1985 - ONE MAGIC CHRISTMAS, attempt at making a good Christmas film

A little late with this one but it should still be considered as this is a well made Christmas film with good actors in it particularly Mary Steenburgen.  This is a Canadian production, the film was shot in Ontario instead of the over photographed city of Toronto which is the place for films set in New York which aren't filmed in New York.

Steenburgen plays the mother of a blue collar family.  She has a job in a supermarket as a cashier.  Her husband has been laid off from his job and they are about to be evicted from their home.  This film is obviously set during the Christmas season and it's safe to say that Steenburgen is not embracing the Christmas spirit this year.  Into the plot comes a Christmas angel who befriends Steenburgen's children and is tasked with helping her regain her Christmas spirit.  The angel is played by Harry Dean Stanton who is really cast against type in this film.  One Magic Christmas  is a little top heavy with some potentially tragic moments involving a bank robbery and Steenbugen's children almost dying but it's still a Christmas film in the tradition of It's A Wonderful Life, so you can expect a happy ending.

 

The film appears to have been actually photographed during the winter for a change and the setting of a blue collar city is a nice variation from the usual bogus Hallmark picture post card village that always shows up in their films.  The fantasy elements are handled in a very low key fashion which keeps the film from ending up as an overproduced special effects show and concentrates more on the characters.

 

One Magic Christmas was picked up for distribution by the Walt Disney company but for whatever reason the film was not really a financial success.  The reviews at the time were not that great which may have been the result of the film's setting and low key nature.  Still this is a very fine film and really deserves to be embraced as a corrective to most of those corny Christmas films that dominate the holiday season.

The film was written by Thomas Meehan one of Mel Brooks writing partners.  The running time is 90 minutes.

1985 - COMMANDO, a comedy pretending to be an Arnold Schwarzenegger action

A film patronized by about every film critic that saw it upon it's initial release.  The critics failed to realized that this was a very funny movie that was also a spoof of action films.  This was Arnold's third film as the lead and it certainly set the tone for every action film going forward.  Arnold was in incredible shape and his dead pan delivery of a bunch of classic comedy one liners in his dialog made this a very fun film.

Arnold is a widower living in a mountain retreat with his daughter played by a very young Alyssa Milano.  He's a former special ops Colonel who becomes a one man killing machine after his daughter is kidnapped by "The Wez" himself Vernon Welles.  It's just one over the top moment after another as Arnold rushes to save her.

 

This film has a decent supporting cast but the standout is Rae Dawn Chong as a flight attendant who gets involved in Arnold's quest.  The diminutive Chong, especially when she stands next to Arnold, more than holds her own in the comedy quips department playing off Arnold's violent shenanigans.

It all ends in a major shoot out as Arnold takes on an army of Vernon Welles's bad guys while basically blowing up the Harold Lloyd estate where this film was photographed.   

This is the film that really cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger's Hollywood leading man career and started his twelve year run in the action genre.  Commando still holds up as a very entertaining film.

The film was written by Steven E. de Souza, the running time is 90 minutes.

1995- DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, updated 40's Private Eye genre film

This film is based on a series of books by the author Walter Mosley.  Mosley worked in the ever reliable private eye genre set in the 1940's.  The character he created was a black private investigator named Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins in a series of mystery books.

 

In the film version of Mosley's novel  Devil in a Blue Dress this black investigator is played by Denzel Washington who is on the trail of an enigmatic woman who happens to be the mistress of a rich white guy running for mayor of Los Angeles.  Denzel Washington is very good as "Easy" Rollins a man who not only has to endure corrupt policemen, gangsters and politicians but also has to deal with all the racism they subject him to.   Denzel Washington narrates the film in the true 40's private eye tradition.

After getting beaten up numerous times by white cops and gangsters "Easy"sends for his friend "Mouse" played by Don Cheadle for help.  "Mouse" turns out to be one scary guy who carries a minimum of three guns and doesn't mind using them at the slightest provocation. Cheadle gives a great performance as a "friend" who is walking a line between sanity and very crazy.

 

Devil in a Blue Dress has an interesting mystery story, good photography and art direction. There's a real 1040's flavor to the film.  The director Carl Franklin does a good job moving the story along and with Denzel Washington had planned to film more stories about the "Easy" Rollins character but it was not to be.  The film didn't attract the audience it really deserved.  It's always a little depressing when a film of this quality can't seem to connect with an audience.  An excellent film.

