The Breakfast Club (1985)

 

The Breakfast Club

It is a new year for me, 1985, and the first entry is “The Breakfast Club”.

In my youth, there was no way around “The Breakfast Club”. This was a movie everybody had watched, and everybody were referring too. In social circles, but also in media and in countless tv-series and movies. Of course I watched it too, but it took me a bit longer to recognize the significance of it than most. I guess I was not much of a rebellious youth at the time.

“The Breakfast Club” takes place in the course of a single Saturday and except for a few bookending scenes, takes place entirely inside a high school with only seven characters appearing. Five of these characters are high school students there for detention, each representing a different type in the school. There is the “Princess”, Claire (Molly Ringwald), the “Basket case”, Allison (Ally Sheedy), the “Athlete”, Andrew (Emilio Estevez), the “Brain”, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) and the “Criminal”, John (Judd Nelson).

The entire movie is about the interactions of these five teenagers during detention. It plays out as a “kammerspiel” (sorry could not find an English translation, look it up) in the Strindberg tradition, not unlike “12 Angry Men”. To begin with each character is their type, provoking each other by playing on their stereotypes. John manages to throw the discipline teacher, Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason) into a frenzy, he picks a fight with Andrew and is extremely provocative towards Claire, whom he seems to find a sadistic glee in getting flustered. Allison is plain weird and generally ignored and Brian, the geek, is simply discounted by the others.

Something happens over the course of the movie. While their assignment of the day is to write an essay about how they see themselves, they actually learn things about each other that shatters their preconceptions. Each have their crosses to carry that seem invisible to others and each of them are a lot more than their stereotype. It is a process, but not a guided process. They fight, they shout, tease, mock, but they actually also listens, and that is the exciting thing. They all experience that when you start learning something about other people, it is very difficult to reduce them back to stereotypes.

Each character has a depth that we are unaware of going in and learning this depth, we the audience, are also listening and learning and getting an unexpected understanding of these young people. In hindsight we may think that their problems are predictable, but so what? To these children, they are deadly serious problems. It is why they are in detention, and they are uniquely able to mirror themselves in the issues the others are struggling with. They also realize that they can bond in unexpected ways. Their dance-off or their roaming through the school are good examples.

The question of whether this understanding and bonding is confined to this room or can be extended to the “real” outside world is popped by Brian: “What happens on Monday?”, but instead of the rose-hued, yes, we will all be friends, the five of them have no illusions. This doubt can be construed as depressing defeatism, but I see it as refreshing clarity. They are changed by this experience, maybe even profoundly, but on their own terms and without obligations.

I had a discussion with my wife on whether the movie has aged well. My point was (and is) that these issues are universal and change hair and cloth fashion, this movie could be made today, that it has aged very well indeed. Her argument was that this movie would be wasted on youth today. That the depth and pace and sentiment of the movie would be too deep, to slow and too profound for the tik-tok generation. She may be right and that saddens me greatly. In the compartmentalized world today of echo chambers, the central message of going beyond type and actually listen, is sorely needed. “The Breakfast Club” is an excellent exponent of it and I would encourage any teenager (anybody, really) to watch it.

The five actors became known as the brat-pack and “The Breakfast Club” springboarded them into excellent Hollywood careers. Checking their filmographies you get lists great movies and tv-series over the past forty years. And John Hughes? Well, he was the king of the teenage movie, a status he still holds, fifteen years after his death.

If you have not watched “The Breakfast Club”, you need to fix that gap immediately.  

 

The Natural (1984)

 

The Natural

The last movie on the List from 1984 is “The Natural”, a big and crafty production that I had some problems following and one I would be the wrong person rate.

Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) is (at first) a young farm boy with some skill for the game of baseball. On the way to a “tryout” with a professional team, Hobbs makes himself be noticed and upon arrival in Chicago he is shot by a woman he met on the train.

Fast forward 16 years (to 1939) Hobbs starts playing for the New York Knights. The manager, Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley), is convinced that the unknown player in his mid-thirties is a bad joke, but the team is losing game after game and eventually he gets the chance. Hobbs takes it and proves himself an excellent player (I suppose).

This makes Hobbs a problem for a guy called “The Judge” (Robert Prosky). In a deal with Pop Fisher, he will take over the team if the Knights does not win the tournament (?). The Judge is a dirty guy so he has rigged the game by paying off certain players, so the team keeps losing. Hobbs must be stopped. First the Judge tries to pay off Hobbs. This fails. Then he sends him in the arms of Memo Paris (Kim Basinger). This works much better, Hobbs cannot focus on the game. Then appears childhood friend Iris Gaines (Glenn Close), the spell is broken, and he can play again. As a third resort, Memo poisons Hobbs. This almost works. Only by a heroic effort and risking his life can Hobbs join the final, decisive game.

I know absolutely nothing about baseball. In Denmark, that game is non-existent. The little I recognize is what I have picked up from movies and that only go as far as “try to hit the ball”. The Natural is very much a sports movie and I understand it is trying to celebrate the sport. That means there are entire passages of baseball in the movie, a lot of talk about details of the game and references to a culture around it, all of which are completely alien to me. Anything that relates to the game of baseball I will therefore henceforth refrain to comment upon. Needless to say, “The Natural” was never released in Denmark and I never watched it before.

Fortunately, I do think the game itself is not at the core of the story. I see it as a story about guy with a dream that he never gave up on, even if it looked impossible. It is a story about loving that dream above all else and not be corrupted to betray the dream. Robert Redford’s Roy Hobbs is that down-to-Earth dreamer who wants to chase that dream before it is too late, and he does it with charm and an almost aloof saintliness. If anything, he is too clean, but very, very likable.

It is also a movie about corruption in professional sports. Match fixing, bookmaking scams and dirty transactions in order to make money on other people’s passion. As I understand it, this not a new story and very likely still going on, but placing the story in an age of gangsters and dodgy characters, I suppose we accept it as part of the times.

I tried to find out if this was in any way a real story, but only got as far as this being based on a novel. It seems like a story that could be based on real characters and that would be interesting I suppose, but as it stands it is a fable about the above themes, and it works fine as that. I do not find the story particularly revolutionary, but it is nice to watch a movie with a guy you can really root for and see him come through in the end. Maybe a bit predictable, but nice.

There are a lot of famous actors here, such as Robert Duvall and news reporter Max Mercy, and even a very early part for Michael Madsen You can tell this is a big production and I sense a lot of production quality here. My guess is that this ranks high for fans of baseball. For me, it was merely a decent movie featuring a sport I do not understand.

     

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

 

Frækkere end politiet tillader

“Beverly Hills Cop” is another 1984 classic, which, to my pleasant surprise, actually made it onto the List. This is a movie I watched countless time in my childhood, but I believe it must have been a few decades since last time I watched it. It is still fun to watch, but I remember it as being much better than how I found it now. To me, it has not aged well.

In Detroit, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is an undercover police officer who is known for his controversial stunts that sometimes backfires. One evening he finds an old friend of his, Mikey Tandino (James Russo), in his apartment. Mikey clearly has something he wants to share with Axel, but never gets to fully explain before he gets shot and Axel knocked out by unknown gunmen.

