The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 1027

CD SUNDAY MARCH 25 1990 0 THE MIAMI HERALD INTERNATIONAL EDITION AT THE MOVIES Not all Oscar winners have been winners 3 Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo prevailed over such longtime Hollywood stars as Katharine Hepburn (Summertime) and Susan Hayward (I'll Cry Tomorrow 4 Simone Signoret pulled off a similar feat when she won for Room at the Top beating Audrey Hepburn (The Story) and Elizabeth Taylor (Suddenly Last Summer) 5 George Scott for Patton who won even though he lambasted the awards 6 Jane Fonda for Klute Her anti-war activism won her many critics but her performance was easily the best that year 7 Geraldine Page for The Trip to Bountiful The veteran eighth nomination finally brought her victory She triumphed over actresses in more popular films: Meryl Streep in Out of Africa and Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple Despite numerous oversights the Oscar has honored some terrific work the reason the award continues to capture the imagination can this winners stand in the company of such past winners as James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy Laurence Olivier in Hamlet and Robert De Niro in Raging Bull! And is this best picture the same caliber as On the Waterfront Lawrence of Arabia and The Godfather? see Monday night Anatomy of a Murder 6 Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8 a movie even she considered a stinker Taylor who had just survived pneumonia was a sentimental favorite over the superior Deborah Kerr in The Sundowners and Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment 7 Maximilian Schell for Judgment at Nuremberg in 1961 Paul Newman deserved the prize for The Hustler his greatest performance Hollywood made it up to him by honoring him for the sequel The Color of Money in 1986 8 Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins in 1964 Her award was a consolation prize for losing her stage role when My Fair Lady was filmed Kim Stanley should have won for Seance on a Wet Afternoon 9 Katharine Hepburn for Guess Coming to Dinner? the Great Kate has given dozens of fine performances but this one of them Anne Bancroft should have won for The Graduate 10 Don Ameche for Cocoon the award was simply an acknowledgment for his long career The better nominee: Klaus Maria Brandauer who gave a splendid performance in Out of Africa The list of poor choices could go on and on But here are some selections the academy got right: 1 Woody sublime original Annie Hall won as best picture of 1977 beating Julia The Turning Point and Star Wars 2 Maggie Smith was a surprise and most deserving winner in 1 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie tacular achievement was overlooked in the 1968 nominations Oliver! won that year! 7 All the President's Men the excellent Watergate drama lost to the crowd-pleasing Rocky in 1976 8 Raging Bull the boxing drama acclaimed by critics as the best film of the 1980s lost to the family drama Ordinary People in 1980 9 Raiders of the Lost Ark Steven first Indiana Jones film lost to Chariots of Fire in 1981 10 ET The Extra-Terrestrial the most popular film in history lost to the far more noble and boring Gandhi in 1982 And here are 10 performances that should not have won the Oscar: 1 Robert heart-tugging teacher in Goodbye Mr Chips in 1939 it is not the equal of James electrifying freshman senator in Mr Smith Goes to Washington 2 James low-key reporter in The Philadelphia Story a consolation prize for losing the year before Henry Fonda deserved the Oscar for playing Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath 3 Judy Holliday who was wonderful in Born Yesterday but not as memorable as Bette Davis in All About Eve 4 Yul Brynner TheKingandl Laurence Olivier was a more imposing monarch in Richard III 5 Charlton Heston for Ben-Hur He seems downright bland next to James attorney in By HAL BOEDEKER Herald Television Critic The batting average is not award-caliber With the Academy Awards to be handed out Monday a look back at some of the best and worst choices over the last 62 years Most of these films are available on video so you can rent them and decide for yourself who deserved to win The Oscar is celebrated as the most important award in the film industry but the academy oftens chooses the film that is the best crafted the most popular or the most politically correct Conventional big-studio productions usually triumph while the great artistic successes lose out Here are 10 movies that should have won the best picture Oscar: 1 Citizen Kane widely acknowledged as greatest film lost the 1941 Oscar to John sentimental How Green Was My Valley 2 The African Queen which was not even nominated for the top prize of 1951 An American in Paris was the winner 3 Singin'in the Rain not even a nominee for best of 1952 the inferior Greatest Show on Earth won 4 Some Like It Hot possibly greatest comedy was not even nominated for best picture Ben-Hur rode away with a record 11 Oscars including best picture 5 Dr Strangelove the outrageous black comedy about nuclear war lost to My Fair Lady in 1964 6 2001: A Space Odyssey Stanley spec- Shock to System: Caine is superb as