http://siskelandebert.org/video/6N355R6KUSON/Texasville–Miller8217s-Crossing–NC–17-1990

Siskel & Ebert start off an interesting show looking at a not-so-interesting movie, that being Pacific Heights, the “tenant from hell” movie where Michael Keaton terrorizes Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine. Gene held out hope that it might be something special from its fine cast, but alas, he thinks it’s a low-rent thriller with a wasted high-quality cast. He spent much of the movie waiting for something more substantial than “Michael Keaton causes trouble” to happen, but that time never came, and he was particularly offended by the assertion that Melanie Griffith couldn’t handle the tense situation to such a degree that she miscarried. Roger was similarly disappointed, calling out the film’s repetition of the age-old “it was only the cat” gag. Their next film is a little better, it being Abel Ferrara’s King of New York, although neither Gene nor Roger are particularly impressed. Roger liked Walken’s performance, Ferrara’s visual style, and some individual scenes, but ultimately, he wasn’t sure what exactly the movie was all about in the end, and felt that its story and the actions of its characters were just too implausible for him to accept. Gene couldn’t even get off the ground-floor with it, feeling that the central premise of a drug dealer trying to do good by financing a hospital was too ridiculous to believe.

Gene and Roger both recommend the next film, and as well they should, because it’s the Coen brothers’ Miller’s Crossing, although the degrees to which they do are very different indeed. Gene loves it, saying that there’s not a bad scene in it (there isn’t) and complimenting the script and Barry Sonnenfeld’s cinematography in particular. Roger is much more reserved, feeling that it works primarily as an insider’s commentary on old gangster movies and that it doesn’t stand up on its own, feeling that its script is too complicated and there are too many players who we don’t really get to know until deep into the picture. And he says that the scene where Tom is about to off Bernie in the woods goes on for too long, until it eventually resembles self-parody. Gene points out that, in real life, a person could conceivably beg for his life for a very long time in that scenario, which Roger counters by wondering why Tom’s two gangster escorts didn’t go into the woods initially to make sure he did the job, which Gene counters by saying that he thought the reason they didn’t check was that they were lazy. Roger then asks him what he thought about the scene where the guys do go look in the woods for Bernie’s body, and gets Gene to admit that he didn’t exactly know how what happened happened, which Roger takes as Gene admitting that his earlier statement about it having no bad scenes is incorrect. Gene says that he had problems with none of the scenes Roger was nitpicking, and thus ends possibly the most contentious “two thumbs up” review in the show’s history.

Their next film is Peter Bogdanovich’s sequel to The Last Picture Show, Texasville, and Roger begins his review by deeming Picture Show one of the very best films he had seen in his time as a film critic. Roger feels that Texasville inevitably isn’t as good as that film, but he liked a lot, praising its mixture of nostalgia and humor. Gene liked it too, especially praising its portrayal of what happens when a large group of people simply don’t pay attention to their relationships, although his complaint about there being too many characters to comfortably fit in the movie seems to echo Roger’s complaint about Miller’s Crossing.

The next segment of the show revolves around the then-newly created NC-17 rating, which Roger feels is a big step forward in the distribution of adult films (in the sense of thoughtful, mature films, not smut). He talks a little about the film that led to the creation of this rating, Henry & June, and how it being a Universal production, as opposed to some obscure, foreign-language indie, was ultimately the deciding factor in the rating. Gene wonders if the studios will continue their policy of limiting directors to an R rating or if the lack of the condemnatory X rating will mean that they can make more adult pictures (it was the former, obviously).

Gene gets to choose the Video Pick of the Week this week, and it’s, fittingly, The Last Picture Show, which he praises as an insightful portrait of teens growing up in a small town, and whose delayed video release he bemoans, although he’s just happy that it’s getting released (after hold-ups involving the music rights) at all.