Axel Foley is told in no uncertain terms to stay out of this case, so he takes “vacation” and follow Michaels trail to Beverly Hills. This is right here the basis for much of the comedy in “Beverly Hills Cop”, the bummed out, black policeman in uber posh Beverly Hills. Anybody familiar with Eddie Murphy will know this is a situation he can get a lot out of (a good example is “Trading Places”).

Axel quickly manages to get arrested by the local police who do not wish to have this potential disaster in their precinct. Detective William Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Sergeant John Taggart (John Ashton) are to babysit him until he leaves town, but Axel manages to get them on his side to find Mikeys murderer. The murder is, of course, only the tip of an iceberg of much bigger crime...

As a crime story, “Beverly Hills Cop” is one big cliché. Everything from the villain to Axel’s angry boss through the investigation, which is a combo unlawful entry and sheer provocation, is something we have seen both before and after in many versions. Be it a private eye or an actual police detective, the story is almost as old as the film media. Let us just say that it is not the excitement of solving the criminal case that keeps us awake watching this movie.

The reason we, or at least I, still enjoy watching this movie has a name and is called Eddie Murphy. It is strange to learn that “Beverly Hills Cop” was not actually written for Murphy, but actually intended for Sylvester Stallone. It was only when the action his version would involve got too expensive for the studio that they turned to Eddie Murphy and rewrote it to fit him. When you watch “Beverly Hills Cop”, it screams vehicle to high heaven. Every scene Eddie Murphy is in, and that is somewhere above 90%, he totally steals the picture. Reinhold and Ashton, good actors in their own right, are reduced to stooges for Murphy’s hijinks. Fortunately, Eddie Murphy is good and many of his stunts are funny. He is maybe a bit unbelievable as a cop, but, hey, this is the eighties, social realism got left behind in the previous decade.

Three or four decades ago, “Beverly Hills Cop” gave me hysterical laughing fits. Watching it now, they are reduced to a chuckle and that I found disappointing. The gags are simply not that funny anymore and without the fun, the rest of the movie looks poor and barely sticking together.

The soundtrack is still good though. Faltermeyer’s Axel F theme is one of those classic scores you never forget and in a strange coincidence, “The Heat is Up” was selected last Friday at the company Christmas lunch as the theme song of the Energy Systems department... This music still lives.

Recently, a new, fourth, Beverly Hills Cop instalment was released. I have not watched it yet and I worry. This was a franchise that took a steep downhill after the success of this first instalment.

 

The Killing Fields (1984)

 

The Killing Fields

This took a long time to get through. Not because it is bad but because it is devastating to watch. “The Killing Fields” pulls no punches and leaves you an emotional wreck. It also makes you loose hope in humankind.

Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston) is a New York Times journalist working in Cambodia together with photographer Al Rockoff (John Malkovich) and interpreter Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor). It is 1973 and Cambodia is a mess. We see them cover what looks like a US airstrike and being somewhat at odds with the American presence in the country. Fast forward to 1975, the Khmer Rouge is taking the capital and Pran gets his family evacuated while the trio stays to cover events. Pran saves the two Americans from being killed by the Khmer Rouge, but when the city, including the French embassy where all westerners are interred, is emptied of Cambodians, they fail to protect Pran who is taken away to a work camp.

Back in the America Scharnberg drives a campaign to find and rescue Pran but to little avail. He also takes care of Pran’s family. Meanwhile, Pran is experiencing life under Khmer Rouge from the inside. He witnesses the destruction of society, the corruption of children and mass slaughter of civilians. In the agrarian-maoist system of the Khmer Rouge, anybody with a hint of education is suspect and Pran survives by pretending to be a very simple person.

“The Killing Fields” tells two stories. The apparent story of Scharnberg and Pran is the human interest story that the plot is hung up on. It is compelling because of the nightmare Pran goes through, but the quest of Scharnberg to pin the misfortunes of the Cambodians on the US government is rather unconvincing. Or, rather, Scharnberg himself is convincing in his almost religious zeal, but compared to the US fumbling in Vietnam, the actions in Cambodia seems trivial. If anything, it would be the inaction that is the problem here.

The second story is the tragedy of Cambodia itself. The complete meltdown and destruction is described both in poignant detail and confused context, leaving the viewer in bewildered horror of the sheer brutality of what happened. It is to my mind one of very few movies to describe this tragedy and that is just way too little. Yet, “The Killing Fields” makes up for this lack up public attention by driving the point all the way in. We see it in the small with casual executions and the complete disregard for the value of human life and in the massive scale of mass murder. When Pran walks through a swamp littered with the rotting remains of thousands of people we start to grasp the scale of this insanity and it forces you to really look while all you want is to look away. This is mass graves where not even the grave is offered. We also see it in the faces of children, the dehumanization that on a mass scale turn children into monsters. This is heartbreak in the extreme and I would have to press stop and wait another day to continue.

We see it all, mutilated bodies, executions, maimed children, despair and suffering. This is documentary, but shows us details documentaries would balk at. It is soul-numbing and yet you feel every punch. It manages to tell us that each of these millions of dead is a heartbreaking tragedy, yet is disposed of as casually as if it was a videogame by the Khmer Rouge.

I am hopelessly uninformed about the Cambodian tragedy. I tried to read up on it for this movie, but I cannot say I understand much of the politics involved. Something about that the Khmer Rouge was backed by China, who also backed Northern Vietnam, yet the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge were fighting it out between them. But all this matters little and even less for the movie. What matters is the complete corruption of humanity and the devastating tragedy.

Haing S. Ngor was a doctor in Cambodia before the civil war and spent four years in captivity. In his role as Pran, he was in a sense reliving the nightmare of his life and I cannot help thinking that this is why he is so convincing, and I wonder how it felt to him to go through all that again.

I am also very impressed with how real and authentic all this looks. In an age before CGI, we see details that you can only think of as being real, yet it cannot be, can it? Impressive and scary.

“The Killing Fields” won 3 Academy awards, including an acting award for Haing S Ngor, and was nominated for another 4. All very deserved.

It will take some time to get over this. Not for the faint hearted.

     

Stranger than Paradise (1984)

 

Stranger Than Paradise

“Stranger Than Paradise” is a movie that challenges the concepts of what a movie can and should do. While Hollywood has not entirely (some would say not at all) shed the classic story arch and format, by the mid-eighties, this format was even more entrenched. Sure, David Lynch had pushed the boundaries, and a number of arthouse directors did whatever they wanted, but it is my impression that “Stranger Than Paradise” came as a surprise for many viewers. Despite being completely different, it works and very well indeed.

The story unfolds in three acts. In the first, Eva (Eszter Balint) arrives in New York from Hungary. She is supposed to go live with an elderly woman in Cleveland, known as Aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark), possibly her mother (?), but as she is in hospital, she must stay for ten days with her cousin Willie (John Lurie) in New York.

Willie is a small time hustler or sees himself as one. He lives in a little one-room apartment and does practically nothing. When he finally does something, it is gambling at the races or cheating in poker with his friend Eddie (Richard Edson), an equally vacant type. He has no idea how to deal with Eva and together they just sit in his little apartment and smoke vast amounts of cigarettes. Eventually Eva leaves for Cleveland.

