The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 638

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 4 1990 THE MIAMI HERALD INTERNATIONAL EDITION AT THE MOVIES Updated Stella does justice to classic 16C 4- Jc '4 ij I- MOVIE REVIEW STELLA (PG-13) By JUAN CARLOS COTO Herald Entertainment Writer Watching Stella the modern-day update of the 1937 Barbara Stanwyck classic Stella Dallas you get the feeling that Bette Midler (in the Stanwyck role) sat down with screenwriter Robert Getchell picked the most memorable moments from the original then said The remake is even more episodic than the original with a plot that jumps across time ajid place and has characters checking in and out of the story What makes the movie jell are some top-notch performances especially As Stella Claire a headstrong waitress from a northeastern mill town who finds herself pregnant after a fling with soon-to- be-rich-doctor Stephen Dallas (Stephen Collins) Midler makes the role her own Stanwyck played Stella with a kind of plucky independence but Midler adds more of the Divine Miss to the character The Stella of the is ferociously liberated sometimes foul-mouthed and wears clothing that could be spotted by highflying planes After the birth of daughter Jenny Stephen reappears and starts up a relationship with his baby girl Through high school and up to college Jenny lives with her mother and visits with daddy in New York for vacations The grown-up Jenny (Trini Alvarado) starts becoming the intelligent well-rounded woman her mother wants her to be but at the las had its own hokey melodrama Alvarado whose most notable film role to date was as Diane daughter in Mrs Soffel turns in the kind of well-rounded performance that gets a career rolling Her Jenny is a convincing teen-ager trying to live on both sides of the class lines at once Then John Goodman as Ed Munn hard-drinking loudmouthed buddy (played by Alan Hale in 1937) The husband of Roseanne whom already seen in the past year in Sea of Love and Always is working overtime and perfectly all right Stella is another strong showing for Goodman one of three great performances in a movie that might jumble its story a bit but mostly does justice to a classic The film succeeds in its peak dramatic moments especially two climactic scenes almost directly lifted from the 1937 version That film was produced by Hollywood pioneer Samuel Goldwyn who also had made a silent version in 1925 The new Stella is produced by Samuel Goldwyn Jr Midler is more convincing in the lighter passages like the scene when she dresses up Carmen Miran-da-style and dances a drunken salsa at a club in Boca Raton (where she and Jenny are spending spring break with the preppy friends) She is exactly the opposite of Stanwyck an actress of impressive power whose comedy seemed forced Midler and director John Erman let some early scenes turn maudlin but then again Stella Dal Cast: Bette Midler John Goodman Trini Alvarado Stephen Collins Director: John Erman Screenwriter: Robert Getchell Producer: Samuel Goldwyn Jr Cinematographer Billy Williams Music: John Morris A Touchstone release Running time: 105 minutes Vulgar language implicit sex same time seems to be growing distant from world Jenny fits the refined well-educated realm of her father and his new love Janice (Marsha Mason) Stella wants to give Jenny the chances she never had and must make a heart-wrenching choice DIVINE: Some of Bette best moments in lighter scenes Lightweight Flashback far from memorable MOVIE REVIEW FLASHBACK (R) By JUAN CARLOS COTO Herald Entertainment Writer Flashback about a radical chased by an FBI agent is the movie equivalent of Billy We Didn Start the Fire a pseudoexamination of issues spiced with memory triggers and held together by energetic performances and a catchy rhythm It begins as a carbon copy of Midnight Run with by-the-book G-man John Buckner (Kiefer Sutherland) ordered to pick up the recently resurfaced Huey Walker (Dennis Hopper) a harmless agitator who played a prank on Spiro Agnew in 1969 Buckner is supposed to transfer Walker from San Francisco to Spokane Wash but the fugitive master of malicious mischief knows how to whip up a snafu Walker trades places with Buckner and has the agent thrown in jail Right about here Flashback looks like it could develop into an enjoyable mini-road picture but the plot starts turning corners entirely too hard to believe The overtones eventually become a kind of Haight-Ashbury kitsch The sound track has Hendrix the Kinks and exactly too much of Born to Be Wild And the characters Not only do they make changes we buy but cut-outs If USA Today created movie characters Walker and Buckner would be the concise summations of their decades The only things missing are the full-color Cast: Dennis Hopper Kiefer Sutherland Cliff Pe Young Director Franco Amurri Producer: Marvin Worth Screenwriter: David Loughery Music: Barry Goldberg A Paramount release Running time: 105 minutes Vulgar language implicit sex bar graphs Walker the ex-flower child yaks about social issues says every three words and blurts out lines such as had a rush like that since the Berkeley Buckner the yuppie-in-training keeps his hair perfectly slicked back and stops several times a day for a vitamin The actors do well despite the thin roles Hopper is especially hilarious but audiences deserve more from Mr Easy Rider himself and Sutherland still the most interesting graduate of that whole Brat Pack thing Flashback