Fatal Attraction (1987)

 

Farligt begær

This is a very hard movie for me to watch. Relationship dramas bother me. Triangle dramas in particular and if it involves philandering it gets really bad. Add to this some sweet children and I am shutting down. “Fatal Attraction” hits all the wrong buttons for me and only in the end with its phyco-bitch on the rampage sequence, I am getting partially into the game again. I cannot say exactly why it is so, maybe something for a shrink to look into, but it means that I am prone to disregard all the obvious qualities of the movie and simply hate watching it. I watched it once before and this second time just confirmed everything.

Obviously, I cannot give “Fatal Attraction” a fair review.

Dan (Michael Douglas) and Beth (Anne Archer) Gallagher live in an apartment on Manhattan with their 6-year-old daughter Ellen (Ellen Hamilton Latzen) and a dog. To all appearances a happy family. Dan is an attorney and, in that function, meets Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). During a weekend where the rest of the family is away, Dan has an affair with Alex. It is supposed to be in full understanding that Dan is married, but when Dan tries to leave it, Alex clings on. This will grow progressively more extreme as the movie goes on but starts on a high with her slashing her wrists to make him stay. She shows up at the office, calls him constantly, first at the office then at home. When he changes number, she shows up pretending to want to by their apartment and she claims she is pregnant with his child.

Dan quickly realizes that that he prefers to stay with his family, but Alex wants him and nothing he can do or say to her makes her change her mind. When the family moves upstate to a new home in the countryside, Alex follows them and her attacks on the Gallaghers include kidnapping and a boiled bunny.

Eventually Dan must tell Beth what is going on and that does not go down easily. The family is under assault both from the outside and the inside.

It is possible to convince yourself that this is a movie about a family being terrorized by a crazy psycho-bitch. Fairly straight forward, the woman has been offended and now the family must pay and as she is out of her mind, her attacks are off the scale.

I think this is mostly the extra drama. The real drama is Dan cheating on his wife and this coming back to bite his ass in a big way. A cautionary tale about philandering. In this light, Dan is not the good guy even if he is the central figure. He is the homewrecker who thinks so little of his family that he risks it for a weekend of fun. Alex is mad, but she is also the avenging angel (or demon) of justice to make him pay for his arrogance. Beth and in extension Ellen are the real victims here. They have done nothing to deserve what is happening to them and when she kicks out Dan, I understand her all too well. Asshole.

And then, of course this could be a story about forgiveness. Is a crime is so big it cannot be forgiven, or if forgiveness is a necessity if it is needed for basic survival. Beth will never see Dan in the same light again, but maybe this is part of growing up, leaving innocence behind. Dan is philandering, but she killed somebody.

The tension of the triangle was overwhelming for me. I could watch around 20 minutes before taking breaks, and I feel pathetic for it, but that is what it is. This may be seen as a special achievement of the movie: if there was nothing at stake, why make the movie? But that is a tension for other people to enjoy. For me it was torture.

No doubt this is a movie with many qualities; it was nominated for 6 Oscars including three of the big ones. It is also one of those movies many people will mention as a landmark even today, but please please do not make me watch it again.

The Dead (1987)

 

The Dead

John Huston’s last movie, “The Dead” was directed by him practically on his deathbed and that is important to know when you watch the movie. Very far into the movie, I did not understand the point of it, until I realized that this was Huston’s elaborate farewell.

It is early days in the 20th century, January 1904, in Dublin, Ireland. People are arriving for a party hosted by three spinsters, Kate (Helena Carroll, Julia (Cathleen Delany) and their niece Mary Jane (Ingrid Craige) Morkan. Most of the men appear to be single and at least middle-aged and the female guests mostly music students of the spinsters. Notable exceptions are Molly Ivors (Maria McDermottroe), an activist who leaves the party early, and married couple Gretta (Anjelica Huston) and Gabriel (Donal McCann) Conroy.

The party starts with some dancing to music from the music students and we are introduced to Freddy (Donal Donnelly), who has a reputation for drunkenness and indeed shows up late and drunk, but is tolerated because of his mother. The dancing is replaced by a lengthy dinner through which we are privy to several conversations and finally the guests leave and we follow the Conroys home to their hotel.

Watching this, the point of all this eluded me. It looks like any other upper middle-class dinner party of that era with the more or less empty talk, a few recitations, some music and some singing. Freddy’s interruptions that are too loud, too insisting and with the lack of the sense of situation expected of everybody, is the closest we come to drama. This is blamed on his drunkenness, but I sense autistic traits in his character that makes my heart bleed for him, yet Freddy does not seem to be the point either.

