St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 43

the new movies Mar. 27, 1981 5D ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH By Joe Pollack $Of the Post-Dispatch Staff 'Thief Caper films may be my favorite type. I love the intricate planning and the multitude of machinations that it takes for a iewel robbery away, awakened his wife to tell her the sun had risen on the wrong side of the sky. It was that kind of experience.

Frank Oppenheimer, often emotional, was at his brother's side on Trinity morning, remembering their feeling of happiness over the fact that it worked and the accompanying feeling of awe over what had just occurred. David and Janet Peoples teamed with Else in the writing of the film and, although the focus is on the horror of the bomb and the tragedy of Oppenheimer, they also take time to depict, often light-heartedly the 1940s in Los Alamos. People from all over the country left college campuses and commercial laboratories to live in trailers and tents, surrounded by mud, livening their Saturday night parties with punch spiked with laboratory alcohol. "The Day After Trinity" is a superior film. Those who have forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki would do well to refresh their memories, and those who never saw the original newsreel footage should view it, because people who are not wise enough to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat It.

(Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes. No MPAA Rating. At the Winifred Moore Auditorium, Webster College, 470 East Lockwood Avenue, Sunday-Tuesday at 7 and 9 p.m.) comes to a climax in an extremely unrealistic series of explosions and murders, with that violence undoubtedly the cause of the ratings. Still, the caper sequences are enough to hold interest, and so is Caan's performance. (Running time: 2 hours, 6 minutes.

Rating, R. At the Halls Ferry, Ronnie's, St. Andrews) The Day After Trinity' On the afternoon of July 15, 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer sent a memo, "Gadget complete. Should we have the chaplain here?" or a con game or international intrigue (almost any epi- of sode sion: money in advance, have a bail bondsman handy and split the profits afterward.

Caan resists, but he suffers the same fate as any individual to keep control of a small business when a multinational conglomerate makes a takeover move. And though the proposition sounds easy, it isn't, partly because the Mob decides to stiff Caan after he has sawed through a concrete roof and burned through a steel safe door for a gigantic score. Unfortunately, Caan is in a difficult position because he has met, wooed and married Tuesday Weld, and they have adopted a son, with all paths smoothed by the ubiquitous Prosky. Caan is strong, as always, but Weld adds very little. Willie Nelson is on hand, as a jailmate of Caan's, but his role amounts to barely more than a cameo, and he's really wasted in the film.

Prosky is outstanding, displaying a feeling of evil and a physique- reminiscent of the late Sidney Greenstreet. "Thief" was shot on location in Chicago, and the street scenes are wonderful. Michael Mann, who wrote and directed, has a first-rate feel for his story, and he builds tension in spectacular style during each of the burglaries. Unfortunately, the story is a rather thin one, not helped at all in the Caan-Weld scenes, almost all of which fail to come across with any sort of feeling. And when Caan seeks revenge, the film famous fable On the following morning, the first atomic bomb lit the sky over Alamogordo, N.

and changed the world. created, and he was a man who had as great a grasp of French renaissance poetry as of theoretical physics. He spoke six languages and is described in the film, by many of those who worked with him, as the finest mind they ever met. Until the mld-1930s, he was non-political, but the rise of Hitler changed him. Ironically, he had been tabbed a security risk because of his liberal, anti-Nazi sentiments, and so had many of the people he recruited.

But Oppenheimer apparently was as fine an administrator as he was a scientist, and worked in perfect harmony with Gen. Leslie Groves, the extremely straight-laced, hardly liberal military man who headed the Manhattan Project. Groves, in fact, chose Oppenheimer to lead the scientific work at Los Alamos, where the bomb was made with uranium from Oak Ridge, and plutonium from Hanford, Wash. During the war, the Russians made contact with Oppenheimer through Haakon Chevalier, an old friend from the University of California-Berkeley, and while Oppenheimer rejected the proposals to share information, they came back to haunt him in the post-McCarthy days in Washington. The man who had created the weapon that ended World War II found himself tabbed a security risk.

Else mixes stills and old film clips with recent interviews. Oppenheimer's brother, Frank, is a major speaker, along with Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, Robert Wilson, Robert Serber, I.I. Rabi and others who either worked on the Manhattan Project or were in the area on the fateful day. Perhaps the most terrifying statement came from a woman who was driving with her sister when the sky erupted. "My sister asked, 'What was that she said, and then explained that her sister was blind.

A farmer who was asleep, many miles By E.E. Edgar I "Thief" fits a number of these prerequisites, though the film is not tPtally successful. James Caan is a safecracker, not with the sandpapered fingers and delicate touch of a Jimmy Valentine, but with the power tools and equipment of any modern craftsman. He works alone and only occasionally, hitting a big strike when he needs cash or when there's a safe to test his talents that is filled with cash or jewels worthy of the risk. As a cover and to "launder" his money, he owns several businesses in Chicago, including a bar, the Green Mill, and if you look closely, you'll see Mike" Genovese, long-time Loretto Hilton actor, working as the bartender.

