Spaceballs (1987)

 

Off-List: Spaceballs

The second off-List movie for 1987 (and the first review of 2026) is “Spaceballs”. This is in my humble opinion one of the best spoof-movies ever made, up there with “Airplane!” and “Naked Gun” and perhaps the funniest movie to come from Mel Brooks. Yes, it is silly and the story makes little to no sense, but I laugh myself silly every time I watch it. It also happens to be one of my son’s favourite movies.

In a galaxy very, very, very, very, very far away an evil and ridiculous empire called Spaceballs, run but Spaceballs out of Spaceball city wants to steal the atmosphere of neighbouring, peaceful and somewhat medieval looking Druidia after have “foolishly squandered away” their own. To this end the Spaceballs want to kidnap Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga) to get the access code to the shield protecting the atmosphere. The Spaceball team is lead by President Skroob (Mel Brooks himself), Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner) and the awesome Rick Moranis as Lord Dark Helmet.

Princess Vespa escapes from her own wedding and is almost caught by the Spaceballs when she is saved by Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and his sidekick Barf (John Candy), half dog, half human, in their Winnebago-turned-spaceship. Then goes the chase though a desert planet, a meet with the Yoda lookalike Yogurt (Mel Brooks again), a space prison and a final showdown on the Mega-maid.

If you have not guessed it already, this a spoof on “Star Wars”, and many of the best jokes are referencing that franchise. Not every joke works, but in the usual Mel Brooks style, there are so many of them and enough of them are great for this to be consistently fun. Rick Moranis, of whom I am a great fan, is the perfect anti-Darth Vader with his diminutive stature and oversize helmet. That man opens his mouth and I am laughing. It is not wrong to say that the best comedy in the movie is involving him. While many, it not all, his lines are quotable, you need his face and voice to really make it work.

In fact, “Spaceballs” is blessed with excellent comedic actors. This was an early part for Bill Pullman and although his part is to be heroic rather than funny, he does pull it off. John Candy is... John Candy. How can you not love him? And then of course, Mel Brooks appearing twice. One of the running jokes is that Brooks’ Yogurt is on a mission to merchandize the movie, a pun at the intensive merchandizing of “Star Wars” and throughout the movie we see Spaceball blankets, Spaceballs toilet paper, Spaceballs mugs etc.

Other movies of the genre are referenced as well such as “Planet of the Apes” and the “Star Trek” franchise. The best reference however is when Lone Starr and Barf see the crew from “Alien” at a space truck-stop. John Hurt reprises his scene with an alien coming out of his stomach after which the Xenomorph dons a little hat and a stick and gives a variety song before escaping to the kitchen. This one has me flat with laughter every time.

The spoof movie genre is more often a miss than a hit for me. Some time in the ninetieth I simply stopped watching thing, they were getting too stupid, but there was a time, from the mid-seventies to around 1990 where they often hit it right. I do not know if it was the quality of the jokes or the actors that made a difference, but my best guess is that they treated their viewers as adults (childish ones...) rather than 10-year-olds.

“Spaceballs”, along with “Naked Gun” and “Airplane!” are the ones I can always go back to. “Spaceballs” is the only one of the three not on the List and that is a miss.     

Happy New Year 2026

 

Happy New Year 2026

A new year is approaching, and it is time for my annual address to... whoever find their way to this blog.

2025 was not a particularly great year. It used to be a casual off-hand thing to say that the world is going crazy. In 2025 it felt as if it is really happening. I find myself increasingly shutting down on international affairs and while I know this ostrich mentality is not really doing any good, I find a lot of comfort in watching movies from the eighties and reading books from the nineteenth century.

I did slow down though on the movies. Only 45 reviews in 2025 of which 39 were List movies. That took me from 1985 to 1987, making this the shortest step so far on this mission. Some of this was due to some very long movies, but most of it was simply lack of time. I love the eighties and the movies have generally been great. Should I mention a particular movie that made an impression, it must be “Tampopo”, though watching “Shoah” with my wife felt very important.

On my book blog I managed 9 books which is pretty good. This took me from “Father Goriot”, 1835 to “Dead Souls”, 1842, a span of 7 years. Those have been very interesting books written some of the most famous classic authors. Maybe surprisingly, the best of them was “The Lion of Flanders” by a, to me, completely unknown author (Hendrik Conscience). This year also included the most difficult to find book-so-far, “Camera Obscura”, which I read in Google translated Dutch.

Anyway, I just want to wish everybody a happy New Year. May the Swartch be with you all (guess what movie is coming up...).