Written by Carl Franklin, the running time is 102 minutes.

1985 - PEE-WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE, well I thought it was funny

Re-watched this at a revival theater the other night, the temperature outside the theater was  -4 below with a wind chill of -14.  The theater was packed.  An almost 40 year old comedy is still bringing people in although I think it would be safe to say it's kind of an older crowd.  They probably grew up on Paul Reuben's man/child character.  Such is the staying power of this film.

To say that critics were divided about the film would kind of be an understatement.  Some embraced it as a supremly funny dadaist experience. Other critics thought it was one of the biggest pieces of crap that was released that year. I guess you go with this kind of humor or you don't.  The film certainly exists in a world clearly created from Paul Reuben's imagination.  Apparently Reubens had been developing this comic character with Phil Hartman for a number of years at a comedy club in Los Angeles called "The Groundlings."  The character proved to be popular and Warner Brothers hired first time director Tim Burton  who had a comic book sensibility himself to direct.

 

Pee Wee's Big Adventure actually turned out to be a financial success.  In many ways it was a high point for both of them and it was kind of downhill after that.  Reubens was stuck with the Pee Wee character for most of career.  Burton while financially successful with his earlier films has definitely hit an artistic slump in his career with crap like the live action remake of Dumbo, the remake of Dark Shadows and most depressingly the remake of Planet of the Apes.

 

Anyway Paul Reuben's loaded the film up with lots of his comedian friends in strange character parts, once seen who can ever forget "Large Marge."  The production design is amusing and the score by Danny Elfman really got into the spirit of the film.

The film was written by Paul Reubens, Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol.  The running time is a lean and funny 91 minutes.

1985 - TAMPOPO, the ramen noodle comedy

 I'll have to admit when I saw this film back in the 1980's I didn't really get the jokes about food and the correct way to serve ramen noodles. Ramen wasn't really that popular in the United States at that time. After seeing it at a revival theater this week I can say this film is hilarious.

Nobuko Miyamoto plays a widow struggling to run a successful ramen noodle bar in Tokyo I believe.  Just when all is lost, in walks Tsutomu Yamazaki as a truck driver wearing a cowboy hat and driving a semi with the horns of a steer on top of it.  Yamazaki commits himself to helping her.

To do this, Yamazaki recruits a team to help Miyamoto become a success.  Right away the parallels to Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven become obvious and amusing.  The performances  throughout the film catch the comedic spirit of the story.  Nobuko Miyamoto as the put upon ramen chef may be down but she is not about to give up on her dream of running the best noodle bar in Tokyo.  Tsutomo Yamazaki is also hilarious as the brooding truck driver acting like an Asian John Wayne.

 

 Throughout the film the director Juzo Itami cuts to some brief vignettes showing other characters and their relationship to food.  Some of these vignettes walk the line between tragedy and comedy but all of them are very amusing.

Tampopo was a complete delight in this viewing and is highly recommended. 

The film was written by the director Juzo Itami and the running time is 115 minutes.

1985 - ZONE TROOPERS, it's space aliens vs Nazis

Prepare yourself for this goofy film.  A platoon of American soldiers trapped behind enemy lines during World War II find themselves encountering a space alien being held prisoner by some Nazis. The Nazis are attempting to exploit the alien technology for their own nefarious ends in order to win World War II.

Character actor Tim Thomerson is the tough American sergeant named Sarge naturally.  The film has the green kid, the old timer and a war correspondent just so all the cliched soldier bases are covered.  There's lots of mowing down Nazis with machine guns and the final battle features the space aliens and American soldiers taking on the Nazis with laser guns.

 

Clearly none of this was to be taken very seriously and the budget for the film was obviously low as befits such a ridiculous premise.  The writers and director of this film had enough sense to play this film as a joke even though it's supposed to be sort of serious.  

 

Zone Troopers was a Charles Band company production under the name of Empire Pictures. They specialized in low budget horror films for the most part.  They were behind such film classics such as Trancers, Meridian: Kiss Of The Beast and Dollman vs. Demonic Toys to name a few. These cheapo films graced the shelves of many a VHS rental store in the 1980's when all of the good stuff was rented.  Nowadays these kinds of films with their ridiculous plots would be big budget entertainments from the major film studios.

