Broadcast News (1987)

 

Broadcast News

News media is a long-time favourite topic of Hollywood. There seems to be a connection as if producing news is, somehow, closely related to producing movies, and journalists, anchors and editors are the heroes of that battle to keep us informed and entertained and most importantly, keep the news media afloat. “Broadcast News” may have a different angle than “Network”, but much is the same.

Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) is a producer at an (unnamed, but big) network. We learn that she early on excelled at managing chaos to the level of micromanagement, but also that she is a social wreck, likely for the same reason. Her friend at the network is Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), a journalist with very high standards. They collaborate like a well-oiled machine and off work they use each other to off-load their personal anxieties. The problem here is that Aaron is secretly madly in love with Jane.

Tom Grunick (William Hurt) is a TV face from a local station who is so well liked by viewers that the big network has hired him. Tom is painfully aware that his journalistic credentials are almost non-existent and that he is hopelessly inexperienced. He adores Jane for her skill (and to some extent Aaron too), but Jane has fallen head over heels in love with Tom. Aaron, however, sees Tom both a rival to Jane, but also as an insult to the journalistic quality he represents.

The three work at the hectic network and juggle reports, dinners and jostling for positions. Tom has success as an anchor, but only because he is carefully fed by Jane and Aaron. Aaron gets his chance at anchoring but despite being trained by Tom, fails dismally due to excessive sweating. When the network goes through a restructuring (read: massive layoffs), Jane is promoted, Tom sent to London and Aaron quits and so they all disperse.

The thing that bothered me watching “Broadcast News” was the classic problem of the producers/director/scriptwriter not believing in the core idea of the story and so insisting to fill in a human element (a triangle drama) that ends up taking over the movie, sidelining what was supposed to make the movie special. In the case of this movie there are two interesting themes: News as information versus news as entertainment and Finding your right shelf. Both are interesting, and strong enough to carry the story (at least for me), but instead we get this triangle drama with a lot of shouting that is both enormously trivial and irrelevant to the core themes. Do not get me wrong, they are going about this triangle adventure nicely enough, it is just a very different movie and, myself, I was much more interested in the other themes.

Tom represents the news as entertainment side. He is selling news, he is attracting viewers to the network who are interesting in him personally, more than in the news themselves. For the network it is a commercial arrangement and he brings in viewers. Aaron and to some extent Jane represent the quality of the news, the credibility and relevance of what is presented and in their optic the network serves a public service function, where they as providers of quality news stories are the best qualified to produce that. That of course begs the question, what is quality news? Is it what people wants to see or is it what people should be watching and who decides what that is in the first place? “Broadcast News” opens that discussion but it fizzles and it remains only as identifiers of Tom and Aaron.

Instead, this discussion morphs into the other theme, which seems to say that everybody has their key competence and if you accept and embrace it, you will be happier for it. The network too. When the three of them accept their roles, they can produce quality news that sells and all is good.

“Broadcast News” does carry the label “Romantic comedy-drama”, but whether this is the intent, in which case the triangle drama takes centre stage, or it is a result of what it became, I do not know.

I did enjoy watching the three of them act it out, but for a long time I was confused about what I was looking at, where this was going. It landed, and I suppose it landed okay, but it felt a bit like an emergency landing.

Hunter, Brooks and Hurt are all good. This was an early appearance for Joan Cusack and Jack Nicholson has a small part as well, so, I guess it was a bit of a Hollywood all-stars event.

“Network News” is okay. It is an eighties movie so already there it is a win, but I felt it could have been a lot more.     

Goodbye, Children (Au Revoir Les Enfants) (1987)

 

Au revoir les enfants

In high school (or the Danish equivalent) I had two years of French classes. We watched two movies in those classes: “Le Boucher”, which I did not like and “Au revoir les enfants”. I remember it working very powerfully on me and although I have not watched it again in all these intervening years, I got exactly the same feeling watching it two days ago.

In German occupied France, Julien (Gaspard Manesse), our narrator, is a 12-year-old student at a Catholic boarding school for children of rich parents. This is a boys-only school in a monastery in a small, countryside town, a pocket of life almost detached from a world at war. Yet, the war insinuates itself into the school in small ways. There is a rampant black market, the school is underheated and undersupplied, bomb raids send everybody into the shelters and one day three new children arrive. One of boys is called Jean Bonnet (Raphaël Fejtő) and he starts in Julien’s class.

