Category: 1986

The Karate Kid Part II (1986, John G. Avildsen)

Towards the end of the first act, Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita have a potentially great scene. The best friends have traveled to Okinawa so Morita can see his dying father (Charlie Tanimoto, in a less than nothing part). Morita’s sad, pensively looking out at the ocean, and Macchio’s got some perspective to share. Macchio’s father died (at some point before the first movie), so now he’s the wiser one in the pair.

While it’s a big swing in a film of big swings, it’s also a good, unique big swing. And then Robert Mark Kamen can’t actually write the scene because he’s got nothing to say in it or any other part of The Karate Kid Part II. It’s a singularly floundering motion picture.

The first nine minutes of Part II recap and conclude the previous film, bringing back Martin Kove as the bad karate teacher. He’s abusing his loser students, and Morita has to intercede to save the day. Would it have worked better last time? It’d have had a point; there’s only so much they can do with it here because, since the first movie, Kid’s lost the female presence. Neither Elisabeth Shue (as Macchio’s girlfriend) nor Randee Heller (as Macchio’s mom) appears. Outside first movie footage. It’s okay, though, because Macchio will meet a new girl in Okinawa and the first movie barely had Heller, so a sequel would need her less. Especially since Macchio and Morita are globetrotting.

After the first movie wrap-up, Part II spends another ten minutes setting up Morita’s ground situation back in Okinawa. This film dumps Morita, the widower, which the previous film established and used to set up Macchio as a surrogate son. It doesn’t retcon it, just ignores it. Because Morita’s spent his entire life mooning over his girlfriend from teenage years, played by Nobu McCarthy. He had to run away from Okinawa and leave her because her arranged marriage husband-to-be Danny Kamekona wanted to fight Morita to the death. Oh, also, Kamekona was Morita’s best friend. And Tanimoto taught them both karate as kids because Morita insisted. It’s a bunch of setups with very little pay-off because Morita never actually gets anything to do. He gets to observe action sequences and do some terribly choreographed and shot karate, but his “returning home” arc happens primarily off-screen. Macchio sometimes sees it from afar, which just draws attention to it not being part of the movie.

Though if they did make it more part of the movie, Part II would probably bungle it, like Macchio’s romance with Tamlyn Tomita. Tomita and Macchio get several outing and date scenes, but their romance arc is wanting. Tomita’s got a lot to do—including play damsel in distress a couple times—she just doesn’t get a character to do it with. She does get some scenes with Macchio explaining the way the world works. Karate Kid Part II’s got a weird American jingoism going on. It’s like someone wanted to make negative commentary, but then none of the other creatives understood what was happening. It’s an embarrassing oversight.

The Tomita thing is a waste of time, at least as character development goes. Instead, it does its job as a walking tour forecasting the rest of the movie.

Yuji Okumoto plays the villain. He’s Kamekona’s best karate student and so starts picking fights with Macchio, with Macchio not understanding Okumoto’s not a rich kid bully, he’s a potential murderer. Okumoto puts up with a lot of silly with his character, and it’s impressive he can keep it together by the end.

Much of Karate Kid Part II plays like a TV show; the characters are thin, and the events are frequent.

There aren’t really any standout acting performances. Morita’s okay with what he’s got, but it’s not enough. Macchio’s a kid on an unexpected vacation, and sometimes it does feel like his movie, not often. Even the fight scene finish complicates things to take it away from Macchio and Morita’s relationship. It takes a back seat to Morita’s rekindling with McCarthy, which (again) is seen through Macchio from afar.

Not a good script, but even worse: lousy plotting.

Better anything technical would help. Avildsen’s direction is barely competent, with he and cinematographer James Crabe (who was so good on the first one) zooming in on all the action. Maybe wider shots would reveal the “Welcome to Hawaii” billboards giving away they’re not in Okinawa. Avildsen’s particularly bad with the fight scenes. Also, he appears to have told villain Kamekona to talk like Cookie Monster.

Bill Conti’s music is terrible, repetitive, and annoying. The omnipresent flute is near intolerable, and the only good bit of music sounds like leftovers from Conti’s F/X score.

The good guys are all sympathetic—Morita, Macchio, Tomita, McCarthy—but it’s a long movie with nothing going for it but sympathetic characters.

River’s Edge (1986, Tim Hunter)

River’s Edge hinges on a few things. First, Joshua John Miller’s performance. The film’s about a group of teenagers reacting (and not reacting) to one of them killing another and showing off the body. Miller is protagonist Keanu Reeves’s little brother, who emulates and identifies with his brother’s worst traits. Second, Jürgen Knieper’s score. The music is ostentatious and emotive, blaring over the performances, and it needs to pay off for it to work. Finally, Crispin Glover. Glover’s performance is simultaneously affected, eccentric, and absurd. It really needs to work for Edge to succeed.

