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Show 'Easy Rider' collides with the 1980s in 'Lost in America' (.minclkn s by nick prougi, ... - . v - j . ' -a w -'"..v, csr, - 'V X V. S; yf x x 1 - ! Sam Waterston plays New York Times correspondent Sydney Schan-berg, Schan-berg, presented here as an abrasive loud-mouthed reporter in 1970s Cambodia who aggravates the U.S. military and pushes his guideinterpreter, guideinter-preter, Dith Pran, to get him scoops. When the country falls in 1975, Schanberg suggests (maybe with half a heart) that Pran can leave, but Pran loyally sticks with Schanberg. When the Communist Khmer Rouge takes over, Pran is sucked into the evacuation of citizens to the countryside and Schanberg is shipped ship-ped stateside. . Director Roland Joffe creates some classic images of war the terror of random bombings; people losing limbs or being mashed into bloody smears; children crying and people scrambling in chaos. The evacuation (at the film's mid-point) is especially masterful. But the movie never explains the tie between the two men, which at worst looks like Schanberg as an obnoxious journalistic Lone Ranger and Pran as his forebearing Tonto. There's nothing in the film to show why Pran loves and respects the American. Conservatives have misread the film as a blanket statement that callous American meddling led to the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The picture does believe that, to an extent, but it also compares the American misadventure in Southeast Asia to Schanberg's own mistreatment mistreat-ment of Pran, whom he kept in the combat zone in order to go after the news. At worst, we see the prisoner Dith Pran wandering through a bog of human bones, then we cut to New York, where Schanberg accepts a journalistic award, and in his acceptance speech implies that Pran's plight is caused by U.S. government policy. Schanberg looks like a jerk, albeit with shadings of guilt and compassion, compas-sion, and is played well by Waterston. Pran would almost look like a silly Gunga Din figure, if not for the humanity and dignity given him by Cambodian non-actor Dr. Haing S Ngor. And John Malkovich shines in the supporting cast as a scruffy photographer. A Classic Recommended Good double I feature material i Time-killer For masochists only iLost in America Albert Brooks' story of Yuppie-dom Yuppie-dom is goofy, ironic and nightmarish. night-marish. Brooks plays David Howard, an ad man who worries that he and his wife (Julie Hagerty) are living too controlled a life. When a hoped-for promotion doesn't come through, he bolts and decides to go on the road, with eyes glistening in memory of the central film of his youth, "Easy Rider." "We have to touch Indians," he urges his wife. . The couple hit the road in a huge Winnebago motor home and decide that, before getting back to the roots of America, they will make a quick stop in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, the wife chooses that moment to become uncontrolled." While David is sleeping, she finds a roulette table and loses the entire nest egg of their life's savings. After talking so much about getting back to the basics, the Howards are left with exactly that and it's a horrid prospect. "We're in Hell," David says, and you share his frantic, scared feeling, even as you appreciate the joke from an ironic distance. Brooks is a daringly low-key movie comic. His jokes may be relatively broad, but he never jabs you in the ribs to make sure you get them. And even when his ad-man says ludicrous things, he is played by Brooks with an uncondescending conviction. Hagerty, with her Alice in Wonderland voice, is a good complement to Brooks. Her best moment is the casino scene, where she gives a wonderfully funny scary look at a Vegas high roller. "Lost in America" fits a tempo that very few comedies have these days. But it's an intelligent, funny portrait of a self-realization odyssey that tries to hit the ground running and instead breaks both ankles. And if you want to pinpoint the identity crisis of the '80s generation is there a better image than Brooks' huge Winnebago rolling down the highway to "Born to be Wild?" remember that teens who aren't pretty like our heroes (Porky's dumb, buck-toothed daughter) are to be sneered at. In the end, of course, the gang destroys Porky's showboat. Send this movie to the bottom with it. The Slugger's Wife Neil Simon's latest movie story looks as if he were peeved with the romanticism of "The Natural" especially es-pecially the parts where Robert Redford is inspired by his love to slam the ball out of the park. Michael O'Keefe is a ballplayer for the Atlanta Braves who becomes smitten with a nightclub singer (Rebecca de Momay) and begins hitting homers to impress her. But after they're married, his use of her as a good luck charm becomes possession. She's pressured to be his shadow at all the games, and when she absents herself, O'Keefe uses his choked-up performance as an excuse to lay guilt trips on her. The movie is okay as an illustration of "woman-on-a-pedestal" chauvinism. De Momay is forced to give up her own career