The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 30

4 24 FEBRUARY 1995 EG THE AGE ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE FIRST RELEASE NB: For screening times at suburban cinemas check suburban listings. As time changes can occur, please telephone cinemas beforehand. Barcelona A quirky romantic comedy, Barcelona is about the adventures of two verbose American cousins, Ted and Fred, who are constantly bickering. Directed by Walt Stillman, who made the awardwinning Metropolitan, Barcelona is set during the last decade of the Cold War when anti-American feelings ran strong in Spain. Much of the film's humor is generated by the way the two cousins try to hang out with a group of sophisticated radicals who are highly critical of American consumerism, violence and bad taste.

Original and witty, Stillman's film promises to be a hit. Barbara Creed Kino, 45 Collins St, city, 650 2100. Mon- 3.30, 7.30, Sun 7.30. (M). A Bronx Tale Films in the form of autobiographical reminiscences are common among -time feature directors.

Robert De Niro's modest debut resembles an extended episode of The Wonder Years as peppered up by Martin Scorsese or Spike Lee. Working from an overemphatic script by cast member Chazz Palminteri, De Niro tells the tale of young Calogero (played at different ages by Francis Capra and Lillo Brancato), who vacillates between good and evil father figures: his salt-of-theearth, bus driving dad (De Niro) and a suave neighborhood criminal (Palminteri). Opting for classical restraint rather than raw energy, De Niro crafts an urban folk tale that is sometimes insightful and touching, but ultimately rather timid. Adrian Martin Dendy Brighton; George, St Kilda; Como, Sth Yarra. (M).

The Browning Version Based on the famous 1939 play by Terence Rattigan, The Browning Version explores the final days in the teaching career of Andrew CrockerHarris (Albert Finney), a stern proud man whose early retirement from the Abbey Boys School has been forced on him by heart trouble and a mercenary school board. Angry at her husband's self-sacrificing attitude, Laura (Greta Scacchi) has taken solace in the arms of the more virile science teacher, Frank Hunter (Matthew Modine). His only admirer appears to be young Taplow (Ben Silverstone), who gives him a present of Robert Browning's translation of the Agamemnon. This act sets in motion a train of unexpected events. The best thing about The Browning Version is the performances, particularly those of Finney and Scacchi.

The film's most troubling aspect is its falure to adopt a critical position towards its own material particularly the British public school system in which human problems are subordinated to class, cricket, tea and chapel. Barbara Creed Cinema Como, Sth Yarra. Bullets Over Broadway Bullets Over Broadway is one of Woody Allen's best comedies. Funny, serious and satirical, it paints a hilarious picture of Broadway in the roaring '20s. The year is 1929 and the world is falling apart, but earnest new playwright David Shayne (John Cusak) is interested only in his creation a serious work of art that makes big statements about the "meaning of His main worry is that he will be forced to alter his masterpiece.

"I'm an artist," he states, "and I won't change a word." The problem is that David's producer has signed a contract with a gangster who will provide the money as long as his girlfriend, Olive (Jennifer Tilley), is given star billing. To make matters worse, Olive is accompanied by Cheech (Chazz Palminteri) a tough gangster, ordered to make sure she stays monogamous. When Cheech begins to take an interest in the play, even suggesting new dialogue, events take off in an unexpected direction. The art-deco settings are perfect, the FILM Tim Robbins stars in an extraordinary tale of hope, friendship and survival inside a security prison. The Shawshank Redemption CRITICS' CHOICE ASED on a non-horror story by Shawshank Stephen King, Redemption The is a In the Mouth of Madness is a classic prison story about living masterly exercise in modern with hope on the inside.

Andy horror. Sam Neill plays the hardDufresne (Tim Robbins) is a Maine nosed rationalist, an investigator banker, a seemingly gentle guy, of suspicious insurance claims, in who receives a double life a world increasingly given over to sentence for the murder of his violent, mass hallucinations. This unfaithful wife and her lover. He is mania is caused by the popular sent to Shawshank prison where novels of one Sutter Cane (Jurgen he befriends Red (Morgan Prochnow), whose malevolent Freeman), who has served 20 years fictive power changes reality. of a life sentence for murder.