 Written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, the running time is 86 minutes.

1985 - LEGEND, disappointing fantasy film

It's Tom Cruise in the silliest character role in his career,  a guy called Jack o' the Green. This is a very expensive and beautiful looking film from Ridley Scott a director who is always good for creating pretty pictures in his films at the very least.

Scott apparently had the desire to create an original fantasy film.  To that end the story was filmed on studio sets, in this case the giant 007 soundstage at Pinewood studios in England where he could completly control the atmosphere.  The story has something to do with unicorns keeping the balance between darkness and light or good and evil as it were. Into the forest comes the actor Mia Sara playing a character called Princess Lili, she manages to get one of the unicorns killed and is kidnapped by a demon called the Lord of Darkness.  To the rescue comes Jack o' the Green along with a ragtag band of elfish helpers.  The elfish helpers speak in ridiculously anachronistic dialog and Cruise just looks downright silly jumping and running around in his silly woodsman costume.

 The film has stunning cinematography from Alex Thompson, makeup effects from Rob (The Thing) Bottin and again some very impressive sets.  

 

Universal, the studio that financed the film must have realized they had a real turkey on their hands. They took the film away from Scott and reduced his 114 minute cut to 89 minutes.  In order to make the film feel more contemporary they replaced the Jerry Goldsmith score with one from Tangerine Dream.  All this tinkering was a waste of time, the film was a critical and commercial failure.

I viewed the 114 minute Ridley Scott cut of Legend.  The original film screenplay and story was by William Hjortsberg.

1985 - THE BLACK CAULDRON , large scale animated fantasy from Disney

 Looking to hit the animation jackpot, the Disney company purchased the rights to a five book fantasy series called The Chronicles of Prydain.  The Disney animators took the first two books in the series and reworked the story now called The Black Cauldron into an 80 minute film with very mixed results.

By the time the film was completed The Black Cauldron was considered to frightening for younger children so 12 minutes were cut from it after a management change at the studio.

Disney may not have been the best place to make this film.  The story of The Black Cauldron uneasily jumps from good action scenes to some very cloying humor particularly with the creatures Gurgi and Doli.  It's as if the Disney animators didn't have the courage to completely make the film an adventure fantasy without resorting to a bunch of cartoon creature silliness.

 

This was an expensive film for Disney coming in at 44 million dollars back when 44 million dollars meant something in the 1980's. The film made only about half it's cost back when released.

 

Of course considering the present climate when it comes to animated pictures the film plays pretty well.

Written by Ted Berman, Vance Gerry, Joe Hale, David Jonas, Roy Morita, Richard Rich, Art Stevens, Al Wilson and Peter Youn.  Lots of writers, never a good sign for a film.  The Black Cauldron runs 80 minutes.

1985 - THE EMERALD FOREST, an interesting blend of many genre films.

 I can't even begin to guess what the director John Boorman had to deal with filming in the Amazon Jungle.  The film is a mix of many different films, The Searchers, Deliverance, some sort of ecological statement and finally a family drama.  The film ends up leading to a scene cribbed from the ending of another film Rolling Thunder.

Could a talented filmmaker like John Boorman pull it off?  Many critics thought so although a few found it a ponderous mess.

 

I thought the film was very good.  Say what you want about John Boorman but the guy always strives to tell a story that certainly isn't in any sense conventional.  At times this got him in trouble, witness Zardoz and Exorcist II:  The Heretic.

 

 The film was written by Boorman's long time associate Rospo Pallenberg and runs 114 minutes.

1985 - TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA - a tough crime thriller

Tough guy director William Friedkin tries for that old French Connection magic again with this sordid tale of a couple of Secret Service agents tracking down a dangerous counterfeiter.

Friedkin probably could do this type of film in his sleep.  He has another exciting car chase and lots of action to keep things moving along.  The cast at the time this film came out was mostly unknown actors which helped with the realism of the film.  This was similar to what Friedkin did in The French Connection, using Gene Hackman who at the time of that film was relatively unknown.

The film was photographed by Robby Müller who frequently worked with German director Wim Wenders and independent film maker Jim Jarmusch.  Müller gave the movie a real Los Angeles "look."  

