Flimsy Fall LineUp

...Alt-man persistently zooms in forcloseups...

...Altman must have transmitted his lack of understanding to the actors, who also work against the thrust of the play...

...1969), as the bride-to-be (one of the few sane characters) in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), astheegocentricwifein TheBig Hv(1978), in forgettable TV movies and a short-lived series(77ie/VevvZ.<ra/), Bedelia has always modestly subsumed herself to the demands of her roles, and has thus been a superbly convincing actress...

...But a few jokes don't go a long way, and since the action is so familiar, the fun dissipates fairly early on...

...they are merely recognizable stereotypes...

...Similarly, when you've read one Graham Greene novel (or seen the film drawn from it), I'm afraid you've read (seen) them all...

...While Michael Wright is much better as Carlyle, he makes the brutal, paranoid black interloper-who does, after all, murder two men-too sympathetic...

...As he did with old serials in Raiders of the Lost Ark and James M. Cain in Body Heat, he "borrows" his plot and characterizations from other sources: a film, John Sayles' The Return of the Secaucus Seven, and a play, Lanford Wilson's Fifth of July...

...In one scene, Rusty-James (Matt Dillon) and his erstwhile girlfriend (Diane Lane) are walking down the middle of a residential street when some sort of low-flying nimbus rolls off an adjacent lawn...

...Yet I've watched him (or was it Richard Burton...

...These aren't real people...

...One cliche after another tumbles out of their mouths as they reminisce about those good old days, the '60s, when they were all purer at heart...

...Inexplicably, Coppola decided to shoot this story of adolescent angst in ersatz Expressionist fashion...

...In the end, though, the quiet dignity and calm determination of the leading lady prevail, as they must have for Muldowney herself...

...No, Ooldfinger, Thunderbolt, and particularly From Russia With Love, the best of the lot...

...they're simply supposed to be fun...

...Michael Caine is appropriately world-weary as the alcoholic Charley Fortnum, a diplomat in Her Majesty's service in Argentina, where he is mistakenly kidnapped by a band of bungling Paraguayan terrorists...

...Then there's the disenchanted lawyer (Mary Kay Place), who has discovered how hard it is for professional women to find time for romance...

...I liked him in the original four films (Dr...

...before in this very role...

...Same bad guy, Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer, wonderful in Mephisto and hilariously evil here, instead of Adolfo Celi), up to his old nefarious scheme (blackmailing the world with a couple of stolen nuclear bombs...

...Granted, Jonathan Kaplan's direction is more craftsmanlike than inspired, and Ken Friedman's sincere script is not particularly deep...

...She's been one of my lost causes since The Gypsy Moths (1969...

...Then...

...Shadows are everywhere, including where they don't belong...

...Unfortunately, Altman's cinematic techniques reveal how little he understands this...

...Lack of fidelity to the original source is the least of the problems in Rumble Fish, the Festival entry that Francis Coppola directed and wrote (with S.E...

...Another Festival entry, Robert Alt-man's Streamers, is a straightforward adaptation of a 1976 stage play by David Rabe...

...Indeed, with his infectious grin and genuine likability, which are constantly warring with his inflated ego, Bridges' Kalitta nearly steals the show...

...Then there's the disenchanted writer (Jeff Gold-blum), who has sacrificed his ideals for a career at People magazine...

...A turning point is supposed to be the confirmation of the group's concern (and, for some, latent hope) that one of them, Richie, is a homosexual...

...Although-or perhaps because-I liked the original production, directed by Mike Nichols, I found the movie version extremely disappointing...

...The upshot is even sillier than I (no great fan of his) could have imagined...

...Rabe's cool exploration of racism and homosexuality requires a director who emphasizes the ensemble...

...As the pregnant marathon dancer in They Shoot Horses, Don't They...

...Hinton, based on her best-selling young adult novel about misunderstood teenagers...

...And Bedelia makes the most of the opportunity...

...The CI A man is now black (Bernie Casey), and 007 is older-a fact frankly acknowledged by everyone in the film...

...But Bedelia gets a lot of help from Leo Rossi, as Shirley's long-suffering (and eventually divorced) husband, Jack...

...There are only so many ways that the private vices of alienated Englishmen can be made to mesh with the public violence of Third World countries...

...It is a mark of Kasdan's utter inept-ness as a writer and director that the audience is supposed to share the group's condescension toward someone so lacking in respect for the Sacred '60s...

...and especially from Beau Bridges, as Connie Kalitta, her much-publicized generous mentor, selfish lover and bitter rival...

...Despite the fact that the screenplay is by Rabe, the film has noneof the virtues of the play...

...I hope I never will again...