offers no meaningful evaluation of the or the though it tries to leave you with something monumental Director Franco Amurri never comes close and settles for a cop-out now overplayed line from the coming attractions that says '90s are gonna make the look like the Wow man SINISTER SITE: Much of Triumph of the Spirit starring Willem Dafoe was filmed at Auschwitz Triumph of Spirit triumph for Dafoe Bad-dad sequel no equal to the original Stepfather MOVIE REVIEW MOVIE REVIEW STEPFATHER II (R) By RYAN MURPHY Herald Staff Writer War pretty but there is a ravaged beauty in the faces and spirit of those who survive it they say The haunting Triumph of the Spirit revolves around such a viewpoint It is the rare war story that sidesteps overblown epic status by gently letting the survivors tell their tale The past year has been a banner one for movies that twist and weave around a Holocaust theme Triumph of the Spirit lacks the charm and heart of Paul Enemies a Love Story or the chilling and effective desolateness of Music Box But it does have Willem Dafoe the logical successor to Robert De Niro whose intelligent aching performance helps Triumph transcend its genre and gives it quiet depth A tribute to a young Greek boxing with family and friends who is on the verge of marrying the stunning Alle-gra (Wendy Gazelle) The trip to the altaa is cruelly interrupted when German soldiers march into town carrying forth command to exterminate European Jewry All are captured and sent to Auschwitz Allegra and her love are separated there and left to ponder each fate in the dark days ahead physical talents keep the gas chambers at bay The SS officers who love to gamble bet on prisoners in matches with no rounds Losers are weakened to the point of physical exhaustion and then sent to the chambers For the camp boxers Salamo included the reward of victory is another day to live Dafoe is the core of the film and has never been better His tremendously physical performance liter ally all sweat and tears and blood seems vastly underappreciated award-wise (not even a Golden Globe nomination) Supporting performances by Robert Loggia as Poppa Arouch and Edward James Olmos as the prison-camp gypsy are equally superb Every performance in this film is as lean and taut as a violin string easy to see why Triumph of the Spirit for the most part was shot on location in Auschwitz and the eerie evil of the place pervades nearly every frame Director Robert Young Extremities pulls back at just the right moments allowing audience members to go on several voyeuristic tours and should be commended for telling his story with a minimal amount of graphic sensationalism Triumph is spooky and it is win-ningly effective that way Cast: Terry Meg Foster Jonathan Brandis Caroline Williams Director: Jeff Burr Producers: William Burr Darin Scott Screenwriter: John Auerbach Cinematographer: Jacek Laskus Music: Jim Manzie A Millimeter Films release Running time: 80 minutes Vulgar language sexual situations violence TRIUMPH OF THE SPIRIT (R) Cast: Willem Dafoe Edward James Olmos Robert Loggia Wendy Gazelle Kelly Wolf Costas Mandylor Kario Salem Director: Robert Young Producer: Arnold Kopelson Shimon Arama Screenwriters: Andrzej Krakowski Laurence Heath Cinematographer: Curtis Clark Music: Cliff Eidelman A Nova International Films release Running time: 120 minutes Violence strong language determination and courage Triumph of the Spirit is based on the true experiences of Salamo Aroucjj (Dafoe) the middleweight boxing champion of the Balkan countries in 1938 As the film opens all is right with the world Salamo is a hero living By BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic The Stepfatherwas one of the ton-ier horror films of recent vintage and scary too it made a flat-out assault on the values" of contemporary America Its villain was a control freak who was a loving husband and doting father right up until the point at which he could no longer tolerate his few imperfections Then he slaughtered them changed identities and moved on down the road in search of a new family to marry into The stepfather (played by Terry was killed at the end and in a rational world that would have been that But one of the defining characteristics of modem horror films is that no villain is ever truly dead at least until the revenue curve is flat And so comes Stepfather II This time bad dad breaks out of the psychiatric hospital and adopts yet another identity in a nice joke on his doctors he sets himself up as a family therapist As luck would have it he finds a comely single mom (Meg Foster) with a richly flawed young son Uonathan Brandis) right in the neighborhood The next thing you know tossing the baseball around in the backyard and dad is polishing up the old hammer The terrors of the original grew not so much- from its few action sequences but from the slow burn of the overheated psyche played him as an attrac- Silly gimmicks fatal to Heart Condition movie tive character whose iron self-control only slowly came to seem menacing and whose sporadic rages over small frustrations were truly harrowing is back and does the same thing but this time less to work with The director of the sequel Jeff Burr have the timing of Joseph Ruben who made the original and apparently have much of a budget either most of Stepfather II seems to take place on the same set with backlit drapes standing in for suburban backdrops And the arc qf the story is now too familiar: He arrives he