Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

 

Dangerous Liaisons

A few years ago, I reviewed the book “Dangerous Liaisons” on my book blog. Now, five years later, it is time to do the same for the 1988 movie based on that book. I went back to my old review and found that it could be used 1:1 as a review of the movie. Normally, that would be a recommendation since a faithful adaption is the exception rather than the rule, but this was a story I did have some trouble to digest and so I find the same problems apply to the movie.

It is the era of the Ancien Régime in France, the period of idle rich nobility in wigs and powder and silly outfits before they got a close shave in the French revolution. Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) are two such unprincipled libertines who entertain themselves with manipulation of other people. Both consider themselves absolute master of the art of seduction and manipulation and have sort of a game going on, which is not entirely transparent.

Merteuil requires Valmont to seduce and ruin the young Cecile de Volanges (Uma Thurman) as revenge on her future husband, an absent and much older man who has a history with Merteuil. Valmont has another task in mind, to seduce and corrupt the religious and married Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), a much harder challenge than the inexperienced Cecile. He does get a chance at both at his aunt’s chateau which involves a lot of deceit, blackmail and spycraft. A very young Keenu Reeves as Chevalier Danceny is thrown in as a tool of Merteuil for the corruption of Cecile.

As in the book, the plot is rather confusing. Partly because of the several, often contradicting, agendas, but also because it is hard to understand the motivation behind these shenanigans. At times this looks like a simple scoring points game. Sort of a game to prove how awesomely powerful Valmont and Merteuil are. At other times it looks like they are trying to impress each other so that, if they are awesome enough, the other will love him or her back. This may be particularly the case for Valmont, whereas Merteuil simply define herself by this craft. Still, these seem very unsatisfying motivations, to do these things simply because they are good at it, and as I wrote in my review of the book, they are both more like caricatures, the boogeymen libertines used to scare people away from an immoral life, than supposed to be actual living people. While this would work well for a novel in the eighteenth century, it is hardly an argument for a movie in 1988. Rather than being scary characters, they came across as pathetic and sorry creatures who are entirely delusional both of their own prowess and the meaning of their lives. The ending seems to confirm this impression.

John Malkovich’ Valmont is a strange creature. At least in his own eyes he is dashing and irresistibly charming and, yes, I know I am of the wrong gender, but I totally fail to see how Valmont is so fantastic. To me he is incredibly creepy and not subtle at all in the way he comes on to women. Except when he resorts to blackmail, I do not understand why it should be so hard to say no to this creep. I know this is a different era with women in a much less favourable position, but should they be this weak? I find that hard to accept.

“Dangerous Liaisons” has two things going for it big time though. The cinematography is amazing. Everything is all eighteenth century. Costumes, sets, music, tone. I can live with the American accent as I doubt this cast would do well in French and I got used to it super fast (with the possible exception of Keenu Reeves). The second thing is that very cast. This is almost a who-is-who in acting, 1988. Especially on the women’s side, this is a supremely strong cast. I can sense the glee in the dressing-up and they are all a lot more than just pretty princesses. If only they could have been allowed to be stronger, but that I suppose is very much a product of the time.

Ultimately, it is a story about vastly delusional characters who are allowed to get away with their abuse, but ultimately implode when reality burst their bubble. Is that great to watch? Probably for a lot of people, but I get very little out of this. I therefore find it hard to recommend it.

   

RoboCop (1987)

 

RoboCop

“RoboCop” is one of the weirder gaps in my movie experience. I have known about Robocop since it came out and have been watching enough clips from it to recognize it, but I believe I have never actually sat down to watch it. That is, until now. I cannot say why. Teenage me would have loved this movie.

In future Detroit, the city looks like shit, and the police is run as an investment by a large corporation. So far, this is not too much of a stretch. Being an officer on the street is dangerous business. Standard equipment includes helmet and body armour, and the casualty rate is still high. Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) has just transferred to a hard-hit downtown precinct and on his first patrol with officer Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen) he gets captured and shot by a particularly vicious gang led by Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith). Somehow, he survives long enough to be salvaged by a development team under Omni Consumer Products (OCP) to be incorporated into their new super cop cyborg: RoboCop.

