film

Rip It Up, Issue 46, 1 May 1981, Page 17

film

William Dart

9 to 5 Director: Colin Higgins An interesting film this, showing as it does the great Hollywood machine taking up the issue of feminism as the three ladies (Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton) combine their talents to overthrow their male chauvie boss and revolutionise the office. The result is a pleasant comedy which pulls its punches a little too often and, despite good performances, is really hampered by the deliberately eccentric casting of the three ladies. Unstinted praise to Elizabeth Wilson as the resident office bitch Roz, and a raised eyebrow to changing standards that allow a lengthy marijuana smoking sequence and s & m leather games in a basic middle-of-the-road Hollywood commercial production. Raging Bull Director: Martin Scorsese The story of middleweight boxer Jake La Motta comes across as a chamber work in Scorsese's, output, beautifully shot by Michael Chapman in black and white throughout (apart from some brief sequences from La Motta's home movies). The director's almost expressionist view of Jake's surging and barely controllable emotionalism spills out in both the fight sequences and his relationship with his brother and his wife Vickie (a stunning debut by Cathy Moriarty, looking like a young Lana Turner). All this encased within the strangely dislocated scenes at the beginning and end of the movie in which I-a Motta is

about to make his club debut reciting the works of such .writers as Tennessee Williams, Shakespeare and Paddy Chayevsky (to name but three). Dressed to Kill Director: Brian De Palma The English feminists have been hacking into this and similar films overseas for their attitudes to women, and I must agree that Dressed to Kill is a nasty little film. If it were a more efficient thriller, one could have something to say for it, but it is curiously lacking in pace and manages to insult everyone from women through transexuals to psychiatrists. Not to mention film buffs, who must find De Palma's arty little games such as the drawn out Art Gallery sequence and the tired old replay of the Carrie ending extremely tiresome. A film to avoid. Divine Madness Director: Michael Ritchie There is a lovely scene at the beginning of Divine Madness where the theatre usherettes are prompted on what to do in case of emergencies during the forthcoming Miss M concert. This is the only instance where Ritchie's personality exerts itself in a straightforward record of a Midler concert. From there on it depends on what you think of the lady herself. The jokes are snappy and effective, her sense of self-depreciation is exhilarating and the macho clones in the auditorium provide a sympathetic audience. But all this barely attones for what the lady does to 'Leader Of The Pack' (a grossly miscalculated punk version) and 'Stay With Me' (a unnecessarily) drawn out and theatrical version of the Lorraine Ellison soul classic).