1984 - SONGWRITER, entertaining showbiz drama with a country western background

Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson are a couple of singer/composers in this very entertaining comedy/drama.  Kristofferson is a love em and leave em guy bedding one groupie after another.  Willie Nelson is a performer and songwriter trying to reunite with his first wife. Nelson's also trying to get out of a contract he had signed with a promoter some years earlier who now owns the rights to his songs.

Into this mix comes Leslie Ann Warren as a recording artist Nelson is promoting while ghostwriting songs for her.  Warren is also mixed up with a shady character played by everyone's favorite scary actor Rip Torn.  With the exception of Warren and Melinda Dillion playing Nelson's ex-wife, all of these male singer/actors are amusingly playing thinly disguised versions of themselves.

 

The film has a nice laid back feel to it from director Alan Rudolph.  Rudolph was a protege of Robert Altman and uses the same approach to working with actors that Altman did, a naturalistic kind of improvisational method. 

 

This film is highly entertaining, Nelson was not a trained actor but he was a very natural performer in front of the camera.  He was close friends with Kris Kristofferson and they play off each other very well.  The songs in the film were mostly written by Kristofferson.

The film was written by Bud Shrake, the running time is 94 minutes. 

1984 - RAZORBACK, yes it's Jaws with a really big pig

A giant wild boar is running around the Australian Outback killing and eating people.  Yes it's Jaws in the desert except instead of being set in the ocean we are in the middle of a lot of dirt.

A fair number of people get killed which includes the wildlife photographer wife of an American who is now out for revenge.  It all comes to a climax at an illegal pet food factory where it's the American vs the really big "Sus scrofa" aka wild boar.

 

This foolishness is directed by a man named Russell Mulcahy who along with Razorback is also responsible for Highlander and it's completely ridiculous sequel Highlander II: The Quickening.  Mulcahy was one of those flashy music video directors who liked lots of weird camera angels, frenzied editing and a spastic moving camera racing all over the place.

 

Is this film worth watching?  Well it's pretty dumb.

The film was written by Everett De Roche who cranked out a lot of garbage for Australian film and television.  The running time is 91 minutes. 

1984 - KAOS, an excellent presentation of some Italian short stories.

Two brothers, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani were a couple of talented Italian filmmakers.  They had a number of good to great films to their credit.  Although recognized as outstanding filmmakers they didn't exactly receive the kind of fawning recognition of a Fellini or De Sica.

Kaos is a film which consists of four short stories set in Sicily in the early 1900's.  The films are based on stories from an Italian author, Luigi Pirandello.  The films range from the tragic to the humorous and are made with a high degree of film making skill.

 

The titles of the films, The Other Son,  Moonsickness, The Jar and Requiem are all tied together with an appearance of the author Pirandello at the end of the film.

Really to discuss this film would be a disservice to the excellent presentation of the stories and the Tavani Brothers.  This is one of the better films I've seen in a while and would give it a very high viewing recommendation.

Written by the Taviani Brothers, the running time is188 minutes.

1984 - FINDERS KEEPERS, disappointing comedy from Richard Lester

The gem of a decent comedy is kicking around somewhere in this disappointing film from Richard Lester.  Michael O'Keefe is a con man on the run from an Oakland, California sheriff. He's slept with the sheriff's wife and the sheriff is out for blood.  O'Keefe also gets mixed up with a couple of thieves who have stolen five million dollars and are transporting it by train in a coffin.  On board the train is Beverly D'Angelo ( with really big hair) as a would be actress with mental problems, David Wayne is an ancient conductor and Louis Gossett Jr. plays a friend of O'Keefe's who just happens to be another conman.

With all the complex character relationships and comedic situations this film should have been a lot funnier than it was.  The actors all seem to want to go for it, but Lester keeps everything clamped down not allowing the actors or the comedic scenes to develop their full potential.

