LA Weekly from Los Angeles, California • 8

8 L.A.WEEKLY Reviews by Ginger Varney and Michael Ventura THE BRINKS JOB Based on a real-life crime committed in the late '40s, this movie has the folksy flavor and knockabout style of all those Bowery Boys features from the same period. Of course Peter Falk, Paul Sorvino, Warren Oates, Peter Boyle and Allen Goorwitz aren't exactly adolescents but they do give an audience plenty of rowdy pleasure before and after they haul off the big bucks. Particularly Falk: he's the kind of burglar whose wife (Gena Rowlands) has to remind him not to forget his screw driver or sack lunch whenever he blunders out to ply his trade. Sometimes the pace gets pokey, but director William Friedkin never goes so slow you forget how much foolish fun this movie essentially is. (GV) DAYS OF HEAVEN Linda Manz child, mystic, hustler, wise cracker seer, survivor narrates Terrance Malick delib erate movie in an American patois that is no longer the English language yet is wholly under standable she is an amazing, vivid creation, the most unique character in modern film Nester Almendros photographed a world for us to see as she would see it hence the film's hypnotic quality If only Richard Gere, the char acter through whom everything occurs, showed any real feeling for anything if only Malick Castles, and now a deaf dancer in Voices.

Not only do all these lovely ladies overcome horrible handicaps to prove themselves professionally, they find true love in the process. Makes you wonder what's next perhaps the romantic saga of a beautiful brain surgeon only slightly burdened by the fact that she's a basket head with no body. (GV) THE WICKER MAN When Scotland was a pagan place, its people took the names of fruits and trees and flowers; they worshipped old gods, new seeds and sex. Here the residents of a privately-owned Scottish island have returned to that religion, and Britt Ekland (as Willow) is their love goddess. In one of the strongest scenes she dances nude, and as she beats her blooming flesh against the walls of a dark room, some splendid stirrings rumble through the theatre.

The movie's end is equally affecting. It's only then that we finally see the Wicker Man, and the spectacle of religious possession that surrounds that image is startling. This movie won't win any prizes for cinematography, and it never overcomes the problems of the mis-cast Christopher Lee or the priggish principal character, but it's one of the more thoughtful films you're likely to see this "ear. (GV) Norma Rae's mix of exuberance and modesty, humor and humanity, and its excellent performance by Sally Fields but if you're in a weirder mood. The Wicker Man will match most weirdness and incite it to thought.

rummm i NORMA RAE I can't cheer this movie enough. The everyday hassles of everyday working stiffs are treated with realism and humorous sympathy neither soap-opera nor the grim tension of Blue Collar. Director Martin Ritt has sympatico- his laughter and tears ring true. Some claim Norma Rae's characters are goody-goody partly true (its a fairy-tale ending), but also due to the accusers' lack of understanding that urban angst is provincial there are many neuroses out there in the sticks, but angst isn't one of them. Nor is union rhetoric dated industrial workers may often misuse their power, but most office and service workers still live at the whims of their employers.

All that aside, the film lives on its fine performances a sweatshop of unknown, expressive faces, and the gentle authority and fine timing of Ron Leibman's organizer. Best of all is Sally Fields this may be her finest performance, the most exuberant and the most intelligent. (A difficult, and gratifying, combination.) She'll get an Academy nomination next year if there's any justice (and there isn't much). Hyperbole aside: this is simply a good film, refreshing for its concerns, but relying on nothing more than human sympathy, good nature, and an optimism that doesn't come off as ridiculous. (MV) FASTBREAK A so-so comedy that pokes along from one gag to the next without ever getting particularly funny or fresh.

Gabriel Kaplan is the basketball coach who drags several superior ghetto players out West to put Cadwallader University on the map. This they dutifully do while the audience is left to amuse itself with some subplots that suggest the scriptwriter thought his main story might need all the help it could get. He was right (GV) GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS Two grown men cant keep one pouty lady happy in or out of bed. She eventually solves the situation herself with a 13-year-old boy genius she can both make it with and mother. If this movie had been done in a Louisiana Drawl instead of a French accent, the sociology would seem less insightful and the psychology more slick.