In the second act Willie and Eddie muster enough initiative to borrow a car to drive to Cleveland to visit Eva. Once there, the activity level drops to zero again and they are just sitting playing cards with Aunt Lotte. Eva has a lousy job vending hot dogs and a maybe-boyfriend, but is also bored.

For the third act, Eddie and Willie get the spontaneous idea of taking Eva to Florida, only to check into a motel there... and get bored. Eddie and Willie go gambling at the races and Eva stumbles on some money and heads to the airport to find a flight home.

In a sense, this is a movie where nothing happens. Or more precisely, about people who has petrified into eventless lives. Willie and Eddie think they are cool and have something going but it is comically clear that they are two losers with zero going for them. Their bland, uneventful lives are well represented by the slightly grainy, black and white cinematography and the cold, dark and hazy winter weather. Even Florida has never looked so bleak. I love the scene where Wille and Eddie are sharing a beer in Willie’s apartment, saying absolutely nothing, because they have nothing to say.

Eva is the outsider who likely has a hope of a new an exciting life in the States, but all three places she goes, it is the same bleak bucket of nothing. Even the music she plays is quickly turned off. Her frustration is felt very clearly, sitting on the bed, left to do nothing. She is the only one who takes a job, listens to music, does something, but it changes nothing.

This all sounds bleak and depressing but it is actually funny in that underplayed absurd way that makes you smile and shake your head, but not laugh out loud. The characters are perfectly relatable but also ridiculous in the way we ourselves are sometimes ridiculous and I am certain that we are amused and touched by something we recognize in ourselves.

I suspect that the overall theme is the disappointment that the fabled American dream does not somehow materialize all by itself and that reality is really, really disappointing. Then, again, maybe it does in a weird turn at the end of the movie. I would not say it is a criticism of this American Dream, but a mockery of what people think it is. It is never actually mentioned but the disparity between self-perception and hopes on one side and the actual effort and skill put into it on the other is what makes this movie interesting.

As mentioned in the opening, all this is told without anything like a traditional Hollywood story arch. There is not really a beginning or end, not a mid-crisis or resolution. It is just a state these people move around in. It is a movie that leaves you with a sentiment, not a story, with characters, not character development. And this it does very well.

I watched “Stranger than Paradise” first time years ago and I usually like Jim Jarmusch’ movies. This is no exception, and it is still amusing and thought provoking. Highly recommended.

 

A Passage to India (1984)

 

A Passage to India

“A Passage to India” is David Lean’s last movie. He has been with us for a long time and has several memorable entries on the List. “A Passage to India” may not be his strongest movie, but it is a worthy representative of his career and a suitable swan song.

The story is an adaption of a novel (by E.M. Forster) and clearly a condensation of what is likely a very detailed and complex book. This is evident in the way Lean tries to juggle several themes and narratives, which or may not tie together. I have identified at least four.

Lean loved big cinema. Vistas, colours, busy scenery and outlandish culture. India provides all that and the chance to showcase this appears to have been a big motivation for David Lean. This is a beautiful movie and the setup rivals that of “Lawrence of Arabia”. Even if I did not care about anything else, just to enjoy the pictures would be reason enough to watch the movie.

Secondly, there is a theme about sexual frustration or at least some pent-up psychological issues. Adela Quested (Judy Davis) is a new arrival in India to meet her fiancé, Ronny Heaslop (Nigel Havers), the magistrate of Chandrapore. While eager to meet the “real” India, she is soon overwhelmed by the impressions. Sexual statues, aggressive moneys, echoes in caves and the underwhelming reception by the groom to be. This climaxes when she imagines herself raped. This is clearly an important element of the movie and, I think, is supposed to be key to the story, yet, I do not think it comes across very clearly. A British girls lost in India falls a bit short as a subtext.

Thirdly there is the criminal story. Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee) is an Indian doctor who randomly meets and befriends Miss Quested’s companion, the elderly Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft). When Miss. Quested asks the school principal, Richard Fielding (James Fox) to meet some Indians, Aziz is suggested. Aziz is very excitable and servile and all too pleased to be of service to the British. He sets up a picnic to the Marabar caves which he can hardly afford and while out there, alone with Miss Quested she suddenly disappear, claiming to have bee raped. The British colonial masters are ready to lynch Dr. Aziz in a kangaroo court with Fielding as his only support among the British, when Adele Quested suddenly realizes that she was not raped at all. This is more a story of judicial murder than a criminal case, really, but it is set up as a court drama.

Finally, the court case becomes a proxy for the much larger (and almost unrelated) struggle between the colonial lords and the colonials. India versus Britain. The old world order versus the new and a criticism of the curious western idea of the white mans burden (the obligation of westerners to “help” the ignorant developing world to do the right thing). The British are exceptionally arrogant and the Indians really takes to this case to demonstrate their disgust with the British Raj. It is reflected in Aziz who turns from friendly to disgusted by the British.

My problem with “A Passage to India” is that these four themes individually are very interesting but tie together here a bit oddly, as if the film media is too small for this combo. And despite this overload, the movie seems strangely thin on story. There is plenty of ambience and build-up, but it fizzles out in the end in something not quite satisfying.

This does not change that it is a movie I did enjoy watching (with emphasis on “watching”) and it does demonstrate the craftmanship of David Lean. It is also very much a product of its time, with the post-colonial sweep of the seventies and eighties, the revisionist view of western behaviour and misbehaviour in the rest of the world. I do not want to apologize for these horrific British overlords, but I do think “Ghandi” struck a better balance there and felt a tad more realistic.

A fair recommendation from me.       

Gremlins (1984)

 

Off-List: Gremlins

When I think of horror comedies, the first movie that always comes to mind is “Gremlins”. It was not the first by a long shot, but it managed to hit the balance exactly right. It is horrific enough to keep us in suspense throughout, and, at least as important, it is hilariously funny in that dark, gruesome way horror comedies are meant to be funny. On top of this, we get excellent production value by any standard. This is a movie that age very well indeed.

Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligans) is a young man who lives at home and works at the local bank in small town Kingston Falls. Billy’s father, Randall (Hoyt Axton), is an inventor of the more ridiculous kind as his technical marvels inevitably backfires. As a recurring feature of the movie, it is a constant source of comedy. While away on a business trip, Randall finds a strange but cute little creature, a mogwai, in a Chinese shop. Thinking this is the perfect Christmas gift, he brings it home to Billy.

The mogwai is super cute, but comes with three important rules: Keep it away from sunlight, do not get it wet and do not feed it after midnight. Such rules are of course meant to be broken...

Soon, the little mogwai has multiplied into a horde of not so cute gremlins. The gremlins look like gargoyles without wings and are like evil fairies. They are like mischievous, cunning cats or children and completely without scruples. The way they get a kick out of terrorizing people is both absolutely horrendous and hilariously funny. The stunt they pull on the (awful) Ms. Deagle (Polly Holliday) is typical: They (somehow) know she hates Christmas carols, so they line up a choir in front of her door, mutilating a Christmas song, while one of them sneaks inside to mess with her elevator. The double effect is freaking her out and sending her rocketing through her upper window.

