The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia • Page 57

nitinmii'tiiiiimivifuiiiiiiii rirfni'i tairfiirn urn ari Wir SIGHT-N-SOUND OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODO -jrn i 8 mis rnmsm mam ifi iiy I ii UUUL3 IIVU UU ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo It's a reflection of this age that many millions are spent on a fairy story with a fantasy promise of salvation. Force 10 from Navarone QUE i mum Also screening at Gosford 24 1489 frl M71-346PITT ST I Ml WQ -miOAM ST. 1 I367i003-377EW STM. MP I 969 5186 9 SPIT RD I 476 3777 HWV TODAY 2, 5, 8 pm DAILY 1.30, 4.45,7,45 pm 47tjj SI TODAY 1.30, 4.45, 8 pm DAILY 9.45 1 3D. 4.45, 8 pm I 2 67111 SiGOHSt ST 1 TODAY 1.30, 4.45,8 pm DAILY 10.15am 1.30,4.45,8pm TODAY 2pm, 5 pm and 8 pm DAILY 1.30, 4.45,7.45 pm TODAY 2,5, 8 pm DAILY 1.30, 4.45 and 7.45 pm TODAY 1.30, 4.45, 8 pm DAILY 10.1 Sam, 1.30, 4.45.8 pm TODAY 2 pm, 5 pm 8 pm DAILY 1.30,4.45,7.45 pm mm -y.

1 -5w with only two accomplices, a dumb stooge (Ned Beat-ty) and his moll (Valerie Ferine). Fortunately, Christopher Reeve, as Superman, is a true-to-cartoon nice guy with a special smile for his fans on his final flypast. If he comes back, one hopes there will be less ballyhoo and a better story. (NRC, Village Cinema City and Suburbs.) House Calls "This season needed a lighthearted sophisticated comedy, and House Calls looks like being the closest to fill the bill. It hasn't the top flight qualities of a film like Touch Of Class, as it falls back on well-worn comedy ploys, and many of the scenes are like quick punch-line cartoon strips.

Four script writers were involved, and it shows. But there is still plenty of fun. It's a hospital movie in which the doctors and surgeons are treated with none of that hushed respect. Walter Matthau, a i h-standing surgeon whose wife has recently died, is determined to enjoy the fun as the ladies pursue him. Within the hospital he is indifferent to the incompetence of his senile senior (Art Carney), and it takes all the British gumption of Glenda Jackson to check his career as a medical butterfly.

She is a former patient who also finds him irresistible, but is careful not mm Although the producers deny it, the movie is partly a send-up, luckily. There's much amusement in the comedy angles to Superman's miraculous powers, as when he saves a disabled airliner by standing-in for the missing engine. Or when he lands on a penthouse balcony to pay a call, and says: "If this is a bad time to talk, I could come back. I don't have to park." It is wonderfully exhilarating when he takes his girl Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) lightly by the arm and flies her round New York and into the clouds. Children have loved that idea since Peter Pan.

The picture is worth seeing for those frisky scenes, but elsewhere it becomes a typical glitter package of Hollywood excesses, full of unnecessary filmstars some of whom have just about disappeared on the cutting-room floor. The space fiction segments lots of that expanding spinning universe business may be fireworks. But they also form part of the solemn gobble-dygook which lends god-cult overtones to the Superman myth. This, one fears, is not a send up. And the movie doesn't neglect its obligations to violence.

To quote the production designer. "There's hardly a set that someone doesn't demolish, crash into or smash out of." The crime adventure in which New York-based Superman becomes involved doesn't reach the standard of the better James Bond movies. Gene Hackman is the most nupromising villain By now, nothing new can come out of World War II. But the adventures which have served many a film can be recycled and still add up to a reliable formula of enjoy-able danger-filled action. The connection with the film Guns of Navarone is tenuous.

Two of the survivors of that mission, played here by Edward Fox and the late Robert Shaw (whose last film this was) are sent to Yugoslavia to identify and kill a spy who has infiltrated the partisan army. Robert Shaw will be missed in future. He had style and it's there, quietly, in his solid performance as an old-style hero, a gentlemanly major. Just as cool in a tight corner is Edward Fox, who saves the situation for a slightly helpless American colonel who has been assigned the job of blowing up a bridge behind enemy lines. Villains are the gigantic Richard Kiel and Franco Nero.

