Page 8 DTH Omnibus
Thursday September 10, 1992
Hidden beauties, fresh views make 'Night' shine
Nisht On Earth
Winona Ryder, Gena Rowlands,
Giancarlo Esposito and Rosie Perez
directed by Jim Jarmusch
Varsity Theatres
967-8665
I 11 people are beautiful," an
artist friend of mine said
once.
Night on Earth lays all
I doubts to rest that it could
ever be otherwise.
Director J im Jarmusch's latest work
showcases five taxi rides in five cities
happeningsimultaneously. The sun sets
in Los Angeles and though the hour is
really the same, the night gets later and
later until the sun rises in Helsinki.
If you're thoroughly confused now,
try making inter-continental phone
calls some time.
The cities are captured in a bill'
board, an awning, a few tailights. I've
never been to L.A., but his meeting of
'50s kitsch, palm trees, traffic and neon
seems to crackle with the lust and en
ergy that the City of Angels exudes in
our collective myths.
Winona Ryder is Corky, a gum
chewin', chain smokin', spark-plug
fixin', tatooed taxi driver in El Ay. She
picks up Victoria Snelling (Gena
Rowlands), a polished casting director
with way too much stress. Winona has
been made to look as skanky as possible
oily hair, dirty face and nails, over
sized clothes and a baseball cap. They
soon find a common cause: man bash
ing. "Guys. Can't live with 'em, can't
shoot 'em! " Corky laughs. She says she's
looking for a man who "loves me right
with his soul, takes me for what I am."
Victoria looks beyond the smudge of
motor oil on Corky's cheek to her big
brown eyes and her brassy attitude. As
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Corky slings her alligator luggage out
onto the driveway, Victoria offers to
make her a star. But Corky tells her that
wouldn't be a real life for her, and leaves
a bewildered Victoria protesting, "Ev
eryone wants to be a movie star!"
New York is also captured perfectly.
The scenes of New York filmed through
the eyes of Helmut (Armin Meutler
Stahl) manage to escape the cliches,
even when panning Times Square.
Helmut, an East German emigre, taxi
driver and ex-clown, picks up Yo-Yo
(Giancarlo Esposito) for afare to Brook
lyn. Yo-Yo's glad to finally get a cab in
the cold winter night, but realizes he's
not dealing with a normal cabbie when
Helmut doesn't know how to get to
"Brookland" or even drive. Yo-Yo takes
over the driver's seat and reassures the
agitated Helmut: "Yeah, it's allowed!
This is New York. Chill out, man."
Yo-Yo tries to teach Helmut slang
and he denies their similarities while
highlighting them for us. He laughs
easily and deeply, and the audience
found his laughter contagious.
Yo-Yo sees his sister-in-law, Angela
(Rosie Perez),apparentlystreetwalking,
fights with her and forces her in the car.
Angela gives as good as she takes, and
sometimes her shrieking seems to speed
up so much she sounds like she's in fast
forward. Helmut's in love. He can't peel his
eyes away from Angela as she cusses Yo
Yo out. He only tears himself away to
stare up at the lit-up Brooklyn Bridge,
eerily beautiful from the moving car.
As they drop her off, she says sweetly,
"Yo-Yo? Fwauk you!"
In Paris, it's the dead of night, and
two drunk African ambassadors are ha
rassing their African taxi driver. They
badmouth him in French as if he
wouldn't understand, and when they
do address him, condescendingly call
Blood, guts
PetSematary II
Edward Furlong, Anthony Edwards
directed by Mary Lambert
Ram Triple
967-8284
really don't want to say
anything bad about Pet
I - Sematary II. It wouldn't be
I fair, and plus, it wouldn't be
1 nice.
I feel this way simply because a bad
review would have zero significance to
the reader. Those with the highest ex
pectations of film as art wouldn't need
a critic's advice to avoid this film like
the plague, and those who do pay six
bucks for this movie probably wouldn't
care about what a critic has to say in the
first place. This leaves us at a dilemma
and me without an audience.
If I judge Pet Sematary II as a teen
oriented horrorslasher film, 1 can keep
my readers, please everyone and say
something good about Pet Sematary 11.
f
At m.
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Rosie Perez stars as
him "little brother." He finally tosses
them out and picks up a blind woman,
because he thinks she won't give him
any trouble.
His awkward questions about life as
a blind person piss her off, and in a
delicious stroke of karma, he gets his for
being condescending too.
Paris is painted even more deftly
than the American cities, and the de
tails shine even more. Beatrice Dalle's
rolled up eyes, the Christmas lights on
the cab and the pink band-aid on Isaach
De Bankole's sharply planed face give a
prenatural beauty to both occupants.
