Stale Popcorn

...No doubt Toback considers such blatancies profound statements about the contradictions of human nature More evidence, if needed, of his pseudo-intellectualism is provided by his own appearance in the film as Elizabeth's ex-lover, a college literature teacher In the space of two or three minutes, the character manages to men-tionLeslieFiedler, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Hieronymus Bosch, and (to prove he's hip) '"50s rock and roll " Toback even drags in the Holocaust-as a motivation for Daniel's antiterrorist activities His virtuosity on the violin is unaccounted for I doubt any performer could triumph over this laughable material Kinski struggles mightily (and looks great), yet Toback's fantasy of femininity is just that-an illusion, not a believable part for an actress to animate Keitel swaggers and grunts, an American in Pans, more a street thug than a proponent of political mayhem, Nureyev stumbles over his lines and prances even when he mimes sawing away at the violin Only Toback seems true to life in the appropriately bit-sized part of a complete fool...

...Later, when Rivas calmly stabs a traitor to his organization, he turns and asks her,' 'Did you think I was all talk...

...On Screen STALE POPCORN BY ROBERT ASAHINA I sighed with relief when Return of the Jedi ended Not because Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) had escaped the clutches of Darth Vader (Dayid Prowse) and the evil Emperor (Ian Mc-Diarmid) once and for all Nor because Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) had conclusively defeated the Imperial troops, while Lando Calnssian (Billy Dee Williams) destroyed the new Death Star No, I breathed easier because producer George Lucas had finally wrapped up the "middle trilogy" of his projected nine-movie series I will not have to waste any more time on that wimpy Luke, that bitchy Leia, or that smarmy Han Never that likable to begin with, the characters were at least meant to be humorous in the original Star Wars (which I enjoyed) and the actors were younger In Return of the Jedi, by contrast, everyone looks a little tired of running around in silly costumes and playing with toy guns Whatever dimension their roles once possessed has been flattened by a plot machine constructed to display the special effects that have long since ceased to impress To be sure, some moments of the en-gineering arc entertaining an eyeball on a flexible stalk that pokes out of a porthole, a creature with a head that terminates in a snake-like appendage wrapped around his neck, a toothy orifice in a sand dune that munches men for dinner And some pleasant comedy can always be found in C-3PO's prissy complaining and R2D2's exasperated whirring and clicking One amusing bit has the latter a captive, forced to serve cocktails as a mechanical waiter Too often, though, Lucas and company give us Steven Spielberg-like cuteness an alien blue elephant that happily shakes his snout while pounding at an outer space keyboard, an army of furry little bipeds called Ewoks, cuddly teddy bears that overrun the second half of the film Worse are some of the creations that are neither funny nor endearing Jabba the Hutt, for instance, who keeps Han frozen in carbonite at the beginning, resembles a repulsive extraterrestrial walrus (Actually, with his rolls of fat, slit eyes and slobbery bluster, Jabba is a dead ringer for Orson Welles ) In Return Lucas also stretches the exoticism first evident in his much acclaimed alien bar scene of Star It ars tar beyond its capacity to enchant Indeed, Lucas (who wrote the script with Lawrence kasdan) shamelessly plagiarizes himself throughout Lando Calnssian's climactic attack on the new Death Star is a shorter, less exciting version of Luke's bombing run in Star Wars The Star itself, a gigantic IBM Selectric-type ball, is only half built-some threat to the galaxy At the same time, Han and Leia are menaced by armored "walkers"apparently Imperial Army surplus from The Empire Strikes Back-that our heroes trip and hogtie in familiar fashion But the vehicles have only two legs instead of four, in keeping with the 50 per cent reduction that seems to be the hidden agenda of the movie Lucas obviously has problems topping his previous work On occasion he frantically dredges up junk from the genre schlock of his youth When Han, Leia, C-3PO, and R2D2 are captured by the initially unfriendly Ewoks, they are carried away on poles, hanging from their wrists and heels like captives of an African tribe in a Tarzan flick Similarly, the good guys' escape from Jabba the Hutt's "sail barge" comes straight out of a pirate movie (A kindred sequence m Monty Python's recent The Meaning of Life, where an insurance company building becomes a pirate galleon, was much funnier) The funeral of Darth Vader is lifted from The Vikings As if this jerry-rigging were not bad enough, the film is further weakened by some shaky dramatic logic Smack in the middle, Lucas wastes a chase sequence-a breathtaking race through a dense redwood forest on "speeders," airborne jet skis-that would have added some desperately needed motion to the climax At another point, in the Ewoks' camp Luke draws on The Force to levitate