It was only when the Conroy’s were back in their hotel room that the movie came together (and explained the title). This is effectively an eulogy by Huston onto things past and gone, life and a world that is over. It is based on a James Joyce short story, but it could have been written by Huston himself.

Most of the guests live in the past and celebrate the past. They live on what or who they were and act as coming out of an earlier age, not entirely understanding the present world they live in. The poems recited and the songs performed hark back to a world lost and gone. When Gretta hears a particular song upon leaving the party she succumbs to memories of a young lover from her past who sung that song to her and died, maybe because of her. When Gabriel stares out the window on the snowy, dark landscape he appears to be saying his farewell to a world that was and is now dying.

It is in that light, I think, “The Dead” should be watched and while that is a downer, it also feels like a fitting end for Huston himself who died an old man months before the release of “The Dead”. Without this purpose, “The Dead” feels pointless and boring, like those parties you cannot wait to leave, but must stay and endure for the sake of politeness. Luckily it is a fairly short movie, but that did nothing to suppress that feeling. For me personally, it did not help that the copy I watch did not have subtitles which was a problem with the heavy Irish accents of many of the characters. I found myself often consulting Wikipedia to learn if somebody said something important, which they invariably did not.

I would like to say it is a beautiful movie, but I think that is a stretch. It has a beautiful and poignant point, but is mostly a movie to endure rather than enjoy. Calling it boring is harsh, but let is just say I was happy it was short.

  

800 Movie Anniversary

 

800 Movie Anniversary

I have now reached the 800 movie mark on the List. Of course, with all the extra movies I am reviewing I am actually long past that point, but counting official entries, this is where I am now. I passed 700 on October 12th, 2023, so it has taken me two and a half years to climb this interval. Not very impressive, really.

On the other hand, I am really enjoying being immersed in the eighties. To me, this is a golden age in so many ways, not least because this was my formative childhood. I therefore decided that the awards I will make this time is for movies that encapsulates the eighties one way or another. This was a hard pick, and I had to keep telling myself that this is more about zeitgeist than quality. My top-10 list of movies would look quite different. Also I stopped at 87. This is after all as far as I got on the List.

 

10. The Terminator

What was the eighties without the buff duel between Arnie and Sly? The Terminator perhaps best represents this.

11. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

E.T. may be the quintessential family film of the eighties. The optimistic note of the movie is so typical eighties that you probably could not have made it at any other time. Project Hail Mary owes a lot to E.T.

8. A Nightmare on Elm Street

While this may not be the best horror-gore movie of the eighties, it perhaps best typifies the genre and Friday, the 13th is not on the List.

7. Dirty Dancing

Dirty Dancing is not on the List, and it does not even take place in the eighties, but it is sooooo eighties! The music, the mood, the message, the structure. This is the very definition of a romantic song and dance movie of the eighties.

6. Ghostbusters

The eighties were super strong on comedies, and few did it better than Ghostbusters. The special thing about Ghostbusters is how rooted it is in the eighties. Not only does it run the standard eighties formula, it is also full of the pop-culture of the eighties.

5. Raiders of the Lost Ark

Here I was a bit in doubt. The Indiana Jones franchise takes place in the past, but this is very much a movie of its time. You could say it is the eighties displaced to the thirties and maybe a case of the movie being so big that it made the eighties. Certainly, the decade is full of more or less successful copies.

4. Beverly Hills Cop

If Ghostbusters is not the most quintessential eighties comedy, then it must be Beverly Hills Cup. Murphy’s Axel Foley takes the ride from the seventies in Detroit and land in ultra hip eighties LA. The decade is almost the main character.

3. Top Gun

Top Gun is a good example that being very eighties is not necessarily a good thing. This is so eighties, it is a hoot. It is almost a mockery of an eighties movie if I was not convinced they actually meant it seriously.

2. Back to the Future

Again, a movie that mostly takes place in another time, but by juxtapositioning the eighties against the fifties it manages to very effectively highlight the eighties. This is literally displacing eighties characters into the past.

1.     1. The Breakfast Club

If you were young in the eighties, there is a very good chance this was the movie that formed you. No other movie I can think of encapsulates being young in the eighties as The Breakfast Club does.

 

I had a thought to place Blade Runner on the top-10. In high school, this was the movie highlighted as representing the post-modern style in cinema, something typical of the eighties, but thinking about it, Blade Runner was so far ahead of its time that it should belong to a complexly different decade. At least the nineties or even later.