People who enjoy cop movies should enjoy this one.

116 minutes, written by William Friedkin and Gerald Petievich.

1985 - FLETCH, modest but enjoyable comedy/mystery

Chevy Chase wise crack's his way through a fairly decent mystery as investigative reporter Irwin Fletcher.  The director is Michael Ritchie who turns in a competent professional job on the downside of his career. 

Chevy Chase's real life wiseguy persona can get mighty tiresome after a while but Fletch plays to his strong suit.  He improvised a lot during filming and got to play a lot of different characters since he was supposed to be an undercover reporter.

Fletch has a good cast of character actors, Richard Libertini, George Wendt, Joe Don Baker and Tim Matheson.  The film is also short so it doesn't wear out it's welcome coming in at around and hour and a half.

98 minutes, written by Andrew Bergman.

1985 - PHENOMENA - Another Argento gore film

A very attractive and very young Jennifer Connelly is the heroine of this Dario Argento film which features a lot of disgusting killings by a homicidal maniac, lots of gore and body parts everywhere.  That's entertainment I guess.  The twist in Phenomena is that Connelly has some sort of psychic powers that allow her to communicate with insects.  Connelly and the insect friends team up to track down the killer. 

Argento keeps Connelly dressed mostly in virginal white outfits and manages at one point to have her wandering around in her underwear.  It sounds exploitative and it probably is but in this film Connelly is a fairly tough little cookie facing down the psycho killer.  The big problem with casting Connelly was that she just couldn't act.  Connelly struggles to look like she is actually worried about all these disgusting killings of students at the all girls school she attends but she comes off like she lost some of her Barbie dolls instead.

I have to give it to Argento, even with all the gore and nasty killings he does bring a lot of style of the film.  I think the question is at what point does the film cross the line?  At times Argento seems like a nasty little kid whose idea of fun is pulling the wings off of live flies. 

Well there's never a dull moment in this Argento film and the soundtrack choices are very effective.  This giallo film is probably mostly for fans of the director and I am guessing his fans are a rather strange bunch if they get off on this stuff.  Stylish gory horror films are only going to get you so far in your film career.

110 minutes, written by Franco Ferrini and Dario Argento.

1985 - MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME, the third in the Mel Gibson series.

After hitting a high point with The Road Warrior,  there was hope that the next Mad Max film would continue the trend setting action scenes and settings of the first two films.  

This time Max ends up in "Bartertown" ruled by Tina Tuner (showing a lot of cleavage) as Aunty Entity.  Max ends up fighting in an arena known as Thunderdome for Aunty Entity in order for her to consolidate her power.  Max runs a foul of Entity and is exiled into the Australian desert.  So far in the film all is well, with lots of weird characters and a great fight in the Thunderdome.  Then things start to go downhill pretty quickly.

Max ends up being rescued by a group of kids living in at an oasis.  The kids seem like they stumbled out of Lord of the Flies and somehow wandered onto the set of this film.  The film also starts to turn into a comedy of all things with lots of silly slapstick gags.

As was the custom in the previous films, this film has another spectacular chase sequence and I suppose it's unfair to compare it to The Road Warrior car chase but this chase is somewhat of a disappointment.  Overall the film is somewhat of a letdown from the first two films.

107 minutes, written by Terry Hayes and George Miller.

1985 - REMO WILLIAMS: THE ADVENTURE BEGINS, and apparently ended with this film

An attempt to star a new film franchise based on a crummy paperback book series called The Destroyer, some of which I have read.  Remo Williams is a former marine and New York City cop whose death is faked so he can become a member of a secret spy agency called CURE.  Remo is retrained in the martial arts by a Korean master called Chiun.  He then goes on a lame spy mission to stop an arms manufacturer from selling defective weapons to the military. 

 

The film was written and directed by a couple of James Bond veterans.  Christopher Wood had written The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.  Guy Hamilton had directed Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun.  These guys should have been able to juice this film up a bit but the whole thing seems a little tired. 

Fred Ward played the lead Remo Williams although he seems a little to rough to be an action hero.  Joel Grey the musical comedy star is the real show in this film as Chiun the martial arts character who trains Williams.  Chiun is probably the most interesting character in the film, teaching Williams to dodge bullets while watching American soap operas.  

