Movie Review: Interiors (1978)

Directed by Woody Allen                                              

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

Mama Eve (Geraldine Page) is an elegant, highly vaunted interior decorator who proves to be a handful for her husband Arthur (E. G. Marshall) and three adult daughters Renata (Diane Keaton), Flyn (Kristin Griffith) and Joey (Mary Beth Hurt). Maintaining an icy façade, Eve is overbearing, manipulative and controlling. One of her chief activities is staging elaborate suicide attempts in which she knows she will be rescued at the nick of time. It comes a no surprise that papa shortly declares at the dinner table that he will be leaving Eve for a trial separation. While the delusional Eve pines for reconciliation, dad shortly arrives at the family’s seaside home with his fiancée Pearl (Maureen Stapleton). The clash is immediate from the get-go; whereas the other characters dress in limpid grays, whites and browns, Pearl is first introduced in a blood-red dress (future superstar director Joel Schumacher served as the costume designer for this film, and Woody Allen gave him a prominent credit at the beginning of the film – and for good reason.) The sassy, brassy and outspoken Pearl grates upon the clan’s nerves. As Julie Kirgo points out on in the liner notes to this Twilight Time release – 3,000 copies, snap them up quick), while it is never made evident, Pearl is implied to be Jewish, and anti-Semitic sentiment seems to bubble just beneath the surface. Eve faces the fact that she and her husband will never be reunited and high tragedy ensues – but in a surprise twist, Pearl grants life to one of the daughters in the manner of the real-life Eve.

Movie Review: Chilly Scenes of Winter (aka Head Over Heels, 1979)

Directed by Joan Micklin Silver

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

While many would come to this expecting a “rom-com,” as Julie Kirgo mentions in the liner notes to this Twilight Time release – limited to 3,000 copies, Chilly Scenes of Winter is every inch a painful “coming-of-age” comedy very much in the manner of Withnail and I (1988).

On the outside, Charles (a very young John Heard) is as white and pleasant as Salt Lake City, the place in which he works as an office drone. Scarcely underneath it all lurks dysfunction at every turn. His roommate Sam (Peter Riegert) is a perpetually unemployed “jacket salesman.”  His beyond eccentric mother’s (the great Gloria Grahame) favorite pastime is submerging in a bathtub while wearing satin gowns. Things are proceeding roughly, until Charles meets fellow office worker Laura (Mary Beth Hurt). The two meet cute, and spark a relationship, despite the fact she remains very married to a man nicknamed “Ox (the likewise great mark Metcalf, who also produced).”

After sneaking around friends and coworkers, the sensible Laura gives Charles up to get on with her life. But Charles is having none of it, starting a campaign that he thinks will make Laura leave her somewhat abusive marriage in a series of stunts that are outright stalker-ish.  It all culminates when both Charles and Sam attend an “open house” hosted by Laura and Ox in disguise as gay roommates!  Our erstwhile hero grows even less sympathetic by the minute until he too, must come to grips that he and Laura’s affair is essentially over before it began.

Movie Review: The Bounty (1984)

Directed by Roger Donaldson

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

In this more “historically accurate” version of the HMS Bounty incident of the late 18th Century, Commanding Lieutenant William Bligh (Anthony Hopkins) goes before court at Greenwich to face charges that he let his ship slip into mutiny. Electing his friend Fletcher Christian (a young Mel Gibson) to lead the expedition to gather breadfruits for good King George – the one who let the American colonies slip through his fingers, the Bounty sails for Tahiti. The Bounty’s mostly young crew is lacking in discipline, and Bligh is forced to resort to strict corporal discipline.

When the ship fails to navigate around Cape Horn due to inhospitable weather, the Bounty must resort to take the longer eastern route. Finally arriving in Tahiti in October of 1788, the Bounty’s crew grows dissolute drinking rum, chasing after the local Pacific Islander beauties and getting tattoos – very much like the twenty-somethings of today.

It is here that Christian fails Bligh by falling in love and conceiving a child with local orchid Mauatua (). Gathering the men for the trip back to Great Britain – after several months of luxuriating in a tropical paradise, the crew grows increasingly rebellious. Floggings and harsh disciplinary actions fail to do the trick, and when Bligh threatens to sail around Cape Horn, knowing that the harsh weather will lead to the loss of crewmate, Christian rebels and sets Bligh and his followers on a raft with minimal provisions. Aware that their actions will lead to executions back in England, the various crewmembers resort to drastic measures to cover their tracks …