At first Julien and Jean are rivals. They appear to have similar interests, but Jean is simply better at it than Julien, so he sees him as an intrusion. Jean is however a nice boy, and the rivalry becomes a, first grudgingly, then heartfelt friendship. Julien discovers that Jean has a secret. First of all, his name is not Bonnet at all but Kippelstein, he does not want to eat pork and his claim to be a protestant harmonizes poorly with the strange ceremonies he performs at night (for Shabat). This is where Julien starts wondering what a Jew is and why it is that some people, especially the Germans do not like them.

Things come to a head when the scullion boy, Joseph (François Négret), the prügelknappe of the school, is fired for black marketeering and takes his revenge on the school.

It has been a few days now since I watched the movie and in that time, I have spent a lot of energy trying to formulate what it is I like so much about this movie. The obvious answer is the drama and the heartbreaking ending, but I think it is a lot more than that. Louis Malle, the director whose childhood story this also is, manages to bring us very close to these boys. We understand them, especially Julien, and this life at the boarding school feels very real. The children are neither better nor worse than any other children. The monks are not caricatures, but real people and the effort to create normality in an otherwise broken world for the children, makes them almost heroic in their small way. I think it is this sensation that gets through so well and immerses the viewer into the story.

When disaster strikes, it is both unsentimental and mechanic and also earthshattering. If you can sit through that without horror and a tear in your eye, you are simply made of stone.

The story is largely true, Louis Malle went to a school like this when he was the age of Julien and witnessed three boys and the head of the school, Pere Jacques, Pere Jean in the movie (Philippe Morier-Genoud), being taken away by the Gestapo. The interaction between Julien and Jean is invented, but life on the boarding school feels, and probably is, very real. It is this authenticity that is the great strength of this movie.

“Au revoir les enfant” was nominated to two Academy Awards (Best Foreign language and Best Original Screenplay), but did not win either. It did win a gazillion other prices around the world and found its way into classrooms the world over. I understand why. Beside being a fundamentally good movie, it also puts faces and people on the lost millions in the Holocaust. We cry for Jean Kippelstein and we understand the loss for Julien Quentin.

Highly recommended.

Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

Adventures in Babysitting

I am introducing a new category here on my blog. It is called “My wife wants me to see this”. As I am progressing up through the eighties, my wife supplies me with a lot of ideas for movies to watch. So many in fact that she has now earned her own category. It is still me who watch and review the movie, but they are her picks.

The first entry on that list is “Adventures in Babysitting”.

Chris Parker (Elisabeth Shue) is a 17 year old high school student who earns a bit of money doing babysitting. When her boyfriend cancels on her, she instead accepts a job sitting for Brad (Keith Coogan) and Sara (Maia Brewton). Brad is 15 years old and has a crush on Chris. His friend Daryl (Anthony Rapp), who joins the party, finds there is a striking similarity between Chris and Playboy’s March centrefold. Sara is much younger and a daredevil who idolizes Thor (god or superhero).

The evening quickly takes a left turn when Chris’ friend, Brenda (Penelope Ann Miller), calls in panic from a bus station downtown Chicago. She has run away from home but regrets and wants Chris to pick her up. With the children in tow, Chris drives from the suburbs into town. This turns out to be quite an odyssey.

Through a number of strange coincidences, a puncture turning into being caught in a shooting, then in a car theft, to being prisoners of a local gang who steals muscle-cars and distribute them nationwide. They make a spectacular escape, but Daryl, wanting a replacement for his lost Playboy magazine, steals the gangster’s copy. This pisses them off. Not because they like the magazine but because it is filled with incriminating notes of their dealings. Now Chris must keep track of her charges, find Brenda and avoid getting caught by gangsters.

“Adventures in Babysitting” taps into a number of overlapping genres that were very popular in the eighties and early nineties. There is the “crazy things happen with the babysitter” theme as well as the “Children/teens from the suburbs encountering the menacing city” and of course the chase movie. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, “Uncle Buck” and “Home Alone” are all in this family of movies. They make up the quintessential eighties family movie and that is exactly where we are with “Adventures in Babysitting”. The only surprise is that John Hughes is not involved in it. And that I never watched if before my wife made me aware of it.

There is an innocence to “Adventures in Babysitting” that is very eighties (and also unmistakeably Disneyesque). With a sole exception (Sara walking on the outside of a skyscraper) it never gets truly dangerous and the bad guys have a tendency to fumble. The teenagers skirt the topic of sex, but stops short of anything actually happening. That may sound boring and once you start noticing, a little annoying, but in this eighties fantasy it gets away with it, the same way “Home Alone” got away with the horrible nightmare of a small child forgotten at home over the holidays. Sometimes the fantasy elements takes the story off on some strange tangents, such a the blues bar scene or the strange tow-truck guy, but it works because it is an adventure and through the children’s eyes everything here is an adventure anyway.