Director Bernard Biter Going Places I simply suggests we settle our sex flutters with the same fuzzy kitty cuteness the three hip leads so (GV) Musr h.iii THE GREA TRAIN ROBBERY Any movie that filches the title of the very first American feature film (produced in 1903 by Edison himself, running-time 11 minutes), owes it to the gods to be better than this one. The stars here are cinematographer (the late) Geoffrey Undsworth (who shot Superman), Production Designer Maurice Carter, Costume Designer Anthony Mendleson, Art Director Bert Davey, Set Dresser Hugh Scaife, Construction Manager Vic Simpson, and Property Buyer Ron Quelch for their exceptional recreation of Ireland, 1855 Their streets and costumes are vivid, and fun to watch in themselves. Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, and Lesley-Anne Down try to be as charming as they can delivering Michael Crichton's lax dialogue, under his stiff direction, but the stars look strained -as though they know that charm alone cant carry what is supposedly a comedy and a mystery. (MV) HARDCORE Sometimes this is a superb movie. When George C.

Scott learns his run-away daughter has become a stag movie starlet, his grief creates the kind of compassionate bond with an audience rarely achieved in popular entertainment. And Peter Boyle's private eye and Season Hubleys -adolescent hooker suggests the meanness of street life without being mean themselves. But our world and that world never connect. Certainly it's to his credit that director Paul Schrader never sensationalizes this sensational subject, but he keeps his camera too cool, too distant. There's no hypocrisy here, but there's not much life either.

(GV) HEAVEN CAN WAIT Warren Beatty saves several people's worlds while bargaining with an over zealous angel for right to life Not much meat here, but there am generous nelpings of what we sav we want laughs, lovely ladies and cute men and a trouble or two made all better by any number of decent foiks before the final frame For those who might get a bit antsy over all the happy goings on, there is the not so little matter of death That lets our laughter chew on fear The best moments belong to Dyan Cannon, who hustles a comic line better than Peewee Reese did the infield (GV) ICE CASTLES A god awful silly movie that actually made me cry. irritatingly enough I forget whether the tears came tumbling down the first or second time Lvnn Holly Johnson becomes an ice-skating champ against improbable odds, but it certainly wasn't when the poor girl goes blind nor was it when she turns to Tom Skerntt and thanks him for beinq her nice Daddy all this time. Jennifer Warren and Colleen Dewhurst are all you can like this film without being ashamed of yourself (GV) IN PRAISE OF OLDER WOMEN In Praise of a Young Man's Cock would be a better title. Tom Berenger boyishly bounces from bed to bed while we Watch what a stud he is so long as the women are appropriately lonely and not particularly choosey. About the only thing Berenger learns from such "older women" as Karen Black and Susan Strasberg is that he, too, can get it up.

Black and Strasberg deserve better, and so do we. (GV) INVASION OF THE BODY SNA TCHERS No mere remake of Don Siegel's 1956 version, this movie has its own authority, its own thoughtful voice. In fact, it's the unexpected classic of the year. The pod people, zombie creatures as repellant as we sometimes think ourselves to be, invade not only our culture but our character with chilling ease. They promise a stress-free life grounded in the twin luxuries of logic and security Ann foiAi Kaua ma.

u.m Mnt Voices, opening Wed. el the Regent MURDER BY DECREE A fine Gothic mystery, rich in atmosphere and peaking in cogent moments of horror -for when you're made afraid of the look on someone's face, that's realistic horror. Its minor disappointment is that the intelligent, manylayered, suggestively gay and very watchable people played by Christopher Plummer and James Mason have nothing but a violin in common with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson not once is a classic Holmsian analysis used. But this is more than made up for in the emergence of Bob Clark as a director.