mad murderer MOVIEREVIEW A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM (R) Cast: Michael Caine Elizabeth McGovern Peter Riegert Swoosie Kurtz Jenny Wright Will Patton John McMartin Director: Jan Egleson Producer: Patrick McCormick Screenwriter: Andrew Klavan Based on the novel by Simon Brett Cinematographer: Paul Goldsmith -Music: Gary Chang -A Corsair Pictures release Running time: 91 minutes Contains violence vulgarity By RYAN MURPHY Herald Staff Writer How easy it would have been for A Shock to the System to be a big-screen version of a Murder She Wrote episode a 90-minute homage to banality Its plot is one that Angela snoopy Jessica Fletcher has unraveled on numerous occasions: A straight-laced businessman crushed by the very system he has supported for years becomes a cold-blooded killer motivated by revenge Nothing new here Thankfully surprisingly A Shock to the System has two things going for it that the Sunday night CBS crime-solving staple does not the inventive sly eye of first-time feature director Jan Egleson who sidesteps clichd at every turn instead of falling into it and the bristling edge of Michael Caine who turns in a marvelous strangely warped performance as the sad suit turned gleeful sociopath Both talents lift this seemingly by-the-book genre film into another realm entirely A Shock to the System has wit a cool classy charm and a hero you root for even after he rigs his faulty wiring so his nagging wife unwittingly electrocutes herself while out of town on business The film transforms the act of murder into a plausible kind of career move something utterly charming Like The War of the Roses another adroit black comedy propelled by clever violence and highly watchable pain A Shock to the System numbs while it entertains The film begins with a corporate jolt Caine as advertising executive Graham Marshall begins a work week filled with promise: A long-brewing promotion which will appease his upwardly mobile fishwife (Swoosie Kurtz) and save him from financial ruin is so close that he can smell its assuring scent Horrifyingly the job is awarded to the much-younger Bob Benham (Peter Riegert) a number-crunching yuppie-from-hell prone to fits of gloating Distraught and bitter as his dream crumbles around him and out of control for the first time in his pathetic life Graham stumbles into a subway where he is accosted by a panhandler who take no for an answer Around the bend comes the roaring train and oops! into its path goes the money-grubbing bum Although initially appalled at his murderous act guilt simmers and turns to reason when the Mountains beautiful but flawed By BILLCOSFORD Herald Movie Critic Mountains of the Moon recalls the great era of exploration that period in the 1 9th Century when not all the world was mapped or even much known about and when the British Empire had determined to rectify the situation The period is fascinating still: Though there was more than mere curiosity at work there was gold in those uncharted regions literal and figurative the English push to discover what lay beyond then-imposing horizons made for a kind of collective frenzy of the intellect in which those who returned from abroad having learned were hailed as national heroes (The American analog would be astronauts except that few people today can name the men who first walked the moon in 19th Century England explorers were the rock stars of their day) The key figures in the film are those of Sir Richard Burton (who was very much a Renaissance man a poet and anthropologist who 1 picked up about 30 languages in his day he translated The Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra) and John Hanning Speke First colleagues and friends they became bitter rivals after two expeditions to Africa in search of the source of the Nile Speke whom the film makes out as a kind of dilettante compared to Burton eventually claimed to have found the source (now known as Lake Victoria) on the basis of flimsy evidence he turned out to be right for the wrong reasons But the good guy the film makes clear was Burton (played by Patrick Bergin) The interesting guy too And not incidentally the heterosexual cause is advanced by the attentions of a wealthy London man who is clearly in love with him Speke (Iain Glen) in turn casts doe eyes at Burton (before betraying him) Although the film never explores its homoerotic subtext with the zeaj of its advance into darkest Africa the several romances and near-romances at least nudge the story off its base which would otherwise be the kind of dead-earnest narrative of countless BBC documentaries The film would be hopelessly static but for its near obsession with the physical price paid by Burton and Speke on their two treks On the first Burton is speared in the mouth and Speke lamed by native torturers who stab his legs In the second Burton is forced to lance his legs which have swelled grotesquely and Speke jabs a compass into his ear after an African bug has crawled into it Yowl You wonder if the film is really about the destruction of Englishmen piece by piece But not really not about the love stories either about 1 not really knowing what about Mountains of the Moon pretty and horrifying by turns has no