OCP is the big corporation than owns the police. In fact, they seem to own most of everything in Detroit, but it is also subject to internal power struggles. The department outfitting the Robocop prototype, led by Rob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) is rivalling a group headed Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), who is developing a robot named ED-209. Not entirely surprisingly, Dick Jones is allied with Clarence Boddicker. It is into this fray the incorruptible supercop enters with determined and unquestioning steps.

RoboCop is the corporate solution to law enforcement. Highly efficient, no salary, long working hours and no pestering union. An employee who simply does the job. Should it get hurt and die it is not really a problem because it is already technically dead. All this is of course a big issue for the actual police force in the precinct and in these AI times, this conflict is easily the most interesting in the movie. Unfortunately, it is not getting anywhere enough space in the movie and that is a real shame. Instead, the focus is on the corruption at the very top, which provide us with a lot of noisy and very violent action. The question here is how does a square thinking machine react when the very source of its orders is the problem. There is some philosophy here and it gets a bit more space. Finally, there is the question of how much humanity is left in the cyborg. Does it still identify as the original human or is it entirely disconnected from it. As the movie progresses, more and more of its humanity is surfacing, but besides making RoboCop more sympathetic, more human if you like, it is a bit difficult to see where that story element is leading.

At the end of the day, RoboCop is an action movie, and it is the action sequences everything else must eventually make way for. It is a good action movie. Verhoeven, the director, is known for not pulling any punches and here he is going all in. In fact, “RoboCop” does feel more modern than its age, and that is largely because the violence is so much in your face. The is not “The A-Team” where nobody seem able to hit their target, but unflinching and merciless violence. A part of me is saddened that it is this sort of violence that makes it feel modern.

The brutality is strangely offset by a dark humour that at times is so silly that it almost derails the movie. The competing robot, the ED-209 is so brutally overpowered and insanely incompetent that it is darkly funny but also difficult to take it serious as a competitor to the RoboCop. Broadcasts are interrupted by absolutely insane commercials for products such as a boardgame where you nuke your family.

Taken apart, “RoboCop” sounds like a mess, but it actually works. I would personally have preferred a movie that would follow through with some of the many very interesting ideas the story presents instead just reducing itself to an action movie, but I suppose that would require a TV-series to realize that and there “RoboCop” is 20-30 ahead of its time. Today, such a series would be both possible and absolutely work.

I still do not understand why I did not watch “RoboCop” back in the day. It is possible the world needed to catch up with it.

Big (1988)

 

Big

It is not a secret that “Big” is a long-time family favourite in our home. Both my wife and I love it, we acquired the DVD early in our marriage and we have watched it a gazillion times over the years. I am therefore totally biased here and will be completely unresponsive to critique.

“Big” is a play on the What-would-you-do-if-your-wish-came-true theme. In this case it is as simple a child wishing he was big as in not a child anymore. Josh Baskin (David Moscow) is a 13-year-old boy, living a normal suburban life with his family and best friend Billy (Jared Rushton). At the town fair, Josh wants to impress a girl but is rejected at the ride for being too short. Humiliated, Josh makes a with at a Zoltar machine that he was big and his wish is granted. The next morning, Josh is an adult (Tom Hanks) with all the complications that entails.

Josh’ mother (Mercedes Ruehl) freaks out and does not recognize Josh. Billy takes some convincing, but comes around and together they decide Josh should hang out in the city (New York) until they can find a Zoltan machine to turn Josh back to child size. When this appears to require some time and they are short on cash, Josh will also need a job. He finds one as a computer operator at a toy company. It is a universal truth that young people are more tech savvy than adults and nobody understands toys like a child so Josh is a fish in the water. Before long Josh is VP of product development with his own office and secretary.