Working in Miller and Glover’s favor is the script, written by Neal Jimenez. Jimenez doesn’t have a lot of subtlety, starting with murderer Daniel Roebuck getting in a protracted argument with the gas station clerk (Taylor Negron in a fantastic cameo) about buying beer. River’s Edge is a movie where everyone speaks from the id, making more and more sense as the film goes on. Edge has a present action of thirty-six or so hours. It starts with Miller observing Roebuck wailing near the corpse, then meeting up with him at the gas station. It’s before the school day. Besides the epilogue, the main action wraps up before the end of the next school day.

The first half of Edge is entirely from the teenagers’ perspectives, whether it’s how Reeves sees mom Constance Forslund, Ione Skye’s fascination with teacher Jim Metzler, or Glover’s “friendship” with local sixties drop-out Dennis Hopper. Hopper provides the kids (and possibly their parents) with their weed. The kids get it for free. Unclear about the adults.

Hopper’s a mostly hermit, stoned all the time, playing with an unloaded revolver, dancing with his blow-up doll girlfriend, and talking about the time he once killed the woman he loved.

Hopper would be another of the film’s big swings if he didn’t pay off before the third act. It takes forever for River’s Edge to get where it’s going, amping up the danger as it goes, but along the way, there are some obvious highlights. The big turning point is in the second half when the film angles the narrative distance just enough to show the kids from the adults’ perspective. Or, at least, less subjectively than before.

Once the first school day begins, Roebuck tells Glover and Reeves about the murder and takes them to see the body. Glover immediately decides they need to help cover it up for Roebuck while Reeves detaches. Roebuck’s also detached from the situation, not exactly showing off the corpse with pride but as a curiosity. The first day has Glover bringing more people over to look at the body (everyone thinks he and Roebuck are pranking them), while Reeves gets more and more upset. He’s just unable to express it.

We’ve already seen Reeves’s home-life—Miller’s an uncontrollable shithead at best, a vicious bastard at worst. Mom Forslund already has her hands full with work, live-in asshole boyfriend Leo Rossi, and youngest child, daughter Tammy Smith. Miller obviously resents Smith and her still experiencing childhood, while he’s already getting stoned and hanging out with another little shit, Yuzo Nishihara. Miller looks up to Reeves’s friends, specifically Glover and Roebuck, while Reeves tries to keep him from bullying Smith too much. The film joins the arc in progress, with Miller’s resentment reaching its boiling point.

Similarly, Skye is nearly her limit with her erstwhile boyfriend, Glover. Late in the film, Reeves has the very adult observation; it’s just a very bad time for everything, and they need to try to get through it. Based on the other examples, it’s the most adult observation in the film. Metzler sees himself as the cool ex-hippie teacher who tells the Reagan Era kids about the good old days when his generation changed the world for the better (though Metzler would’ve been their age and seen it through teen eyes). Hopper’s arc is about confronting the narrative he’s been living and the reality he’s been avoiding, and how it plays out with this teenage social circle he’s inadvertently joined. Forslund’s overwhelmed and frantic. Then cop Tom Bower’s only approach to teenage interaction is to berate them into submission. No one really knows what to do. Their inability to acknowledge it puts them into an adversarial relationship with the teens, who are quite aware of what they’re going through. With some late-Cold War existential nuclear dread.

The majority of the runtime is spent on the night, specifically after midnight. Glover’s trying to get the gang together to hide the body and get Roebuck enough cash to leave town. It proves more difficult than expected since his car can’t make a significant trip, no one’s got any money, and Roebuck’s indifferent to an escape plan. Meanwhile, Reeves feels the consequences of his actions and inactions, including further alienating Miller while also getting into a dust-up with mom’s boyfriend Rossi.

Miller will spend the rest of the movie juxtaposed against Roebuck (often literally, kudos to Howard E. Smith and Sonya Sones’s sublime editing) as he becomes more and more dangerous, committing to taking his revenge on Reeves.

Circumstances—and Glover—pair off the rest of the cast. He exiles Skye for talking back (she’s wondering why the dead girl isn’t as important as bro Roebuck) and then assigns Reeves to keep her company, leading to a great character arc for them. Glover’s also stashed Roebuck with Hopper, which ends up forcing Hopper to deconstruct his own bullshit, unable to sympathize with psychopath Roebuck even when he tries to bond over macho stuff.

The film’s a graphic dissection of toxic masculinity, as it plays out over multiple generations, and the horrific effects it has on boys and girls alike.

In other words, Jimenez can get away with the id-speak. Likewise, Miller and Glover can get away with their performances (so long as they actually develop, which they do). And Knieper’s booming tragic operatic score has the right action to company.

Technically, Smith and Sones’s editing is the highlight. Frederick Elmer’s photography is good, but he and director Hunter shoot the film mostly naturalistically. Yes, the light’s muted, but it’s because the light’s muted. The editing is where the film finds its exquisite moments. Hunter’s direction is intentional throughout, taking well into the second act to do much besides observe the characters and their reactions. River’s Edge is mostly about reaction.

As far as the acting, Hopper’s the best performance. No one else gets anywhere near as good an arc. Skye and Reeves are good as the heroes. Glover’s indescribable yet successful. Roebuck’s appropriately disturbing, revolting, and tragic. It’s an elegant move. We get the most insight into Roebuck through Hopper’s perspective. It also helps everyone’s supposed to be stoned or drunk most of the time.