It is difficult not to be charmed by “Adventures in Babysitting”. It is not top quality and it does venture into a lot of cliché’s and completely unlikely coincidences, but it is also fun and if you, like me, love thar eighties vibe, then it is difficult to be hard on this movie. It is a good time in the sofa Sunday afternoon. And Elisabeth Shue was a big thing back then.

 

     

Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)

 

Good Morning, Vietnam

Is it possible to make a comedy on the backdrop of the Vietnam War? Today I suppose the answer is “Why not?”, but in the eighties the Vietnam War was still a touchy subject and a comedy in that setting might well press any number of wrong buttons. Yet this is the tightrope “Good Morning, Vietnam” tries to walk and although you can sense how it tries not to be insensitive, it works decently well.

The story is based on a real radio host, Adrian Cronauer, played in the movie by Robin Williams, who was a big thing on the radio waves in Vietnam in 1965. This apparently is also about as far the true story goes. The movie’s Cronauer lands in a radio studio where half the staff, including Cronauer’s assistant Edward Garlick (Forest Whitaker), is wildly supportive of Cronauer’s irreverent style, while the other half, including Cronauer’s immediate superiors Steven Hauk (Bruno Kirby) and Phillip Dickerson (J.T. Walsh), are vehemently opposed to Cronauer.

And yes, Cronauer is a riot. One thing is his choice of music, but it is what he does in between that sets him apart. Williams was given free reign to just ramble away and he took the opportunity and knocked it out of the park. Cronauer soon learns that while his style causes some opposition among the conservative staff, there are news he simply is not allowed to use, which happens to be anything relevant to the G.I.s in Vietnam. Cronauer balks at that and tries to find ways around it. Half the comedy of the movie is Williams doing his thing, while the other half is the reactions from Dickerson and, especially, Hauk. Hauk considers himself a comedian, but when Cronauer gets suspended and Hauk takes over, it is hilariously evident that Hauk is an embarrassment, not least when he tries to argue that polka goes down very well with a certain segment of the listeners.

Outside the radio studio, Cronauer meets the reality of Vietnam. That is where the comedy largely disappears and the movie runs with a different message. Cronauer meets the crude attitude of American soldier to the local population on the local bar, and he befriend some locals at an English class, especially a brother, Tuan (Tung Thanh Tran), and a sister, Trinh (Chintara Sukapatana) who open his eyes to some harsh realities.

“Good Morning, Vietnam” takes place in a realistic universe where some characters may be slightly on the side of caricatures but with enough verisimilitude that we accept them. This means that Cronauer is a funny man in a very much not funny setting. The effect of this clash is both humorous and extra tragic and it gives an unexpected depth to the movie, but may also pull the rug from under the levity. Jokes are not so funny when people are dying, but maybe so much more necessary.

Robin Williams is so central to “Good Morning, Vietman” that it largely stands or falls with his performance. Luckily, Willams is in great shape in this movie, and it catapulted him into stardom. I do not always find Robin Williams funny, there is this particular edge to his comedy I am not fond of, but here it works very well. It may be the setting that works for him here, perhaps.

A curious detail is that most Vietnam movies of the eighties show plenty of explosions and soldiers, but very little of Vietnam itself. “Good Morning, Vietnam” is shot in Thailand and the local Vietnamese are actually Thai, but at least it is trying to present the country and the people it is supposed to take place in. The result is that Cronauer, representing the western visitor, is surprised to find how little he knows about the country in which he is fighting and how unwelcome his army actually is.

“Good Morning, Vietnam” has moments that works fantastic as comedy and moments of depth, but also seem nervous at trying to hit the right balance. There is a feeling of driving with the hand on the brakes, but it may be that it is this consideration th

Withnail and I (1987)

 

Withnail and I

Doper buddies on adventures is a bit of a movie trope. Whether it be “Trainspotting”, “Up in Smoke” or “Harold and Kumar... xyz” they follow a certain pattern. The dopers are pretty messed up, they get into crazy stuff that works for comedy and they get into some shit, partly from substance abuse and partly because they have problems taking responsibility for their lives, that either is, or could potentially be, very tragic. “Withnail and I” falls squarely in the middle of that trope.

Withnail and I are also the labels of the two main characters of “Withnail and I”. Withnail (Richard E. Grant) comes of a rich family, but slums it in Camden under a pretence at aiming to become an actor, but actually avoiding any kind of responsibility while drinking, smoking and doping his life away. “I” (Paul McGann) is Withnail’s unnamed roommate and occasional narrator of the movie. He may be slightly less wasted than Withnail and may take a bit more responsibility but is also prone to a very nervous disposition. We are in 1969 and there is a sense that this may be “I” looking back at his life back then.