Finders Keepers is Richard Lester in the later part of his career,  The one time innovator of madcap fims like A Hard Day's Night, Help, The Knack …and How to Get It and the drama Petulia seemed to have lost his touch.  Lester hadn't really made an interesting film since Superman II and a good portion of that film had been shot by Richard Donner until he was fired and replaced by Lester.  It seemed like time had finally made his 1960's anarchic comedy style obsolete. 

It's to bad because some of the comedic situations in the script are actually very clever.  After all how many films have you watched that has a scene with a runaway house.  Jim Carrey shows up in what was a very early role for him and I'll say he's consistent, he plays the same obnoxious character at the beginning of his career that he's played throughout his entire acting career.

The film was written by Charles Dennis, Ronny Graham and Terence Marsh.  The running time is 96 minutes.

1986 - HOOSIERS, very entertaining sports film

 Let the Gene Hackman memorial film tribute begin.  After watching The French Connection and Get Shorty we moved on to Hoosiers, a very good sports drama.  Gene Hackman is the coach of a small town basketball team.  He has to put up with the know it all townspeople and pull together a very small team of high school players.  Even with all of this going on he makes time to have a romance with school principal Barbra Hershey and rehabilitate Dennis Hooper the alcoholic father of one or his best players.

This is probably one of Hackman's most likable films and it's definitely one of those Frank Capra triumph of the little guy feel good films.  The film was shot in Indiana and is based on an actual championship game although in this case it's an all white team of high school kids in real life their were black basketball players in Indiana basketball although you would hardly know it.

Hoosiers may be a feel good film but apparently it wasn't a real feel good film for first time director David Anspaugh to shoot.  Anspaugh had to deal with a very ornery Gene Hackman who felt this film would be a career killer for him.  His romantic lead Barbara Hershey was also unhappy as she saw her part reduced during the making of the film.  Anspaugh and his production team were also working on a very tight budget.  Composer Jerry Goldsmith put together what you would call a rousing score and careful attention was paid to 1950's period detail in spite of all the challenges.

 

Hoosiers succeeds thanks to Gene Hackman's excellent performance. He may have been a grumpy guy on set but he was a complete professional when it came to performing.  The director and the writer Angelo Pizzo were also smart enough to focus on the characters in the film.  There are plenty of basketball game scenes to watch but they never lost track of the story or the people.

The film runs 115 minutes.

1984 - THE MAKING OF FANNY AND ALEXANDER, a documentary

Sensing this would probably be his last film, Ingmar Bergman had a cameraman named Arne Carlsson follow him around while he filmed Fanny and Alexander.  The resulting documentary with the less than clever title The Making of Fanny and Alexander was the result. The film is sort of fascinating and probably of more interest for film scholars especially those who are admirers of Ingmar Bergman.

The film starts out with Bergman and his cast at a meet and greet where Bergman announces he is just a director this time and doesn't remember any of the script they are about to film. This is a rather dubious claim since he wrote the film.

We get a lengthy scene of Bergman staging a scene on the Ekdahl family set and we see Bergman working with the young actors playing Fanny and Alexander.  We also see cinematographer Sven Nykvist behind the camera setting up the lights and the camera angles.  Sven Nykvist was clearly an important collaborator for Bergman and at times he almost seems like a co-director.

Probably the most poignant and interesting part of this film is Bergman directing one of his old colleagues the actor Gunnar Björnstrand.  Björnstrand  is clearly suffering from memory loss.  Bergman is extremely patient with him as Björnstrand blows take after take.

 

Again, an interesting film but it's probably best to keep in mind since Bergman took a director's credit on this we are only going to see what Bergman wants us to see.  Considering the big cast and the logistics of filming such a long film I doubt things went as smoothly as he seems to indicate.

The running time is 110 minutes.