Billy’s mother, Lynn (Frances Lee McCain) fights off the monster invasion in her home like an imitation of Ripley in “Alien” with spectacular kills, such as microwaving and blending gremlins. Still, the most amazing and crazy display is the party the gremlins are having in the bar where Billy’s girlfriend, Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates), is forced to wait on them. It is both ridiculous, full of logical holes and immensely funny. The gremlins are going all out on all the vices we, as civilized beings, are supposed to refrain from and they are having immense fun doing it.

Billy and Kate have to fight off the invasion and that is of course fraught with danger and suspense, but throughout the highlights both in terms of horror and comedy belongs to the gremlins. They steal every scene they are in. It does not matter that they defy logic in everything they do because of the way they press that combination of fun and terror, timed exactly right. Think too much about it and the story collapses, this is a movie to enjoy for what it is.

“Gremlins” is a Halloween movie relocated to Christmas and as such works for both holidays. In our home, we watch it almost every Christmas as a season staple and we can quote most of the movie. I have a feeling we are not the only ones, and I would go so far as to consider “Gremlins” a true classic. That of course begs the question why this movie is not on the List? I have no other answer than the editors thought they had filled up their quota of blockbusters and comedies for 1984 already. It is also clear that critics at the time was not exactly won over by “Gremlins”, which is just their loss.

“Gremlins” is one of the best movies in an already amazing year and I cannot recommend it enough.

   

Ghostbusters (1984)

 

Ghostbusters

When I was 11 years old, I went to watch “Ghostbusters” in the local cinema. I do not remember why I went alone, but it was the first time I was in the cinema without any friends or family. When the stone creatures came alive, I got so frightened that I left the cinema, not very proud of my self. You might have thought such an experience would scar me for life and maybe it has. Today it is one of my favourite movies of all time, somewhere in top 10 or so.

Doctors Stanz (Dan Aykroyd), Venkman (Bill Murray) and Spengler (Harold Ramis) conduct highly dubious and not quite productive research in the paranormal at Columbia University, when they get thrown out of their protected world for being just that. Stanz and Spengler are tech nerds while Venkman is just a deucebag.  Left to themselves they form a paranormal investigation unit, the Ghostbusters, to catch and remove paranormal pests.

After a slow start, the trio gets busy as something is staring to unravel in the city, starting with a demonic god living in the fridge of Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver). Catching ghosts is messy business, involving lots of slime and mayhem, but the Ghostbuster becomes good at it with their beam guns and traps.

As a crescendo builds, it becomes clear that two things are threating the future of mankind: The god Gozer, brought forth by the mating of the Gatekeeper (Weaver) and the Keymaster (Rick Moranis), the destroyer of worlds, and Walter Peck (William Atherton), the dickless, from the EPA, who wants to shut down the Ghostbusters facility. Even with the addition of a fourth member, Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), this is an uphill battle (literally).

This is a fun story and a very eighties one at that. As “Ghostbuster” follow a well proven story arch, there are not terribly many surprises to the plot, but then again I like those rather predictable eighties movies. What makes “Ghostbusters” stand out is how fun that ride is along that plot.

The fun is partly based on the premise. It is a loony idea to have a bunch of grown men running around in a city in coveralls, chasing ghosts. Just plain wacky. Yet, the only one of the three who is not taking it seriously is Venkman, but then again, he takes nothing serious. Ramis and Aykroyd both go all in with their characters and that in itself is totally hilarious. Then you have a demon inside Sigourney Weaver’s fridge and Rick Moranis as the little accountant who is being possessed by... something badass. Just the thought makes me chuckle.

Moranis’ line “Okay, who brought the dog?” we find can be used on so many occasions and it always makes us laugh.

The other big source of the fun is the play between Ramis, Aykroyd and Murray. A lot of it is the awesome script, but in three lesser hands this could well have fallen flat. I happen to be a fan of all three and having them together is just pure joy.

Then there is the wrapping of the movie. The iconic music, the montage, the crowds, the setting and I get transported back to a better and happier time, even if it was prone to giant marshmallow men and refrigerator dwelling demons.

If there is something wrong in your neighbourhood

Who are you gonna call?

GHOSTBUSTERS!!!

Highly recommended.

It also feels like a good Halloween movie.

 

The Element of Crime (Forbrydelsens Element) (1984)

 

The Element of Crime

In the Danish edition of “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die”, the local editors have added Lars von Trier first feature movie, “The Element of Crime”. I am not a fan of his, but at least it saves me from reserving a slot for a Danish off-List entry in a year otherwise so bountiful.

In an undefined future or past, a police detective, Fisher (Michael Elphick) is undergoing hypnosis to go through his latest case. Fisher is based in Cairo, but returns to “Europe” to solve a case known as the “Lotto murderer” case. It is never entirely clear on what basis he is working, but he seems to be in competition with a policeman called Kramer (Jerold Wells) and being tutored by his old master, Osborne (Esmond Knight), who devised a method called “The Element of Crime”, through which the detective must embrace the personality of the criminal to fully understand and find the perpetrator.

Fisher finds the trailing log of the suspected murderer, Harry Grey, and embark on a chase together with a prostitute, Kim (Meme Lai), with whom Grey has a child.

Here is the thing: Nothing in this movie makes the slightest sense.

The plot is a neo-noir detective story, while the imagery is acid-yellow pictures of broken, wet sets. The two are barely connecting and, more often than not, entirely disconnected. Most of the dialogue is narration on top of the scenes (presumably from the hypnosis), but even the spoke dialogue is strange, abrupt and disconnected. Attempts to follow the plotline is constantly sabotaged by strange cuts, out of the blue events or imagery totally at odds with the narration.

It is impossible to place the story. Is it past or future? Is it a post-apocalyptic world or is it the wreckage of Fisher’s mind seen though hypnosis? The place is referred to as Europe, place names are German, people’s names are English and so is the spoken language. All the while, I get the impression none of this actually matters.

Lars von Trier says quite clearly in the extra material that this is a movie of fascinating pictures with a story on top for those who requires a plot. This is incidentally also my impression. Von Trier concocted some imagery that looks like a mix of “Stalker”, “Alphaville” and “Last Year in Marienbad” and needed an excuse of a story to present those images. So, he is having a lot of fun making some freakish imagery for us to enjoy, except the pictures are so horribly ugly that it is just depressive. But then again, that stuff is high art.

I cannot say I enjoyed this movie. It feels amateurish because of the disconnects and I think by now I hate the colour yellow in a movie. I knew up front that Lars von Trier is not my thing, but I was curious as to where he started. Now I know and somehow this explains a lot.

An interesting piece of trivia: Meme Lai, easily the best part of the movie, had a career in Italian cannibal movies (turns out to be a thing!). “The Element of Crime” was her last movie. After this she became a policewoman in Brittain. I will let that stand for a moment.

 

This is Spinal Tap (1984)

 

This is Spinal Tap

Everything starts somewhere and for mockumentaries it likely happened with “This is Spinal Tap”. I am quite certain that the verité comedy had already been in place for some time (“Real Life” from 1979 comes to mind), but the format of presenting a movie as a documentary, while actually making fun of the subject is often attributed to “This is Spinal Tap”.