River’s Edge is a race. Hunter gets the momentum going in the first act, and the film never slows down, even as some of the plot’s more significant swings threaten the derail it. It takes until the finale to really pay off, and that pay-off is incredible stuff. Then the epilogue—not set to Knieper’s score but a perfect song selection—wraps it up beautifully.

I’m not sure it’s exactly a challenging watch, but it’s a thoughtful, painful one. River’s Edge is great.

The Color of Money (1986, Martin Scorsese)

The Color of Money opens with a brief narration explaining the pool game variation nine-ball. Director Scorsese does the narration, which is the most interest he ever shows in the game of pool for the rest of the movie. The narration serves a straightforward purpose—it lets the audience know when to know the game is won. Later in the film, Paul Newman will give a brief history of nine-ball as the regular money game for pool players and pool hustlers, but that description’s for texture. Scorsese’s opening one is all the film needs.

Scorsese loves shooting pool games; he, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and editor Thelma Schoonmaker go wild showing the games in progress; the cues hitting the balls, the balls moving across, sinking. But the game itself—which is the focus of all the characters’ attention—Scorsese’s got zero interest in it.

The film is an extended-length sequel—twenty-five years before Money, Newman played the same character in The Hustler. Though there’s minimal connection between the films. I think they reference one of Newman’s shots from the original, and it gets briefly discussed, but there aren’t any other echoes. Because Newman’s playing the guy his Hustler character became in the twenty-five years since that picture.

After he gave up playing pool, Newman became a liquor salesman. When or how he became a liquor salesman, how he ended up in Chicago mostly, sort of dating bartender and bar owner Helen Shaver, sort of stakehorsing John Turturro. Outside the vague intimations about his pasts with Shaver and Turturro, which both seem recent, the film doesn’t offer anything else about Newman’s past. Instead, the film’s got to create the character from near scratch. Or, at least, nothing more than a paragraph description. A short paragraph.

Newman’s got to do it on his own, too, because Scorsese’s busy directing the hell out of the movie, and Richard Price’s script focuses on Newman’s proteges, Tom Cruise and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Cruise is the pool player who reminds Newman of his pre-Hustler self; Mastrantonio is Cruise’s girlfriend and “manager,” but she’s got her eyes on the angle just like Newman, and he sees an opportunity for the three of them to make some money.

Now, if Color of Money were a real sequel to The Hustler, there’d be some very obvious analogues between the films because Hustler’s about what happens when your stakehorse ruins your life for his own benefit. The Color of Money is about what happens when… well, when your stakehorse screws up your life for no one’s benefit. After Scorsese’s nine-ball monologue and the opening titles, the first thing in the film is Newman trying to sell Shaver on some cheaper but smooth enough booze. He’s not hustling her; the stuff works so well when added to top-shelf booze, not even Newman can tell the difference, but he’s selling her something.

And it’s going to turn out what Newman’s selling kids Cruise and Mastrantonio is different from what they think they’re buying. Feelings get hurt, suckers get hustled. The film bodily, jarringly forces the narrative distance from Cruise and Mastrantonio to Newman at a certain point, with Scorsese, Price, and Newman pushing forward to make it seem like a natural shift.

Since the film’s kept the characters generally flat and let the actors bring all the drama, they get away with it for the most part. The first two-thirds of the film is great scenes followed by okay but occasionally dull scenes. The boring scenes are usually breathtakingly directed and consistently well-acted, so they’re passable, but the film has no rhythm to the character drama. The filmmakers know they won’t need it after a certain point, so why bother.

Newman and Mastrantonio are great. Cruise is good. When she’s got something to do, Shaver’s good. The movie forgets about her too much—Newman calls her from the road, but we never see or hear Shaver’s side of the conversation. It’s a peculiar misstep in the film, which is otherwise very sure of all its moves. Sure, it showcases Newman’s performance, but it’s expressly telling and not showing.

The film starts stumbling in the second act, when Cruise keeps pissing Newman off—Cruise is too arrogant—promises never to do it again, does it again. Money makes Cruise into a caricature while also giving Newman and Mastrantonio more depth. With an entirely different third act, it might work. With the one, the film’s got… well, if you’re going to have a half-baked resolution, do it with a great cast and outstanding filmmaking.

There are some nice supporting performances, particularly Forest Whitaker, who’s got a showy scene. Then Bill Cobbs is occasionally around to show what may have happened to Newman if he hadn’t gotten into liquor sales.

The Color of Money is way better than it should or needs to be. Not just Scorsese’s meticulous, glorious direction or Newman’s patient, simultaneously patient and agitated performance. Cruise and Mastrantonio are just as key to the overall success, with Mastrantonio tempering Cruise’s (intentional) excesses.

Technically, the only things wrong with it are the so-so opening titles and then Robbie Robertson’s middling score. Scorsese leans on the music a lot too. Robertson’s got like one theme and uses it for everything, which really doesn’t work when you’ve got a movie about three very different characters, two different romances, pool hustling, and—with caveats—love of the game.