One of the truly amazing things about “Big” is how believable Tom Hanks is as the 13-year-old Josh in an adult body. His facial expressions, body language and way of talking is exactly like David Moscow’s and what we see is really a young teenager trying to get along in an adult world. It is heartbreaking to see him curl and cry up on the mattress in the seedy hotel he is staying at. When he enters the big toy store Macmillan owns, he is in a child’s heaven and starts playing with everything, forgetting he is supposed to be an adult. Even when Macmillan himself (Robert Loggia) shows up, it is difficult to get back into the role of a grown up and, discovering the walking piano, he forgets it altogether and needs to play. This is the iconic scene everybody knows from the movie, two adults jumping around on the keys. This entire part of the movie is filled with these child-encounters-the-adult-world events. Josh at the company party, Josh’ new loft apartment, which is more like a playground, Josh attending business meetings and playing paddle with a man who sees him as an enemy.

The longer Josh stays in this world, the more he grows up and the real turning point is his first sexual encounter with the mercenary Susan Lawrence (Elizabeth Perkins). This is also the part many people have a problem with. Susan acts in good faith. To her, Josh is a bona fide adult with a boyish charm, the entire opposite of her former boyfriend. We know that Josh has started thinking of girls, so entering this world is a magic dream, but also one he is entirely unequipped to deal with. We know Susan is having an affair with an underage boy, but she does not. When she eventually realises this, she does act accordingly, she is no paedophile. To me, this is also what saves it. To none of the involved there is an intent of doing something creepy.

Josh is being sucked into the adult world and it takes a wake-up call or two to realize what it is he is missing out on and to know he must get back. Being an adult for a few months was quite an experience but he will get there soon enough.

This is an endearing movie, partly because of the way it is told, but mainly through Tom Hank’s entirely convincing performance, one he was nominated for at the Academy Awards. Early in the development, adult Josh was supposed to have been performed by Robert de Niro. That would have been a very different movie, and I am happy it ended up with Tom Hanks. This is a movie that works at all age levels, and each age group will see something else in it. Yet, the relationship between Susan and Josh, key as it is to the story, has seriously threatened the reputation of “Big”. I understand where that position is coming from, but I do not share it. It is a (scary) part of the adult experience, and it is dealt with with sensitivity. There is not evil intent, and it convinces Josh this is all too early for him. Yet, there is no way this could have been made today.

Beetlejuice (1988)

 

Off-List: Beetlejuice

If you are a ghost and somebody have moved into your beloved old home and are making a mess of things, who’re you gonna call? Ghostbu... no no... Betelgeuse! (or Beetlejuice if you are so inclined). This fantastic and hilarious reverse of ”Ghostbusters” is my third off-List movie for 1988.

The Maitlands, Barbara and Adam (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin), live in a cozy country house in Connecticut when they have the misfortune to die in a car accident. They are slow to realize they are dead and even slower to work out what that implies as the “Handbook for the Newly Deceased” is particularly cryptic. They do realize they cannot leave the house without ending up on Saturn’s moon Titan, which is infested with colourful sandworms.

Their second disaster is the new owners of the house, the Deetz’es, Delia and Charles (Catherine O’Hara and Jeffrey Jones) and Charles’ daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder). Charles is a developer looking for a quiet place while Delia is a sculpturer and very impressed with herself. Lydia is a goth girl living in perpetual misery. With those parents I am not certain I blame her. Delia’s art friend, agent or leech, Otho (Glenn Shadix), practically moves in with them. Right from day one they are busy changing the house in the most horrendous, but likely fashionable, way and the Maitlands want them out. The only place they have for themselves is the attic.

Lydia befriends the Maitlands as she is the only one who can see them and when their first serious attempt to scare them away fails (the famous Banana Boat Song scene), Lydia becomes the unwilling intermediary as the Deetz’es see great possibilities in a haunted house. It is time to get serious so, against advice from their caseworker, the Maitlands summon Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) and this is where it gets really funny.

I was surprised how late in the movie Betelgeuse appears. I recall it as much earlier, but it is really only the last 20 minutes or so we get the fireworks which this bio-exterminator is. Sure, he pops up before, but only as hardly more than a mention. Betelgeuse is what everybody remembers from this movie and Keaton went all in on this character. He is repulsive and offensive, but also a hilariously funny clown. The uncle nobody wants to invite to the party, but all the children love. Well, who all the adolescent boys love.