 

Red Sorghum (Hong Gao Liang) (1987)

 

Red Sorghum

“Red Sorghum” is a Chinese film. Not a Hong Kong production, but a movie from mainland China. This is from a period where the technical capabilities became absolutely comparable with what was made elsewhere, but when there is still a political imperative that is not to be avoided. Combining these two elements we get a movie that is cryptic, interesting and ham-fisted at the same time.

The narrator of the story, whose voice appear from time to time in the movie, tells us that this is a story about his grandparents. Evidently it takes place in the period of the 1920’es to the 1940’es, which makes it prior to communist takeover and at least in the latter part during the Japanese occupation. His grandmother, Jiu (Gong Li) is sent off to marry a rich winery owner who also happens to suffer from leprosy. Needless to say, Jiu is not happy about this. One of the employees at the winery, whom the narrator names his grandfather, but whose name in the movie I forgot (Jiang Wen), takes an interest in Jiu. He sleeps with her in something that to me looks a bit like rape and it is implied that he may be the one killing the winery owner. In any case a sort of anti-hero.

Jiu takes over the winery and starts running it a bit like a cooperative, but with her as executive lead. Sort of the Chinese communist ideal. There is some story about Grandfather getting drunk, telling everybody he has a claim on Jiu, then when Jiu gets kidnapped by bandits he rage on them and after that, being angry he pees in the wine, which, curiously turns it really good (I guess I want to avoid Chinese sorghum wine...).

When some years later the Japanese arrive, they abuse the local population and demonstrate cruelty on a level where the winery commune forms a resistance cell to fight off the Japanese. The narrator’s father, a little boy loses his mother in the fight and is left with his grandfather.

The red sorghum of the title refers to the fields of red sorghum surrounding the winery. It is tall and mysterious, hiding things and is the source of the sorghum wine they are producing.

The general story is one that fits in very well with the communist China narrative. The local countryside population is suffering under greedy landowners. That the winery owner is suffering from leprosy represents the rot of the wealthy class. His death is the revolution and the winery, a mini-China forms a cooperative under gentle and loving, but firm leadership. The winery employees must be educated. The Japanese invasion was both a real, formative event for China, but also represents the external threat that China / the winery needs to defend against and to make sacrifices for in the process. The grandfather is the re-educated Chinese helping the young generation into a future.

This is rather ham-fisted and would in itself, perhaps, be uninteresting to a western viewer. What makes “Red Sorghum” interesting after all is how it presents itself. There is a production quality underlying this movie that makes it astonishing to look at. The big sorghum fields, the sun-parched winery, the endless skies and the construction of the setting of the movie. There are also impressive and convincing performances all around. Especially by Gong Li, who would develop into one of the biggest Chinese actresses, at least seen from a western perspective, but also all-round by the staff on the winery. I sometimes feel watching Hong Kong movies a disconnect from reality as if actors are acting that they are acting, if that makes sense. This is absent in “Red Sorghum” and the naturalistic acting here as far more convincing. Director Zhang Yimou would become one of the premier directors of China and this is his promising beginning.

Yet, all this is still very Chinese and while I understand the overall picture, I feel that so much is lost in the cultural translation. There are odd elements, things that are said or done and contexts that makes little sense to me. I lived in China for half a year back in 2008, so I recognize these things as Chinese idiosyncrasies, but they still baffle me. I therefore cannot say that I fully understand the movie and indeed I felt lost at times, but that is, I suppose, to be expected.

Despite that, this is a movie worth spending time on, if for nothing else than to enjoy the spectacle and the window into a transitional period of China, whether is be the 1920-40’ies or the 1980’es.

 

Moonstruck (1987)

 

Lunefulde måne

Laughing at exaggerated cultural stereotypes is not exactly acceptable in this day and age, but it was in, apparently, in the eighties and “Moonstruck” goes all in. As in everything is permissible as long as we understand this is a comedy.

We are in the Italian community of New York and Loretta Castorini (Cher) is a 37-year-old widower who lives at home with her parents, Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia) and Rose Castorini (Olympia Dukakis), her grandfather (Feodor Chaliapin) and perhaps a few more family members, this is not entirely clear to me. Loretta is convinced that it was bad luck that caused her first husband to die after only two years, so when her boyfriend Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) propose to her, she insists that everything must be done according to the traditions. Johnny just needs to go back to Sicily to tell his dying mother about the marriage.

Meanwhile, Loretta promises to seek out Johnny’s brother Ronni (Nicholas Cage) to settle a five-year-old feud so he can attend the wedding. Ronni is VERY upset. He blames Johnny for ruining his life by distracting him, so he lost his hand in a meat slicer. It is five years ago, but to Ronni it is like yesterday. Loretta’s attempt at placating Ronni develops into... an affair. All of a sudden, Loretta is invited to a date at the Opera and going through a makeover to look a little more like... Cher. At the Opera, Loretta meets her father with a woman who is definitely not her mother, while at home Rose meet a university teacher who we have already seen twice being ditched by a student date.