We are introduced to the “filmmaker” Martin Di Bergi (Rob Reiner himself, the actual director of this movie), who tells us that he is a long-time fan of the band and wants to make a concert movie based on their tour of the United States. As the filmmaker, he then proceeds by showing up here and there in the movie, either to comment or to interfere with the tour.

Of the band we particularly follow lead singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) with keyboardist Viv Savage (David Kaff) and drummer Mick Shrimpton (R.J. Parnell) more in the background. The band started out as a very mellow flower-power band in the sixties, but then turned to heavy metal or at least the glam-rock version of it, now having the reputation of being the loudest band in Brittain (cranking volume up to 11!). It is understood that they used to be a really big name but is having less success of late.

The American tour is supposed to be a promotion tour of the new album “Smell the Glove”, but there are problems right from the outset as the American record label does not want to print the cover, which is considered sexist (which, from the description of it, is an understatement). The manager of the band, Ian Faith (Tony Hendra), desperately trying to keep it all together, lands a compromise with an all-black cover that satisfy no-one.

The tour is, to say the least, chaotic. Many venues are cancelled or moved to far more humble locations. We see the band interact, both with themselves and the press, and in both cases we get a lot of the tropes on moronic rock musicians. There are some, but sadly few, clips of them actually playing at concerts. Those parts are great, though, if you listen to the lyrics. Those lyrics are simply amazing.

Midway through the tour David’s girlfriend Jeanine (June Chadwick) shows up. She quickly sets herself up as a band member off stage and challenges Ian to his great chagrin. Her ideas are even more moronic than the band’s own and the whole thing explodes with both Ian and Nigel walking out on the band.

The entire movie is a joke, of course. It is a parody of the touring rock band, mocking all the tropes on those. The band members are more air-headed than most, the lyrics totally out there, the attitudes in place, and of course of money-people who are only there when things are going well.

The interesting thing is that all this is played for real. Everybody stays in character and take themselves seriously. They are over the top, but nobody plays over the top. Add to this that all the dialogue is improvised, and you get this real documentary feel to the movie. A documentary of a crazy, but quite real world. There are times where it gets totally absurd as with the pod on stage that does not open, trapping Derek inside or the 18-inch version of Stonehenge on stage with dancing leprechauns. But it is dealt with by the band as serious incidents, crazy, but real and so it works (not to mention the Jazz-Odyssey incident).

It is this balance of keeping the craziness real that is the key to “This is Spinal Tap”. Had this just been about making fun of rock musicians, this would not have been half as funny. As it is, the verité element is so well developed that we believe in the band even though they are stupider than toothpaste. As it happens, I read that several famous musicians are themselves fans of the movie, notably Sting, because this is the story of their experience, and they can see the fun of it.

Although hours and hours of material was shot, it is cooked down to only  82 minutes and I think that was a wise choice. There are simply limits to how long you can draw out a joke. As it is, I was having a lot of fun watching this one, but I am not certain it would have lasted another hour.

Researching this, I looked up the story of Christopher Guest. It is quite amazing. I want to watch a movie about him, his life and family.

 

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

 

A Nightmare on Elm Street

In 1984, I was eleven years old. Horror movies were way to scary for me and even “Ghostbusters” crossed that line. Needless to say, a movie like “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was way outside what I was going to watch at the time. It was, however, a movie that was impossible to avoid and the posters as well as the street-talk was enough to freak me out. For this reason, I watched it later than most people, which is likely a good thing but today I consider it a true classic, not only for its impact on popular culture but for its inherent qualities.

The high school students Tina (Amanda Wyss), Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), Glen (Johnny Depp) and Rod (Nick Corri) have scary dreams of a creepy man with a burnt face and knives on his fingers, chasing them. Tina is so scared of this she is asking her friends over at night, including her boyfriend, Rod. During the night her dream gets really bad when the creepy guy catches her and cuts her up. While it is happening in her dream, the effect is very real as she is tossed and turned around the bedroom with blood spraying everywhere and Rod starring in shock as his girlfriend is getting torn apart.

Obviously, Rod is being charged with the murder, but Nancy, daughter of the police chief, is convinced it was not Rod, but the creepy guy because he is trying to do the same thing to her. Every time she doses off, he is there, and she only barely avoids getting chopped up herself. It is all she can do to stay awake, and it does not help that nobody believes her. Not her mother, nor the police or even Glen although he appears to have similar dreams.

Eventually we learn that the creepy guy is a Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a serial child murderer whom the parents had trapped and burned to cinders. Now he is back in supernatural form to take his revenge on their children.

The scenario of teenagers chased by demons is old like in really really old and both “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Halloween” has walked this ground. Yet, it feels as if many of the tropes of this genre either originates or were perfected by “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. What they are up against is evil with demonic powers, nobody, certainly not the adults believe them and only by facing the fear (i.e. to grow up) can they overcome the danger.

Freddy Krueger is the stuff of legends, both from his gruesome appearance and through his omnipotency. Residing in the dreamworld, there is no physical laws restricting him, but what makes him really scary is that he transcends the dreamworld into reality. We all have had scary dreams and what is it we tell ourselves when we wake up? Phew, this was only a dream. But what if it is not only a dream? What if the terror can reach us also when we are awake or can harm our real world? That is truly scary.

My son, who never watched the movie before, knows exactly who Freddy Krueger is. “He looks like me”, he says, “I kind of like him”. My son suffers greatly from atopic eczema and while I do not agree there, it does say something about how the character has achieved a life of its own that goes far beyond the movie itself. Freddy Krueger is the boogieman.

“A Nightmare of Elm Street” was made on a shoestring budget. In fact, a lot of it is either made for free or paid with the participant own money, yet it is difficult to see from the results. It is a movie heavy on special effect and with a few near misses they mostly work amazingly well. Somethings do not have to be terribly advanced to be scarry, but with Krueger himself, the prosthetics and the effect are worthy of a far more expensive movie. This is from an age before CGI and yet they pulled off some amazing stuff there. The murder of Glenn is one of the most spectacular I have witnessed in a long time. The budget way kept low by relying on unknown actors but a lot of those have had impressive career after this movie and I think the acting performance is generally a lot better than should be expected.

Sometimes it takes a very low budget to trigger the creativity that makes a great movie and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” became a huge success both as a movie and a franchise and is today recognized as a classic.

In 2010 a remake was made with a very different budget, but, frankly, I prefer the original. I much prefer the horrific ambience to cheap jump-scares.

While horror movies are still not my territory, I do not hesitate recommending “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. This is definitely a movie you must see... before your dreams kill you, wuhahaha...

 

Paris, Texas (1984)

 

Paris, Texas

“Paris, Texas” is very much a Wim Wenders movie. A few months ago, I watched his excellent “Perfect Days” in the cinema and although I do not think “Paris, Texas” hits the same perfection, they do have a lot in common, traits that are typical for Wenders.

There is a man staggering through a desert. He looks exhausted and very thirsty. When he arrives at a store, he starts to eat ice and then collapses. A local doctor examines him, concludes he is mute and uses his wallet to contact his next of kin, his brother. When Walt Henderson (Dean Stockwell) arrives, we learn that the bewildered man is called Travis and that he has been gone and lost for four years. Only very, very slowly does he start to speak and recognize what is happening around him.

