LA Weekly from Los Angeles, California • 85

FILM Stormy Monday, a Newcastle-based thriller composed of standard-issue components: a good-looking loner (Sean Bean), a reluctant girl-for-hire (Melanie Griffith), an insidious American millionaire (Tommy Lee Jones), and the jazz club owner (Sting) who stands in the way of the Yank's money-mad villainies. Judged purely as a thriller, the movie runs hot and cold, largely because Figgis doesn't give his story the wildness that could match the posters of Billie and Bird on the jazz club wall. True, Jones is a diverting Reaganite gangster and the plot has some witty surprises, yet there's no sexual heat between the vacuous Bean and haggard-looking Griffith (who should retire from such roles). Still, the movie's worth seeing because Figgis slyly turns a thriller into a parable about the thuggishness of venture capitalism, about how the British Conservatives are selling out their country and their people to the Yanks. (Selected theaters) (JP) A TAXING WOMAN Tampopo and The Funeral established Juzo Itami as a filmmaker of enormous comic resources, a man able to put his own crazy spin on everything from food to death.

In A Taxing Woman, Itami tackles another sacred Japanese cow: money and the ingrained Japanese habit of dodging the taxman. Or taxwoman, in this case: Nobuko Miyamoto (Itami's wife) stars as a hard-charging tax collector who spends the movie busting a funny cross-section of social types before and keeps it from getting stuck in inspirational-story goo. In an impressive feature debut, director Ramon Menendez smartly resisted prettifying things; we are given barrio life in its beautifulugly rawness. Told in a series of vignettes, Stand and Deliver follows two years in the lives of a group of Garfield students who, under Escalante's guidance, are transformed from ghetto losers into academic success stories. This narrative style has its problems, though.

Some of the segments have a contrived air about them and there are some troublesome gaps: The students seem to become geniuses overnight. Despite its flaws, it remains an entertaining and meaningful film full of humor and pathos, helped along by Lou Diamond Phillips' and Daniel Villarreal's gritty performances. There're also some important statements; for one, an indictment of this country's educational system, which still reeks of inequity and racism. It also tells us that inner-city kids, given half the chance, can overcome seemingly insurmountable odds and disprove racist notions of barrio inferiority. (Selected theaters) (Ruben Martinez) STORMY MONDAY While Hollywood has largely capitulated to Reaganism, British filmmakers have spent the '80s showing how Thatcher's rule has led to misery and repression.

This rebelliousness even carries over to an enjoyable crime movie like Mike Figgis' piercing yet funny, desperate yet shining with a childlike faith in the whole sad, silly, lovely human race. Jaglom plays Danny, a deeply sentimental filmmaker who is obsessed with his own broken heart, and with the questions of why no one's settled into a grown-up's life and why so many people are alone. On Valentine's Day he invites a couple of dozen people over for what they think will be a party but which turns out to be a film shoot in a Santa Monica theater. The trick is that Jaglom made Someone To Love by doing something like this. Then he gave his "guests" roles: Michael Emil plays Jaglom's fictional brother, Sally Kellerman an actress, Andrea Marcovicci a singer.

Other people, including Orson Welles (in his last, and one of his best, performances), play themselves. Which, of course, is also a role and that's the point. As Jaglom brilliantly intercuts all the conversation, it's as though one multifaceted psyche is speaking with all its faces its male selves, female selves, old, young, wise, foolish selves. In the end, Jaglom dares us to stare down the camera of our inner eye, to risk banality and loss, and attempt love without hoping for happy endings. A healing film.

(Fine Arts) (MV) STAND AND DELIVER Edward James Olmos' dynamic portrayal of Jaime Escalante, the Bolivian-born mathematics teacher who made history at East L.A.'s Garfield High, holds this film together THESE SHOWTIMES FOR FRIDAY 624 THRU THURSDAY 630 ONLY lWLL.Kjl I BtVERLYSH TOM HANKS IN police guy (Arnold Schwarzenegger) in Walter Hill's new thriller are Soviet. Sent to Chicago from Moscow to arrest the drug dealer, Schwarzenegger teams up with the oddball of the Chicago police department, played by James Belushi. This "unlikely pair of cops" formula has been beaten into the ground, but Hill cranks up the proceedings with nonstop action, including a chase with two buses instead of only one, like in 43 Hours. Red Heat delivers all the bedlam anyone needs, along with snappy banter and the earth-shattering discovery that two lonely guys can still become friends as long as they get the chance to bust some heads together. Citywide (MD) RIKKY AND PETE Another overdose of Australian larceny and niceness from Nadia Tass and David Parker (Malcolm).