It should’ve been twenty minutes shorter or twenty minutes longer. In the middle, The Color of Money just seems an unsteady, incomplete gesture. Price’s script has the places where it most definitely succeeds but also places where it most definitely does not.

So it’s a mixed bag; a very, very good one.

Aliens (1986, James Cameron)

Thirty-six years after its release, recreating the original Aliens (albeit on home media) experience is difficult. Not only has there been a direct sequel, there have been multiple reboot sequels, and the extended, “special edition” version has been readily available for nineteen years now. I’m not ready for an Aliens canon deep-dive, but when did a much later sequel, they did it with details from the special edition.

So it’s entirely possible to watch Aliens, the theatrical version—running a spry 137 minutes (the extended edition adds seventeen minutes)–in the context of what’s changed for the franchise since it was the traditional version of Aliens. Probably starting with thinking of Aliens as a franchise entry, not a sequel. I should also preface—I’ve seen Aliens a dozen times; I’ve seen the theatrical version thrice, including this time. “My” version is the special edition version.

And I was worried it’d be hard to watch Aliens without that perspective getting in the way.

Luckily, Aliens is not a vacillating memory, it’s a movie; once I stopped thinking about how the film works as a proto-old [man or woman] franchise—like Sigourney Weaver as a (mentally) more mature action hero, I was able to just let it play. Because Aliens is less about Weaver’s arc than I remembered. There’s one big missing character motivator in the theatrical version and it only changes the impact. Instead of Aliens leaning in on the motherhood allegory in the theatrical version, it’s about Weaver proving herself in an entirely different context than before. She’s still got a great arc with Carrie Henn, it’s just less the focus of the film. The focus is, of course, survival in extremely hostile, constantly worsening conditions.

Aliens starts with an Alien epilogue. Weaver gets in trouble for blowing up her spaceship; they fire her. She ends up back on Earth in a shitty apartment, hanging out with the cat (the only other returning character), working a crap (compared to her previous position) job, and smoking too many cigarettes. She can’t convince the Company stooges to investigate her story, though she’s got an ally in self-described “okay guy” Company man Paul Reiser. Writer and director Cameron and Weaver do a very quick job setting up Weaver’s character, post-resolution. They start the development arc once Weaver wakes up—almost sixty years after she expected—when it’s unclear she’s going to get scapegoated, which runs one character development arc under another, not letting the subtle one through until the plot requires it.

Then one day, Reiser shows up at Weaver’s door with a Marine lieutenant, William Hope. That planet no one believed Weaver about? They’ve lost contact with the colony. Reiser wants Weaver to come with him and Hope (and Hope’s Marines); just an observer, though. The Marines will have it. After some cajoling (and because otherwise it’s a very different movie), Weaver agrees and now Aliens proper is underway.

For most of the runtime, Aliens never looks, sounds, or feels like an Alien sequel. Not in terms of the filmmaking. If it weren’t for the three hyper sleep scenes, it wouldn’t at all. There’s the opening, where Weaver—asleep in her pod—gets rescued. Then there’s the Marines waking up from their hyper sleep, which goes from feeling vaguely Alien to being very much Aliens. And then there’s another hyper sleep sequence where Cameron ties it back to the original even more. Though, stylistically—even when he’s doing the Alien reference—he often adds something to it. Something more akin to a 2001 reference, actually. There are a number of 2001 homages in the first act, but also Cameron doing something of his own. Aliens is a very thoughtful, thorough film. A verisimilitude achievement, requiring a lot of subtleties to navigate the film’s constraints. Even if the budget had been bigger, for instance, there were technological limits as far as creating the omnipresent special effects; Aliens is a special effects bonanza. And it’s all from scratch.

The film occasionally will let Weaver’s observations determine a scene’s narrative distance. She’s seeing it new, the audience is seeing it new, also now the characters (the Marines) who are not seeing it new… they then get othered enough to become subjects. It’s one of Cameron’s neat narrative moves. He has a number of them, in addition to his neat directorial moves. The film’s chockfull of good moves.

Aliens proper is the story of the Marines mission. They wake up, they banter and bicker, they find out in a briefing it’s an Alien sequel, then it’s basically down to the planet and the film never takes a break until the denouement. Aliens’s biggest chunk of runtime has a present action of maybe twenty-four hours, and short segues between the contiguous scenes. The film introduces ten supporting characters at the same time and requires you track them for the next two hours. It’s rushed but they’re rushed too. Got to get down to the planet.

Once they’re on the planet and at the colony, the film changes gears again. Cameron’s done his take on Alien-style space travel, he’s done a back to Earth bit, but the colony’s something again. It’s a little bit of a Western, just one where they’re in high tech future rooms instead of an Old West town with a false front. And they’re on an alien world, which gives the characters no pause. With one exception—the space station in the first act—Cameron’s utterly devoid of wonderment when musing about the future and its strange new worlds. He never forces it to be grim and gritty though; it’s simply unimaginable it could be any other way.