real anchor and Bob Rafelson who directed settles for routine adventure tropes when he senses the drift (this could be a museum-grade Raiders of the Lost Ark police take no notice of his deed He comes to the conclusion that the only path to success is to make a killing several Other carefully planned and equally undetectable he realizes will make him a most happy fellow The only thing standing in his way to success is the detective eye of junior executive Stella Anderson (a thankless role wonderfully fleshed out by the talented Elizabeth McGovern) who evolves from passionate bed partner to sickened observer Sleek and brimming with giddy cruelty A Shock to the System has more unexpected turns and twists than the hedge labyrinth in The Shining Egleson has a knack for rich detail and an obvious disdain for the politics of corporate America and his end product has a cynical sheen to it Gary tinny crime-caper music a sound spoof wonderfully accessorizes the black yet very funny vision His dark conclusion like that of The War of the Roses is a true satisfying one As for Caine he has never looked worse Director of photography Paul Goldsmith has bathed him and the rest of the cast in an eerie disturbingly yellow cast As a result A Shock to the System looks severely jaundiced There are times however when cheeks are ruddy with menace a dastardly good villain and although his switch from good guy to corrupt climber is too sudden and unexplained always riveting and believable a cheekiness to madness indeed on several occasions he verges on a wink 1 and his ascent into lucid evilness is as giggly and buoyant as it is chilling HEY SAILOR: Vivian (Julia Roberts) a hooker helps Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) a wealthy corporate raider enjoy his coffee break more than usual in the improbable comedy Pretty Woman Pretty Woman Attempt at comedy slips a Gere in her day Roberts plays a nutso actress playing a prostitute But Pretty Woman after grit It is believe it or not a romantic fantasy a kind of Officer and a Gentleman of the late (by which time Wall Street bond lawyers had pretty much stolen the glamour market from Navy captains) The one nice surprise is watching Gere looking easily suave even cracking a smile he has a comic sense behind the stone face and every now and then in this film you can see it But the point? Garry Marshall so much directed as filled in the blanks his TV roots are showing and they pretty This is a meant-to-be-frisky comedy about a hooker meeting the richest john in the world and winding up having Rock HudsonDoris Day spats with him The French have been cranking these things out for eons but the French you should pardon the expression know how to do it This one? what expect if Disney were to make a hooker comedy Which come to think of it is exactly the case MOVIE REVIEW By BILLCOSFORD Herald Movie Critic In Pretty Woman a merciless corporate raider meets a hooker with a heart of gold (and a head of sawdust) who turns him into a caring man willing to give up millions to make sure a defense contractor have to lay anybody off This is what I recall of it anyway The cliches and worn-out ideas flew so fast that now in the relative calm of reflection hard to remember Still Pretty Woman is a good bet to become a big hit It has Richard Gere who while not exactly box office exactly a marquee junk-bond either and it has Julia Roberts fresh off the improbably middling success of Steel Magnolias here showing lots of skin and making very very cute The Big Conflict is between the Gere well-honed social graces and fish-out-ofwater flounderings The raider is in Los Angeles for a week of financial predations and meets hooker by a fluke But lonely as BoeskyGekko figures are wont to become when raping and pillaging far from New York so he figures hire this girl for the week not for sex though that eventuates but for companionship First thing is he has to buy her some clothes still slouching across the high-toned Beverly Hills hotel lobby in her Sunset Boulevard hey-sailor ensemble Then comes the Social Education in a Greed Decade version of Pygmalion (at dinner with high-rollers near tears over the profusion of forks and loses a round to the escargot she squirts a shell at the captain who rolls his eyes) Roberts plays dumb well even if you never believe her Shirley MacLaine could play a prostitute MOVIE REVIEW MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON (R) PRETTY WOMAN (R) Cact: Patrick Bergin lain Glen Richard Grant Fiona Shaw Bernard Hill Director Bob Rafelson Producer Daniel Melnick Screenwritera: William Harrison Bob Rafelson Based on William Harrison's book Burton and Speke Cinematographer Roger Deakins Music: Michael Small A ri-Siar Pictures release Running time: 135 minutes Vulgar language nudity sexual situations violence Cast: Richard Gere Julia Roberts Ralph Bellamy Jason Alexander Laura San Giacomo Alex Hyde-White Director: Garry Marshall Producers: Arnon Milchan Steven Reuther Screenwriters: Jonathan Lawton Stephen Metcalfe Barbara Benedek Cinematographer: Charles Minsky Music: James Newton Howard A Touchstone Pictures release Running time: 98 minutes Vul-gar language brief nudity sexual situations brief violence.