It is true that the movie pulls into high gear when Keaton shows up, but what we forget is that this is already quite a feast. The Otho character is so sleazy and slimy that he is a hoot, and Jones did everything right back then in the eighties. Despite Keaton, my favourite scene of the movie is the Banana Boat Song sequence. Watching those pompous narcissistic bozos succumb to the song is always a laugh for me and it was heavily referenced in the sequel. The Maitlands’ visits to the afterlife are also legend. This messy place that looks like a Kafkaesque nightmare is all we fear about public sector bureaucracy. Being number 1000000 in the queue, a caseworker who do not have time for you. Paper and dust everywhere. Regulations nobody understand and catch-22s that means you are pretty much stuck. Dying sucks because this is where you end up.

Ryder’s Lydia is the heart of the movie, and she is fine and everything, but in this party everybody is having she is drowning out a bit. Her function is mainly as the only truly sane person among all these weirdos, the sounding box to make everybody else funny.

Only recently a sequel was made (it took 36 years!) and despite my fears of the opposite, it works surprisingly well. Keaton’s Betelgeuse gets a far more prominent role in that one, but it is otherwise faithful to the original. It works well as a double feature to watch them together.

“Beetlejuice” carries all the hallmarks of Tim Burton, the primary colours, the imagination and the larger than life characters and the crazy thing is, this was only his second feature. I would add this to the List without hesitation.

 

 

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988)

 

Høj pistolføring

When the latest “Naked Gun” movie came out last year I was greatly disappointed. Had I become so old that the spoof movies of the eighties had become too stupid for me and lost their charm? I immediately went home and put on the original and to my great relief I had not lost the love, it was the genre that had gotten stupid. It is a year later, I am watching it again and I am still laughing.

“The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” follows in the footsteps of “Airplane!”. It takes a well-known genre, in this case the police procedure movie, and makes a joke out of everything. And I mean everything. Sometimes there are multiple jokes happening at the same time, sometime the joke is in the way of the story and so the story must pause and no joke is too silly. While not every joke works, enough does and they have enough freshness and charm to be more than just silly.

There is a frame story, though not a terribly important one. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) is a police lieutenant who on his return from beating up the top bad guys in the world, finds that his colleague Nordberg (O.J. Simpson) has been badly injured. Also, his wife married someone else. Nordberg was shot six times, touched a hot stove, leaned on a newly painted door, fell into a wedding cake, stepped in a bear trap and fell out of a window of a ship into the harbour. Beside looking for the culprits, Drebin is also involved in the security detail for the British queen’s visit to L.A. We know early on that Vincent Ludwig (Ricardo Montalbán) is the bad guy, but as he is also a locally important businessman and host for the queen, Drebin is making difficult enemies. Luckily, Ludwig has a pretty assistant, Jane Spence (Priscilla Presley), who also like policemen.

If you know who Leslie Nielsen is, it will not be a surprise that Lt. Drebin is a complete disaster. He can hardly open a door without somebody getting hurt and he has this face that looks completely oblivious to the effect he has on his surroundings. Combining this character to the very low but also strangely innocent humour of the team from “Airplane!” is dynamite. Or at least it was back then when they were at their peak. A silly joke like Drebin having his microphone open when he goes to the bathroom during a press conference on the visit of the Queen works every time I watch it. I know it should not, farting jokes are not that funny, but with Leslie Nielsen it is hilarious.

What happened later with this genre was that it was forgotten that any comedy only works if you have a sounding board of normality. If everything is anarchy it is simply not funny anymore. Even the Marx Brothers knew this and used the awesome Margaret Dumont for that purpose. “The Naked Gun” tries to hang on to its “normal” frame story and it has a degree or normality in the world Drebin operates in. Not a lot, but just enough. Mayor Barkley (Nancy Marchand) is such a character as is (to some degree) Drebin’s boss Captain Hocken (George Kennedy). It is a tenuous grip on normality. When the movie is poorest it is because it is slipping away, but when the movie is best it is because the joke is up against normality as when Drebin takes over the role of a famous opera singer and abuse the national anthem at a big baseball game in front of an amazed audience. We see (and hear) Nielsen, but he is funny because of the audience.

The spoof genre continued for many years and got worse and worse. It is not that the jokes were sillier than here, but because the sounding board disappeared. When, finally, “Naked Gun”, 2025 came around, it was just dumb.