Truly a messy situation and in any other connection, this sounds like the recipe for a family meltdown. Alas, this is an Italian family, so we are to understand that this sort of thing happens all the time, it takes a bit (lot) of shouting and then everybody are happy again. It is natural to give into your passions as long as you remember family is important and everybody actually love each other even when they are throwing things at each other.

I am Scandinavian and this mentality is... rather far away from me, but I think that is the point here. These Italian Americans are described with emphasis on all these cultural stereotypes, so far over the top that most people, maybe even Italians, would find them crazy and amusing. This is cultural stereotypes as a joke. Italians are a bit crooky, full of passion, screaming their lungs out, intense lovers and family people above all and here it is used for comedy.

The crazy thing is that it is totally working. This is hilariously funny. Somewhere between the absurdity and the recognizable, we can both follow the characters and are completely left by the wayside by their crazy lives. The movie is obviously made with a sympathetic eye to Italian culture, and it is laughing with, more than laughing at, the Italians, which leaves a feel-good taste where this could have been really bad. I had a great time watching this and that was totally unexpected.

This feels like an Italian version of “My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding” in that the comedy is almost entirely based on extreme cultural stereotypes, but “Moonstruck” is a cleaner movie in that it almost entirely dispenses with plot and focuses of this particular situation across just two or three days. It gives the movie more time to focus on the characters and that is to the benefit of the movie.

Cher is almost the only actor without an Italian background, but she pulls it off surprisingly well. I believe her to be Italian. Her only problem is that her Cinderella transformation is not so convincing when she already looks very pretty before it happens. Cage reminded me of his character in “Raising Arizona”. He is rather good when he is a maniac. It is when he is supposed to be sincere, he gets unconvincing.

I had no idea what I went into here and that is that best way to approach a movie, no expectations at all. Here I was highly rewarded and had a good time watching it.

The Untouchables (1987)

 

De uovervindelige

It may just be me who is not that much into gangster movies and that I am deeply unfair, but “The Untouchables” feels to me a bit flat. A beautifully wrapped package, but the thing inside is the same gift I got last year and the year before. Can you be disappointed with something that looks so great?

It is 1930 and Al Capone (Robert De Niro) is the de facto king of Chicago, largely fuelled by the illegal import and sale of liquor during the prohibition. Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) of the Treasury department is tasked with doing something about this problem. This is not easy, because Capone and his money are everywhere, even within the police department, so Ness learns the hard way that he must work outside the normal law enforcement system. Ness forms a small group around him consisting of veteran policeman and mentor Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery), young sharpshooter George Stone (Andy Garcia), whose real name is Guiseppe and thus closer to the Italian community in Chicago than the others, and accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith).

Wallace, who is intended as the somewhat comical character, early on mumbles a lot about Capone’s tax irregularities, but Ness is far more focussed on Capone’s crimes of violence. The team, soon called The Untouchables because they refuse bribe, focuses on busting Capones operations which certainly catches Capone’s attention and a war between the two starts. Capone is not shy of any sort of imitation. It is only when a raid yields a book with the accounting of Capone’s business transactions that Ness realizes Capone can be nailed for this. At that point however, Capone means serious business, the sort that comes out of the end of a gun.

There is no discussing the quality of the execution of this movie. Everything has been very carefully done in the best way possible. The recreation of 1930 Chicago is flawless, down to minute details. The filming is done in a brownish colour tone that emulates the black and white image we have of the era while remaining in colour. The tracking shots and steady-cam shots are flawlessly executed, giving a presence and first-person impression that is very convincing. The soundtrack by Ennio Morricone is as usual excellent, with bits of contemporary music by Duke Ellington thrown in. Most importantly, the casting is genius. Robert De Niro as Capone is exactly spot on. He has for a generation been the incarnation of a mafia boss. Costner as Ness works very well and Connery as Malone is another match in heaven. Yet it is Garcia and Smith that I particularly noticed. Their roles may be smaller, but they were exactly right for those parts.

SPOILER ALERT!

When I am still grumping about “The Untouchables” it is because of the structure of the movie, the plot if you will. This is a plot that very much tries to play it safe. We can pretty much predict every step of the way and any attempt at a plot twist is either something we have seen before or something that is not taken far enough. We get a hint of uncomfortability when Capone through his henchmen start threatening Ness family, but the story never follows up on that. Wallace and Malone die, but they are sacrificable and the conclusion in the courtroom almost feel anticlimactic.