 

Babette's Feast (Babette's Gaestebud) (1987)

 

Babettes Gæstebud

When I was in high school our teacher asked us to watch “Babettes Gæstebud” (Babette’s Feast) while she was away. You should never ask this of high school students. We watched “Dirty Harry” instead and agreed to simply say about “Babettes Gæstebud” that it was “okay, but a bit slow”. This is actually deeply unfair. “Babettes Gæstebud” may be a bit slow but it is a great movie with a lot to think about.

We are on the west coast of Jutland in what was and still is known as the bible belt of Denmark. The only place name given is the manor of Nørre Vosborg and that makes perfect sense. It is the 1830’ies and out there in a small community lives an elderly priest (Pouel Kern) with his two young and beautiful daughters, Fillipa (Hanne Stensgaard/Bodil Kjer) and Martine (Vibeke Hastrup/Birgitte Federspiel). They form the core of a very pious sect in their village. All three are convinced their religious duty goes ahead of anything else, certainly ahead of something as trivial as marriage. All suitors are rebuffed. This includes the young Swedish lieutenant Lorens Löwenhielm (Gudmar Wivesson/Jarl Kulle) who even joins the sect for awhile through his pious aunt.

Another visitor is the French opera singer Achille Papin (Jean Philippe Lafont). He gets infatuated with the voice of Fillipa and is convinced she will take Paris with storm, but she withdraws when she feels uncomfortable with those prospects.

Fast forward to 1871. The now middle-aged sisters get a visitor from France. This is a refugee from the Paris commune whom Papin has recommended to seek refuge with the sisters. He mentions that Babette (Stéphane Audran) can cook and as she offers to work without wages, she becomes housekeeper for the sisters. Babette slowly learns the language, customs and cuisine of her hosts and is well liked.

Another 14 years passes and the now elderly religious community is falling apart. Pettiness and quarrels dominate their meetings and with the 100-year anniversary of the long dead pastor coming up the sisters are worried. Then Babette wins a large sum of money in the French lottery (10,000 francs) and offers, insists, on preparing a French dinner for the anniversary party. She just needs to do a bit of shopping. When her groceries arrive, the community is shocked. Everything looks very outlandish and suspect. Convinced they are in for a witch-sabbath, they decide to stay quiet during the meal and ignore what they are eating.

For the feast, Löwenhielm shows up, now a general, after 35 years of absence and as the dishes come in, he is the only one who recognizes how exceptional the meal is. In fact, the highlight of the dinner, “Cailles en Sarcophage”, can only come from the former famous head chef of the exclusive Parisian restaurant Cafe Anglais, revealing that Babette, the humble housekeeper is in fact a renowned master chef. The effect of the dinner on the guests is remarkable. From the initial quietness they thaw and the meal functions as a catalyst to mend all their quarrels and bring them all together in joy.

This is an amazing movie, a curious mix of “Ordet” and “Tampopo”. This religious community who are longing so much for their paradise that they are almost dead to the world, being outdone in generosity and spiritual gift by this French woman and her food. There is a power in this meal, this gift, that mends all their problems, bring Martine and Löwenhielm together and teaches the sisters a lesson in humility. The great thing of course is that Babette is not religious at all. Never does she take part in the community worshipping, yet her life, appearance and gratitude are the Lutheran Christian values in practice. In a community of self-righteous parsimonious fools, she is the saint.

What starts out as a fairly dry and slow story begins to reveal cracks of comedy about midway into the movie. The community are revealed as barbarian next to Babatte and when we get to the actual feast, this becomes glaringly exposed. The dinner is not made to mock them or expose them, but to watch their confusion and how they look to the general for clues how to eat the food is hilarious. They are like children watching a plane for the very first time and reversely knowing now the capabilities of Babette thinking back on how she was instructed in preparing dried fish and øllebrød becomes a joke activated half an hour after it was planted.

The production value is high, higher than was common for Danish movies at the time and much care was made to make it look authentic. It is also absolutely believable. The one point where the illusion falls apart is the accents. All Danish is spoken as standard Danish and not a hint of west coast dialect. I would have loved if they would have made the attempt, yet the price would have been that not even Danish people would have understood a word of it.

“Babettes Gæstebud” won the Best Foreign Language Film award for 1987 and is apparently on the Vatican list of “Most important films”. The full menu can be found on the Wiki page of the movie and is indeed a feast even to read. This is a great movie even if you only watch it for the food, but it offers so much more.

Back is the day our teacher only learned we never watched the movie on our graduation day, yet the joke is on us. We missed something not watching “Babette’s Feast”.