romances (though not enthusiastically we find out) he loses his temper The climax of Stepfather II takes place before a wedding reception amid the cake and presents which is a fine grim touch But it takes a long time to get there even though the sequel is a short film This time he probably is dead By JUAN CARLOS COTO Herald Entertainment Writer Making Heart Condition must have been deja vu for Bob Hoskins He plays Jack Moony a racist Los Angeles cop who after a near-fatal coronary receives the heart of a black arch enemy (Denzel Washington) Then when followed by that ghost Hoskins often plays to dead air like he did in Who Framed Roger Rabbit before the toons were drawn in Hoskins does fine he is one of our most pliable actors and HEART CONDITION (R) Cast: Bob Hoskins Denzel Washington Chloe Webb Writer-director: James Parriott Producer: Steve Tisch Music: Patrick Leonard A New Line Cinema release Running time: 92 minutes Vulgar language adult situations Implicit sex have made it past movie-of-the-week status' if Hoskins and Washington been signed The movie seems over a good half-hour before it ends and is forgotten even more quickly Washington is as charming as ever but going on around them has the excitement of an EKG reading part buddy picture and caper comedy the buddy part working better thanks to the performances The caper involves a cover-up involving a senator who overdoses in an overwrought opening sequence while a prostitute ex-live-in Crystal Gerrity (Chloe Webb) snaps photos Well-dressed lawyer Napoleon Stone (Washington) who has been seeing Crystal steps in to help her but not without Hoskins chasing him down A day later Stone is iced as part of the cover-up and Moony has the heart attack The transplant operation is a success and when Stone appears in ghost form obvious that going to help Hoskins solve a murder expose a cover-up and get back with his girl The plot starts to fibrillate with simplistic cops-and-robbers gimmicks in the second act and clear that Heart Condition Ava Gardner: Despite what she said she really was an actress By HAL BOEDEKER Herald Television Critic Ava Gardner a North Carolina daughter was a down-to-earth screen goddess honey I was never really an she told an interviewer in 1985 of us kids who came from MGM were We were just good to look Gardner who died last week in London was definitely gorgeous But unlike other sex symbols she exhibited intelligence and independence along with the required sensuality She was Harlow with class Hayworth with humor Monroe with brains Unlike those actresses Gard- ner even won the regard of Oscar uaraner voters and a nomination with her moving performance in Mogambo Not really an actress? Bette Davis she but Gardner was accomplished in her own right was much better than she thought she co-star Gregory Peck said had no vanity about her talent but she will stay in the minds of millions as the perfect Hemingway The best Gardner films are available on video a quick look: The Killers (1946): This dark drama based on a Hemingway story is about an murder The film made stars of Gardner and Burt Lancaster (it was his debut) Gardner portraying a crime ambitious moll talks Lancaster into helping with a robbery and later betrays him Robert Siodmak was the excellent director Show Boat (1951): The lavish MGM version of the Jerome Kem-Oscar Hammerstein musical gave Gardner one of her most memorable roles She is Julie the half-black show boat star who loses her job when her marriage to a white man is revealed Julie later helps reconcile the lovers played by Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel Gardner tried to do her own singing but was later dubbed by Annette Warren The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952): Gardner plays another Hemingway heroine this time the first great love of author-adventurer Gregory Peck She wants to settle down he wants to roam They part but her memory haunts him as he lies feverishly ill near Mount Kilimanjaro Susan Hayward co-stars Mogambo (1953): best The film is a remake of Red Dust a love triangle drama set in Africa Clark Gable repeated his role as a safari leader Gardner took Jean part and Grace Kelly filled in for Mary Astor The great John Ford directed this colorful adventure It contrasts the friendly sensuality of Gardner with the icy beauty of Kelly and Gardner comes out the winner She however lost the Oscar to Audrey Hepburn Roman Holiday The Night of the Iguana (1964): Gardner is the lusty proprietor of a run-down Mexican hotel in the film version of Tennessee play She plays hostess to defrocked minister Richard Burton artist Deborah Kerr and nymphet Sue Lyon John Hus ton directed this uneven film but Gardner is very striking Other notable films not best but worth a look include: The Barefoot Contessa (1954): A long sometimes boring drama about a director (Humphrey Bogart) and the tragic star he creates (Gardner) The chief claim to fame is Edmond Oscar-winning supporting performance On the Beach (1959): An end-of-the-world drama set in Australia and directed by Stanley Kramer Gregory Peck and Gardner are lovers Fred Astaire co-stars Seven Days in May (1964): An excellent thriller about a plot to overthrow the government with Burt Lancaster as a scheming general Kirk Douglas as his aide and Frednc March as the president Gardner plays former mistress The Bible (1966): John bloated epic is most interesting for the scenes of George Scott as Abraham and Gardner as Sarah.