July 28, 1995

Volume 14, Number 47

news

Paying More for Less in East Austin

Film Reviews

I Am Cuba was actually shot as an elaborate pro-Castro piece of Soviet propaganda, but instead it's as if everyone in question just went gaga, drunk on the sheer beauty of Cuba and making up new film techniques as they went along. The film is a stylistically brilliant quartet of vignettes set during the waning years of the Batista regime. The interconnecting stories that propel the film along were written by Russian poet laureate Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love

The Last Hero in China

Operation Dumbo Drop

Rebel Without a Cause

If you haven't ever seen this Nicholas Ray/James Dean classic in widescreen … trust me, you've never really seen it. It's been 40 years since James Dean essayed his quintessential role in as a troubled American teen and, along with co-stars Wood and Mineo, established an iconography of adolescence whose potency extends into the present. Ray, who told stories that were "bigger than life" and pulsing with "hot blood," was one of the most dynamic directors of the American screen and his capacity to tell a widescreen story was as articulate as his ability to pinpoint an individual stuck "in a lonely place."