This war drama is a simple, exciting business of military and hush hush operations, directed in traditional English style by Guy Hamilton. (M, Hoyts Entertainment Centre.) Continued next page I 47 3777-155 PAC MWY I 633 3 ST. 621 ST. TODAY 12.05 pm DAILY 10 am 134 1001-377 WtW STrt MP TODAY 12.05 pm DAILY 10 am I2i 670l-S4SjtORQSTl TODAY 12.50, 6pm and 8pm DAILY 10.15am, 12.50, 35, 6, 8 pm Also screening Gaslord 241489 Balgowlah 941811 TODAY 12.05 pm DAILY 10 am TODAY 12.30. 3 om DAILY 10 am, l2.3U.3pm 3 JH EM TODAY 2.1 5, 4.45, 7.30 DAILY 9.1 5, 2.15,4.45,7.30 pm mmmm Inn I I i 1 tasiiienifiai) TODAY 12.30, 3, 5.30, 8 pm DAILY 1 0 am, 12.30, 3, 5.30, 8 pm TODAY 2, 4 7.45 pm DAILY lu am, 12,2.

4 and 7.45pm to let him know. The old game of a cannv woman snaring a I 633 27t CHURCH ST 1 1 26 GEORGE ST wayward man can't fail FELLIHIS CASANOVA 26 3321 SUNDAY 4-45 p.m. ONLY. LAST 4 DAYS. of the year as Lex Luthor, to entertain when she is evil mastermind who lives Glenda and he is Matin an underground palace thau.

(M, Pitt Centre). OS mi nam DAILY 5.45 and 8 pm DAILY 4.50 and 8 pm lltt 'O' -5SOEOHUt ST. I I I I GEORGE ST 1 Reggae Special. BOB MARLEY IN CONCERT, (1st release); plus Jimmy Cliff, (M). THE HARDER THEY COME, All the window-dressing of expensive movies symphonic scores, special effects, camera art, costumes becomes easily dispensable when a movie simply about people comes along.

(M 4 mm mm TODAY (SUNDAY) ONLY 1.30 and 8.00 pjn. 3 I 969 518 SPIT HO TODAY 12.05 DAILY 10.30 am 633 3766 CHURCH ST I TODAY 12.15pm DAILY 11.45 am i)i 1H03-377WEWSTM MO NO SCREENING TODAY DAILY 10.30 am 6 71 S4SG0GtST 1 TODAY2pmonlyt DAILY9.30am,11.55 and 2.20 pm Today 2.15. 6.15 ony AJ TODAY 1.30, 4.30, 7.30 pm DAILY 9.30 am, 12.30, 3.30, 7.30 pm TODAY 120, 3J0, 7 DAILY 9.30, 1Z30, 3.30 nd 7 JO pm tJ3 37M CHURCH ST. 1 421 S400 HILDARE ST I i ConvutfcKat Mm ACADCrnV from her contemporaries. She muddles on her way with girlfriends, boyfriends, through all the emotions which can churn up a young adult and we see her learning, just a little bit anyway.

The talent budget of this fresh, biting movie is invested in the best possible way in excellent acting. As Susan, Melanie Mayron is an already-experienced support-role actress full of appealing likeability. Eli Wallach has a small but striking role as her elderly admirer. Here is a film mainly for young adults but also for teenagers and their parents, who may like to think, compare, and recognise. (M, Showcase, Double Bay Twin).

A young American director, Claudia Weill, succeeds with some rare assets; brevity, observation, humour, detachment. Her story about a young Jewish girl trying out life on her own in New York hasn't a plot, hasn't a message, hasn't drama. What is so surprising is how vitally it does succeed. It arouses warm involvement in the ordinary experiences of an ordinary young woman. Susan Winblatt is a pudgy, bespectacled girl who isn't prettier when she takes off her spectacles.

Her youthful confusions of happy and sad moments will stir memories in the not-so-young, and a rush of sympathy ivmHAua TUJIfV 4453.1 k3i Oxfcrf a Paddington. ddjngt33 Everyone has one, wants one, oris one. SPECIAL SNEAK PRE VIFW1 of forthcoming maVy attrac girl friends wi C-F TONIGHT 7.30 pm tions. 2.30 Craig Russell and Hollis McLaren in (M) probably the most unusual love story ever. 5.00 Offenbach's hilarious light operetta with all the fun of French Can Can and classic bedroom farce.

1 SUNDAY AT THE SHOWCASE Judy Garland stars in our special Christmas eve programme. THE WIZARD OF OZ (G) and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (G) 3.20 pm ONLY! LA VIE PARISIENNE (G). Visconti's L'INNOCENTE starts Boxing Dayl BASS HILL BUCKTOWH FA1RFIE1D DUNDAS FRENCH'S FOREST HATBAVIllt PENRITH WARRIEWOOD I NORTH RYDE CARINGBAH PARKltA LIVERPOOL GOSFORD KRIS ICRISTOFFERSOrJ TRAVOLTA Yi i Mnnnnii (M. MWUIIMMH ITWW yiwiiKjmwwir livinginn rj 000 1 BEE GEES CATCH 4 THE FEVER, itr urn 1 I 4f ALL NEW-swEEtiEY a 54 THE SUN-HERALD, DEC 24, 1978 54.