BEFORE NIGHT FALLS (R) (2.5 stars)
Cuban poet Reynaldo Arenas joins the long list of suffering writers portrayed in recent cinema, from Marcel Proust in Time Regained to the Marquis de Sade in Quills. And though actor Javier Bardem validates the passion and life of the writer, director Julian Schnabel fares less well in his telling of the story. Before Night Falls (2000) traces Arenas' life from his poor childhood playing in the dirt, to getting a job in a library, entering writing competitions, getting published, discovering his homosexuality, fighting censorship, and going to jail. Admittedly, a 133-minute film is not really enough to capture a man's entire life, but Schnabel is unable to find even a connecting thread for these episodes. His pacing seriously falters about 90 minutes in, resulting in climaxes with no payoff—as was the case with his previous film, Basquiat (1996). Still, credit is due for the high quality of acting. The Oscar-nominated Bardem more than lives up to his task; his rugged looks and passionate eyes convey chapters even when the film fails to. Besides Bardem, higher-profile stars Johnny Depp and Sean Penn shine in heavily disguised smaller roles. Depp, in particular, has a ball with his double cameo as a drag queen and an oversexed German officer.
ERASERHEAD (NR) (5 stars)
David Lynch's unusual and powerful black-and-white Eraserhead (1977) may be the greatest debut by an American director after Citizen Kane (Cassavetes' Shadows comes a close second). Jack Nance stars as the fright-haired Henry Spencer, living and working in a buzzing, humming industrial section of some unnamed nightmare city. He goes to dinner at his girlfriend's house and learns she is pregnant. The girlfriend (Charlotte Stewart) moves in with him but soon disappears, leaving him to take care of the creepy, phallic baby by himself. At the same time, Henry dreams of a cheerful girl with ovary-like bumps on her face who lives in his radiator. She dances and squishes little sperm-like things that fall from the sky, and, well ... Suffice it to say that Eraserhead is one of the weirdest movies ever made—but it's certainly not weird just for weird's sake. As we can now see by comparison to his subsequent work, it's vintage Lynch, full of his personal whims, desires and fears, both funny and disturbing. Especially notable is the stunning sound design calculated to make the audience feel anxious at all times. It's one of the few movies outside of Bunuel's oeuvre that captures the elusive feel of dream logic. Anything can happen at any time, including the still-hilarious sequence that explains the title. There's also something slightly compulsive about watching it, which explains its success as a midnight cult film during the Rocky Horror-era.
PARIS, TEXAS (R) (4 stars)
When we think of men venturing into the desert, we think of big films, like Lawrence of Arabia or The Thief of Bagdad. But it's only a small film like Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984) that can get a fix on a lost soul like Travis. Played by Harry Dean Stanton in one of his precious few leading roles, Travis begins the film wandering the American desert wearing a suit jacket and a baseball cap, his memory gone. Slowly, he re-enters the lives of his forgotten family; his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) has been raising Travis' son (Hunter Carson), and his wife (Nastassja Kinski) has been working in a peepshow, talking to men from behind a two-way mirror. Travis' reconciliation with his wife and the long, slow conversation it entails is perhaps this beautiful movie's most memorable scene. For most of the film, German-born director Wim Wenders emphasizes quiet, open spaces, so when these words tumble in at the end, they resound thickly and sharply. (He tried the same trick in his subsequent film, Wings of Desire, but with a less pronounced effect.) Great cinematographer Robby Muller gives the film a hot opaqueness that perfectly matches the rhythm of Sam Shepard's screenplay. As a European working in America and obsessed with road movies, Wenders has a unique sense of what it costs to go out looking for something you probably won't find.
THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR (NR) (4 stars)
Celebrated director Joseph Losey (The Servant, The Go-Between) made his debut with this 1948 war allegory, but his star, 12-year-old Dean Stockwell, was already a veteran actor, having made at least a half-dozen pictures. A handsome boy with a sturdy face and dark, brooding eyes, Stockwell would grow into a slightly offbeat character actor in pictures like Paris, Texas, To Live and Die in LA, Blue Velvet and The Player, earning an Oscar nomination for Married to the Mob. In The Boy with Green Hair, Stockwell plays Peter, a war orphan who suddenly wakes up with a head of green. Everyone teases him until he realizes that he's become a symbol for war orphans everywhere. (The green represents spring and rebirth.) Had the film been made today, Peter would have been interviewed on Oprah and become an intolerable media darling. But through sheer determination, honesty and an early smattering of his famous icy control, Losey avoids sentimentality and crafts his tale into an oddly effective little film. It's certainly the most bizarre anti-war film ever made, chiefly because of the scene in which a group of ghostly poster children appear to Peter and explain his purpose in life. The great, underrated Robert Ryan (The Set-Up, Caught) also appears as a child psychologist who gets the bald Peter to tell his story in flashback.