ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU and A TIME TO KILL
A film review by Peter Dizozza
Copyright 1996 Peter Dizozza
I saw Dr. Moreau (director John Frankenheimer) and A Time to Kill (director Joel Schumacher).
Moreau has the great H.G. Wells story, the second of the summer (war of the worlds being independence day). The stars get their individual death scenes which disjoints the film, and then the lead actor tells us and the cat girl what we could have learned visually with him as he searched the lab records, but there are surprising Brando scenes. He's so like a relative up there. I feel such affection for the man. He was really sweet in this film. I think he was actually trying to do something on screen. Rex Reed referred to his refinement as his Eleanor Roosevelt immitation. Val Kilmer was Jim Morrison, and in this film he acts like one of his disciples. Say, his last movie was a Schumacher film, Batman Returns, the Scorpio Rising homage to Kenneth Anger.
Schumacher makes good films. The affection in this legal one goes to Donald Sutherland. I'm referring to a film whose more complete title should be: IT'S ALWAYS TIME FOR A FATHER TO KILL A MOCKING CHILD RAPIST. Donald Sutherland is from Nova Scotia and I've been there so again, I feel like I'm related to the man. Did you see Kelly's Heroes? I particularly like his MASH role. Then he became disturbing starting with Bertollucci's 1900 and Eye of the Needle.
Grisham's story carries a lot of plots. The most interesting conflict is the interpretation of the lawyer's non-action in the face of the immenent revenge murder. First we get his reason, then finally his wife gets it, and the near affair ends. Ms. Bullock, the other woman, gets short shrifted if you ask me. She's almost left hanging in the field until the mickey mouse saviour comes along. Was I wrong about feeling I was left hanging about some of the plot elements. The appearance of the Klan seemed to spill over from the Moreau film.
The best thing about Moreau is the hour and a half length. Remember the Laughton film of the thirties, Island of Lost Souls. That one handled the animal misegenation issues well.
A Time to Kill and the Island of Lost Souls, two films dealing with the issue of misegination. The refinement of animal instinct is unique to Moreau.
I also saw Ms. Tyler in Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty, a funny story in that she's not only the last virgin in Northern Italy, but a virgin looking for the identity of her father, when it's perfectly obvious she's the Arrowsmith singer's daughter, but apparently she didn't know that in real life until her mother left her a cryptic letter, like the one in the film. A RIDDLE solvable by a glance in the mirror while watching MTV.
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