They live in squalor, none of them are getting any acting jobs and “I” suggests they leave town. Withnail has a rich uncle, Monty (Richard Griffiths), with a cottage in the Lake District, so they go there to get him to lend it to them. Monty, extrovertly homosexual, has an eye on “I” so they get the key and go there.

The majority of the movie takes place in and around the cottage and this is also scene for most of the comedy. These two bozos are completely unequipped for life in the countryside and their blundering about result in one absurd situation after the other. Cooking a hen in a tea kettle, fishing with a shotgun or getting chased by a bull all works because of the almost alternative reality these dopers live in. When Monty shows up at the cottage and starts hitting on “I”, the trip gets a notch wilder and more absurd.

“Withnail and I” is sometimes described as plotless, but that is not the case at all. It is the classic doper-buddy plot where the leads are floating around in their outwardly fun but actually miserable lives, then goes on an adventure that may or may not make them move on in their lives. “I” uses the experience as a wake-up call and breaks with this lifestyle while “Withnail” is way too cowardly to look up from his self-imposed exile from reality and responsibility.

Yet, this is not a moralistic tale. It is far to busy having fun with Withnail and I for that. Sure, there are consequences to the liberties they take, even if Withnail often get away with his stunts, but even the consequences are often milked for comedy, such as Withnail getting arrested for drunk driving, then caught trying to use a crazy device to supply a clean urine sample. This is also a British, very British movie meaning that no matter how absurd the situation, it is always grounded in a British reality that makes it all believable and to an extend, relatable. Unfortunately, it also means that some of the comedy may only be picked up by fellow Brits. My copy was not texted, and I found myself occasionally lost.

“Withnail and I” is an okay movie and decently fun, but it is neither as outrageous nor as powerful as the best in this genre. We can clearly sense that especially Withnail is a lost case who will get nowhere, but we are not talking “Trainspotting” crisis, nor does the idiotic stupor lead to the mad scenes of “Up in Smoke” or “Harold and Kumar goes to White Castle”. In that sense “Withnail and I” is almost too cozy. Fending off the lusty uncle Monty is the level of danger “I” experiences, beside the threat of being stuck in a lifestyle that would eventually eat him up.

This is why I found “Withnail and I” a decent but unexceptional watch. I guess I expected more from it. It does deliver, but does it deliver enough?

  

Evil Dead II (1987)

 

Off-List: Evil Dead II

The third slot in my off-List category is usually allocated to a Danish movie, but I since I have two of those on my main list for 1987, this leaves room for “Evil Dead II”. I am usually not much for sequels, but “Evil Dead II” is more of a reboot than a sequel and its status in years following has taken it beyond the original “Evil Dead” movie. At least so it was back at my old campus in the nineties. I have not watched it since and I realized now that I watched it again, how much of it I had forgotten.

While “Evil Dead II” is a retelling of the “Evil Dead” story, reviewed earlier on this blog, there are a number of substantial differences. This time Ash (Bruce Campbell) is taking his girlfriend Linda out in the woods to a deserted cabin. It does not take long before he finds an old book, the famous “Necronomicon”, and a tape recording of the professor who used to live in the cabin spelling out the magic words that summons evil. In short order Linda is sucked out of the window, returns as a monster and is killed and buried by Ash. Of course, she does not stay there, and her different body parts continue to cause havoc. Ash is tormented by the evil and occasionally possessed by it as well.

The professor’s daughter, Annie (Sarah Berry) and her partner, Ed (Richard Domeier) are trying to get to the cabin, but finding a bridge destroyed enlist local hillbillies Jake (Dan Hicks) and Bobby Joe (Kassie Wesley) as guides. This of course makes the situation spin even more out of control with the resurrection of the professor’s wife in the basement, and horrible deaths to each of the newcomers. When it is down to just Annie and Ash, a dark ritual seems the only way out... or in...

The point of “Evil Dead II” is pretty much the same as “Evil Dead”. A small group of people under siege from evil forces trying to get to them, being the excuse for a lot of gory mayhem. The result is over the top and hardly credible, but with so much comedy thrown in that the ridiculousness of it all is forgiven. This is classic horror comedy.

It is obvious that the team worked with a larger budget on this one as all the gory parts are far more elaborate than in the original “Evil Dead”, but it maintains the style and tone of that one. This still feels like a bunch of amateurs having fun, they just have more money to spend on it. With the exception of Campbell, none of the actors have other qualities than being good at screaming (which they do very well) and internal logic is not exactly the strong side of this movie. But we also well know that this is not why we watch it. It is the adolescent playfulness with which this movie is imbued, that makes it endearing, if that is even possible to say when monsters are chopped to pieces with chainsaws and spades and what not.