Drawing on influences from Life at Shawshank is grim. Andy Videodrome and "manga" comics survives by becoming a financial to Philip Dick and Twin Peaks, this adviser to the warden and other is Carpenter's best work in years. officials. When a young new It is a playfully self-conscious film, prisoner arrives, events take an constantly alluding and to a plot via unexpected turn. The Shawshank chilling "flash-forward" glimpses vertiginous movie and a superior prison film; it never fully reveals.

As in many of Redemption is a typical buddy montages that the acting is flawless, the story the most sophisticated films of and the direction this genre, the horror arises as assured. much engrossing from this margin of Barbara Creed incomprehensibility as from the usual assortment of shocks, Cinema Centre, 140 Bourke Street, mutations and city, 663 3303. Mon-Sat 11.10, Carpenter's work with music and apparitions. 2.20, 6, 8.45, Sun 2.20, 6, 8.45; also sound design has never been so at Brighton Bay. (MA).

radical and the film's set pieces particularly the terrifying scenes In the Mouth of of Neill's night driving are breathtakingly executed. Madness Adrian Martin THOUGH you may have to Cinema Centre, 140 Bourke Street, A rush screen to before catch it it on escapes the big to city, 3.30, 663 6.45, 3303. 9.05, Sat Mon-Sat 10.40, 10.40, 3.30, 1, video, John Carpenter's new film 6.45, 9.05, Sun 3.30, 6.45, 9.05 (M). song-and-dance routines spectacular, backstage dramas happen by the minute and the funny lines keep coming. Bullets Over Broadway is a hilarious comedy that takes a serious look at art and ethics.

Barbara Creed Russell Cinemas, 131 Russell St, city, 654 8133. Today, Sat, Mon Wed 11, 1.30, 4, 7, 9.30, Sun 1.30, 3.45, 6.15, 8.45; also at Brighton Bay; Rivoli Camberwell; George St Kilda. (M). China Moon China Moon is a steamy thriller about illicit passion, greed and murder. "When the moon is like a big old plate of china, strange things really happen," says one of the characters.

Set in downtown Florida, it tells the story of homicide detective, Kyle Bondine (Ed Harris) and Rachel Munro (Madeleine Stowe) as the estranged and battered wife of a local banker (Charles Dance). A smart cop but a vulnerable romantic, Bondine lets desire blur his vision when he meets the beautiful Rachel. Directed by John Bailey, China Moon epitomises film noir film) at its with sexual harassment by his new boss, the beautiful and ambitious Meredith Johnson (Demi Moore). Billed as "a suspense thriller of corporate intrigue and sexual Disclosure promises to be one of this summer's most controversial offerings. Barbara Creed Village Centre, 206 Bourke St, city, 667 6565.

Daily 1, 3.40, 6.20, 9, also Mon Sat 10.20; also Dendy Brighton. (R). Eat Drink Man Woman "Food and laments Old Chu, the master Taiwanese chef who is far more adept with the wok than his own repressed emotions. "Is that all there is?" Apparently so. This triumphant tale of Chu and his three grown daughters shows us that life is all about appetite.

Ang Lee takes ingredients that sound as if they should add up to a soap opera outbreaks a pregnancy, several surprise of romance, and some solidly terminal diseases and cooks them up into a stir-fry of family life that is richly original, perfectly observed and often very funny. Among many fine performances the food itself is a standout: sensuous marinated pork chops and rotund dumplings gleam like welloiled bodies diving from wok to plate. Stephanie Bunbury Lumiere Cinema 108 Lonsdale St, city. 639 1055. Today, Sat, Mon-Wed 2.30, 7.05, Sun 4.45, 7.05, Thurs 2, 7.05; also at Brighton Bay; Como, Sth Yarra.

(PG). Heavenly Creatures Heavenly Creatures is certain to be one of the year's best films. Chilling yet compelling, it tells the story based on actual events of two girls, Pauline Reiper and Juliet Hulme, who murder Pauline's mother. The deadly duo believe she is responsible for a decision which will lead to their separation. Set in New Zealand in the '50s, Heavenly Creatures draws on a mix of film styles from documentary to magic realism.