But if you're good, at anything from speed-skating to safecracking, word of your abilities gets around, and the Mob, in the person of Robert Prosky, decides that Caan needs them as partners. The Mob will pick the job, furnish expense Whenever one of his plays opened on Broad' way, GEORGE S. NAUF I i a 4 MAN would pace up and down at the rear of the theater, suffering aloud the tortures of the damned every time an actor missed a cue or ROBERT DE NIRO stepped on a laugh. At one such opening The test was code-named "Trinity," and years later, when Oppenheimer was asked about atomic disarmament, he said, "We should have begun on the day after Trinity." Jon Else's documentary on Oppenheimer and the bomb, which opens Webster College's new series of works by independent filmmakers on Sunday, slashes more savagely into the pit of the stomach than any of the current spate of horror movies. It's a nominee for an Academy Award in the documentary category.

The story deals with both the bomb and with Oppenheimer, one of the most brilliant minds of the century, but a man who lived the last decade of his life in total disillusionment and considerable disgrace. He was only 41 when the bomb was In A MARTIN SCORSESE PICTURE "RAGING BULL" United Artists his groans were so agonz- Fit 6TH WEEK! DAILY 1:30, 7:00, 9:30 Challenge ing that a lady in the audience left her seat and came over to him. "I know know how you feel," she said sympathetically, "but for us it will soon be over. Just think how you would feel if you were the author. mi i OulSPB aL-Wli.

Ml latl.W.i rltoJ fcrWl )tj How many words can you make? LUTE SHOW SAT ONLY 12HM) DAILY 4:30. 9:30 7TI In 3 minutes, find as many hidden words as you can and write them down. To make a word, use letters, in sequence, that adjoin at any side or corner. Each letter may be used only once in a word. Any word found in a standard English dictionary is acceptable.

PLAY AGAINST THE "BOGGLE BRAIN." Find the list below tm. -4tt 6 ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS I ADULTS $2.50 III including i l-71 1 If lifrtUWI "AIRPLANE" ZZ the game grid. OR PLAY AGAINST A FRIEND. Compare lists and cross off the words you have in common. Score the remaining words as Best sRJ4 Picture 7,0011,00 0(3 I i a Howe aasEr rggsyr KaipbtakM't I tj.

I HrlnlMA UTI "AMERICAN POP" III Ii (L i 1 -J I-' I jffifrrh fm I 1 i I I pius Waf 1 cISm -dr Jry Mr 1 follows: 3-4 letters: 1 point .5 letters: 2 points 6 letters: 3 points 7 letters: 5 points Best Director ROMAN POLANSKI more: 11 points Best d.M'ds'uS'uod'ld'uid'tMd'Md'udO'dtN Th On and Only HE Ritad Mf i 'dal 'umi 'WH 'Buh 'ua ')(a 'ua 'Buag 'u8 31DOOB stahts wed. amil i j-Hs 'm BooatoCtMllarmlBbMedonBoooH PaiMr Brottw hkWwi wort game m.T 4. igeo, Pari Brothers. Dunham Road, Bevarl WCTfW 5W 1 (Authorized registered users) Dist. Flew Newspaper Syndicate 'mmmmwim ifjcimor irisa ai i ae KSSItL I Qn pj if' COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS COLUMBIA PICTURES PRESENTS A ROMAN POLANSKI FILM "TESS" STARRING NASTASSIA KINSKI PETER FIRTH LEIGH LAWSON screenplay by GERARD BRACH ROMAN POLANSKI JOHN BROWNJOHN A MARTIN RANSOHOFF PRODUCTION A RALPH BAKSH1 FILM "AMERICAN POP" Mf nttfn by Etfcunve frradix-" RONN1 KERN RICHARD ST.

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xd 1 wkm DEST PICTURE DEST DIRECTOR Roberr Redford DEST ACTRESS Mary Tyler Moore DEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Timorhy Hut ron, Judd Hirsch TheFinalConflicT THE LAST CHAPTER IN THE QMEN TRILOGY A HARVEY BERNHARD PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH MACE NEUFELD THE FINAL CONFLICT" SAM NEILL as Damien ROSSANOBRAZZI DON GORDON LISA HARROW BARNABYHOLM Executive Producer RICHARD DONNER Produced by HARVEY BERNHARD DEST SCREENPLAY (adaptation) Alvin Sargenr Paramount Pic tuf os Presents a Wiiawood Enterprises Produc tion Ordinary People" -Donald Sutherland Mary Tyler fVoore Judd Hirsch Itmothy Huflon Music Adapted by Marvin Hamlisch Screenplay by Aivm Sargent-. Produced by (Vonald Schwary Directed by Robert Bedford A Paramount Picture JANE FONDA ULYTOMUN DOLLY PARTON AN IPC FILMS PRODUCTION OF A COLIN HIGGINS PICTURE NINE TO FIVE DABNEY COLEMAN ELIZABETH WILSON Pmduad by BRUCE GILBERT Dinxicd by COLIN HIGGINS by COLIN HIGGINS and PATRICIA RESNICK Su.ry by PATRICIA RESNICK Directed by GRAHAM BAKER Written by ANDREW BIRKIN I 6THWEEKI Based on Characters Created by DAVID SELTZER Music by JERRY GOLDSMITH KtAU I Ht (0 MGNLT PAIxKHACK WHTWICT1D SI Musk- byCHARLES FOX COLOR BY DELUXE" I9B1 TWENTIETH CENTURV-FOX U0(S 17 DtQUI'fl aCCOMFaliriM MET MULT GUHDla Daty aot "I MCA Inwit Ml IM PHEAD TfK BANTAM BOOK (Jg 0ritaat Iwwltficlt nn umrffm awarai mm Ttaw. HraHTLY M. IM. MT-jua Ma, MMMTLT IM, kM UT-uw i to taa.

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