OCR Text |
Show Saint Nick gets lump of coal for glittery 'Santa Claus' Quickies byltickBrongh some old childhood phobia. And he quickly and somewhat callously skips out. Unfortunately, he also has lost most of his money, stranding him in Soho. But when he goes back to Ar-quette's Ar-quette's apartment to apologize or get cab fare, we're not sure which she is dead by suicide. Did his rejection push her skittery psyche over the edge? As he bounces from one person to another in Soho, his own vague guilt reflects on the neighborhood's paranoia, until each is feeding on the other. The neighborhood comes to suspect him of being the culprit in a rash of burglaries, while the real thieves (Cheech and Chong) slip in and out of the area unscathed. As the evening wears on, Dunne is desperate to get home, not merely for practical reasons, but to escape the cloak of sin he feels weighing down his shoulders. He becomes a walking plague, setting off even picayune disasters. In a stranger's bathroom, for example, he uses a tissue, throws it into the toilet, flushes it and the toilet overflows. Dunne is the only character we stay with all through the movie. And maybe this accounts in part for a certain coldness in the film. Dunne has an off-putting personality that keeps us from completely identify- " ing with him. Meanwhile, the alien characters he encounters are played by actors with more warmth than he has. The best of them include Arquette, Teri Garr as a restless waitressaspiring artist, Catherine O'Hara (of "SCTV") who leads the neighborhood vigilantes in an ice cream truck, and even Cheech and Chong. This is only a minor flaw in the persistently demented fable of "After Hours." V2Santa Claus "Santa Claus" is the Christmas, dud of the year a film that seems to have spent most of its budget and effort ef-fort on glitter dust. Santa (David Huddleston) is a1 toymaker of bygone years who loves , to hand out toys at Christmas time. Then he is caught in a dangerous blizzard and buried with his wife (Judy Cornwell) and reindeer Don-nerandBlitzen. Don-nerandBlitzen. The next thing he knows, he has been "transcended" to the North Pole. He's greeted by a troupe of elves as The Chosen One, who will deliver gifts to the whole world. It's nice to see Huddleston, a 1 veteran character actor, get a chance at a big role. He's warmhearted warm-hearted and utterly likable as Claus, as is Cornwell as Mrs. Claus. But " he's too earth-bound. Talking to the reindeer before a flight, he sounds a . little like a football coach. And he is smothered by the superficial super-ficial glitz of the movie. The reindeer appear as wagging, fake heads. And the toy shop looks like the biggest department-store window win-dow display of all time. Much of the story focuses on Dudley Moore, who appears here with strained cheerfulness as Patch, an ambitious elf who makes a lot of puns with the word "self "like talking talk-ing about "elf-confidence." 3 He makes an effort at mass-producing mass-producing toys that turns out to be a bitter failure. Disheartened, he leaves for the outside world.' ; Unfortunately, he hooks up with businessman B.Z. (John Lithgow) who makes a line of dangerous toys his dolls blaze into flame like highway flares. Lithgow's booming, over-the-top villainy is the picture's biggest delight, as he markets Patch's magic dust and supplants Santa in the affection of children. B.Z. even plans to stage a second Yuletide in March, to be called "Christmas II." It's a nice joke, coming from the producers, Ilya and Alexander Salkind, who perpetrated the "Superman" series. You're grateful for it, because it's a personal touch foronce. If only the rest of the movie didn't look like it was designed by B.Z. as a big, consumable item. King Solomon's Mines' ( Let me make something clear. This isn't a good movie, but it's so Now Showing At the Holiday Village Cinemas : After Hours " To Live and Die in L. A. Spies Like Us (not yet rated) White Nights ( not yet rated ) . ' gloriously bad, it's fun to watch. Richard Chamberlain, usually a rugged, dignified hero, reacts to being be-ing trapped in this picture by giving a boyish performance worthy of his "Dr. Kildare" days. A bfatty Sharon Stone is the woman he's guiding through the jungle to the mines. The two villains quibbling like kids are a nasty Arab (John Rhys-Davies) and German Herbert Lorn, who constantly con-stantly plays Wagner on his gramophone. You can choose your favorite idiocy from a long list. Chamberlain makes modern-day wisecracks in a story set in the late 19th century. When the actors fly in an airplane, they're really bouncing in front of the most obvious process-screen work Jn years. The, natives realistically talk to each other in . African, untij'snddenly oneof lhenv talks to his tribe in English, so we can be filled in on a plot point! And at the ojjmax, one of the villains keeps dying, then reappearing, reappear-ing, then dying, then reappearing . . . It's a treasure for turkey fans everywhere! After Hours Martin Scorsese's dark comedy is inspired by his customary black urban ur-ban milieu, plus a little Kafka, a . dash of Hitchock and most of all a healthy dose of Alice down the rabbit hole. Alice, so to speak, is a New York computer programmer (Griffin Dunne) who meets a woman (Rosan-r na Arquette) in a coffee shop and casually accepts her invitation to ; look her up at her flat in Soho. The mood of the evening is leading toward bed,' but Dunne, looking around her apartment, finds personal per-sonal effects that hint she is a burn victim. This seemingly triggers A Classic I Recommended ... Good double f ; feature material :! Time-killer l . :pV , For masochists ;', v only ' |