  

Project A, Part II ('A' Gai Waak Juk Jap) (1987)

 

Project A Part (I and) II

Project A is actually two movies: Project A (here referred to as Part I) from 1983 and Project A Part II from 1987. I watched them together which turned out to be a very good idea as Part I gives a lot of back-story to Part II.

We are in Hong Kong at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century. In Part I Ma Yue Lung (Jackie Chan) is a sergeant in the coastguard tasked with hunting pirates. Unfortunately, the pirates blow up the entire fleet and so Ma’s detachment become policemen on land. The unit still becomes involved in fighting pirates and after an endless series of martial arts brawls, we get the big showdown on the pirate island.

Part II is far more convoluted. Instead of just pirates and policemen, we have so many fractions it is easy to lose count, especially if, like me you think some of the characters look very much like each other. Group 1 is a gang of pirates left over from the first movie. They want revenge on Ma Yue Lung, though with little idea on how to go about it, they are more a comedic element than a real player in the story. Group 2 is a revolutionary group supporting Sun Yat Sen’s revolution in mainland China. This group consist mainly of women, including the governor’s daughter Regina, Carina and Yesan (Maggie Cheung) but also a few men including Li. Group 3 is a group of agents of the Manchu rulers of China, lead by a man known as “the Prince” (Lau Siu-ming). They are hunting revolutionaries but are also on foreign turf as Hong Kong at this time is run by the British. Group 4 is the corrupt police headed by Inspector Chun (David Lam). Police headquarters suspect all is not good with this guy, so they place Ma in charge of one of Chun’s districts, Sai Wan, a notorious hub of crime. All except one of the police officers are in the pocket of the gangsters and Chun himself is working with both group 2 and 3 as well as the local gangsters and see it as his mission to get Ma out of his way. Group 5 is the gangsters in Sai Wan, led by Tiger Ow (Chan Wai-man). They put up a mighty fight, but after the first chapter they are out of the story. Group 6 is Ma Yue Lung and with his group of four or five colleagues sent to Sai Wan. They are up against all of the above.

If you are confused at this point, then I got it right. It is very difficult to keep track of the characters here and who they belong to. Where Part I is a straightforward affair, there clearly was an intention of adding more plot to Part II. Well, they got plot all-right.

It would not be a Jackie Chan movie if we did not get a substantial amount of martial arts and we do, in spades. I did not time it, but my guesstimate is that at least 70% of the running time of Part I is brawling. It is a bit less in Part II, but of the same very high quality. There is a clownish element to the brawling that plays for comedy, but except for the over the top sound effects, the antics of the fighters are kept only marginally outside the realistic and not as in other Hong Kong movies full of flying superheroes. Still, these are very acrobatic scenes, and it is obvious that the cast is extremely highly skilled not just Jackie Chan. It is also noteworthy that Chan takes a lot of punches as well and it is not every fight he wins, though it often takes a handful of opponents at the same time to subdue him.

Both movies have a very strong comedic element. It is clear that we are not supposed to take the movies that serious, but have a fun time watching them. Where this comedy is often crude or even childish in Part I, Part II tries to go beyond that. While the dialogue comedy is likely wasted on us Westerners, it is more successful in the physical and especially in Part II with situational comedy. There is an entire chapter in Part II where every group except group 1 and 5 are hiding in Yesan’s apartment. While there is very little fighting in this part, it plays high on comedy as each group is trying to avoid the others. This is supposed to be a tribute to the stateroom scene in Marx Brothers’ “A Night at the Opera”. Another scene, the collapse of a wall around Chan is a reference to Buster Keaton’s “Steamboat Bill”.

Part II is definitely an attempt to make a bigger and better version of Part I, but I think it is only partially successful. The convoluted plot and the situational comedy threaten to steal the picture from what anybody is watching a Jackie Chan movie for, the brawling. That is always the problem with sequels, and this is no exception. Still, you get plenty of what you came for so if martial arts is your thing, there is no way around these two movies.

  

Wings of Desire (Der Himmel Uber Berlin) (1987)

 

Himlen over Berlin

I am slowly becoming, if not a fan, then appreciative of the movies by Wim Wenders. There is a contemplativeness to them that is rare in other films as his movies dwell more on an idea, a tableau, if you will, than an actual plot. This was probably never more true than with “Der Himmel über Berlin” (or “Wings of Desire” as is its English title).

The idea in “Der Himmel über Berlin” is that there are angels walking unseen among us. They observe and listen to our thoughts, but they are unable to interfere, except maybe guide our thoughts with gentle nudging. The angels are cut off from the sensory input we get. Their vision is devoid of colours, the feel no physical impressions such as wind or cold or softness or pain for that matter. They are almost unfeeling themselves. Almost. They do sense that we sense, and they do feel a loss. A loss at not sharing these sensory inputs and a sadness for people subjected to them. The price of eternal life is a life of deprivation.