Walt takes Travis home to California where he lives with his wife Anne (Aurore Clément) and Travis’ 8-year-old son, Hunter (Hunter Carson). Hunter has practically been adopted by Anne and Walt after he showed up four years earlier, telling them that his parents had disappeared. Hunter at first wants nothing to do with Travis, but eventually they get close and when Travis sets out to find his lost wife, Hunter insists on coming along.

This is a movie that movies very slowly, not just in its pacing but also in the way it opens up its story. For the first half hour I am confused, then slightly bored, but ever so slowly meaning creeps in and confusion is replaced by understanding. Not through a big reveal, but simply by pieces sliding into place.

Travis is an enigma. Why is he walking around in the desert of Texas and why has he spent four years doing that? Where is Hunter’s mother and why is she where we finally find her? And what is the point of the title: Paris, Texas? It seems to refer to a place we only see in a worn-out photo.

For me, the biggest question was and still is, why this German film is taking place in Texas?

If you are going to watch this movie, you should stop reading right here, because getting the answer to the former set of the questions is one of the great satisfactions of watching this movie.

When Travis finally finds his wife, Jane (Natassja Kinski), working in a peep show in Houston, he tells her a story about a boy and girl who were in love. Obviously, a story about Travis and Jane. In this story we learn that their relationship developed horribly into an abusive and dysfunctional relationship where they both loved each other and wished to be far away from the other person. The relationship apparently ended by both of them taking off on their own, seemingly to find that empty place where nothing existed. No love, no pain, nothing. Travis found his empty spot in Paris, Texas and Jane found it pretending to be someone else in a peep show. Both are longing for reconciliation, especially for their son, but Travis knows that being together is impossible, so his reconciliation must be to at least bring Jane and Hunter together.

This is a movie about broken people and how there is no big solutions but only small solution or no solutions. How realizing and coming to terms with the fact that you are yourself the problem and then facing the courage to at least begin to fix that, is a monumental task. Like in “Perfect Days” people are not as simple as we think they are, but have landed where they are because of a traumatic past. Simplifying life is a remedy to reduce pain, but in itself it does not really solve anything.

“Paris, Texas” is a slow, but rewarding movie to watch. As we get closer to Travis and Jane, it becomes painful, but that is because there is something at stake and the ending is a heartbreak.

I really want to watch some more Wim Wenders, so it is good he has made a lot of movies. There are also more of his coming up on the List. This one is a good one if you like his style.

I still have to work out, though, why this had to take place in America.

 

Stop Making Sense (1984)

 

Off-List: Stop Making Sense

Last night, my wife and I were invited by friends to watch “Stop Making Sense” at Cinemateket in Copenhagen as part of their music film festival. As it turned out, this was quite an experience and I do believe that as a 1984 movie, “Stop Making Sense” deserve some recognition and a mention on my blog.

“Stop Making Sense” is a concert film featuring the band “Talking Heads”. It was filmed over four nights at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles but is cut so that you get the impression it is a single concert. Quite an achievement, actually, considering that all four nights must have been exactly the same to be able to create a seamless cut.

The show starts with David Byrne entering the stage with a guitar and a ghetto blaster. All on his own with the tape as backing he does “Psycho Killer”. Slowly the stage fills up. For the second song Tina Weymouth joins him, then Chris Frantz and so on until the sixth song, “Burning Down the House”, when the entire band is complete.

The show is a tour de force of the “Talking Heads” catalogue. There are songs I recognize and songs that I do not, but it does not really matter because the energy is there in every single song. This is partly due to the enthusiasm of the band, but also driven by the Duracell-bunny that is David Byrne. His idiosyncrasies, his energy and his magic voice are all infecting and I have the impression he could read up from a children’s book and still rivet the audience.

A very big part of why this was a special experience was to watch this on the big screen in the cinema. The theatre was full, and the audience was very enthusiastic. One of our group who works in the cinema business told me that the sound system used was very clever and of very high quality, so that you felt immersed in the concert and when the audience was cheering, we felt we were in the audience too so we clapped and cheered as well. It really was the second-best thing to actually being there. You got the same rush through the audience when people recognize a song and felt the same excitement as you would at the real concert forty years ago.

That was also a wondrous experience, that this did not feel 40 years ago. Apart from a few haircuts, this concert could have been recorded yesterday. The soundscape by “Talking Heads” has aged very well, meaning that I would expect or hope for the same in a concert today. Some elements may have been avantgarde in 1984, but today it is just awesome. Even though some of the synth effects may sound retro today, that sound is often actively pursued and best of all, this is music you really want to move to. I would say that the only drawback to watching this in the cinema is the inability to dance.

As it happened, the event had a solution to that. The bar of Cinmateket was converted to a dance floor and when the movie ended, the “Talking Heads” songs continued there. I think we were at it for two hours and, man, I do not think I have danced at all for half a decade. This crowd was the most unlikely combination imaginable, with the age groups spanning six decades.  We all stood out like sore thumbs and therefore nobody stood out.

“Stop Making Sense” has been titled the best concert movie ever. That is a lot of hype, but it may actually be the case, especially if watched in a cinema with an enthusiastic crowd.

This was a unique and great experience. If you ever get the chance to watch this in a cinema, do not think twice.

    

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Off-List: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

The three original Indiana Jones movies are to my mind all masterpieces and although the second instalment, “The Temple of Doom”, is often considered the poorer of the three, it is still far ahead of anything that came after “The Last Crusade”. It is a mystery why these three were not all adopted for the List.

“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (IJTD) is a prequel to “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. If you did not catch that from the date displayed (1935), it is apparent from the complete lack of Nazis. The setting is also quite different, taking place exclusively in Asia (China and India), but the most notable differences are how far it ventures into dark mystery and unbelievable stunts.

The opening is light enough. At the cabaret venue of Bar Obi-Wan (caught that?) in Shanghai, a transfer of an archaeological artifact for a diamond between Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and a Chinese gangster (Roy Chiao) goes haywire with shooting, dancing, poisoning and general confusion. Dr. Jones barely manages to escape with cabaret singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) and child sidekick Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) in tow.

Finding themselves alone on a plane about to crash in the Himalayas, they bail out, using an inflatable boat as a parachute (!). After a completely insane decent from the mountains, they end up in India. Here the villagers believe our unlikely trio is godsent to save them from the evil flowing out from the Pankot palace. This sets off the real adventure of the movie, involving a Thuggee cult (See Gunga Din) and some very dark magic.

Some elements suffer from the classic sequel problem of “let us do the same but bigger”. The stunts are crazier where both the bailing out of the plane and the rollercoaster ride in the mines had been abandoned in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” for being too much and unbelievable. Instead of snakes, we get bugs, and instead of Nazis we get cultists. It is exhilarating, but also a tad stupid.

What we also get is a lot of the Indiana Jones vibe we love. The dry humour and the outlandish adventure and of course the gung-ho attitude. We also get a setting and a plot that is sufficiently different from the first movie to set it apart as a different movie. I used to find this darkness a detraction, but as I got older, I see it as an asset. There is something at stake here, it is not just fun and games and that adds much needed depth to the movie.

In our household, the most common talking point is the choice of lead actress. Kate Capshaw is, for lack of a better word, annoying. Her shrieking voice and her attitude is a source of pain throughout the movie, but again, as I get older, I see it actually works for the movie. I am not certain my wife has come to that conclusion yet.