but (small comfort) Hubby tells her she's the reason for his success. There's little else to interest you, however, in this bland movie. Both leads sound like gawky teenagers. O'Keefe is better playing. characters with some self-irony and awareness, so you wonder what he's doing playing Andy Hardy. De Mornay has a nice, sensual huskiness in some of the intimate scenes and is a sexy bandstand presence, but she sounds like an abashed cheerleader most of the time. Simon's script doesn't do much to help them. His famous one-liners get no better than having O'Keefe say to his love, "I couldn't take my eyes off your voice." "Slugger's Wife" doesn't work as a romance or a story of Careers vs. Love. (The movie is based on the idea that both lovers get off on delivering in front of a crowd, but ironically the scenes in the nightclubs night-clubs or in the ballpark are perfunctory and lifeless, as directed by Hal Ashby. ) Simon also throws in a few sour, satiric comments about the scramble to win (again, as if to refute "The Natural"). He touches all the bases for plot ideas, but the movie is no homer. The Killing Fields "Killing Fields" presents a terrifying picture of warfare, but the picture's central emotional relationship relation-ship is one of the casualties amid the smoke, shrapnel and tangled poli-tical poli-tical history. " Pork warns Coach Goodenough (Bill Hindman) he faces death or worse if he doesn't throw the championship basketball game in "Porky's Revenge." Mozart. His justification? He was defying God, who gave Salieri the lust to write music to the divine glory, but no skill. He only has enough talent to recognize genius in Mozart who is a foul-mouthed, froggy little lecher. Two sounds dominate this movie Mozart's soaring music and his obnoxious giggle. But for the premise of Peter Shaffer's story to work, we have to feel that Mozart is an often-loathsome character who creates beautiful music. As Mozart, Thomas Hulce reconciles recon-ciles the slob with the genius. He's a stammering ball of energy, and equally convincting later, when tortured by the death of his father. (Ironically, Hulce's biggest previous credit was as one of the "Animal House" slobs.) Director M ilos Forman has created a beautiful picture, with sumptuous cpr mnsip anH liffhtina Thp spmnH with repressed frustration, to old, forgotten lunatic who smiles with a crazed sweetness and creakily charts the wreckage of his life. Yet Mozart is rarely unlikable; he's a combination of two comfortable comfort-able old stereotypes the quirky genius burning himself out, and the rebellious lout with a decent heart. He's modestly aware of his crudities; when he mocks royal authority, the victim is always someone who's a fool or a pompous jerk. At his worst, Mozart humiliates his rival by taking a Salieri piece, the product of hours of labor, and making it 10 times better with a few minutes of improvisation. But later, Mozart redeems himself. After Saliere premieres an awful, bombastic bombas-tic opera, he asks an opinion of Mozart, who replies tactfully ("I never thought such music possible.") pos-sible.") ? Porky's Revenge - That's it. There's not a glimmer of . humor left in the "Porky's" series 1 and it's time to put the old sow to sleep. This time around, the gambling-den owner Porky (Chuck Mitchell) is operating from a riverboat and he's pressuring Pee Wee and the guys to throw a state basketball tournament. (Their coach owes the Porker money. ) In the rest of the plot, the horny Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) yearns for a Swedish exchange student, but succeeds only in getting depantsed, derobed (at graduation!) and demoralized; the kids reunited stern gym-coach Miss Balbricker (Nancy Parsons) with her chubby lover from high school; and, at their most appealing, the gang blackmails a teacher who's threatening to flunk Meat (Tony Ganios) out of the basketball game. (They'd be better off without him, since he has a habit of punching our opposing players.) The theme of "Porky's Revenge" is that everyone is hung up on sex, the kids are moronic, and middle-age middle-age adults making love are pathetically disgusting. And Now Showing At the Holiday Village Cinemas : '-..Mask Police Academy II: Their First Assignment Cat's Eye ( Not yet reviewed.) half, of Shaffer's story, though, bogs .down into a straight recounting of i alien's intrigues. In the supporting j cast, Jeffrey Jones is fine as a vague, ' unintelligent King Franz Joseph and Elizabeth Berride, woefully miscast as Mrs. Mozart, acts like a high school girl in a time warp. But if there's any rationale for seeing "Amadeus," besides the music, it's F. Murray Abraham. He takes us from young man, seething i t 2 Amadeus ', , The film begins promisingly as a , I handsome,, Jyrical , study. of -cruel,,; inexplicable fate. But over its nearly three-hour length, it dissipates into a conflict between two familiar character charac-ter types. The aged composer Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) wallows wal-lows in a madhouse and recalls to a startled priest how ho ruined the life of the young Wolfgang Amadeus i |