Using material taken from Pauline's actual diaries, director Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, Braindead) recreates beautifully the atmosphere of a prim and proper community beneath whose repressive surface ferments the seeds of I anarchy and murder. The film's most remarkable achievement is its depiction of the Fourth World, a secret magical place in which the girls live via the power of their imaginations. The Fourth World is peopled by singers and film stars such as Mario Lanza and Orson Welles the latter a dark figure who avenges in fantasy form any insults the girls have experienced in real life. Heavenly Creatures is a knockout a riveting story of love, sexual repression and hysteria. Performances are excellent, the suspense is electric and the recreation of the surreal fantasy world is breathtaking.

Barbara Creed Russell Cinemas, 131 Russell St, city, 654 8133. Faraway So Close 1.30, Today, 4, Sat, 6.30, Mon-Wed also at 11.15, Rivoli, 1.45, Camberwell; 4.15, 7, 9.30, George, Sun St Kino, 45 Collins St, city, 650 2100. Daily 5. Kilda; Como, Sth Yarra. (M).

FREEBIES 1 Robert De Niro makes his directorial debut with a film called A Bronx Tale. He also stars in it, along with Chazz Palminteri. It is set in the New York Italian community, which should come as no surprise at all. It also contains the odd punch-up and a few words you wouldn't utter in front of the Monsignor, which should also come as no surprise. But, hey, It's by De Niro, so It must be good.

The film is showing at four cinemas around town and to find out which ones they are you'll have to check the listings herein because, sheesh, that way we feel useful. There are 10 double passes on offer to any session at any of the flick houses, except those on public holidays or after 6pm on Saturday. Phone 817 4433 between 10am and 10.15am today to score one. best with its dramatic images, melancholic atmosphere and illicit passions. One of the film's best features is its camerawork.

Willy Kurant, director of photography, is known for his dark style. In one particularly sensuous underwater sequence, Stowe and Harris plunge into the black depths, unaware they have already been touched by the icy glow of the full moon. Barbara Creed Cinema Nova, Carlton. (M). Disclosure In Fatal Attraction, Michael Douglas was harassed by a demented career woman, and in Basic Instinct he surrendered willingly to the deadly charms of a female serial killer.

Now the man with a death wish is back again. This time he stars with Demi Moore in Disclosure (directed by Barry Levinson) based on Michael Crighton's best-selling novel. Douglas plays Tom Sanders, a corporate executive on the way up that is, until he's charged Forrest Gump Hollywood films often imply that an idiot is the perfect American, the ideal citizen of the land of the free and the home of the brave. This is perhaps the first film or the first since the days of Frank Capra to state this explicitly as an article of faith. The title character is an Alabama guy with an IQ of 75.

Gump (Tom Hanks) wins a football scholarship to university, becomes a hero in the Vietnam War and a business tycoon and has other successes. His life is a series of inadvertent triumphs as he stumbles in and out of critical moments in his nation's history. The film's attitude is that intellectual deficiency is not something to be treated with understanding; it should be worshipped as the highest quality to which Americans can aspire. Neil Jillett Russell Cinemas, 131 Russell St, city, 654 8133. Today, Sat, Mon Wed 11, 2, 6, 9, Sun 2, 5.45, 8.45; also at Dendy Brighton.

(M). I Don't Want to Talk About it Kino, 45 Collins St, city, 650 2100. Thurs 7.20. Like Water For Chocolate Using such ingredients as magic realism, cookery, Greek drama, nostalgia and revolutionary history, Laura Esquivel wrote a novel that she adapted for this alluringly eccentric Mexican film, directed by Alfonso Arau. Set in the early years of the century, it is a tale of young women in search of different brands of happiness.

The film seems to float (when it is not running off the rails!) in a romantic haze that at times blithely turns comedy and tragedy into roughly the same thing. Neil Jillett Kino, 45 Collins St, city, 650 2100. Daily 1, 9.35. (M). Maitresse Directed in 1975 by Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female, Reversal of Fortune), Maitresse tells the story of a small-time thief, Olivier (Gerard.