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.

   

The Princess Bride (1987)

 

The Princess Bride

For some strange reason, “The Princess Bride” was not a big thing in Denmark. I had never even heard of the movie until I was introduced to it by my astonished wife. Although I have watched it multiple times since, this is an excellent movie, it is not one of those eighties’ movie with a patina of sweet childhood memories. To me, it does not feel that old.

The story of “The Princess Bride” is a bedside story told by a grandfather (Peter Falk) to his grandchild (Fred Savage), a bedridden child of around 10. This is a fairytale, so it takes place in a fairytale world. In this world a girl, Buttercup (Robin Wright) is in love with a farmhand, Westley (Cary Elwes). Westley leaves to seek his fortune, but is captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts and rumoured dead. Buttercup is devastated and five years later betrothed to the arrogant prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon), a man she does not love.

Shortly before the wedding, Buttercup is kidnapped by an unlikely trio led by the dwarf Vizzini (Wallace Shawn). He is accompanied by a giant, Fezzik (André the Giant) and a Spanish swordsman, Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin). They are chased by a mysterious stranger which they first take for the Dread Pirate Roberts, but eventually turns out to be Westley. What ensues is too good to reveal in a synopsis. Suffice to say that Prince Humperdinck and his evil advisor, Count Tyrone Rugen (Christopher Guest) are the true bad guys here and both Buttercup and Westley must pass a lot of trials on their way.

The plot of “The Princess Bride” is nothing special. It is the characters and the dialogue that wins the price here. Both are magnificent. Vizzini as the Sicilian smartass has some fantastic lines including his ubiquitous “Inconceivable” and “Never enter a land war in Asia”. Inigo Montoya is hunting for the six-fingered man who killed his father and dream of telling him “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die”. This is his life mission and for this he has become a master swordsman. Both Humperdinck and Rugen are absolutely awesomely evil and ridiculous. Exactly the over-the-to villains that makes a good movie great. Guest is particularly awesome and such a departure from his role in “This is Spinal Tap”. We even get Mel Smith and Billy Crystal in small but vital roles.

Because of these fantastic characters, “The Princess Bride” is amazingly rewatchable. It is one of those movies you enjoy quoting the lines from so that if you hear someone screaming “The cliffs of insanity!”, you know what they have be watching. This is the kind of comedy that may not have you rolling on the ground on first view, but one that drops so many pearls that, I at least, cannot help loving it more every time I watch it.

This also happens to be one of my wife’s favourite movies.

Not long ago Rob Reiner got murdered, apparently by his own son. It was such a crazy story and it made me think of all those great movies Reiner made, especially back in the eighties, and not least “The Princess Bride”. He had a very good streak and even though his late movies may not have reached the same level, he was one of Hollywood’s great directors (and producer).

“The Princess Bride” is a fun watch and an essential comedy of the eighties. If it had not been on the list, I would have added it in a heartbeat.