Three Cool Sips of Summer

By RICHARD SCHICKEL, R.C.

Tired of Hollywood bang-bang? Try a little tenderness

THE GREY FOX

They put Bill Miner in San Quentin for robbing stagecoaches. By the time he was released, some 30 years later, Wells Fargo had sold its horses and invested in railroads, and the movies had been invented in order to fill idle minds with devilish ideas. Watching The Great Train Robbery in 1903, the old gent perceives a profitable way to enliven his sunset years. All he needs is horses, a few accomplices and, of course, some trains to stick up.

On the whole, this was not the best idea Bill Miner ever had. He may have been the first man ever to hold up a train in Canada, and to do it in an incongruously sweet manner. According to the film, Miner liked opera, was the tolerant and understanding lover of an abrasive early feminist-photographer and never hurt anyone in the course of his depredation. On the other hand, his takings were minuscule, his life as a fugitive mostly hard. And he managed to rile the lawmen of two countries, who quickly truncated his second career.

Screenwriter John Hunter makes the story of this latter-day Rip Van Winkle strangely touching; anyone struggling to adapt to the technologies of the 1980s is bound to admire his good-humored patience with the ways of the world he nev er made. Director Phillip Borsos has an unpretentious eye for natural beauty and an admirable restraint that forces neither the melodrama nor the elegy. And Richard Farnsworth, the former stuntman who was so fine in Comes a Horseman, gives another splendid performance here. Like the movie, he is slight but sturdy. Film and actor compel one to lean for ward in order to catch all their whispered nuances.

--By Richard Schickel

KRULL

The time: "Neither the past nor the future." The place: the planet Krull, under enemy attack from metallic meanies who could be the second front of Darth Vader's army. The hero: Prince Colwyn (Ken Marshall), risking his world to save the flame-tressed Lyssa (Lysette Anthony). His hearty crew: a wizened wizard named Ynyr (Freddie Jones), a sad-faced Cyclops (Bernard Bresslaw), the scabrous brigand Torquil (Alun Armstrong) and Ergo, the inept conjurer (David Battley). The villain: a reptilian Beast who looks like the Alien from the Black Lagoon.

Attentive viewers will recognize Krull as the 68th variation on medieval scifi, where Camelot meets Middle Earth, and Errol Flynn engages in just enough Star Wars to keep Screenwriter Stanford Sherman and Director Peter Yates out of plagiarism court. Like the cycle's earlier entries, Krull offers battles, special effects and a hero and heroine with all the humanity of furniture on feet. But there are ingenuities of decor and character here. The Beast's fortress contains vaulted corridors that resemble a vulture's rib cage; his lair is a rococo igloo; walls close in on Lyssa like giant pillows. The senior good guys, notably Ynyr and Cyclops, move with a certain sad majesty. The Cyclops' knowing wink (or is it a blink?) is a hint of mature fatalism: he knows too much about this world--our world--to participate wholeheartedly in its redemption.

--R.C.

PAULINE AT THE BEACH

The game most Hollywood directors play with their audience is: How much can we get away with? The French game is called: How little? On the serene coast of Normandy, six characters ranging in age from 15 to 40 compete in a low-key triathlon of sailing, wind surfing and sexual deception. Enter the elegant geometry of French farce: young Pauline (Amanda Langlet) is sweet on Sylvain, who has a dalliance with flippy Louisette, who has made time with Henry, who is now sleeping with the magnificent Marion (Arielle Dombasle), who has jilted Pierre. Poor Pierre is obsessed by Marion's unnerving perfection of body and spirit. Henry is almost bored by it; a perverse gourmand of sex, he wants to spend his life opening diseased oysters, not finding pearls.

Years ago, Eric Rohmer made a marvelous six-film series called "Moral Tales." His new series, of which Pauline is the third, should be called "Negligible Tales." His themes--the natural superiority of women, summer as the season when romantic rules can be bent, conversation as the sexiest form of foreplay--are by no means trivial, but this time his people are. The film's pleasure comes not from its characters' garrulousness but from their eloquent body language, which Pauline watches with a virgin's wide, wise eyes, wondering why otherwise sensible people waste time playing la ronde eternelle.

--R.C. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.