There’s some more setup in the second act with Weaver, Reiser, and the Marines finding out what’s going on with the aliens. They’ve also got to pick up Henn—a little girl who survives for weeks, hiding from the monsters in the vents. Aliens is all about the vents. Henn’s character started the still strong entertainment trope of lone survivor kid showing up to give some necessary exposition—the not-always Feral Kid—but Cameron isn’t craven here. He never treats Henn as functional, because he never makes any bad moves in the script. It’s such a good script.

The Marines. There’s Hope as the lieutenant, but he’s new and doesn’t have any combat experience. One of the “funny” things about Aliens is realizing, even with third act twists, most of the problems are because Hope’s bad at his job. Al Matthews plays the sergeant. He’s more likable and memorable than good, but also he doesn’t have much he’s got to do. When he does have bigger moments, it’s usually to support someone else’s character development, like Michael Biehn. Biehn’s the corporal, he’s succinct not laconic, and kind of a Western hero. Biehn’s got the most interesting performance in the film because he’s the only one who defaults to trusting Weaver’s judgment. The movie’s often about the two of them problem-solving.

In between shooting at alien monsters with acid blood.

There are nine more Marines, but Bill Paxton and Jenette Goldstein are the most important ones. Paxton’s the wiseass who breaks under pressure and Goldstein’s the badass who doesn’t. Cameron’s got a really interesting approach with Paxton—he makes the other characters rein him in when he spirals and turns it into character development for all involved. It’s really effective.

Of the Marines, only Biehn and Hope really get arcs. Paxton’s panicking always plays out in active scenes. Goldstein gets a little more character work than most but it’s about thirty seconds worth. Aliens is an action movie, after all.

There aren’t any bad performances. Paxton gets the most tiring (but just imagine being under siege by aliens and stuck with him), but it’s never bad. Best performances are Weaver, Biehn, Reiser, Henn, and Lance Henriksen. Henriksen is the ship android who Weaver doesn’t trust because of the last movie. Cameron’s very obvious about their arc, which is the least of Weaver’s four character relationship arcs—Henn, Reiser, Biehn, then Henriksen–and makes sure every scene is excellent. The scenes are good showcases for Henriksen too.

The whole movie’s a showcase for Weaver. Going back and fighting the monsters from her nightmare strips her to the id. It’s a great performance in what’s really just an action hero part. Weaver and Cameron make it seem like more, but it’s the performance and the direction.

Lots of technical greats. James Horner’s music, Ray Lovejoy’s cutting, Peter Lamont’s production design, Emma Porteous’s costume design. Adrian Biddle’s photography is successful, competent, and good, but when Aliens betrays itself as a very grim, very gritty Flash Gordon serial, it’s usually because of Biddle’s lighting.

The special effects are usually outstanding. There’s one bad composite shot—though Cameron directs the heck out of it—and some of the alien planet exteriors look too soundstage (Biddle’s lights). Otherwise, the effects are stellar. Including the slimy aliens, which is the most important part. Stan Winston does a singular job with the aliens.

After the first act, Cameron’s direction tries to be more functional than flashy. It works. He asks a lot from the actors and they always deliver; it’s masterful action suspense.

Thanks to Cameron, Weaver, and everyone else, Aliens is a resounding success. Special edition or theatrical version, it’s always spectacular.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986, Frank Oz)

I begin talking about Little Shop of Horrors with a confession—I didn’t like it as a kid. I think I saw it a couple times on video, but a full decade before I was willing to give musicals a chance. Now, of course, I can appreciate the absolute glory of the film’s musical numbers, particularly in the first half. Director Oz, choreographer Pat Garrett, production designer Roy Walker, cinematographer Robert Paynter, editor John Jympson, the entire cast, they do a phenomenal job. The film opens—after a text crawl—with its Greek chorus, Tichina Arnold, Tisha Campbell, and Michelle Weeks and it’s excellent, but then the film brings it up another dozen notches with an elaborate, full-set (Pinewood Studios set so a gargantuan one) number, which also brings in protagonists Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene—it’s truly wonderful stuff.

Also when I was a kid I didn’t like movies shot on sets. They had to be shot on location, something I’d forgotten about but was—as I recall—solely so my best friend and I could dismiss things out of hand.

I was obnoxious.

Anyway. The movie’s mostly great. Around the halfway mark, it becomes a special effects spectacular, with a giant otherworldly Venus flytrap (voiced by Levi Stubbs) singing duets in real-time with Moranis. There are bigger effects sequences as the plant grows and grows, thanks to Moranis’s willingness to provide it with human blood then flesh, but nothing’s more impressive than the puppeteers keeping it all in time. It’s phenomenal work. And exactly the kind of thing I should’ve appreciated as a kid (being a Muppet fan). Maybe it was the pan and scan.

While the story is about this carnivorous plant promises Moranis fame and fortune—instead of early sixties skid row squalor, the film’s got a separate arc running simultaneously: revealing Greene can belt out a song like nobody’s business. Throughout the film, outside the musical numbers (but also in most of them), Greene does a blonde bimbo voice—she’s never a blonde bimbo caricature, mind you, she’s just got the voice and the character’s behind it. She sings a full solo in the bimbo voice, but when it comes time for her big romance number with Moranis, Little Shop reveals her full range and it propels the film. Just when the film’s going to need it the most, because the third act is mess.

