Friday, October 11
Six women get together for a slumber party on the eve of their ten-year high school reunion to reminisce about their friendship and bare their souls. Written by Nancylee Myatt and based on her play, the film has some strong moments, but Myatt and director Mark Sobel seem unable to trust the original material enough to let it stand on its own and wind up interspersing a series of unnecessary black-and-white flashbacks to the women’s high school days, each accompanied by an obligatory musical “hit” from the 70s. The film also suffers from too many cliches: we get a litany of stories about who did it with whom in high school, how the homecoming queen was really insecure all along, how the most promiscuous of the women was the loneliest, and how they were jealous of one another over qualities that proved hollow. As a result the emotional payoffs in the film seem forced and never quite ring true. (RP) (Music Box, 7:00)
Queen of Diamonds
Up until the cop-out finale, Barry Shils’s first feature, scripted by Joseph Minion (After Hours, Vampire’s Kiss), is so genuinely weird and outlandish in its midnight-movie-like delirium that you may have trouble believing your eyes and ears. The ten-year-old Candide-like hero (Jordan Christopher Michael) runs off with $20 and his father’s Mustang and becomes obsessed with a card-collecting game called Motorola promoted by filling stations along the highway. Barreling through imaginary states and encountering a lot of screwy individuals–there are cameos by everyone from Jack Nance to Shelley Berman (including Michael J. Pollard, Susan Tyrrell, Garrett Morris, Flea, Mary Woronov, Vince Edwards, Meat Loaf, and Dick Miller)–he gets mauled and mutilated but never loses sight of the prize promised at the end of the game. This movie constantly threatens to break loose into something wild and wonderful like The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T., but it never does; instead it eventua lly backpedals its way into total incoherence. (JR) (Esquire, 11:00)
Women stand-up comedians have come of age, as evidenced by this vastly entertaining visit with a dozen or more of the funniest ones around. There’s a decidedly feminist consciousness to Canadian director Gail Singer’s National Film Board documentary: many of the sharpest comic routines Singer shows are aimed at deflating what men carry so proudly below their belts, and many of the women talk angrily about how they’re viewed suspiciously when they walk on the stage because audiences are brainwashed into expecting the usual sexist male comedy. Perhaps the most interesting discussion is about how the comedians handle the invariably male hecklers. At any rate, when Wisecracks is over, you’ll be checking the paper to find out when Joy Behar, Ellen Degeneres, or Canada’s brilliant, rubber-faced monologuist Sandra Shamas is descending on Chicago. And you’ll have new respect for Phyllis Diller. (GP) (Music Box, 1:00)
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Michael Apted’s 35 Up was scheduled for this slot but it was pulled by the producer at the last minute. It’s last-minute replacement is this Apted documentary narrated by Robert Redford, who served as executive producer, about the notorious “Pine Ridge incident” of June 1975, when two FBI agents illegally drove onto the Indian reservation and were killed, along with a Native American, in the resulting shootout. The death of the agents reportedly led to the biggest manhunt in the history of the FBI and the protracted persecution of one individual, Leonard Peltier, whose guilt is still widely debated. (Esquire, 1:00)
Men of Clay