Roma has to be the funniest seg
ment. As Roberto Benignt karooms
through piazzas and the wrong way down
one-way streets, his good-natured curses
and yawns
CHRISTOPHER SPECK
To begin, people go to horror films
for one reason only: to have the bejeesus
scared out of them. To be honest, the
movie wasn't scary. It wasn't scary by
horror movie standards. I mean it was
ridiculous. PS2 couldn't scare a three-year-old
simply because the plot offers
few surprises to the average viewer and
absolutely none to the seasoned veter
ans of horror movie fare.
The story begins when an actress
named Renee meets a gruesome death
while making a film in Hollywood. Her
son Jeff then moves in with his es
tranged dad, Chase, who lives in the
same town in which the original Pet
Sematary took place. Jeff soon learns
about the cemetery (deliberatelyspelled
"Sematary") and befriends a portly boy
named Drew whose sadistic father Gus
kills Drew's beloved dog, Zowie.
Of course, the boys bury Zowie in
the cemetery only to find a rather wired
and particularly evil-looking Zowie
a potty-mouthed freelance streetwalker In 'Night On Earth'
and exclamations echo off the empty
streets. He picks up a priest on the
island in the middle of die Tiber and
takes him clear across town, confessing
his sexual sins all the way. Pumpkins,
lambs, his sister-in-law been there,
done that. Unfortuately, these incidents
have spoiled his appetite for vegetables
and meat. "I eat little," he admits.
The comic rhythm accelerates as
the tassista gestures and rocks, shouts
and groans. Finally he says, "I know
these are serious sins. But in my opin
ion, they are sins of love." He suggests
the father try them out : "They're heaven
on earth! Then you just confess."
But sometimes it's not that easy, he
finds in a hysterical surprise ending.
Helsinki is the darkest segment as
haunt 'Pet
limping around the next day. Nights
later, Zowie kills Gus near the cemetery
and the boys (you guessed it) decide to
bury Gus too. There's more, but I'll
spare you the details by saying that
everybody dies in the end except for Jeff
and Chase who promptly drive out of
town for good. The moral: Never bury
people in a pets-only cemetery.
I know I said I wouldn't say anything
bad about this movie, but what good
things can you say about it? It doesn't
even qualify asa "it's-so-bad-it's-fiinny"
movie because PS2 is a straightforward
tale that takes itself seriously from be
ginning to end complete with silly
posthumous visions of Renee, Gus and
Drew that cloud the screen as Jeff and
Chase drive off into the sunset.
And to think of the budget: Judging
from the computer-animated graphics
in the opening sequence and the
plethora of helicopter shots and grisly
special effects, I'll bet that director Mary
Lambert truly thought that PS2 would
be a scary movie. One doesn't spend
millions of dollars on a film so an audi
ence can laugh at it instead of with it.
Don't get me wrong, it was difficult
the drunk passengers of a morose taxi
driver try to see who can tell the best
tale of woe among the snow-filled streets.
But as sad as the men's lives are, as they
oscillate between agression and maud
lin sympathy, the sun rising at the end
seems to send a message of hope.
This movie is wonderful, especially
if you speak French, Italian or Finnish.
The contrast of the Cote d'lvoire and
the Parisian accents further heightens
the theme of colliding cultures, na
tional or physical. Benigni's manic
"madonna" "insomma" and "che ca
sino!" are funnier than the subtitles.
Night on Earth doesn't have a plot. It
simply has a few strangers discovering
each others' beauty.
Which is more than enough.
Sematary D7
but these laughs were few and far
between because they were unantici
pated by the filmmakers themselves.
But PS2 delivers the goods with a
vengeance in the carnage department.
You witness a woman get electro
cuted and a boy mutilated by a spinning
motorcycle wheel. You get to see a litter
of half-eaten kittens, rabbits being
skinned alive and a skeleton doing the
mamba in a house of flames ... every
thing that makes a psychopath drool.
In fact, for the last third of the film,
blood, guts and hemoglobin splatter
everywhere, and I am certain that avoid
ing PS2 is something both vegetarians
and meat lovers would agree upon. So, I
strongly recommend PS2 to anyone who
delights in watching people and ani
mals die horrific deaths for no reason ...
because that is what the movie is all
about.
There! I said something nice about
PS2. It wasn't easy, but I did it. And as
for those of you who do not delight in
watching people and animals die hor
rific deaths for no reason, I recommend
you stay home and work up a good
appetite for dinner ... because after