In the movie we follow two such angels, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sanders). They hover over their grey city and observe. Trivial things, important things, personal things. They have access to everything, but all this is also outside their reach. Through the bulk of the movie, we see them either on their own or together listening in on people. There is the old man reminiscing on what used to be, of a city now gone, young people wondering what to do with their lives, people thinking of work, people thinking about money and surprisingly many simply feeling lonely. Cassiel tries to save a young many from jumping off a roof but is impotent to save him.

Damiel has two contacts that particularly stand out. One is on a filmset in the ruins of Berlin, where a movie is made about shortly after the end of the war. Peter Falk is playing himself as an actor in the movie and we learn surprisingly that he used to be an angel who 25 years before took the plunge and became a human. The other is a trapeze artist in a circus, Marion (Solveig Dommartin), who is seeing her dream of being an artist crumple. Damiel is drawn to her, and she is instrumental in his decision to take the plunge and become human.

When the perspective changes from that of the angels to the human perspective, the grayscale turns to vibrant colours, showing us the difference between the flat, senseless world of the angels and the textured and deep world of humans. Berlin in November is a dreary, depressing looking place and so much more so in the eighties. I have been there a few times, it is not so far from Copenhagen, and even today it is not exactly a joyous, uplifting place to look at, but in that black and white colour, with ruins still around from the war, it looks extremely dismal.

The movie uses a lot of poetry by Rilke. Not that I am familiar with it, but it adds a flavour of something otherworldly as if we are watching something behind the curtain, which to some extent we are. It is also just one of the ton of symbols the movie juggles, some more blatantly than others, but balancing them so they do not get in the way of that idea which is presented. Berlin is a fallen angel with its horrendous past. People themselves are feeling around like children while weighted down like old people. It is a song of despair and hope, of death and birth and of finding that person you need.

I was surprised to suddenly see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds taking a central role near the end. Then again, why not? His sensibilities fit the movie quite well. I guess I should not be half as surprised as learning that Peter Falk used to be an angel...

Whether it is “Paris, Texas”, “Der Himmel Über Berlin” or “Perfect Days”, there is this slow dwelling on a cinematic landscape where very little is happening, but small scenes that combine to tell a story of a condition, something almost static, until suddenly something happens that releases the story. I suppose that is a unique talent of Wim Wenders.

I would recommend this movie, but only if you are ready for this state.

 

 

Dirty Dancing (1987)

 

Off-List: Dirty Dancing

It does not matter if you were a boy or a girl. Being a teenager in 1987 there is no way you could have missed “Dirty Dancing”. I was 14 years old when it came out and although adamant that this movie was NOT for me, the girls loved it, the music was played at EVERY teenage party we went to, and everybody ended up watching the movie anyway. The craze lasted for years, especially in a small town in Jutland, Denmark.

This also happened to be one of my wife’s favorite movies and as her birthday a few days ago was ruined by influenza anyway, we sat down to watch this instead.

Nobody puts Baby in the corner!

It is the early sixties, and the Houseman family is vacationing at the Kellerman’s resort in the Catskills. Daughter Frances “Baby” Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is soon bored with the inane entertainment of the place, but fascinated by the staffers, especially with the dance instructors. She becomes friendly with Penny (Cynthia Rhodes) and Johnny (Patrick Swayze) and although staffers are supposed to separate completely from the guests, clearly some do not. Robbie, one of the waiters happily sleeps with everybody including Baby’s sister and Penny. When Penny gets pregnant, no trifle affair in those days, it is Jenny who steps in to help. She borrows money from her father so Penny can see a doctor and takes her place at a dance show at a neighboring hotel. The latter is easier said than done and requires some intense dancing training by Johnny and Penny, all top-secret.

Of course everything explodes at some point, including some mistaken assumptions on the part of several key characters, but while tense enough not to be flat, it also resolves very satisfyingly and without too many ruffles as only an eighties romantic movie can get away with.

The attraction of “Dirty Dancing” comes from a happy marriage of several factors that come together very well in the movie. The first one being the coming-of-age story of Baby. She is a character interesting enough to get invested in. She is intelligent and curious and with enough integrity to understand what is right and what is not. She understands that she cannot just insult Neil Kellerman (Lonny Price) by turning him away, but she sees him immediately as a bozo. Baby is stirred by the thinly veiled sexuality of the dance raves the staffers are mounting and it becomes her lead into adulthood, partly by discovering her sexuality (of course), but also by the more cynical lessons of learning about the divides there exists between the haves and the have nots and between those with integrity and those without. These are life lessons that forces her to make adult choices herself.

