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St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 45

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St. Louis, Missouri
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45
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the new movies October 10, 1980 5D ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 'Ordinary People' In a word or two, "Ordinary People" is an extraordinary motion picture. Not since "Kramer vs. Kramer" has the moviegoer received so much re has been exposed to a superior motion picture. The rating is because of some rather common, garden-variety profanity as expressed by high school boys.

(Running time: 2 hours, 3 minutes. -Rating, R. At the Westport, Ronnie's and Halls Ferry.) JOE POLLACK the Seine. All this for one admission price. The story centers on Goldie Hawn, who plays a Jewish-American princess with more bad luck than a character in a Russian novel.

Hawn is also the film's -j executive producer, which probably means she had a crack at the script," too. Sam Wanamaker plays Hawn'S with the proper creases. His office is slightly shabby; their home is pristine. The use of the psychiatrist is an easy way to move the story along, to add the exposition. It's a convenient place tcr insert flashbacks, and Redford uses the devices, but not to excess.

Excellent supporting work comes from two young actresses. Dinah Manoff who won a Tony last spring for her supporting work in Neil Simon's "I Ought to Be in Pictures," has only one scene, but she's magnificent as a young woman Hutton meets in the hospital. And Elizabeth McGovern, making her screen debut, is rich and just perfect as a high school classmate. Their dates, their attempts at communication, are handled with glorious style, and the three-steps-forward, two-steps-back growth of the relationship is depicted with all the painful humor those relationships often have. McGovern, by the way, will have the featured role of Evelyn Nesbitt in the upcoming production of "Ragtime." "Ordinary People" is not the easiest picture to watch, right up to the painful, yet honest, ending.

It will hit home in many ways, and it may hurt. It will probably bring tears. And afterward, it will cause thought and reflection, and the realization that one spectacularly. She portrays a woman who is more concerned with appearance than with reality she's horrified that her friends know that her son is seeing a psychiatrist, for example and who has, through her life, hidden emotions and feelings behind a ramrod-rigid backbone and a stiff upper lip. Sutherland, in his strongest performance in many years, is a perfect contrast.

He has built a comfortable world for his family, a good home and all the proper conveniences, and suddenly everything falls'apart and he has no answers. It is more than just the death of his firstborn; there is the trauma of Hutton and the discovery that the relationship with his wife is not what he always believed it had been. He hurts, and he hurts deeply, as he searches for the answers, but there's a reality to the portrayal that is awesome, and his emotions are not only real, but transmitted to the audience in the same manner. Judd Hirsch rounds out the main cast as the psychiatrist who works with Hutton, and Redford has made him the perfect contrast to the Jarretts. He's Jewish, while they're white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

He's a bit rumpled; they're always in the proper clothes that one level of filmmaking. He has drawn marvelous performances from the cast, and he has also has a made a film that is visually attractive without tricks or stunts. Real people live in a real community and do real things in "Ordinary People," and that's about as much praise as is possible'to give. Look for a swarm of Academy Award nominations next spring. On the surface, the story is very simple.

The Jarretts live in the exclusive, wealthy community of Lake Forest, and those who ever visited the Football Cardinals when they trained there will feel at home immediately. There's a father (Donald Sutherland), a mother (Mary Tyler Moore) and a son (Timothy Hutton). There was an older son, too, but he drowned in a boating accident, and as the film opens, Hutton is beginning his senior year in high school, home after an attempt at suicide and four months in a mental hospital. Neither life nor the film is that simple, of course. Hutton is consumed with guilt over his suicide attempt, the death of his brother (he was in the boat, too) and his relationship with his mother, among other things.

It's a difficult role, with many shades of emotion, and Hutton carries it off splendidly. And then there's Moore, who Is simply dazzling. It's not a sympathetic TJ riVate lienjamill "Private Benjamin" is a movie written by a committee of three, and its pace and tone reflect this. It is actually a movie within a movie within a movie; it seems that no one's ideas have been left out. Whether the collaboration of three screen writers gave this sometimes delightful, sometimes interminable motion picture an identity crisis, is anyone's guess.

But "Private Benjamin" begins in ironic comedy, goes to Abbott and Costello slapstick, includes an interlude of Grade movie girls' barracks stuff, has an Army recruiting segment, and lush romantic scenes on the banks of "The Blues Brothers is a Scream, One of the all-time great a flat-out lint Siskt'l, Trihunr "Don't miss the blues' a miracle of sound, action and hijjh spirits you cannot afford to miss. An extraordinary Archer Wirnltn, New York PM part, and it's a far cry from Mary Richards, but Moore carries it off PI "A big, crazy, hilarious a musical action-comedy that is as much fun to listen to as it is to jack MalhcuV, Detroit Free Pros JOHN BELUSHI JAMES BROWN CAB CALLOWAY VI This is Brother Ambrose, Lead him not into temptation. I 1 For he's sure I 1 tO foHOW. ialliMbWpBam ARETHA FRANKLIN HENRY GIBSON THE BLUES BROTHERS BANLS Written by DAN AYKROYD and JOHN LANDIS Executive Producer BERNIE BRILLSTEIN Produced by ROBERT K. WEISS Directed by JOHN LANDIS A MARTY FELDMAN FILM "IN GOD WE TRUST" MARTY FELDMAN 'PETER BOYLE LOUISE LASSER With a visitation by RICHARD PRYOR as God Introducing ANDY KAUFMAN as Armageddon T.