It’s not a mess, just messy. There aren’t great cameos—the first two acts have John Candy, Christopher Guest, and Bill Murray (with Steve Martin basically doing a giant extended cameo as Greene’s sadist boyfriend, the local dentist)—instead we get Jim Belushi. I mean… Jim Belushi? He’s fine, but… Jim Belushi? Candy’s got a funny scene as a radio show host, Murray’s a pain seeker who enrages Martin with his desire for torment, and then Jim Belushi. Little Shop manages to avoid caricature in every one of its principals—including the Greek chorus—for the last stunt cameo to be a disposable one from Belushi. It’s a very weird miss, especially since it comes after an extended break from stunt cameos so it’s not like they needed another one. They could’ve gone out with Murray and Martin’s simultaneously revolting and exhilarating scene, but instead Belushi in a throwaway.

So, messy.

Obviously, in the intervening years since release, we—the royal we, lots of people knew at the time because it’s a stage adaptation—know the film’s got an entirely different ending than originally intended and shot and there are some rough tone shifts in the third act. It doesn’t help the “Moranis gets famous” arc is too rushed (and a much better place for a stunt cameo), especially since Greene doesn’t participate in it even after they become de facto business partners.

The resolve is abrupt but decent, with Oz finding a good enough tone, seemingly aware he’s just got to get to the end credits and they can run a song medly and it’ll all be fine.

Great performances from Greene, Moranis, and Martin. Martin’s an Elvis bad boy who’s the perfect combination of vile and jackass. Moranis is the shy orphan who doesn’t realize he’s come into his own; he does well on the singing, but he’s never the actual star of the sequence, it’s Stubbs or Greene. Greene’s breathtaking. Her character arc’s not great but it’s good enough under the circumstances and, wow, can she belt. There’s one number where she’s holding this note and ostensibly Moranis is keeping up with her but it’s like… what noise was he actually making because how could he keep up.

Stubbs is awesome as the plant.

And it’s impossible imagine anyone but Arnold, Weeks, and Campbell as the Chorus, who also suffer in the third act (but at least they get to go out on a great number).

Little Shop’s a delight and a big success. Even with the messy third act, changed ending, whatever, it’s an achievement for Oz and his crew, Greene, Moranis, Martin, and company.

Hard eye roll at my nine year-old take on this one.

Absolute Beginners (1986, Julien Temple)

Absolute Beginners, the David Bowie song, is so good Absolute Beginners, this Julien Temple directed musical film adaptation of Colin MacInnes’s presumably autobiographical novel would have to be singular to be better than the song.

Okay, singular in a good way.

Because I suppose Beginners, which Temple stages as a Technicolor stage production, is singular in a bad way. The film’s never too far away from its next bad decision, like having Bowie—who also cameos on screen as one of the few people who can actually sing the songs, otherwise it’s unimaginative lip-syncing from leads Patsy Kensit (at least, I hope she’s lip-syncing) and Eddie O’Connell. As far as the dance numbers… well, whoever Temple and cinematographer Oliver Stapleton had running the Steadicam did a great job, but they’re not good. Temple composes all of his shots for what seems to be eventual pan-and-scan, so there’s empty space on half the screen, either on the sides or on one side. Not good for the dance direction. Though I suppose the scale of the production is impressive.

Beginners takes place in the late 1950s, when it was more pragmatic for white London youth to be progressive and live and hang out with the marginalized—because cheap rents, but it still did lead to personal growth. O’Connell likes the working class melting pot, Kensit wants stability so much she’s willing to marry old gay fashion designer James Fox so she can be a kept woman.

Now, Beginners Technicolor dancing melting pot includes a lot of gay folks and O’Connell always seems more anti-homophobic than anti-racist (eventually it’s going to turn out he was just too busy trying to be a teen heartthrob to notice the subtle hints of a white terror organization in his photographs but also because he didn’t talk to his one Black friend, Tony Hippolyte, about Bruce Payne and his sidekicks burning down buildings)—but there’s a lot of digs at Fox for being a gay guy pretending to be straight so he could have a business in 1958. He’s a villain, sure, but… the last thing Beginners ever needs to do is come off more white. Especially once the film decides it’s going to do race riot as musical number.

Other bad choices… Bowie’s accent. I got lost in the other rotting weeds of the film but Bowie’s accent. Wow. It’s a fake American accent looped in, so there’s an added level of unreality to it. It’s such a profound move, I suppose whether or not Bowie is good or bad isn’t an answerable question. Is he effective?

No. But it’s not his fault. They stunt cameoed him in a bad part.

The film’s at its best—so it takes about an hour—in the studio-built streets where O’Donnell, Hippolyte, and Payne collide for the big race riot musical number third act. Beginners has four editors, but only the one or ones who worked on the third act managed to establish any kind of pace. Otherwise it’s jerky, with O’Donnell’s unwelcome narration popping in. At first I thought it was Bowie doing it from old age, which would bring some personality.

