Today Call Me Snake At the Movies will review two new movies in a shortened, special holiday edition. Well, actually, neither of these movies are "new," though they are both fairly new to DVD. The first movie is "Heights," a Merchant Ivory production starring Glen Close as "the grand dame du theatre" and a cast of other lesser knowns. After watching this movie, which is by no means terrible, I thought: Robert Altman, what have you wrought? In Nashville, which came out 30 years ago, Altman introduced the format that has since taken over cinema--that of multiple characters and story lines that intersect in unforeseen ways. He perfected the technique in Short Cuts (1993). Since then, and especially in recent years, there have been countless movies of that style and they all blend together. It's hard to remember any of their names although last year's "Crash" is a recent example, not to be confused with the execrable 1996 "Crash" starring James Spader and Holly Hunter (what’s a nice girl like her doing in a revolting picture like that?) Heights follows the formula of a group of people with seemingly disparate lives that are linked by a neverending chain of coincidences. My thumbs remain firmly in my pockets for this one.
The second movie, Bad Timing, is a 1980 film by Nicholas Roeg, who made the beguiling "Don't Look Now" (1973) and the intriguing "Performance" (1970, though I'd have to see how well it holds up today). Bad Timing is supposedly a tale of "sensual obsession," but it’s actually the story (to the extent there is a story) of a sordid little affair that (big surprise!) comes to a bad end. Art Garfunkel (who sings better than he acts) and Theresa Russell (who acts better than she sings and used to specialize in playing dissolute tarts) star in this picture, along with a youthful Harvey Keitel as the cop. In case you’re curious about the title, it has to do with whether Garfunkel gave a truthful rendering of the timing of events that occur near the movie’s end, chronologically speaking (though the narrative unfolds almost entirely through flashbacks). But for me, personally, “Bad Timing” means having had the bad fortune of looking at the screen during the two hours and two minutes this DVD was playing.