1984 - AFTER THE REHEARSAL, a film late in the career of Ingmar Bergman

 After announcing that Fanny and Alexander would be his last film before he retired from film making After The Rehearsal showed up a year later,  so much for truth in advertising. This is what is called a chamber film, it has only three characters and for the most part is a real talk fest as a lot of Bergman's  later films got to be.  You can't read the subtitles fast enough to keep up with the Swedish dialog in the film.

 

After The Rehearsal is about theater director Henrik Vogler,  (played by one of Bergman's stock company regulars Erland Josephson) staging a version of Strindberg's "A Dream Play."  Bergman had a great affinity for this play as he frequently refered to it in his other films and even staged a version of it for Swedish television.  As Vogler reviews his notes from the latest rehearsal a young actress, Anna Egerman shows up supposedly looking for a bracelet she lost.  The role of Anna Egerman is played by a very young Lena Olin who Bergman was very high on at the time. What Anna Egerman is really at the theater for is to confront Vogler about the affair he had with her mother Rakel Egerman (played by another Bergman regular Ingrid Thulin) years ago.

Let the fun and games begin as Vogler and Anna Egerman square off about the affair.  The mother shows up at the theater as a ghost or memory or something.  After all this is a Bergman film. 

As Bergman began to wind down his career he gravitated towards making films for television.  His kind of searing emotional dramas were getting harder to finance and he rightly figured that television was a way to keep working.  Bergman besides being an excellent film maker was also a talented theater director.

 

 

After The Rehearsal appears to be a summation of Bergman's time in the theater, staging plays and working with actors. In a way it's an old man's film since Bergman seems to be reflecting about his past life, career and relationships.  If you are a fan of this director you will probably find this film interesting otherwise it's kind of a slog to sit through but with some interesting scenes.  The film is well regarding by a number of critics.

Written by Ingmar Bergman, the running time is 70 minutes. 

1984 - THE COTTON CLUB, Coppola's gangster musical

The version of The Cotton Club is called the encore version but I've seen the original film and there's really not much difference.  Coppola appears to have cut out all the actors playing 1930's celebrities and added more musical numbers.  Other than that it's basically the same film.

Clearly the plan of the producer Robert Evans was to get lighting to strike twice with another gangster epic.  To that end he hired Mario Puzo to write an original story about the famous 1930's Harlem jazz club that was essentially run by white gangsters.  Dissatisfied with Mario Puzo's story, Evans turned to his Godfather director and writer Francis Ford Coppola to rewrite the film and eventually direct it.  Robert Evans must have been really desperate since he and Coppola had feuded a lot during the making of the Godfather films

The film has a notorious backstory involving real life gangsters and murder but lets not get into that here, that story can be easily found all over the internet.  With Coppola in charge the budget shot up and he was able to wrestle final cut away from Evans.  The resulting film is beautiful to look at with the carefully recreated sets and costumes from that era.  The musical numbers are all extremely well done.  If there is an issue with this film it's kind of with the story.

For all the work Coppola and his production team put in on this film the main love stories are rather on the thin side.  Richard Gere is a trumpet player who falls in love with gangster Dutch Schultz's mistress played by a miscast and far to young Diane Lane who was  probably 19 years old when she appeared in the film.  She hardly seems like the tough 1930's broad who falls in love with Gere.  Gregory Hines and his brother Maurice are tap dancers who appear at the Cotton Club and Lonette McKee is a light skinned black woman passing for white who Gregory Hines falls in love with.  This would have made an interesting story line but it's barely touched upon.

 

For all the flaws in the story telling this is a very entertaining film.  Coppola succeeds in mixing the musical numbers with the gangster story line rather well.  As one critic pointed out, in retrospect this film with it's mixed genres was the one he was attempting to make with the disastrous One From The Heart.

The film was written by  Francis Ford Coppola and the novelist William Kennedy, the running time is 139 minutes.