Mostly “IJTD” is a fun adventure ride, made by the champions of such rides, Lucas and Spielberg. Many have tried to copy the format, but I have yet to see anybody besting it. Any of the three classic Indiana Jones movie are worth taking out any given evening or Sunday afternoon and it is a guaranteed good time. “The Temple of Doom” is my pick when I need it to be a bit darker and as such it does what it needs to do perfectly.

My favourite scene of the entire movie is the dinner scene in the palace. It takes the concept of disgusting local delicacies to an entirely different levels, and we often refer to one of these amazing dishes when we want to describe horrible outlandish food (nice, snake surprise!!!). Childish, I know, but this is a movie of my childhood.

Interestingly, both the Chinese and Indian authorities would not allow the movie to be filmed in their countries. Some people are so touchy.

 

The Karate Kid (1984)

 

The Karate Kid

One of the most iconic, most referenced and highest grossing movies to be released in 1984 was “The Karate Kid”. Even today, one of the best series on Netflix is “Cobra Kai”, a spin-off of “The Karate Kid”. “Wax on, Wax off” must rate as one of the most recognizable quotes in movie history and this movie is supposed to have done the same for the karate sport as “Sideways” did for Pinot Noir.

Why is this movie not on the List?

My wife asked the same question after we had watched the movie (again) last night and the only answer I can give is snobbery. I do not think “The Karate Kid” was ever considered high art and by including “The Terminator”, I suppose the List editors thought they had ticked that box for 1984.

Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) is a high school teenager moving to California with his mother (Randee Heller). Daniel starts his new Californian life with a few bumpy days. On the upside, he meets a pretty (and rich) girl Ali (Elisabeth Shue). On the downside, he also meets Ali’s very jealous ex-boyfriend, Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). Unfortunately, Johnny knows karate and so does his buddies, so Daniel gets his ass kicked multiple times.

Daniel also meets the Japanese born janitor of the apartment block, Mr. Miyagi (yeah, I can see it, you are beginning to smile...) (Noriyuki “Pat” Morita). When things look the very bleakest, Miyagi steps in and probably saves Daniel from ass-kicking turning fatal. Mr. Miyagi also knows karate.

A confrontation with Johnny’s master Kreese (Martin Kove) of the Cobra Kai dojo results in a truce. Johnny must stay off Daniel until the All-Valley karate tournament, 2 months hence, at which point he can kick the shit out of Daniel. Daniel now has two months to learn karate from Mr. Miyagi himself.

While “The Karate Kid” is a martial arts film with a lot of fight scenes that (I am told) are both awesome and realistic, this really a coming-of-age story with the focus on the master and apprentice relationship between Daniel and Miyagi. This relationship is also what makes the movie special and memorable all these years later.

From the outset, Daniel is obnoxious. There is no other way to describe him. If it is the lack of a father figure, I do not know, but he takes to Miyagi as if he was his father and there is a mutual respect and sympathy between the two that is very touching. This starts before the karate training begins, but the karate makes it formal. By teaching Daniel karate, he is also forming him as a person.

It helps a lot that Miyagi is a quirky and amusing character with a lot of fantastic lines. The famous “Was on, wax off” line is not even close to his best ones. Morita’s deadpan delivery makes his lines even better. Morita could both draw on his father’s (a Japanese immigrant) mannerism and speech and his experience as a stand-up comedian and his Mr. Miyagi character is one of the classic characters in movie history, synonymous with mysterious-wise and fatherly teacher.

Robert Mark Kamen wrote the story based on his own childhood experience. His first teacher was a Kreese-type teacher, while his second was a Japanese teacher who was a follower of Chojun Miyagi of Okinawa. It sort of creates depth to the story.

As a child, I could totally identify with the characters in the movie and who has not dreamt of having a Mr. Miyagi? As an adult, I still find the movie incredibly watchable. It is not just interesting at its core, it is also very well executed on all sides and funny to boot. This may be a template story, but so well done that I can forgive the clichés.

“The Karate Kid” generated many sequels and spin-offs and for the most part they got progressively worse. Trying to tell the same story again and again is not a recipe for success. This lasted until 2018 when Macchio and Zabka came together in the “Cobra Kai” series that picks up the thread 33 years after ”The Karate Kid”. Six seasons down the line, this is still the best thing on Netflix.    

 

The Terminator (1984)

 

The Terminator

“Come with me if you wanna live”.

One night in 1984, two characters appear in Los Angeles amid burst of static electricity. One is a cyborg with superhuman strength and durability, and the other is a comparatively frail looking soldier with the objective of preventing the cyborg in it nefarious purpose. Both are from the future (2029, so it is soon) and both are very interested in a particular woman, supposedly the future mother of a future leader.

Seriously, if I must explain the plot of “The Terminator”, you probably ended up on the wrong website. Also, there really is not that much to tell. Plotwise, “The Terminator” is as thin as plots go and follow the template for action movies of the eighties down to the comma. It is not really that logical either or endowed with some secondary, deeper meaning that makes the apparent plot irrelevant. By these accounts “The Terminator” is one of many action B-movies from the eighties.

None of that, however, explains why this is such an enjoyable movie to watch.

The academic explanation would be that it is a movie that plays with the genre and through that uses the template form to get to another level, but I am not certain that explanation covers it. Rather, I think it is a combination of enthusiasm, a vision, a balance between ironic distance and taking itself serious and brilliant casting.

James Cameron is a visionary man. It is the one denominator in his impressive and quite wide-ranging filmography. His filmmaking is always driven by a visual imagination, of what the movie should look and feel like. According to Cameron lore, he got the idea for “The Terminator” in a dream in a hotel room in Rome and it was the enthusiasm for this vision that he channelled into the movie. You can feel it when you watch it, there is a deeper world of thought behind what we see. His background in visual effects is also evident.

The Terminator itself is of course Arnold Schwarzenegger, a role that became iconic for him. His superhuman appearance, mechanic acting style, lack of facial expression and heavily accented delivery IS the cyborg. Today it is impossible to imagine that a lethal battle cyborg can look like anything else than Arnie and even the later high-tech versions of death machines of the franchise are not half as compelling as he is. But more importantly, his delivery of the role gives it BOTH its menacing terror and its deadpan distance. Do I need to say “I’ll be back”?

This balance is not restricted to the cyborg but is pervading the movie. The dialogue on the police station is my own favourite element. Paul Winfield, Lance Henriksen and Earl Boen are all dead serious and funny at the same time, talking about “the weird ones” and refusing to take Kyle Reese, the soldier from the future serious. Pretty much like normally thinking people would and yet with our outside knowledge, it makes them the laughingstock.

Michael Bien and Linda Hamilton as Kyle Reese and the target girl, Sarah Connor are almost the dullest part of the movie and their role is simply to drive the thin plot forward, but they are serious enough about it that they are not hampering it. They fit the vision so to speak, acting as prügelknappe for the Austrian killing machine.