Thunderbird A HOWARD WESTGEORGE SHAPIRO PRODUCTION Written by MARTY FELDMAN CHRIS ALLEN Music by JOHN MORRIS Executive Produce; NORMAN T. HERMAN Associate Producer LAURETTA FELDMAN Produced by HOWARD WEST and GEORGE SHAPIRO Directed by MARTY FELDMAN HAMILL HARRISON FORD CARRIE FISHER DEE WILLIAMS ANTHONY DANIELS PROWS KENNY BAKEP PETER MAYHEW PRANK OZ -IRVIN KERSHNER KURTZ BRACKETT LAWRENCE KASDAN pMlTWeTlD TT- 1 OrWiulSHjrHjin.kRn. wiling Rt-feliMnVr BWt STARTS TODAY 9:10 7:15,9:40 GEORGE LUCAS WILLIAMS GEORGE LUCAS soundiback on mo kcopos (SORRY NO PASSES) A UNIVERSAL PICTURE iMOUMVemAiCrrrSTUOlOSMC Ml MQHTS RE SERVED 3RD WEEK iatner, ana nis emotional commitment to his daughter is not unlike the sort of father, and his emotional commitment attachment that one has for his prize springer spaniel. Barbara Barrie, who in my opinion should have won an Academy Award. for playing the mother in "Breaking Away," is a mother again.i Unfortunately, this maternal role gives her very little opportunity to do anything except hold a handkerchief to her face.

"Private Benjamin" bears a little resemblance to a night of spliced- together home movies, all focused' closely on one member of the family. It is wonderful; it drags. I liked it. I liked it not. I liked it.

I liked it not. Ah, but there is a point to all this," and it is woven throughout the various phases of the movie. That is, neve-underestimate a pampered, See NEW MOVIES, Page 6 I loved 'The Blues Brothers! Loaded entertainment and bulging with good Piter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle DAN AYKROYD RAY CHARLES CARRIE FISHER TiAM1t Unr Rpdthr riRlf.lt ROOK 9:05 OPENS AT 6:00 BOOK MGM Unitnd Artists 5:15,7:15,9:15 OPENS 6:30 STARTS DUSK 9:05 I spect from the filmmaker, and if his first film is characteris-' tic of his abilities as a director, Robert Redford is even finer behind the camera than he was before it. Redford and writer Alvin Sargent, who adapted Judith Guest's novel for the screen, really treat an audience as grownups. They have brought a mature, literate, powerful script to the screen, handling a complex subject without pandering to cheap emotion, so that the emotional moments really strike home.

A film that deals with family problems, and the Jarrett family certainly has problems, can easily slide across the line into soap opera, into maudlin tear-jerking, but someone, and we have to assume it was the director, keeps "Ordinary People" from vanishing in that painful direction. Each time it approaches the line, Redford does something to bring it back. And he has succeeded on more than fWhy Would I "Why Would I Lie?" is a small but moderately charming movie that is not afraid of sentimentality, hard-to-swallow coincidence or telegraphing its punches (or kisses). It stars Treat Williams and Liza Eichorn as a couple who fall in love with each other and with a young boy who was abandoned by his mother. Williams, recently seen as the head hippie in "Hair," the one who dances on the table, plays rather stolidly a sort of holy fool, a young man who is given to what he calls "fabrications." Those are complicated lies that are so incredi-bile, yet so convincingly told, that normal "So what do you do for a living?" chit-chat is totally broken down.

The theory is that, once the cliches are disposed of, people can talk about real things. Not much as philosophy, but it leads to some interesting tales and some funny lines, such as an exchange between Williams and a psychiatrist, played by the very droll Severn Darden: Darden: "Did you love your mother?" Williams: "Only once." Eichorn is lovely and very effective as a liberated woman who is looking for something a lot less complicated than Williams and the boy (played wonderfully by Gabriel Swann) have to offer. She wants a little fun and they want love. The idea of course reverses the gender on an old plot cliche'. Natural II in a 1MU, CREVE COEUR: ly, as in the days when Clark Gable or Tyrone Power played the Liza Eichorn role, love wins.

