The Boston Phoenix
Review from issue: September 9 - 16, 1999

[Boston Film Festival]

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Man of the Century

I was saddened to learn that the mike boom that kept bobbing into the frame during the screening of Adam Abraham's film was a projection error and not part of the film itself. It was the only thing worth watching in the worst movie I've seen all year. The premise is clever in an irritating way: coyly named newspaper columnist Johnny Twennies (Gibson Frazier) of the fictitious New York Sun-Telegram is a throwback to the speakeasy period of seven decades ago in dress, mores, and rapid-fire clichés, and this innocence of a simpler age gets him in trouble with his girlfriend, his co-workers, assorted freaks, and a local mobster. Abraham's filmmaking, however, would be inept in any era -- in this punishing exhibit of bad jokes, grotesque acting, and utter cinematic non-comprehension, the errant mike boom's knowing presence would have provided the only relief. Screens at the Copley Place Saturday, September 11 at 7:15 and 9:30 p.m.

-- Peter Keough


Film Festival Feature Films

| The Minus Man | The Tavern | Black Eyed Dog | The Last September | A Wake in Providence | Man of the Century | Pups | Dreaming of Joseph Leeds | Wisdom of Crocodiles | That's The Way I Like It | American Beauty | Mifune | Black Cat, White Cat | Hit and Runway | All the LIttle Animals | Me Myself I | The Alchemist and the Virgin | Trash | Old Man River | The Poet and the Con | Snow Falling on Cedars | Guinevere | East is East | American Movie | Rivers of Babylon | Two Ninas | Rats | Keepers of the Frame | The Runner |


More Boston Film Festival information, film descriptions, and show times



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