In this vision of Cameron there are so many details worth mentioning. The dystopian future (which is truly horrible) matched up with the almost exclusive use of night scenes in contemporary Los Angeles. The tech noir night club (which I always wanted to visit), the trashy, rain glinsing backstreets, reminiscent of “Bladerunner” and the freakish maintenance the cyborg performs on itself. There is a fantastic eye for details here.

I watched “The Terminator” for the umpteenth time last night with my wife and son and asked them afterwards what their impression was? How should I frame my review? Their response was that it should be overwhelmingly positive, and I think that is also how generations since its release have, sometimes grudgingly, viewed it.

On paper, this is at best an action B-movie, while in actuality this is one of the true Hollywood classics. Later instalments in the franchise may have overmatched it in effects and action, but never in vision and that is where it counts.

Amadeus (1984)

 

Amadeus

The first movie of 1984 is “Amadeus”. It was also the big winner of 1984 with eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, so 1984 starts on a high.

In 1823, Antonia Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) is a patient in a hospital. He is visited by a priest to whom he tells the tale of how he killed Mozart. Yes, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the great composer. His story takes us back to Vienna in the 1770’ies.

At this time Salieri is a court composer at the court of Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones), a sovereign very much interested in music but lacking any talent for it. At this time Mozart (Tom Hulce) arrives in Vienna. He already has a reputation as a prodigy, but he is also an infantile playboy. In an age of wigs, face powder and effeminate men, it takes something to stand out as an obscene playboy.

Salieri immediately recognizes the massive talent of Mozart and is perceptive enough to realize he is himself just an amateur by comparison. Add to this the ease with which Mozart produces his art and the libertine silliness of the man, Salieri is struck by deep envy and anger with God for bestowing such gifts on an undeserving person. Salieri makes it his life mission to bring Mozart down.

Mozart and Salieri are real, historic characters, but the story presented here is entirely fiction. Mozart died young from a mysterious ailment and already in the early nineteenth century, the conspiracy theory were flourishing that Salieri and Mozart were rivals and that it was Salieri who killed Mozart. In reality they were more like colleagues, and it was Mozart who had a thing for conspiracies.

So, if this movie is not about a historic event, what is it then? My understanding is that this is a tale of envy. Of mediocracy and conformity trying to stifle the extraordinary and the beautiful. What better example of talent than the greatest composer ever and the myth of Salieri’s rivalry with him. Director Milos Forman was Czech and had a history of subversive movies challenging the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and it is not a big jump to see Salieri as the communist party supressing the arts in the East.

As a drama, “Amadeus” works, but at a very slow pace. Considering Salieri “just” has to bring Mozart down, he is awfully slow at it, this is a lengthy movie, and it is more about the grief Salieri suffers at his more or less failed attempts at discrediting and marginalizing Mozart. Mozart suffers immensely, but he does not make it easy for himself either. He is a reckless playboy, convinced of his magnificence and spending far too much for his measly income.

The real assets of “Amadeus” are the music and the sets. Oh, Lord! Almost every time there is music, it is Mozart. The volume goes up, it is full orchestra, and it is a Mozart Greatest Hits show. We hear parts of “The Marriage of Figaro”, “Don Giovani”, “The Magic Flute” and many of his famous symphonies. I am not very knowledgeable on classical music, but even a heathen like me gets blown away by this music and the arrangement of it does it full honour. This is a movie to listen to in a cinema with a good sound system.

The set is just as magnificent. The illusion of the eighteenth century is perfect, not just on the costumes and the wigs, but using Prague as location was a strike of genius. Some of the scenes were shot in the very theatre where Don Giovanni premiered originally. It has been far too long since my last visit to Prague, but I do remember that eighteenth century vibe. I also did bring home a Don Giovanni puppet on my last visit...

What works less well is the choice of using American English as the spoken language. I know this is not an unusual thing and even Ridley Scott’s recent “Napoleon” did it, but I kept expecting to hear German. This gets really bad with Mozart’s wife Constanze Mozart (Elizabeth Berridge), who otherwise delivers an excellent performance, but her accent is so thick... According to Wikipedia, Mark Hamill was considered as Mozart. That could have been fun.

This is not a bad movie at all, even if it seems to creep along at a slow pace. There is so much to look at and listen to that I do not mind. My only regret is that I never saw it in a cinema.

 

  

1984

 

1984

At this point, I am about to start on 1984. Normally, I make no introduction to a new year, but 1984 is different. To my mind 1984 is one of the great movie years. I am, of course hopelessly biased as I grew up with these movies, but even with that in mind, the List is exceptionally stingy for this year. When I look down on lists of what was released in 1984, I am amazed the editors found room for so few movies.

Of course, the list of movies I like is a product of my personal taste and looking down the release list, many of them do not qualify as great, but they mean something to me and where I would normally add three off-List moves to review, here I feel I could add ten movies and not be done with it.

I already picked my three movies to add, but do not be surprised if a few more sneak themselves onto my block. For now, I will make a quick run-down on movies that did not make the cut for the List, but which I think deserve at least a mentioning.

In addition, there are a similarly long list of movies I am not familiar with but that I very much would like to watch. Most of those have slightly more adult zing than those on the list below.

 

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Seriously? Even if this is the poorest of the three great Indiana Jones movies, it is a no-brainer. I picked this as off-List without blinking.

Karate Kid

Maybe not film art but a pop-culture landmark. Who does not know “wax-on, wax-off” and Mr. Miyagi? Also, “Cobra Kai” is one of the best current series on Netflix. This I also picked as off-List for 1984.

Gremlins

Why is this movie not on the list? This is better and more important than at least half the movies on the List. The only explanation is that the editors do not like comedies and blockbusters. This is both. Of course, I added this one.

Romancing the Stone

While this is “Indiana Jones light”, it is also immensely entertaining and one of those movies I have watched so many times.

Police Academy

Yeah, I know, not film art, but this, the first instalment was immensely funny when it came out. I have rewatched it a few times since and while it has not aged too well, I still have a good time watching this.

The NeverEnding Story

This was a monster hit in 1984, at least in Denmark. Everybody was singing the Limahl theme song, and I even went on to read the book. Personally, I found both book and film a bit disappointing, but I was in the minority at the time.

Footloose

Well, Kevin Bacon dancing...

Revenge of the Nerds

Again, not exactly high brow, but every time I think of the Nerds movies, I fell like revisiting them. This one is the mother of the Nerds movies, and the jokes are not as stupid as they later became.

Splash

A guilty pleasure. Not a great movie, but with Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks. That alone makes it worth watching.

Red Dawn

Decidedly a B-movie, but the list of young actors that would later become big names is amazing.

Starman

With Jeff Bridges as the alien, this is a decent romantic sci-fi.

The Last Starfighter

I only watched this one in recent years and have not the sweet memories of childhood. Still not a bad sci-fi.

Blood Simple

The first feature from the Coen brothers. Say no more.

Purple Rain

Prince!!!

All of Me

Steve Martin is not my favourite comedian, but this one is one of those I like the best.

Dune

David Lynch version of Dune took a lot of heat, but I quite like it. If anything, it is not Lynch enough.

Bachelor Party

One of Tom Hanks’ earliest movie. This movie it totally nuts.

Canonball Run II

Okay, not a good movie, but it was the very first movie I went to see without parents. I thought it was great. I was 11 years old, so that kind of figures.