The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984): review: unfinished film

Length of film: 121 minutes

Length tolerated before switch off: 54 minutes

Percentage suffered: 44.62%

Narcissistic Italian-American scoundrels in New York, more used to stealing from their catering employers, plan a robbery. They have various romantic complexities too.

This is a very sub-Scorcese picture with a lot of method style mannerisms, and observations of proletarian New Yorkers eating, drinking, walking about and being rude to each other.

Reason for switch off: the film dawdles hopelessly, unsympathetic characters, facing challenges of no consequence.

The acting is all good, but it is insufficent to hold against the films aimlessness. In addition, the characters are nearly all unplleasant, but none in a way that could generate any passion: they are mediocrities of vice- low scum. Their interior lives are flat and consequently their relationships are without richness. The challenges they are set are uninteresting, and it's impossible to give a hoot about whether they succeed or not.

The Company of Wolves (1984): review: 8.5/10

"...never trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle"

A rebellous adolescent girl locks herself in her room and sleeps. In her dreams, she is in a seventeeth century European village where her grandmother introduces her to wolves, their malign and seductive ways.

This is an amusing and diverting essay in nascent sexuality, seen through female eyes and full of momorable dialogue, but which might disappoint those used to more sophisticated special effects.

Maria's Lovers (1984): review: 5/10

A traumatised veteran returns from a Japanese POW camp to his town in PA, where he marries his long time sweetheart.

As he suffers from erectile disfunction, the marriage is not a great success and everyone goes a little crazy.

This is a depressing film, whose message seems laboured despite the fine acting and interesting scenes of forties life in a Russian-American community.

Eureka (1984): review- 1/10

A prospector strikes it rich in Alaska, then builds a mansion in the Carribean where he lives with his unpleasant family, and is approached by speculators wishing to develop his island.

A dogs' breakfast of a film, boring and absurd (it even has a mystical element!), illustrating in its failure the tenet guiding all good pictures: concision and clarity are virtues in art.

This is Spinal Tap (1984): review- 8/10

Good-natured spoof documentary that whizzes along nicely, following a heavy metal band on tour in the USA, providing a lot of amusement and ridiculing the rock industry and its servants magnificently.