The original, though, is a lot of fun. Do not expect too much, just have a good time. Pretty much like you would with “Airplane!”. I love it.

 

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

 

A Fish Called Wanda

I remember vividly watching “A Fish Called Wanda” the first time. I was in eighth grade, and my class was going to England to spend a week with British host families. In those days, the cheap way to go to the UK was an overnight ferry from Esbjerg to Harwich. We were a group who watched “A Fish Called Wanda” in the ship’s cinema. Midway through the movie there was a blackout. The ship lost power and lay still in the water for an hour before we could continue the movie. That sort of thing makes an impression on a 14-year-old.

“A Fish Called Wanda” is not so much a caper movie as about what happens after the heist. The gang has four members, the leader George (Tom Georgeson), his girlfriend Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis), her lover and team gunman Otto (Kevin Kline) and right-hand man Ken (Michael Palin). Minutes after the heist, it becomes clear that nobody trusts anybody. George moves the loot (some very valuable diamonds), he entrusts their location to Ken, while  Wanda and Otto call the police to report George who is immediately arrested. Wanda is playing everybody, being lover of George, secret lover of Otto, friend with Ken and, when she learns he is the barrister of George, tries to become friendly with Archie Leach (John Cleese). Archie is, in his turn, living a fairly boring, if comfortable, life under the boot of his rich wife, Wendy (Maria Aitken). When he is approached by the vivacious Wanda, a whole new world opens up to the repressed, middle-aged barrister.

This is a comedy and it plays hard for comedy, though less so in the beginning. It is a fairly slow starter where the pieces need to be set up. It does not take long though to work out that Otto is an imbecile with an inflated ego. As an American with a very high opinion of himself he hates the British, though not as much as when people call him stupid or tries to cheat on him. He is the source of much, if not most, of the comedy here. There is a running joke with him being incredibly jealous of anybody getting close to Wanda and with Wanda using her female charms on practically everybody, this happens a lot. Wanda meets with Archie several times and whenever she does, Otto will appear, looking in through a window or suddenly be in the room. Those are my favourite scenes of the movie. When Wanda and Archie, in an embrace, are deriding Otto for his stupidity, Otto’s head suddenly appear next to the bed, saying: “Do not call me stupid!”. I almost fell off the sofa laughing.

Kevin Kline is funny here because he has been built op throughout the movie so his fumbling around and idiotic appearances becomes a trigger for comedy. Just seeing him, we know it will be crazy. It is a bit less so with the sensitive, animal-loving Ken with a stutter. He is tasked with getting rid of an elderly woman who were able to identify George during their getaway. His attempts at her life invariably fail as he ends up killing one of her dogs instead each time. Much to his own chagrin. As a 14-year-old this was incredibly funny. Less so now. It is when Ken has his encounters with Otto it becomes hilarious. Otto pretends to be gay and makes passes on Ken, and, towards the end tortures Ken to reveal the location of the loot by sticking up chips in his nostrils and eating his beloved fish.

“A Fish Called Wanda” is very much a John Cleese project. With Michael Palin on board there is a hint of the old Monty Python vibe, but this in not the anarchy of MP, not is it the zany world of Fawlty Towers. There is a grounding here in reality that at first seem to take the fun out of the movie, but eventually becomes the sounding board at which the crazy elements are thrown. Archie would not be half as fun without Wendy. Otto is hilarious because he operates in an otherwise sane world. Cleese’ Archie is a central character, but through much of the movie he is the stooge rather than a protagonist and it is often difficult to recognize the unhinged Basil Fawlty in the repressed lawyer. As a Cleese fan, this is a bit disappointing.

As for Jamie Lee Curtis, I always had a bit of a problem with her in this movie. She is a great actress, and I have watched lots of movies where I loved her and her stunts, but I simply cannot make her that femme fatale she is supposed to be here. Something does not ring entirely true.

A few anecdotes: Archie Leach is the actual name of Cary Grant, and he came from a location (or very close to) used in the movie. Coincidence? During a showing of the movie in Denmark, an elderly gentleman in the audience died from laughter. He laughed so hard he got himself a heart attack. The deadly joke of MP?

