ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

Ellen Burstyn

ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE (1974). Director: Martin Scorsese.

After the death of her husband in an accident, Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn of The Exorcist) packs up and drives off to a new life as a singer with her young son Tommy (Alfred Lutter). Trying to get a job as a singer -- although she's not very good -- she winds up as a waitress in a diner in Arizona and along the way gets involved with two very different men (Harvey Keitel and Kris Kristofferson). This once very popular movie hasn't worn well with time. Although Alice was hardly the first Hollywood movie to deal with a widow moving on and starting a new life for herself, stumbling all the while, it came out in a decade reappraising women's roles and therefore seemed more novel than it actually was. Burstyn is good, if a bit overwrought at times, and won the best actress Oscar for the role. Lutter as her son is terrific and the rest of the supporting cast, including a young Jodie Foster as a friend of Tommy's, is excellent. A product of its time if little else.

Verdict: Pleasant and well-acted. **1/2.

INTO THIN AIR (1985)

Ellen Burstyn

INTO THIN AIR (1985 telefilm). Director: Roger Young.

Brian Walker (Tate Donovan of Nancy Drew) bids his family good-bye to go to a writer's retreat. When days go by without a word from Brian, his mother Joan (Ellen Burstyn of (Same Time, Next Year), brother Stephen (Sam Robards), and father Larry (Nicholas Pryor) -- who apparently lives apart from the others -- begin to worry and start to search for him. Joan is told by police that he can't be considered a missing person until thirty days go by, but even when the deadline passes they don't put his name in the system. Alarmed at police disinterest, Joan contacts a private eye named Jim Conway (Robert Prosky), whom she convinces to search for her son. Just when things get hopeless, Conway gets a lead, a lead that the FBI could have also uncovered if they had just been more concerned and diligent ...

Sam Robards and Nicholas Pryor

Into Thin Air is based on a true story and it is both suspenseful and very well-acted by all. This includes Patricia Smith, who in her few short scenes etches a memorable portrait of Conway's wife, Olga, and John Dennis Johnston as the sleazy, if sexy, Earl Pike. Unlike other fact-based true crime telefilms, Into Thin Air also works as well as it does because it is well-directed by Roger Young. It all builds to a satisfying but heartbreaking conclusion. Sam Robards is the son of Jason Robards Jr. and Lauren Bacall. Ron Howard was one of the executive producers. (As this film is told from the frustrated family's pov we don't really know if the authorities were really as disinterested or as inept as portrayed.)

Verdict: Absorbing, well-done made-for-TV crime drama. ***.

SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR

Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn

SAME TIME, NEXT YEAR (1978). Director: Robert Mulligan. Screenplay by Bernard Slade, based on his play.

Doris (Ellen Burstyn) and George (Alan Alda) are dining alone in a restaurant at a country inn, when they decide to have dinner together, leading into a one-night stand. Both of them are happily married with children, but decide to meet again at the same inn the following year. In five year increments, the movie shows them meeting up each year for a romantic weekend, telling each other both good and bad stories about their spouses, and changing with the times and as they grow older, suffering losses but remaining in love. Same Time, Next Year is entertaining but it never quite recovers from its highly contrived and theatrical premise, which probably worked much better on the stage. The performances are okay -- sitcom star Alda [The Mephisto Waltz] seems perfect for what is, in effect, a two hour sitcom, but Burstyn [The Wicker Man] completely lacks a finely-honed comedic gift, tossing off lines that might have been funnier had her timing and delivery been better. One foolish sequence has Doris showing up for one rendezvous when she's eight months pregnant. Some nice moments, but it probably should have been done as a TV special and not a theatrical movie. A basic problem with the whole concept is that it would be hard for two people to grow that close when they only see each other one weekend out of the year. Robert Mulligan also directed To Kill a Mockingbird and many others.

Verdict: Pleasant enough but very small-scale. **1/2.

THE WICKER MAN (2006)

Nicolas Cage in a --what else? --  tense moment

THE WICKER MAN (2006).Writer/ director: Neil LaBute. Based on a screenplay by Anthony Shaffer.

A cop named Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) gets a letter from an ex-fiancee, Willow (Kate Beahan) who tells him that her daughter, Rowan, is missing. He travels to an island in Washington where Willow lives and where she has joined an odd matriarchal and religious society that has an upcoming celebration. The islanders try to convince Malus that the missing child doesn't exist, and even Willow acts strangely, finally confessing that Rowan is also Malus' daughter. Malus fears that the girl is to be used in a horrifying ritual, but on that point he may be slightly mistaken ... This remake of the 1974 British cult film The Wicker Man transplants the action to the U.S. and for some reason does away with all the free-spirited sexuality of the islanders, even as there are some hints that this is essentially a Sapphic society, giving the film a [perhaps unwarranted] homophobic cast-- at one point Cage punches out a stereotypically butch female tavern owner. Instead of Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle, we get Ellen Burstyn as Sister Summerisle, and instead of people breaking out into song we get a lot of bees buzzing about a hero who's allergic to them [but somehow survives]. This version of The Wicker Man may be intriguing (as well as confusing) to viewers who've never seen the original film, as the basic storyline is still absorbing. LaBute has cooked up a more modern-type post script for the film. Cage is not bad, but this is not a "great" performance a la Edward Woodward's in the original. Paul Sarossy's cinematography is a plus.

Verdict: The perfect film version of this story has yet to be made, but the original is better. **1/2.

THE EXORCIST

THE EXORCIST (1973). Special Edition DVD with extra footage. Director: William Friedkin.

Although billed as “the scariest movie ever made,” I have never found The Exorcist to be especially chilling (although the novel did give me the creeps). There had been many movies of demonic possession made before The Exorcist, but William Peter Blatty's novel and Friedkin's film version took such stories out of haunted castles and ghostly manors and placed one in prosaic, sun-lit Washington D.C. -- and made the possessed person an innocent little girl who not only acts differently but looks different as well. [In fact, that is one major flaw in this movie among many. Even when we take into account that medical science is at a loss to explain what has happened to Regan (Linda Blair), I can not believe that any mother, seeing her child covered in suppurating sores and turning green and nasty, wouldn't insist she be placed in a hospital with around the clock care!] The reason why the novel worked better than the film is that the movie is simply too literal. It's one thing to read about what happens to Regan, quite another to actually see her ramming a crucifix you-know-where and all the rest. In fact, at times The Exorcist turns into a vulgar burlesque of a horror movie, just as silly as the endless imitations that followed in its wake (such as Abby). At the same time, the story remains fascinating (but only in an unbelievable 'horror' fashion) and some of it is quite well done and generally well-acted (although Jason Miller, who is otherwise fine in the movie, shows absolutely no reaction to Regan's appearance when he enters her bedroom!) The good performances of Ellen Burstyn, Lee J. Cobb, and others certainly help. Jack MacGowran is excellent in the small role of the drunken director, Burke Dennings, whom Regan/Pazuzu throws out her second story window. Kitty Winn, who plays Burstyn's assistant, co-starred with Al Pacino in The Panic in Needle Park (and was superb), but, sadly, faded out into small parts like this thereafter. Of the new footage included in this edition, Regan's walking down the stairs backward like a scuttling crab is effective but perhaps they thought it looked too comical. The opening sequence with Max von Sydow (rather wasted in this part) seems rather slow. Despite my many quibbles, I have to say that The Exorcist is a good, entertaining flick and was – for better or worse – highly influential. Friedkin continued his examination of the transferal of evil in – of all things -- his film version of Cruising with Al Pacino.

Verdict: A mixed bag but entertaining. ***.