He has something to say and, more, something to see: visual and verbal asides; loving attention to minor characters (the whore who brags "Oiy got all me own an astonishing scene with Genevieve Bujold in an insane asylum; and the way Clark lets his film slow to a crawl so that Plummer can say his say at the end all are the mark of a first-rate film artist, capable of great things. (MV) ONCE IN PARIS This movie tries very hard to please with its swanky settings, frisky sentimentality, and appealing characters. Especially appealing is Jack Lenoir, He's the rascally Frenchman who goads Wayne Rogers' innocent abroad into an affair with the sultry Gayle Hunnicut. Everybody's married to somebody else, of course, but this is Paris and that's sophisticated. It's also healthy.

Or so says Lenoir who gets to deliver the movie's message with such lines as "I still remember a girl I didn't speak to 20 years ago," and "If you wait to win, you miss a lotta good celebrations." Rogers takes these pithy wisdoms to heart, though an audience might reasonably consider them little more than a pleasantly put cluster of cliches. (GV) TOURIST TRAP Chuck Connors runs what remains of a motel-museum now by-passed by a major highway. He's a lonely sort and welcomes whatever company wanders his way, particularly luscious young ladies who remind him of his dear, dead wife. They rarely wander anywhere else once Connors gets them in his courtly clutches but thats all part of the fun. The script falls somewhere short of perfection, but art director Robert A.

Burns (he was profiled in issue 8) mounts sufficient thrills to please even the picky hard-core shock fan. (GV) VOICES First there was the paraplegic skier in The Other Side of the Mountain, then the blind skater in Ice had shaken Gere to his soul or was Malick escaping from his story's consequences throuqh Gere's very blankness? Whatever, the Gere Malick character leaves an emptiness at the core of Days of Heaven at once the most beautiful and most disappointing movie of our year For it would have been great, and had it been great it might have changed a few of us stuck here on earth (MV) THE DEER HUNTER Insidious. Its excellences overpower your emotions while its evasions subvert your thought. Nobody ever says "gook," but the Vietnamese all look like "Japs" in a World War II propaganda film. Nobody disapproves of the war.

and these incredibly idealized Americans are virgin to American changes; they've never heard of drugs, rock 'n' roll, or The CBS Evening News. So The Deer Hunter iums the deepest fantasy of mainstream America: that 1972 be magically transformed into 1942. Yet while director Cimino lies like Kissinger he films like Ford: Deer Huntens incredibly powerful to watch, and DeNiro, and Christopher Walken, John Savage and Meryl Streep are excellent. So Cimino supplies us with a powerful new memory, less threatening and far more exciting than our dimming, dismaying memories of what happened to us all. Horrific history remembered as noble fantasy can only create more horrific history.

Cimino bids to become our own Leni Riefenstahl. (MV) uunyaaafi AGATHA Just why Dustin Hoffmans American journalist is hanging around this movie's plot is never made particularly clear, but he does do an admirable and entertaining job of rescuing Vanessa Redgrave's decidedly troubled Agatha Christie so what the hell. And anyway, the sets (from Shirley Russell and Simon Holland) are scrumptious and there's some sophisticated humor to chuckle over plus a delightful performance from Australia's Helen Morse. The big pleasure comes when Hoffman and Redgrave finally meet. Hes a little short and she's a little tall but they like each other just the same and it's fun for us to watch this sweetly awkward couple bob about the dance floor.

(GV) AUTUMN SONATA While other filmmakers explore and exploit our fantasies, Ingmar Bergman faces us with our own. our very own, realities. Autumn Sonata is the scream of every child against every mother; and it is every mother's dread of that scream Its the need to be loved, and to be forgiven; it is our hope for these things, and it is how we are afraid to hope. Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann give us the most subtle and most passionate acting of the year, portraying the mother and daughter with a courage and honesty unequalled anywhere For all the grown-up children who've never once believed that they've really grown up (MV) tWBiyyii.