C-3PO, thus making the robot seem godlike to the primitive aliens, who quickly release the humans out of fear We are never told why Luke does not simply untie himself and the others, given his powers Lucas' biggest mistake is I Ailing to dramatize the Dark Side of The Force with which the Emperor controls Vader and hopes to lure Luke from the path of righteousness When the show down arrives, the evil ruler does not oiler the young Jedi the splendors of the Empire, like Satan tempting Christ The Emperor only gives Luke the chance to kill him, urging that he "surrender to his anger " Maybe that's how to entice a Jedi Knight, but it's Zen to me Especially since rage-Vader's, not Luke's-eventually does in the Emperor anyway Yes, father love comes through at the finish Although this was never in doubt, it is disappointing to learn a heart of gold was always beating beneath that shiny black armor No one has told Lucas that unredeemed evil is more, well, interesting than good (Think of Satan in Paradise Lost') By now he should be aware, too, that the spirit of Freud belongs in the background of a comic-book adventure When Return of the Jedi finally revealed that Luke and Leia are brother and sister, laughter rippled through the screening I attended So that's why the two of them never became an item' And I thought the modesty was merely a ploy to preserve that PG rating Not that the film is aimed at anyone other than kids or the feeble-minded Lots of noise, lights, gun battles, sword fights, explosions Saturday afternoon popcorn Sadly, after three movies and seven years, the butter is rancid, the crunch long gone You will not find much to savor in Blue Thunder, either The star of the film is a futuristic helicopter, complete with computerized targeting controls, infrared scopes for night vision, heat sensors, electronic snooping devices, and something called "whisper mode," enabling the chopper to fly silently The co-star is Roy Scheider, who is locked into the whisper mode throughout as Frank Murphy, the pilot He is one of those strong, silent, slightly wacko Vietnam veterans with lots of guts and not much tolerance for his superiors in the Los Angeles Police Department The story has something to do with a secret government plot to employ the machine, supposedly intended for military purposes, for civilian crowd control A city official who uncovers the dark, fascistic plan is murdered, and Murphy winds up stealing the chopper and exposing the plotters with a videotape recording he has made of them via the surveillance equipment This intrigue is a pretext for a lengthy, ridiculous chase sequence that takes up the last 15-20 minutes of the film, complete with Murphy gunning down some aircraft over the streets of Los Angeles Brightening matters is some nice acting by the late Warren Oates as Murphy's sardonic, foul-tempered boss, and by Daniel Stern (the goofy, gangly loser in Breaking A way) as the pilot's hapless partner Nevertheless, the best performer is the helicopter The gadget does all that is asked of it with spooky realism The credits solemnly inform us that all of its capabilities are technological realities Verisimilitude has never been one of James Toback's problems Exposed, his latest effort as a writer/director, is the silliest and most improbable combination of sex, violence and politics since his previous effort, Love and Money This one is 007 for Vanity Fair readers-a pastiche of literary criticism (or what passes for it), international terrorism, classical music, and haute couture displayed in Soho art galleries, the Pans Opera House, Left Bank book stores, and photographers' studios The bare outline of the plot could have been borrowed from a commercial thriller In fact, Exposed has much in common with a pulp best-seller, Solo, by Jack Higgins Naive, young Elizabeth Carlson (Natassia Kinski) dreams of a career as a pianist, moves to Manhattan and becomes the nation's number one fashion model instead She also secures herself a lover, a concert violinist named Daniel Jelline (Rudolf Nureyev), who happens to have a secret identity as the world's leading antiterronst They continue their affair in Pans, where they cross paths with the Continent's premier political killer, Rivas (Harvey Keitel), whose gang of mad bombers is made up of fashion models Guess who joins the group7 Toback has too many pretensions and too little talent to make a straightforward suspense flick Exposed is spastically paced (frequently interrupted by such irrelevancies as a glimpse of Elizabeth dancing alone in front of her mirror) and poorly plotted We are subjected to every conceivable directorial cliche-pendulum-like 180-degree panning between two people at a dinner table, a freeze-frame ending that fades from color to black and white To top off everything, Toback stages Elizabeth and Daniel's first sexual encounter with truly astonishing literal-mindedness Daniel actually makes love as he would play a violin-he runs his bow all over Elizabeth's body Toback's idea of getting a point across is to have someone explicitly announce it He shows Rivas cuddling a baby, for instance, then has him say to Elizabeth moments afterwards, "I have tenderness-didn't you see me with the baby...