At the Academy awards “A Fish Called Wanda” was nominated for Best Director (Charles Crichton) and Best Original Screenplay (John Cleese) and, very deservedly, won Best Supporting Actor (Kevin Kline). Kline being the absolute reason this is a big recommendation from me.

 

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

 

Off-List: My Neighbor Totoro

1988 is one of those years where there is so much good and interesting stuff to add to the List, yet when I noticed “My Neighbor Totoro” was a 1988 movie, I was not in doubt I had to add this one. There are a few Ghibli movies on the list, but, surprisingly, not this one and that despite when you look for Ghibli merchandize, the Totoro figures are the most iconic ones. Did I mention my son is an avid fan of everything Ghibli?

“My Neighbor Totoro” takes place in rural Japan, sometime in the fifties. A university teacher, Kusakabe, and his two children, pre-teen Satsuki and four-year-old Mei, are moving into an old, deserted house. The mother is in the hospital during the entire movie, suffering from some illness that keeps her there and is a constant worry for the family.

The story is very much seen from the eye-height of the two children. They are very energetic, everything they do seem to happen at a frenetic pace, and they have a lively imagination. When they believe they see something, the father is not rejecting it, but plays along. The girls see soot-mites escaping into crevices when they open doors to deserted rooms and rather than being afraid, they take delight in it. They are also spotting (Mei first, then later Satsuki as well) strange creatures dropping acorns in the house and the garden. Mei, following the creatures into a thicket surrounding a giant tree, ends up with a gigantic, furry creature who seems benign and says just one word, “Totoro”. Later, while waiting for a bus to meet her father, Satsuki also meets Totoro. He is simply standing next to her in the iconic image at the bus stop. She lends him an umbrella, and he gets on a gigantic cat bus before her father arrives.

A few days later there is a telegram to contact the hospital immediately. The girls worry something has happened to their mother. Satsuki tries to get hold on their father while Mei simply wanders off towards the hospital. Satsuki is upset Mei is lost but gets help from Totoro and the catbus to find Mei and then get to the hospital. The girls do not enter, but the parents find an ear of corn with a message from the girls on the windowsill.

Miyazaki combines a number of his classic elements in this movie. First of all, there is the world as viewed from the eye height of a child which both involves what is important to a child but also the magic that the child sees in the world. Another element is nostalgia for a time past. Miyazaki is taking us back to his own childhood where he moved from the city to rural Japan and the world he met there. Something he would reference a lot in “The Boy and the Heron”. Finally, the animistic spiritual world of nature plays a large part in “My Neighbor Totoro”. The world the girls see is not just their imagination, but a spiritual grey-zone where they are in touch with forces in nature that are very much part of traditional Shinto beliefs. Not that Totoro himself is a Shinto deity, but Shinto allows for nature spirits that you need to respect. Both “Princess Mononoke” and “Spirited Away” go down that road in a big way.

The girls seem to be allowed access to this world because the possibilities are never denied them. Where other parents may be keen remove such fanciful thoughts from the children, the father and the local old woman known as Granny never deny the girls’ claims and even encourage it. If the girls had been very sad about moving to the countryside, the magic world could be an escape, but that is not the case at all. Instead, the magic is part of the excitement of moving to the countryside and for the girls simply an extra dimension to be in. This world does offer help when they need it, but as an ability, not as an escape. In this way the nature-spiritual world is not a crutch but a bonus and an altogether much more positive thing.

As all Ghibli movies, “My Neighbor Totoro” is on the surface a children’s movie, but one with messages to adults as well. It seems to lack a plot, but that is because it is so much more focused on a state of things. This is less about overcoming a story-arch crisis as about achieving a communion with a spiritual reality.

Finally, not to forget, “My Neighbor Totoro” is a beautifully drawn movie. As in all Miyazaki’s movies the backgrounds are hand drawn to exquisite perfection. Totoro is now an iconic Ghibli creature, and I think many children all over the world are very familiar with it.

“My Neighbor Totoro” is a necessary watch in the Studio Ghibli universe and I highly recommend it.