Two lovable kooks leave the city to start a mine, but the city (in the form of a cop and their parents) comes after them because they're so kooky. Though the film is quite amiable, it has no dynamics or strong conflict, just pleasant people doing enterprising anti-establishment things. Unfortunately, this sense of larceny is never justified by clarifying how the enemy done them wrong. As with Malcolm, the unquestionable joys of watching the creativity of the characters is hampered by what seems to be a more seriously criminal aspect. When Rikki or Pete perpetrate some ingenious villainy, it's supposed to be okay because they're so cute and clever.

I thought they should have been caught. (Beverly Center Cineplex) (MD) SALSA Picante sex-merengue fashioned by cilantro-brained marketers of the hot and spicy; the jalapeno fart of the Hollywood Latino "renaissance." It's the adolescent dream of Rico (Robby Rosa), who crotch-dances under the imperialista flag; this becomes neastonefarious especially as the Miami Sound Machine shouts an endless burro chorus to Uplift the Race: "Mucho money! Mucho money!" Rico dreams of the island Puerto Rico, a billboard vision of palmeras on the play a (no babies crying), and the sesos in his cojones are his ticket to ride. But this is no Fred Astaire trip, mano these be our thighs bared for Hollywood, tasty and dripping with nada, like a Jack-in-the-Box fajita. Nada story, nada and laughable dialogue, and whatever salsa there may have been (in the bailes, in the musica is wasted by a distant camera, as distant as a turista's gaze upon our exotic raza. (Selected theaters) (Ruben Martinez) SHAKEDOWN If you don't stop to think about anything, you can watch this film and have a terrific time.

It looks great, the nonstop action is stupendous, and the performers are exceptional. Peter Weller is fascinating to watch even though he's playing the straightest of lawyers. As the undercover cop helping him out, Sam Elliott's gravelly voice and devil-may-care demeanor make him absurdly lovable. Together they wreck dozens of cars while giving us a tour of underground New York, a foul place. Writerdirector James Glickenhaus The Exterminator knows how to keep things in fourth gear, especially during a spectacular fight on a rollercoaster.

So much of Shakedown is good, much like a grittier Lethal Weapon, that it's too bad the writing isn't as powerful as the filmmaking. As soon as I left the theater, the "How comes?" and "Why did theys?" started piling up. (Selected theaters) (MD) SOMEONE TO LOVE Somewhere between the inspired revelation of Wim Wenders Wings of Desire and the slick, artsy cynicism of Alan Rudolph's The Moderns you'll find Henry Jaglom's Someone To Love unflinching yet sweet, labor, a process that turns peasant farmers into art objects; 2) makes no connections between the images it shows, thereby revealing nothing about the socio-historical connections between, say, alienated big-city high-rises and photogenic farmers in rice-paddies; 31 wallows in cliche and heavy-handed imagery, such as a cute Third World boy being swallowed up by the dust from an (obviously Western) truck; 4) blithely cuts back and forth between, say, Nigeria, Peru and India, as if these cultures' specific traditions scarcely mattered; 5) displays a naive faith in the power of photography to show us the world. The result is a silly New Age travelogue that unravels to the strains of Philip Glass' Hopi-fied score. (Goldwyn) (JP) PRESIDIO Peter Hyams' logy thriller begins with a car chase, ends with a shootout and is every bit as innovative in between.

Smirky Mark Harmon plays a San Francisco cop investigating a murder in the Presidio, the city's military compound. This means working side-by-side with his old enemy, the compound's Provost Marshall (Sean Connery), and inevitably getting romantically entangled with Connery's plucky, tousled daughter (Meg Ryan). It would take a brash, original director to scrape the mold off Larry Ferguson's "original screenplay." Hyams is scarcely the man: Here there's lots of flashy lighting and no chemistry between the lead actors. (Even reliable old Sean overacts, evidently hoping to give his character some emotional weight.) The only thing remotely interesting about The Presidio is the way that it feeds into the seemingly contradictory stereotypes of late Reagan-era cinema: It implies that the CIA is a bunch of crooks, while also seeking to rekindle affection for the military and its manly virtues. (Citywide (JP) PRINCESS FROM THE MOON Kon Ichikawa's science-fictionized retelling of a classic Japanese fairy tale is mildly disappointing: He gives the charming surface of the story an elegant gloss, but he hasn't managed to make it ring true emotionally.

A grief-stricken peasant couple (Toshiro Mifune and Yasuko Sawaguchi), stunned by the death of their small son, find a new child, a daughter, in the ruins of a solid-gold meteor that crash-lands in a nearby bamboo forest. The lovely moon princess communicates with her lunar home through a glowing crystal ball, and drives a series of aristocratic suitors wild until she's called back home. This is all well and good, but it ultimately feels more quaint than compelling precisely because it's held tastefully at arm's length. (Little Tokyo Cinema (DC) RAMBO III The Rambo saga's latest installment should have them hooting from Burbank to Beirut. Even as the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan in the real world, Rambo crashes into Afghanistan to save his commander (Richard Crenna) from inhumane Russkies.