1984 - THE MASKS OF DEATH, an original Sherlock Holmes story

 A real old time actors film if ever there was one.  Peter Cushing in his 70's plays Sherlock Holmes for the last time.  He had played Holmes in Hammer's good version of The Hound of the Baskervilles and in a TV series.  British actor John Mills was Dr. Watson.  Mills was I believe 76 years old when this was filmed.  The rest of the cast is virtually a list of old guy British actors, Ray Milland, Gordon Jackson, Anton Diffring and somewhat incongruously American actress Anne Baxter in the role of Irene Adler.

The plot has Holmes and Watson called out of retirement to find a missing German prince.  But what you really have in this film is a couple of very good veteran actors showing how it's done when it comes to performing.  The film was directed by another old veteran Roy Ward Baker whose career started in 1947 and lasted until 1984.  Cushing had worked with Baker at Hammer so they probably got along very well.

 

The Masks of Death is Cushing's last major role before his retirement. He did some minor work after that but his health had started to decline.  Peter Cushing certainly had an interesting career.  His work at Hammer studios left an indelible mark on the studio and he found a whole new fame as Grand Moff Tarkin when George Lucas cleverly cast him in Star Wars.  A remarkable career.

 

The film was written by Anthony  Hinds and N. J. Crisp.  The running time is 78 minutes.

1984 - WET GOLD, is a young Brooke Shields in a swimming suit.

You know you're in trouble when it takes two nights to finish a film like this. Anyway, a 19 year old Brooke Shields probably at the peak of her beauty stars in what is basically a remake of The Treasure of Sierra Madre set in the Bahamas.  Brooke is a waitress with a fabulous wardrobe, particularly an assortment of swimming suits which she wears throughout the film. 

The film features Burgess Meredith in the Walter Huston role as the old guy who knows where there is a sunken boat full of gold bars.  Brooke and Burgess along with Brooke's no good boyfriend and a scuba diver head off to find the loot.  Naturally tension arises with Brooke dumping her boyfriend and falling for the scuba diver and as greed takes over the group violence arises.

 

But lets get this straight this is basically a girl watching film.  Brooke Shields looks fabulous but was always a very acting challenged young woman especially in her early career.  For the life of me I don't understand how Burgess Meredith got mixed up in this film.  I can only assume the chance to take a free trip to the Bahamas where the film was shot must have been the reason.

 I would honestly have to say this film is so inane and full of stock situations that it became somewhat of a chore to sit through. Even as a "girl watching" movie it leaves a lot to be desired.  Sure Brooke Shields looks great but every time she opens her mouth her lack of basic acting skills is more than apparent.  She's at her best when she is just laying on the boat sun tanning.

 

The film was written by David Sherwin who was associated with Lindsay Anderson of all people and Otis Jones.  The running time is 91 long minutes.

1984 - STOP MAKING SENSE, the Talking Heads concert show

 David Byrne the lead singer of the Talking Heads jumps, struts, shakes and runs around like a mad man possessed in this film version of one of their concerts that features most of their hit songs up to this point in the band's lifetime

It's all here the songs, Psycho Killer, Burning Down The House, Once In A Lifetime, Take Me To The River and Byrne running around in his famous big suit.

 

The concert film was directed by Jonathan Demme a big rock and roll fan who's major contribution was probably just turnin on the cameras and letting the Talking Heads do their thing.  Stop Making Sense is certainly a lot less pretentious than Martin Scorcese's The Last Waltz which practically patted itself on the back with all the big name talent they had for that film.

 

A very enjoyable film, however six years later Byrne walked away from the band.  Byrne didn't even bother to tell the band they were breaking up, they had to read about it in a newspaper article.

The film was written by the Talking Heads and Jonathan Demme, the running time is 88 minutes.

1984 - CITY HEAT, Eastwood and Reynolds together in a classic Hollywood disaster

 The director Blake Edwards wrote the story for City Heat which apparently was going to be a tribute to hard boiled crime films of the 1930's and 40's. Edwards was also going to direct and Warner Brothers persuaded Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds to team up together.  It seemed like easy money in the bank for the studio with those two stars.  The end result was a big flop which did additional harm to Burt Reynolds now fading movie career.