The action set pieces are OK with lots of stunt men dangling from high places but nothing really spectacular.  The film does have a sense of humor and clearly none of it was to be taken seriously, it's just nothing special.  I've seen worse.

121 minutes.

1985 - DEATH WISH 3, middle aged white guy right wing fantasy or parody of the vigilante film genre?

Sometimes you can learn more about the human condition from watching a stupid film like this than anything that was directed by Yasujiro Ozu.  In Death Wish 3,  Charles Bronson is back in his signature role as vigilante Paul Kersey out to slaughter all of those "creeps" menacing middle aged white people in a run down apartment in one scary neighborhood in East New York City. 

It is completely impossible for me to tell if this film is supposed to be serious or a complete joke.  The plotting and characterization are so ridiculous that the director Michael Winner could not have possibly been serious about this film.  The first Death Wish film was released 11 years earlier and Charles Bronson wasn't exactly a spring chicken when that one came out.  However for a guy in his early 60's he's in pretty good shape.  He has a love scene with the film's female lead Deborah Raffin.  Raffin was a one time up and coming starlet who's career never made it into the big time.  Their love scene such that it is, is extremely uncomfortable to watch but how many 60 year old men would run around with a shirt off?   But getting back to the love scene, there is no need to worry about any additional love scenes,  since Raffin is Bronson's love interest we know she's toast.  

The plot has Kersey showing up to help a friend living in a run down neighborhood deal with an improbably multiracial gang of "creeps" extorting the good citizens of that neighborhood.  This gang of "creeps" probably has more members than the 1st Infantry that stormed the beaches on D-Day.  Since this is a Death Wish film the body count with the good guys vs the "creeps" is just extremely high throughout the film.

After lots of killing, raping, stealing,  stabbing and blowing things up,  Bronson grabs a Browning machine gun and literally starts shooting everyone in sight.  When that runs out of bullets he whips out a pistol that uses cartridges made to stop an elephant, that's when the real killing starts. This 15 to 20 minute slaughter with Bronson and what's left of the gang of "creeps" essentially demolishing the entire neighborhood is how the film ends.  A whole lot of stuntmen fall off of buildings which makes me remember the good old days when people did real stunts and weren't replaced by computer animation.  As is to be expected the police let Bronson go so he can star in the next Death Wish chapter Death Wish 4:  The Crackdown.

 

The director is an old favorite of this blogger, Michael Winner.  Winner was a pro at filming on actual locations and completely incompetent in about every other area of film making which included good storytelling.  But I could be completely wrong, Winner may have realized that this was a chance to send up this film series.  With the death of Michael Winner this year, the truth will probably never be known. Highly recommended.

92 minutes, written by Don Jakoby.

1985 - POLICE STORY, Jackie Chan in his prime

My  copy of Police Story is bad, the dubbing is bad, the print is bad, and it's been cut by about 10 minutes.  Still this is Jackie Chan starring, directing and doing a lot of his own stunts.

The plot of Police Story is another chance to watch Jackie Chan a very physical actor in top athletic condition when the film was made.  Chan's character is one he developed on his own, sort of an action hero who actually gets hurt during fights and a clown who does a lot of physical comedy reminiscent of Buster Keaton.

Chan always loads his film up with good looking women, in this case Brigitte Lin and Maggie Cheung a couple of intelligent actors who are required to act like a couple of very stupid women.  Women in a Jackie Chan film don't come off particularly well as characters.

What Police Story is all about are the incredible stunts and action sequences.  The film starts with an amazing chase through a shanty town and ends will an all out battle in a shopping mall.  All this is done with stunt men bouncing around and looking like they actually got hurt which in all probably they did.

90 minutes, written by Jackie Chan and Edward Tang.

1985 - MR VAMPIRE, classic horror comedy from Hong Kong

The Chinese like it fast and very goofy in this vampire comedy which features hopping vampires.  The Chinese have it figured out, vampire films are kind of stupid

  I actually laughed at loud at this nonsense particularly the scenes where the Taoist priest attempts to keep his assistant from turning into a vampire by filing down his teeth.

This was a big hit when it came out in Taiwan and was responsible for three sequels.  

As usual with these Hong Kong films from the 1980's, the stunt work is very impressive.

96 minutes, written by Sze-to Cheuk-hon, Barry Wong and Wong Ying.