When reading up on the movie I learned that practically everything in the movie except the characters were invented and even some of those were not real. This is obviously one of the more dramatic events in American history, yet the scriptwriters found it necessary to completely rewrite event to conform with Hollywood templates. I am not so naive that I do not know there always is a level of adaption, but it seems to me that in this case a potentially very interesting and exciting story is reduced to a cliché in anticipation of what the audience wants to see. The point is not that Ness never killed Nitti (Billy Drago). The point is that he does it in the movie to conform to the predictable plot.

Again, I have to mention that I am not big on gangster movies in the first place. I find it very hard to get into them. At least in this case we are not supposed to sympathize with the gangsters, but the flatness of the “good” side makes it equally difficult to get close to them. A fan of the genre may see it differently. Still, and no denying, this is a very pretty movie.  

A Chinese Ghost Story (Sien Nui Yau Wan) (1987)

 

A Chinese Ghost Story

As usual, when watching movies from far away places, I feel a bit on shaky ground as I do not always understand the background or context of what I am watching. “A Chinese Ghost Story” or “Sien Nui Yau Wan” strikes me as the Hong Kong version of “Evil Dead”. Sort of a horror comedy with over-the-top monsters, gross-out visuals and silly dialogue. I could be entirely wrong, and this is actually an established Hong Kong tradition, which it certainly is in terms martial arts by wire, in which case I have just demonstrated by complete ignorance.

Ning Caichen (Leslie Cheung) works as a debt collector, but it is not really going well for him. The ink in his book of debts has washed out so when he arrives in the town he is supposed to collect from, he is out of money and must stay in the only free place in town, a deserted temple. There is good reason the temple is deserted as it is haunted by ghosts with an appetite for humans. Nin Caichen knows nothing of this and the only reason he survives his first night is his fumbling luck and complete ignorance. He meets a pretty girl, Nie Xiaoqian (Joey Wong), and is infatuated by her. He also meets a Daoist priest, Yan Chixia (Wu Ma), who lives as a hermit at the temple, keeping the ghosts at bay.

Until Ning Caichen learns the girl is a ghost, he thinks he is protecting her from a madman, especially after seeing him decapitate one of Nie Xiaoqian’s sisters. When the priest finally convinces him they are indeed dangerous ghosts, he is terrified but agrees on a scheme to lure them out. Ning Caichen also learns that Nie Xiaoqian is a prisoner of “The Big Lady” (Lau Siu-ming), who is actually a terrible tree demon. To help Nie Xiaoqian, Yan Chixia and Ning Caichen enter a dramatic battle against the tree demon using all sorts of magic weapons to fight a ginormous demonic tongue. The battle eventually takes them to the underworld to fight even worse monsters.

I recognize three levels to this movie. At the first and most immediate level, this is a combined love and ghost story (Ning Caichen is after all in love with a ghost). It is not too hard to follow that story. Love is sweet and the ghosts are dangerous. The priest is a ghost hunter, and Ning Caichen is anything but a warrior. At the second level this is a comedy, which is much harder to translate. Practically all the dialogue comedy is lost on me. When the characters are supposed to be funny, they just look stupid or strange and only when the action turns comedic does the comedy start to work for me. This is not strange at all and very common. Comedy is extremely difficult to translate and for the Chinese the same is probably true the other way round. At the third level, this is a martial arts movie in the wuxia tradition with fancy swordplay and lots of wirework. It is over-the-top, but that is almost always the case and whether they are throwing magic spells or deadly thrusts at each other, it is dramatic to look at and not so difficult to follow. Martial arts translate fairly well. Luckily, as I mentioned, some of the comedy extends to these fighting scenes and we enter the same realm of horror comedy as that of “Evil Dead”.

The further we get into the movie, the more we enter this familiar territory and for me as a westerner the better “A Chinese Ghost Story” gets. All those battle scenes are impressive and the love story between the ghost and the mortal is sweet. Anything that happens in the town, though, feels awkward and amateurish, basically because it plays on a comedy I do not get.

This is very much an eighties movie where most of the budget was spent on the special effects. The soundtrack is... Chinese electronica and the acting is... well, Chinese. I am not the right judge of that. Apparently, “A Chinese Ghost Story” hit it big time in Hong Kong and became an underground cult phenomenon in mainland China, creating all sorts of spin-offs and what-not, so obviously it got a lot of things right.

I did enjoy it more than I expected. Certainly more than I expected ten minutes into the movie. Once it really gets rolling, we just need Ash showing up with his chainsaw to save the day.