Apparently Eastwood was immediately disenchanted with Blake Edwards and had him removed during pre-production on the film.  Eastwood's production company took over the film and hired actor turned director Richard Benjamin a man who was fairly good with comedies but clearly didn't know anything about shooting an action film with lots of fights and gun battles.

 

Blake Edwards had his name removed for the screenplay and used a pseudo name " Sam O Brown," aka SOB which was the name of the film Edwards made that was a fairly nasty view of Hollywood studios.  Edwards claimed that his dealings with Warner Brothers and Clint Eastwood inspired SOB.  This seems very unlikely as SOB came out in 1981 and City Heat was released in 1984.

 

As you may have guessed this hasn't been a post about the actual film, frankly the film is just not good.  Audiences sniffed out a turkey and the studio deservedly lost money considering the mess that was made of it during the production phase of the film.

The running time of City Heat is 97 minutes.  Besides Blake Edwards the film lists an additional writer Joseph Stinson who wrote a couple of mediocre Clint Eastwood movies, (Sudden Impact and Heartbreak Ridge).

1984 - CANNONBALL RUN II, creative disaster or brillant parody

 So shockingly bad as a film it almost had to be deliberate.  The sequel to a film probably nobody wanted and a big career killer for one time box office champ Burt Reynolds.  The film almost defies any attempt to summarize the plot or explain the strange casting that prevails throughout the film.

Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise are part of a racing team with DeLuise also playing his alter ego Captain Chaos and an Italian mobster called Don Canneloni.  Members of Don Canneloni's gang include Abe Vigoda, Alex Rocco, Henry Silva and playwright Michael V. Gazzo.  Hispanic actor Ricardo Montalban plays an Arab Shiek with Jamie Farr playing his son.  It just gets weirder.

Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. are in the film, Frank Sinatra also makes a brief appearance so this is the final bow of the notorious Las Vegas "Rat Pack".  Shirley MacLaine and Marilu Henner are nuns and Susan Anton and Catherine Bach are a couple of drivers not above using their chests to gain an advantage during the race.

 

Throw in appearances by Telly Savalas, Charles Nelson Riley, Tim Conway, Don Knotts, Jim Nabors, Jack Elam and god knows who else and you have a who's who of the 1980's Hollywood performer scene.  Did I mention there is also an orangutan involved. The film was partially financed by Golden Harvest a company that Jackie Chan was associated with so Chan ends up appearing as one of the drivers along with former James Bond villain Richard Kiel. Chan's participation guaranteed box office success in Asia.

 

The mess was directed by Hal Needham a former stuntman who was also a buddy of Burt Reynolds.  Needham was an expert in staging car stunts but not much else, he lets the actors run amok throughout the film.  

Obviously just describing the cast should give you an idea of what you are getting into.  The film was written by Harvey Miller and Hal Needham, the running time is 108 very bizarre minutes.

1984 - INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, viewed at a revival theater

 I saw this film when it was first released in 1984, nearly 40 years later I attended a revival showing of this film and I can say, I still don't like it. Everything about the film with the exception of the photography and John Williams score just does not work.  Spielberg was always the master at where to put the camera and when to edit a scene for maximum impact and that really didn't fail him here, but the story and screenplay are just terrible.

 Producer George Lucas along with his longtime collaborators Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz apparently had no idea how to construct a decent story with entertaining thrills and some interesting characters.  The film was apparently strung together from a bunch of leftover action scenes that didn't make it into Raiders Of The Lost Ark.  After the fun and lighthearted approach to the first film in the Indiana Jones series Lucas decided he wanted to go darker.  The result were a lot of scenes which were extremely violent and gross more so than the first film.  And this was supposedly a family film.