The direction, rather too languid in the first half-hour but quite sprightly after that, is by Larry Peerce. His previous movies range from "The Bell Jar" to "The Other Side of the Mountain." Despite the subject, the mood is a bit closer to the latter than the former. (Running Time, 1 hour, 45 minutes. Rating, PG. At the Des Peres, Ronnie's, Halls Ferry, Cinema 4.) HARPER BARNES this fables of the famous By E.E.

Edgar Late in life, WINSTON CHURCHILL became partially deaf, and his doctor told him to wear a hearing aid. Britain's most eloquent statesman didn't think much of the idea. "But it will improve your hearing," the doctor assured him. "So?" shrugged Churchill. "I usually do the talking." When Finnish conductor BORIS SIRPO and his wife came to the United States, they moved into a house that was rumored to be haunted.

One night, they were wakened by a clanking in the attic. Her voice shaking, Mrs. Sirpo asked her husband to investigate. "You go," he suggested. "Your English is bet-ter' 7:00, manna l.OO, 3:00, lATESHOW 4" MARK BILLY cCVMD nn 1 :30 'My It's Away It's freckled hkiw; CHRIS MATT CRAIG DAVE 5:10,7:10,9:10 7:15,9:40 NOW SHOWING 1i41, MO, 7iOO, iX UCUWVEI 70MM and DOUT STtKO OPENS 6:30 STARTS DUSK 1 7:15,9:40 iinHj 5:00,7:00,9:00 iioo, ioo, 9:05 i I 4S, 5i4S, 7ilO, IilO, WO 7SOO, SHOWN ROTH KHIN1 NO HHI CARM) ADVANCE TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR ANY OF TODAY 01! TOMOR- PM TO 6:00 PM.

Not since "COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER" has a film so touched the hearts of movie-goers! Bodyguard is sensitive and gripping. 'Rocky 'Breaking and more. brilliant!" Marilyn Beik Syndicated Columnist Bodyguard' is fast, funny and with unvarnished truths. THS PICTURE IS ROMANTIC, yWol OUTRAGEOUS fW AND ffJSm COMPLETED JC CONTAGIOUS! AiY ifcp I WOULD WE Jtplf ffM PULLTHEWOOL Bodyguard' could be summer's sleeper." Daily Vaiwtv iPGl wmip suggested bJ ErMTZMAL MAT MOT St MJfTMLf FOR CMLDKM 5:30,7:30,9:30 sioo, rioo, 9.00 1:40, 5:10,9:00 not supposed to happen. there when it does.

BLOSSOM dEVA LE GALLIENNE 9:30 5:20,7:25,9:30 1 There is a line between life and death. Edna McCauley crossed over that line and came back. Now no one she touches will ever be the same. It's Be A A 9 IT BOSK GUARD Mtl.VIN SIMON PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS A TONY BIU. FILM MY BODYGUARD MAKEPEACE RUTH GORDON DILLON JOHN HOUSEMAN RICHARD NELSON KATHRYN GRODY BALDWIN MARTIN MULL GRUSIN MELVIN SIMON ALAN ORMSBY DON DEVLIN H0s.j wowldl METRO-GOLDVVYN-MAYER mm A PATJCHO KOHNER-AURORA mcutanoi A LARRY PEERCE tm TREAT WIUJAMS USA EICHHORN 'WHYWOULDIUEr swnng SUSAN HELDFOND-ANNE BYRNE' VALERIE CURTIN-JOCELYN BRANDO GABRIEL SWANN xm RICH IRVINE JAMES STEWART by CHARLES FOX Me And Ybu And You'wwi muk oy RANDY GOODRUM sungoyBJ.

THOMAS krpaybyPETERSTONE wd on nowr if futKmfby HOLDS HODGES ftoducwey PANCHO KOHNER Onam by LARRY PEERCE ELLEN BURSTYN k0MRm RESURRECTION ROBERTS Wrimn by LEWIS JOHN CARLINO DlmWol rhotoffiphy MARIO TOSI, A C. Miuk by MAURICE JARRE tndmrt by RENEE MISSEL ml HOWARD R06ENMAN Olracttd by DANIEL PFTRIE Rui tfct itonl froM rOCKET ROOKS A UNIVERSAL PICTURE PG XMTA UNCI UBITn trii rVHIIH SUIBMU SUHiiSltO TH AVOH aOtH IMTIML MM ICT MTUU CHIIMN BILL gt'wwg tWCNTX-H Cll'l' '01 NOW SHOWING! 9:05 5:20,7:20,9:20 1:33, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30 5:45, 7:45, 45 7:30,9:30 STARTS TODAY!) 3RD WEEK 7:30, S.OO, 7:00, 9:00 FRI.i 11:00 wn riHWiiin mm I 5:20,7:25,9:30 5:40,7:45,9:50 jlKKI, 70, 9:25 7:15,9:15 I lO, 3:00, 5:00, 9:00 l4U-00, 5:15, 7:30, 9:40 i iik twit t4bJi tm RUbJb.

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Pages Available:
4,205,153
Years Available:
1849-2024