The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 67

3 .1 A sweet 'Kiss Horizon warms to iTretude' A Friday, Sept 25, 1992 Golden sounds Westminster choir sings Visual Arts Night Beat BoxOffica The Atlanta Journal The Atlanta Constitution --V. here tonight H5 Theater H4 K4 SARAFIHUr 3 cs mighty message sical pad Spirited mu 1 lets the material's ail-too-famil By Eleanor Rinsjel FILM EDITOR A "GodspelT-ian mix of' song-and-dance and social agenda, "Saraflna!" makes a joyful noise amid the jarring horror of apartheid. A 1988 Broadway hit, the musical is the story of a children's crusade that began in 1976 in the classrooms and schoolyards of Soweto. Saraflna (Leleti Khu-malo) is a high-spirited teen whose hero is a still-imprisoned Nelson Mandela. A hero much closer to home is Sarafina's gutsy history teacher, Mary (Whoopi 0 mi Hollywood Pictures plays a gutsy teacher who to fight apartheid.

Whoopl Goldberg Inspires her students stop on the way to somewhere "else." Mary's subversiveness doesn't go unnoticed, and she's arrested. Tensions escalate when a student demonstration turns into a massacre. Before long, bright, optimistic Saraflna has become an embittered political activist who is brutally tortured in prison. The transition between the infectious musical numbers and the grim realism of the dramatic scenes isnt always smooth. But director Darrell James Roodt shrewdly emphasizes his young cast's energy and idealism and 'Saturday Night is heavy-handed and hilarious By Eleanor Rlngol FILM EDITOR Consumer alert: There's enough schmaltz in Billy Crystal's "Mr.

Saturday Night" to dog the arteries of a medium-sized Midwestern city. But because the movie is Mr. Crystal's he's the writer, director and star it ultimately wins you over with a shameless mix of over-the-top sentimentality and broad borscht-belt humor. Like its stand-up protagonist, this picture is relentless in its pursuit of an audience's approval. i FILM REVIEW "SaraflnaT A musical starring Whoopi Goldberg and Leleti Khumalo.

Directed by DarrelNames Roodt Rated PG-13 for violence and adult themes. At metro mettert Goldberg), who believes freedom begins with self-pride. While Mary sticks to the government-mandated curriculum, she slips in her own "history lessons." Lecturing on the first white settlers in South Africa, she notes, "That's all South Africa is for whites. A gas station By Eleanor Rlngol FILM EDITOR A nd they lived scrappily I 1 ever after 111 That, in essence, is 1 1 the theme of "The Best HI Intentions," the won-JL JLL drous new film directed by Bille August the from a screenplay by the legendary Ingmar Bergman (no intra needed). Winner of the top prize at Cannes this year, "The Best In- it iar message take care of itself.

Ms. Goldberg provides a warm presence in a supporting role. Reprising her Broadway role, Ms. Khumalo is a captivating young beauty with a million-kilowatt smile. She's as convincing as a schoolgirl as she as a sadder but wiser young woman who mutters in her jail cell, "See what they've done to me, Nelson.

They've filled me with hate." The mission of "Saraflna!" is to turn that hate into a kind of hope. At its exuberant best, it does just that parents' arduous courtship and rocky marriage in early. 20th-century Sweden. Henrik Bergman (Samuel Froler) is a stiff-necked, dirt-, poor divinity student with the. judgmental nature and pinched self -absorption of the eternally neglected.

The product of an unloved childhood, he's an obstinate outsider, as emotionally needy as he is unyielding. Anna Akerblom (PerniUa August) is the sunny, spoiled Please see H3 1 ah XB '1 1 if. ZXStf Crystal "Mr. Saturday Ktfrt" A comedv starring Billy Crystal. Directed Mr.

Crystal. Rated PG-13 for -language. At metro meatea 7 A The plot is SO years in the life of Buddy Young Jr. (Mr. Crystal), an iconic Jewish comic who never saw a room he couldn't workTHe began in his parents' Brooklyn living room, honed his skills on a dying vaudeville circuit, cracked 'em up over gefllte fish in the Catskills and, at the apogee of his career in the '50s, headlined the No.

1 TV show in the nation. But the show went under, a victim of ratings, the, Davy Crockett craze and Buddy's own venomous bent When the going got' tough, Buddy always got An sluent family must cope with a beloved daughter's A perfect portrait of not-so-perfect marriage to her dirt-poor opposite in ''The Best Intentions." love, 'rntentions' is best of Bergman .1 ugly on his show in front of 50 million viewers or during a doomed comeback appearance for Ed Sullivan (he's on right after the Beatles). Now in his early 70s, Buddy just wants to keep working. As his loyal wife (Julie Warner) says, "He needs that little extra hug that he can only get from an audience." But his browbeaten manager-brother, Stan (the excellent David Paymer), wants to retire; his brisk new agent (Helen Hunt) has never heard of the Ritz Brothers; and the audience for aging Jewish comedians isn't exactly a growth market Though Mr. Crystal spends more than half the movie in old-age makeup, he goes far beyond mere impersonation.

Channeling the spirits of Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Phil Silvers, George Burns and; outers, ne ceieoraies a aymg generation or jewisn humorists with unabashed UWUV1UM niUI IU1IWMUVW FiUJREO Best Intentions" A drama. Starring PemiHa August snd Samuel Froler. Directed by Bille August Not rated, but there are adult themes. In Swedish with subtitles. At (Men fats.

tendons" is more scenes from a marriage. But not just any marriage. Mr. Bergman, who announced in 1983 that he had directed his last film, has given us a vivid, mesmerizing portrait of his own strong-willed smolders does emerge Th SwvmjiI GoMwyn Co Pemilia August and Samuel Froler play Ingmar Bergman's parents. MIWUVIM The movie's center may be mushier than a soggy 1 1 bagel, but as Buddy might say, Billy Crystal knows from funny.

And for all its show-biz cliches, its rf overdone ethnic stereotypes, its tear-jerking jerki-! ness, "Mr. Saturday Night" can be ba-da-boom hi-; larious. I Taking a stroll through Central Park, Buddy and Stan ponder the -mysteries of "The Patty Duke Show." "Identical wheezes Buddy. affection. Stan replies, "Weren't something like that?" 'Mohicans' fire Given time, the adventure "TheLarttftJieMoMcans" An adventureromance.

Starring Daniel Dsy-Lewis and Madeleine Stows. Directed by Michael Mann. Rated for extreme violence. At metro theiters. that possible?" And the Germans working on Now that't funny.

i OAltf Krtifir V. V. In 4 i 21 By Eleanor RlngeJ FILM EDITOR Don't expect "Dances With Wolves II" when you see "The Last of the Mohicans." Sure, it's got a period setting, a sympathetic view of Indians and a hunk-factor star. But this frontier epic, based on James Fenimore Cooper's classic and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, has about as much in common with the Kevin Costner film as it does with Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives." Filmmaker Michael Mann, who gave Don Johnson his IS minutes of pastel-colored fame in "Miami Vice," has made movie that's big, bold, beautiful and bullheaded. "Mohicans" goes beyond old-fashioned; it's a true primitive.

And that, ironically, is its power. Set in 1757 in upstate New York (actually North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains), the movie centers on an Indian-raised white man named Hawkeye (Mr. Day-Lewis) who's caught up in the bloody mayhem of the French and In- LJ Daniel Dav-Lwb olays a suoer- human frontiersman who triumphs Pleas see H3 by his wits in this adventure yam..