We even get the classic prepping montage when Ash arms himself with shotgun and chainsaw to take on the monsters. It is so gung-ho that I could not stop laughing and this is essentially what makes it worth watching today. Modern B-movies are generally too overworked even when they try to be funny. The gung-ho style of the Evil Dead series, at least the old stuff, makes them actually work, so while this looks dated, it is dated in a good way, if that even makes sense. There is an honesty about the hijinks that is refreshing.

Sam Raimi would go on to make A-list movies and good ones at that, but it is when he reverts to some of this old style that he is best. These old, gory horror comedies can something that is difficult to do today.

For anybody nostalgic about the eighties, “Evil Dead II” is a must. As I am not the typical horror enthusiast I cannot say how this stands in that hall of fame, only that it still works for me.

 

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

 

Full Metal Jacket

One of the recurrent themes of Stanley Kubrick’s production is the corruption and corruptive effect of militarism. “Paths of Glory”, “Dr. Strangelove” and to a large extent “A Clockwork Orange” all carry that line. This message is nowhere condensed as strongly as in “Full Metal Jacket”, Kubrick’s Vietnam War epos.

“Full Metal Jacket” plays out in two acts. The first act takes place in boot camp for the US Marine Corps. Without any introduction we see new recruits arrive at the camp and we are directly thrown into the welcome speech by Drill Sergeant L. Hartman (R. Lee Ermey). It is quite long and the point of it is to make the recruits understand they are worthless and only he matters in their world now. It is one, long dressing down.

As the recruits go through training it is clear that Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D’Onofrio), called Gomer Pyle by Hartman, is having a hard time getting things right. This earns him scorn and abuse from Hartman and when Hartman makes it the entire platoon’s problem, Pyle finds himself very much alone. James Davis (Matthew Modine), “Joker” by Hartman, is assigned to help Pyle. They form an uneasy friendship and it is largely due to Joker that Pyle completes his training. At graduation Pyle takes his own life as well as that of Hartman.

In the second act, Joker is in Vietnam as a journalist for an army news agency. When the Tet offensive in 68 hits, he is sent north to a battlefield where he reunites with one of his friends from boot camp, “Cowboy” (Arliss Howard). Embedded in his squad he joins the fighting, a fight that seems to confuse those taking part in it. The only brutal fact seems to be that people die. When the squad gets pinned down by a sniper in a position where they are not even supposed to be, the pointless dying reaches a climax.

“Full Metal Jacket” can be seen as two separate movies with apparently little tying them together. With the death of Pyle and Hartman at the conclusion of act one, it feels is if that concluded that story. When the movie continues in Vietnam Joker and Cowboy are the only links to the first act. The story now moves at a different pace, with different characters and with a seemingly different plot. Commenters on the movie have noted that the second part appear aimless, that it seems to go nowhere.

I read the two parts differently. Part one is the destruction of the civilized individual in order to create the Homo Militaris, and the second part is showing this new crippled creation is further destroyed for no apparent purpose in the war. The second part feels aimless exactly on purpose. The skirmish is just another pointless encounter that kills people but does not change anything. It is completely generic.

There are quite a few movies out there that follow soldiers through basic training and then on mission, both dramas and comedies and they usually have that in common that the unit is fused together through the hardships of training, that a bond is created and something is won. “Full Metal Jacket” has none of that. There is no camaraderie, there is no upside. Basic training is destruction, not creation and while it may feel like a miss if you are thinking of “Band of Brothers” or “Stripes”, it is entirely on purpose. The only fusion taking place is the common rejection of humanity.

The most spectacular character of the movie is without a doubt Ermey’s Hartman. I learned that Ermey was in fact an actual marine drill instructor and that he added a lot to the role himself. He is completely believable and scary as hell. It is telling that he is also the only character that really stands out. Even Joker, the lead of the second half, is only really an observer and an uncommitted one at that. In the final scenes, even his humanity seems to die. I think it is deliberate that we hardly get to touch these soldiers. There are glimpses of something else underneath, but soon after they are usually dead or somewhere else. Destroyed by the machine of war.

I do not know if “Full Metal Jacket” qualifies as an entertaining movie, but it is certainly an effective movie at conveying its message, even if it never spells it out. It is ugly and pointless in its plot, but anything else in its message. That makes it very much a Kubrick movie. If you are a fan of Kubrick, there is no way around this one.