...The truth of the film depends not simply on its fidelity, or on its ability to make the bizarre world of 2,500 horsepower "top fuel" dragsters burning 86 per cent nitromethane seem real to viewers who have never smelled smoking rubber on a quarter mile track, but on Bedelia's smallest gestures...

...The one relevant critical question is how much fun...

...But I saw that in Tex, last year's Festival feature inspired by Hinton and starring Dillon...

...The result is a string of dull declamations and reaction shots that isolate the characters-emphasizing their racial and sexual differences, rather than the fear and confusion they have in common...

...Two hours of that kind of blather made me sympathize with the outsider at the gathering, the eighth character (Meg Tilly), who announces at one point, "I don't like talking about my past as much as you guys do...

...But Mitchell Lichtenstein portrays Richie in such a lisping, limp-wristed style that no one, let alone his barracks mates, could ever doubt his sexual preferences...

...Now Connery is back as Bond in Never Say Never Again (the title spoofs the star's broken promise never to resume the 007 role...

...Unhappily, Hampton's superficially faithful script lacks even the rudimentary moral and psychological complexity of the novel, so the movie seems like a political thriller with pretensions...

...The chief differences are Felix Leit-er's race and Bond's age...

...On stage, the interaction of the four principals, soldiers awaiting shipment to Vietnam, is carefully balanced...

...And it is an indication of Kasdan's sleaziness t hat The Big Chill comes as close to plagiarism as anyone could get without risking legal action...

...or Alec Guinness...

...In Heart Like a Wheel, the highlight of the Festival, she has her first great part: Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowney, the real-life drag racer who has won an unprecedented three world championships in a sport almost totally dominated by men...

...Heart Like a Wheel is one of those true stories that seem like make-believe: A young housewife from Schenectady raises a son while working as a waitress, races part-time with her husband as crew chief, endures the hostility and discrimination of competitors and officials alike, then triumphs, a la Rocky, through sheer guts and ability...

...I'm not one of the many fans who mourned Sean Connery's departure from the popular series...

...There's the disenchanted actor (Tom Berenger), who has learned that Hollywood is (surprise...

...Same sweet young thing, Domino (blonde Kim Basinger has taken the place of raven-haired Claudine Auger), abused by Largo and seduced by Bond...

...full of phonies...

...Pretense hasn't been aproblem in the James Bond movies...

...I must confess, too, that I had not in the past recognized the importance of Monty Norman's theme and John Barry's incidental songs...

...John Mackenzie, director of the much (and properly) acclaimed The Long Good Friday, keeps the pace brisk...

...Both have been eliminated in this non-Albert Broccoli production, and both are sorely missed...

...Buried in the atmospheric turbulence is a teenage diamond-in-the-rough story...

...from Anthony Edwards, as her gangly, devoted son, John...

...By now it should be clear that Kasdan knows little about art, less about life?but a great deal about other people's works...

...Except for the fish, seen briefly in an aquarium, the film is in black and white...

...Curiously, what nobody seems to be saying is that this is merely a remake, suitably updated, of Thunderball, which I happened to see on television a few weeks prior to the screening of the film...

...Bonnie Bedelia is someone I have missed during her periodic, sometimes lengthy, absences from the screen...

...You might expect them to be alarmed that a nearby house is on fire, yet they simply breathe it all in and plunge ahead without hesitating...

...I had not, however, previously seen Richard Gere playing a half-Paraguayan, half-English physician who gets in over his head and pays dearly for his foolishness...

...Dorian Harewood gave a less sentimental, and thus more frightening, performance at Lincoln Center...

...Dialogue that effectively carries the burden of exposition on stage often seems longwinded on film, where narrative points can easily be made with the camera...

...it's too embarrassing...

...The Honorary Consul is no exception, nor is its puzzlingly titled film adaptation, Beyond the Limit...

...With the not-quite-suppressed grimace of someone used to enduring male abuse, with the stiff walk of a racer who has come close to being trapped in a flaming wreck, with a thousand other movements thai spring from a depth of insight into her character, Bedelia convinces the most resistant audience that, as an article in Sports Illustrated put it a few years ago, "the best man forthejob is a woman...

...Lawrence Kasdan's tale of seven college friends, reunited after a decade, sets a new standard of tedium...

...You get the idea...

...Smoke or clouds are always roiling, reflected in windows, engulfing the characters, and imparting an unearned air of Weimar decadence to small-town Oklahoma...

...Why didn't Christopher Hampton change the character in his screenplay to an American half-breed and spare Gere the trouble of imitating an English accent...

...Nevertheless, I have come to prefer Roger Moore's arch snobbery to Connery's straightforward brutishness...