The second reason is the dancing and the music. I admit flatly that dancing in movies in itself very rarely does anything for me, but this is an exception. Not so much the moves (although I suppose they are excellent), but because the dancing and the music is a catalyst for sexual liberation in the movie. The staffers experience something real and intense as opposed to the inane drivel of the vacation guests. A few of the dancers having sex in the corner would not have been out of place at all and the funny thing is that it works on us viewers. I feel invited into their party as does Baby and we certainly felt way that back in the late eighties even if we were a trifle young to fully understand it.

A third reason is that Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze is a fantastic match. Or at least feels like a fantastic match. Rumour has it that Grey initially had reservations working with Swayze, but if so, you do not see it at all. Swayze had at this point only played dramatic roles, but he was a trained dancer and, I think, surprised everybody by being born to play Johnny Castle.

“Dirty Dancing” was made on a shoestring budget, one of those movies that almost never happened, but ended up being a cultural icon that everybody from my generation would know, though not necessarily be honest enough to admit that they like. I really do not understand how “Dirty Dancing” did not get a slot on the List.

In Danish we called the movie “Snavset Dans”, but I think you need to be Danish to see that as being kind of sweet.

 

Brightness (Yeelen) (1987)

 

Yeelen

This was another movie I had problems finding. Early on, I found it on YouTube, but without subtitles. As this is a movie in a Mailan language I did not understand anything and half an hour in, I had to throw in the towel, this was too stupid. My only take away was that this was very African. More research and I found a version with subtitles and what a difference that made! I cannot say I understand everything, this is still too culturally embedded in West Africa, but I managed to get caught up in the story and I did enjoy the movie.

“Yeelen” can best be described a fairy tale or a legend, a magic story from many years ago where magic is a real thing, which the story takes seriously. While we never learn exactly when the story takes place, it has the feel of a world where people have been living in this way for thousands of years and except for a few concessions (some agriculture, basic iron working, horseback riding) maybe since dawn of humanity.

In this world we meet Nianankoro (Issiaka Kane), a young man and a wizard. Nianankoro and his mother escaped his crazy father years ago and now he learns that his father is looking for him to kill him. Soma (Niamanto Sanogo), as his father is called, is indeed a crazy wizard. He walks around with his two servants carrying his magic totem while he screams and shouts curses of destruction on his son and everybody in general. I never learned exactly why he is so upset, but he did seem quite deranged.

Nianankoro sets out on a journey to find his uncle, another magic man. Passing through the land of the Fulas he helps the king (Balla Moussa Keita) defeat his enemies by conjuring up a swarm of bees. When the king asks him to also help him cure his youngest wife, Attou (Aoua Sangare), of barrenness, he is taken in by the young beauty and must admit that “My cock betrayed me”. The most awesome line in a movie of great lines. He did cure here of barrenness, old school way. Nianankoro is sent on his way, now with a new wife.

He finds his uncle and is equipped with a magic tool of his own, the wing of Kore. Soon he meets his father in a cataclysmic battle. The god, or whatever magic entity that gives them power tells Soma that he is so disgusted with the way he has abused his power. The battle erupts with blinding light, both wizards disappear and the land is devastated and I think we are to understand that this is what created the Sahara Desert.

Attou’s son is then seen to pick up the remains, and it is with him the future of the Bambara people lies.

“Yeelen” works best if you see this as an African Odyssey or local version of Lord of the Rings. Magic in this context is very real and a lot of the action and reactions, while obscure in a modern context, makes perfect sense within the logic of the movie. I do not understand half of the things they are doing, especially the conclave of the wizards is very strange and bizarre with a lot of weird yelling, but I buy it because it makes sense in this world. I get the feeling the movie is very true to folklore and ancient customs in Mali and a local viewer will see a lot more meaning than i do. I am just happy it all looks authentic.

There is a real danger that something so culturally embedded would be too difficult for an outsider to follow, but once I got the subtitles, the story caught me completely. I rooted for Nianankoro and felt the tension of the chase of his crazy wizard father.

This is also a beautiful movie with lots of scenic shots and a beautiful framing of the characters. It is evident that many of the actors are amateurs, but the key characters are doing a good job and together with the beautiful scenery, this is a feast for the senses.

“Yeleen” won the Jury’s prize in Cannes in 1987 and was nominated for the Palme d’Or. I can see why.