The characters were nothing to write home about as well.  Harrison Ford does what he can to prop the film up but Kate Capshaw who is the female lead in this film is pretty terrible, no fault of the actor. The script really let her down.  The film also has a cute little oriental kid nick named "Short Round" a character who originally showed up in Sam Fuller's The Steel Helmet.  The film spends a lot of time on his foolishness as Indiana Jone's sidekick.

 

If anyone comes out on top it's the veteran British cinematographer Douglas Slocombe.  Slocombe was one of Spielberg's most important collaborators for a while and in fact he is next to Spielberg in about every shot in the making of feature found on YouTube. This is a good looking film

The film was commercially successful but as a piece of commercial entertainment, a complete failure.

 The running time is 118 minutes.

1984 - DUNE, alternate edition redux

This is a fascinating film floating around the internet.  Someone took the deleted scenes from David Lynch's failed science fiction epic, reedited them and supposedly following Lynch's original script put them in the proper context.  The end result is a much more coherent and frankly more interesting and entertaining adaptation of the Frank Herbert book than the recently released 2021 version.

Lynch's film version of Dune was considered a critical and commercial disaster.  Lynch had to deal with studio interference and a lot of pressure to make a Christmas release.  Clearly Universal Studios was looking for a Star Wars type of film but by hiring the idiosyncratic Lynch instead of a more conventional filmmaker they really should have known better.

 

This film has impressive set design and probably one of the most incredible casts ever assembled for a science fiction film.  Herbert's book was a long slog but in reality the story is actually rather simple to follow.  In this version some of the characters are really something to see.  Kenneth McMillian is Baron  Vladimir Harkonnen the chief bad guy who floats around in some sort of flying suit and has disgusting puss pouring out of his face.  The singer Sting shows up as one of Harkonnen's family who is presented  almost as a psychotic running around in what looks like a futuristic diaper.  Sian Phillips, Francesca Annis and Silvana Mangano are members of some mysterious group called the Bene Gesserit a group of mysterious psychic women dressed in black with bald heads.  And so it goes, after all this is a David Lynch film.

 

I doubt that we will ever have a definitive David Lynch version of Dune, but this film reedit is very good.  Lynch wrote the screenplay.  The released version of the original studio cut was 139 minutes.  This alternate version runs close to three hours.

1984 - A CHRISTMAS CAROL, yet another version

Yes it's another version of A Christmas Carol, this time with George C Scott in the role of Mister you know who.

This film was directed by one time British wonder boy Clive Donner.  What ever happened to his career anyway?  It has good production values, was photographed in England and with the exception of Scott has an English cast.

Considered to be one of the better and most faithful versions of the Dicken's warhorse of a story.  This strikes me as just another unecessary version of A Christmas Carol.  Filmmakers really need to take a nice long break before anyone tackles this story yet again.

Screenplay by Roger Overholt Hirson the running time is 100 very familiar minutes.

1984 - UNDER THE VOLCANO, later John Huston film

 The last day in the life of an alcoholic British diplomat as he wanders around a Mexican town during the Day Of The Dead festival.  From that short description you can gather this will not be a feel good type of film.  Albert Finney is the diplomat Geoffrey Firmin. Finney plays Firmin as a completely wasted drunk stumbling from one bar to another while guzzling anything with alcohol in it.

 Into the mix arrives Jacqueline Bisset as his estranged wife Yvonne Firmin and Anthony Andrews as his half brother Hugh Firmin to join in all of this fun as the film marches to its inevitable conclusion.

The director is the legendary John Huston in the later part of his career.  Huston would work on crap like Annie and Victory and then manage to pull together more interesting projects like this.  However this time I don't think that Huston was able to fine the right tone for this project.  The audience never understood why anyone should care about Albert Finney's character.  Frankly a film about a drunk wandering around drunk isn't exactly compelling viewing.

 

Guy Gallo wrote the screenplay under Huston's supervision, the film runs 112 minutes.