Instead, it’s O’Donnell, who’s absent personality, which it turns out isn’t the worst. Kensit’s got some personality but it’s all bad. Bowie doesn’t have any because of the dubbing, though Anita Morris isn’t dubbed and she doesn’t have any either. Lionel Blair does but it’s potentially problematic personality. Steven Berkoff’s cameo as a British Hitler wannabe is easily Temple’s best direction of an actor in the film, which is certainly something.

The Sade cameo—she sings a number—is easily the best musical bit outside the opening and closing use of Absolute Beginners, though the finale action is so bad it would’ve been better to hold the song for the end credits.

Wildcats (1986, Michael Ritchie)

Wildcats is supposed to be about a woman coaching high school football but it ends up being an unintentionally thorough examination of patriarchy, misogyny, and racism. There’s a lot to unpack; more, actually, than its worth. Because Wildcats isn’t just a failure of a female empowerment picture, it’s also a failure of a White savior picture. Things with Chicago’s “Central High”’s football team haven’t been going well in general—the previous season’s star quarterback quit school to become a criminal and the same bunch of guys who couldn’t get their act together on the team are back again this year because they all are repeating because they’re dumb. Oh, it’s also classist. The team is mostly Black guys, who talk mid-eighties R-rated Black guy jive as written by a White guy (meaning it’s rarely funny, even if the actor’s able to be funny), a handful of Hispanic stereotypes (including the guy translating for the other guy because it’s a sitcom special), and Woody Harrelson. The one thing the team has in common besides being in their early-to-mid-twenties is they hate the idea of a female coach.

So it’s a problem with the only willing football coach the principal can find is Goldie Hawn. See, she asked if she could coach the Junior Varsity team and after saying yes, admittedly good but utterly cartoonish villain Bruce McGill went and gave the job to a gay guy. Wildcats is at its most interesting eighties movie when there’s the homophobia against the gay guy but then the gay guy joins with the other guys in the room for some misogyny. It’s like Wildcats thinks, while telling this story about Hawn ostensibly having her White Savior story arc, having a woman coach the boys’ football team isn’t going to have to make a comment on toxic masculinity. No, it doesn’t, of course; the film doesn’t go there. Ezra Sacks’s screenplay is profoundly bland. But it doesn’t even recognize the position its putting itself in.

Of course, it also fails the White savior story arc because… Hawn’s a woman. She’s not empowered enough to be a White savior. The first act hints at trying it a bit, but then Sacks and director Ritchie’s utter disinterest in any kind of authentic narrative pushes it aside. But if you remember back, during the end of the second act and the first half of the third, it’s stunning to think the movie might have gone for that much of an arc for Hawn. Instead, Hawn’s arc is just finding the right group of men. And once you find the right group of men, well, you can convince the other men out there to acknowledge you. And if you can’t, there’s always punching. But the right men will do it.

It’s like Hawn’s supposed to be the lead of the movie but the movie doesn’t need her. Not just as the coach of the football team—because once they’re over her being a girl it’s all training montages and original soundtrack singles and the games fly by—but as the lead. The opening credits are home movies of Hawn as a child (well, Hawn’s character presumably) and her history with football. Dad was a player or a coach. Maybe both. Doesn’t matter, because Hawn’s history with football and ability as a football coach have nothing to do with the movie. They’re nonsense details. The movie would be no different if Hawn got the job through a clerical error.

Sacks’s script goes with every predictable plot turn—once ex-husband James Keach (who’s not good but perfectly cast as an upper class prig) starts threatening to take Hawn’s kids away from her, anyway. Before Keach comes into the movie it’s just Hawn and the montages and then her trying to get the ex-star quarterback to give up crime for football, which is kind of more likable because even with the bad script you don’t dislike the actors and you wish the script were better for them. With Keach… well, he brings in new girlfriend Jan Hooks, who’s a punching bag for gags (an example of the film’s passive versus active misogyny), but it also gives Robyn Lively more to do. She’s the older daughter. She’s not very good. Her part’s terribly written, Ritchie could give a hoot about directing the actors, but she’s not very good.

So, Keach drags the film down, directly and indirectly. Especially when you get into how badly Sacks writes anything related to White privilege. Like the toxic masculinity, you can tell he notices it and sees it might not be good, but then pushes those thoughts down and acts like it’s okay to have rapey jokes about Hawn from students, as well as Black principal Nipsey Russell get threatened by rich school’s teacher McGill and whatever else I’m forgetting, and to just go with it. There’s one part where the team destroys Hawn’s office and faces no consequence because, well, she needs motivation; she’s a woman after all.

It’s a lot. There’s a lot. And even if you’re willing to forgive a solid amount because it was the eighties, the movie itself still flops around and then fizzles by the end. Ritchie and Sacks not caring about football ends up limiting what they can come up with the final game. The big showdown between Hawn and her nemesis gets hijacked by fat jokes. And Ritchie shooting a bunch of solo inserts of Hawn’s reaction shots to the game when she should be, I don’t know, coaching or something. It’s a really oddly directed movie football game. It’s poorly directed, but also oddly directed.