Needless to say, these Russians don't have a chance against Rambo, a killer-Christ who slaughters everything but the Tri-Star Pegasus in a series of unbelievably dull action sequences (mainly Rambo running away from $30 million dollars' worth of explosions). And what's with Sylvester Stallone? Not only does he look like a sculpted rump-roast, but his diction (always bad) is now incomprehensible, as if his ego has grown so big that it now fills his mouth like a cup of mashed potatoes. The only real surprise is the film's strange homoerotic charge, which (among other things) includes Rambos affection for a pretty Afghan boy. (Citywide) (JP) RED HEAT In line witfTthe spirit of glasnost, both the bad drug-dealer guy and the good iWESTWOOD ODEON CINEMA 208-4575 10887 LINDBROOK DR. (FORMERLY EGYPTIAN WESTWOOD) KEVIN COSTNER IN BULL DURHAM (R) in THX Dolby Stereo 11 15,1 20,325,5 30,8 00,10 15 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 12 30 CENTURY PLAZA CINEMAS 553-4291 2040 AVENUE OF THE STARS ABC ENTERTAINMENT CENTER (FORMERLY PUTT CENTURY PLAZA) CAFE NOW OPEN.

BETTE MIDLER IN BIG BUSINESS (PG) in THX Dolby Stereo 12 30,3 00,515,7 30.9 45 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 1 2 00 NO COUPONS ACCEPTED KEVIN COSTNER IN BULL DURHAM (R) In HPS-4000 Dolby Stereo 12 00,2 30,505,7 45,10 15 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 12 30 POLTERGEIST III (PG-1 3) In HPS-4000 Dolby Stereo 1 00,3 15,5 30 8 00,10 15 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 12 20 TUES 628 1 00, 3 15, 10 15 WINNER OF 9 ACADEMY AWARDS INCLUDING BEST PICTURE THE LAST EMPEROR (PG-1 3) in HPS-4000 Dolby Stereo 1 45,5 15,845 HOLLYWOOD FAIRFAX CINEMAS 653-3117 7907 BEVERLY BLVD. DAN AYKROYD IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS (PG) in Dolby Stereo 1 00.3 15,5 15 7 30, 10 00 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 12 00 ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER IN RED HEAT (Ft) in Spectral Recording Dolby Stereo 12 30,3 00,5 30,8 00, 10 30 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 12 30 NO COUPONS ACCEPTED POLTERGEIST III (PG-1 3) in Dolby Stereo 12 30,2 45 5 00,7 15 9 30 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 11 30 UNIVERSAL CITY 18 CINEMAS (818) 5080588 ATOP THE HILL AT UNIVERSAL STUDIOS FREE PARKING (parking CHARGE REFUNDED WITH PURCHASE OF MOVIE TICKET) NOW EQUIPPED FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED. CAFE NOW OPEN. COMING TO AMERICA (R) OPENS WEDNESDAY 629 JOHN CANDY IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS (PG) in Dolby Stereo DAILY 12 00. 2 15, 4 30, 6 45, 9 30 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 1200 DAN AYKROYD IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS (PG) in THX Dolby Stereo DAILY 12 45, 3 00, 5 15, 7 30, 10 15 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 12 30 JAMES BELUSHI IN RED HEAT (R) In Dolby Stereo DAILY 12 00, 2 30, 5 00, 7 30, 10 00 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 12 30 NO COUPONS ACCEPTED ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER IN RED HEAT (R) In THX Dolby Stereo DAILY 1 2 30, 3 00, 5 30, 8 00, 1 0 30 NO COUPONS ACCEPTED KEVIN COSTNER IN BULL DURHAM (R) in THX Dolby Stereo DAILY 12 30, 3 00, 5 30, 7 45, 10 15 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 12 30 SUSAN SARANDON IN BULL DURHAM (R) In THX Dolby Stereo DAILY 1 00, 3 30, 6 00, 8 30 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 11 00 SEAN CONNERY IN THE PRESIDIO (R) in THX Dolby Stereo DAILY 12 00, 2 30, 5 00, 7 45, 10 15 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 12 30 MARK HARMON IN THE PRESIDIO (R) in THX Dolby Stereo DAILY 12 45, 3 15,5 45,8 30 LATE SHOW FRI 4 SAT 11 00 85 A WEEKLY Jimr im.