Though the football games are the only thing Richard A. Harris can edit acceptably. Every other cut in the movie’s a little off. Ritchie has this boring one-shot he always goes with from close-ups and Harris can never figure out how to cut it, even though Ritchie seems to have given him enough coverage.

It’s like no one cared.

James Newton Howard’s score is bad.

Donald E. Thorin’s photography is adequate.

The best technical contribution is Marion Dougherty, who casted. The team is mostly solid, performance-wise, when they need to be. They don’t do great at being assholes, but once they’re okay being coached by a woman, they’re fine. Wesley Snipes has maybe the showiest part, he’s okay. Mykelti Williamson’s okay. Not a good part, but he’s okay.

M. Emmet Walsh’s got a small role and you wish they’d gotten someone else for it, just because it’s Walsh and you want to like him and there’s no reason to like him in Wildcats. Like much of the film, he’s pointless. Sacks’s script doesn’t have anything for its performers. Not good speeches, not good scenes, not good arcs. No one even gets an arc. Not really.

Until Keach comes in strong—which is well over half-way in–Wildcats seems like it’s going to make it to the finish. Not great, not even good, but passable enough. Hawn’s charm can carry a whole lot. And given the movie is supposed to be her movie but instead Ritchie and Sacks do everything they can not to make it her movie, she gets some added sympathy. But that third act is the pits.

This post is part of the “1st and 10” Blog-A-Thon hosted by J-Dub of Dubism and Quiggy of the Midnite Drive-In.

Malcolm (1986, Nadia Tass)

Malcolm has strange plotting. The film runs just ninety minutes—like you don’t really believe that official ninety minute runtime and it doesn’t feel like they’re rounding up from eighty-nine either. The film’s light and it seems to be coming from the drama. There really isn’t any. There’s charm instead. Almost cuteness.

The title Malcolm is Colin Friels, a thirty-ish Autistic man (though the film never describes his diagnosis or even if anyone understands he’s got one—1986 after all) who lives alone since his mother’s died. He’s a mechanical genius with a fascination about Melbourne’s trams. He even works for the trams for a while… but off-screen. The movie opens with him getting fired for building his own one-person tram. Strapped for cash, he has to bring in a lodger. He takes the first one who comes to see the room–John Hargreaves.

At this point, Malcolm seems like it’s going to be about kindly neighborhood shop owner Beverley Phillips getting Friels to socially develop thanks to Hargreaves. It seems like it for about three minutes, which is a long time in Malcolm. But then Hargreaves brings home girlfriend Lindy Davies and she stays. Like a day after Hargreaves comes in. It isn’t clear why Hargreaves and Davies weren’t just looking for a place together. Character motivations are not writer (and cinematographer) David Parker’s strong suit. Neither is the cinematography, just to get it out of the way. Malcolm has very flat cinematography. The film’s able to get through the flat lighting and the script’s absence of characters’ ground situations because of director Tass. She’s okay with composition, but she’s great at directing her actors. Friels, Davies, and Hargreaves all turn in these fantastic performances and, along with the mood (which is the script, is the direction), make Malcolm work. Even though both Friels and Davies kind of get the story focus shaft. It instead concentrates on Hargreaves, which doesn’t make any sense because the whole point of his life being different than before is specifically because of what Friels and Davies are now doing in it.

Hargreaves is really good. He gives the best performance in the film, which he shouldn’t, but he isn’t able to transcend the script. The part isn’t good enough. The closest the movie gets to dramatics often involves Hargreaves saying something shitty about Friels behind his back and Davies giving him hell for it, leading to offscreen bonding between Hargreaves and Friels. Eventually Hargreaves has some personal growth and isn’t a dick to Friels anymore but we sure don’t get to see it. There’s the potential for character development, then there’s a jump ahead past it. Multiple times. Parker and Tass are too obvious in what they’re not addressing. They draw attention to what they’re not doing and then still manage to be too deliberate in how they showcase the gadgetry.

After Davies moves in, Friels starts making different gadgets and machines to impress Hargreaves because apparently Friels thinks he’s cool. Or something. We never find out because whenever anyone wants to have a serious talk with Friels, they do it offscreen so Parker doesn’t have to write the dialogue. After the first act, Friels basically becomes a (necessary) third wheel in Davies and Hargreaves’s story, which is mostly from Davies’s perspective because Hargreaves doesn’t do anything interesting on his own. Not even when he does things on his own; the movie can’t make them seem interesting.

Hargreaves has a scummy bar friend—an astonishingly third-billed Chris Haywood, who gets about four minutes on screen and never a close-up. Haywood’s just around for when Hargreaves needs to do something away from Friels and Davies. Until Hargreaves reaches the point he realizes he’s got to grow and then he just runs away to different areas of the house.

Another success of Tass’s direction is the lack of claustrophobia, even when there ought to be.

Whenever Friels shows Hargreaves a new gadget, it’s an action set piece. They’re really cool sequences, often involving remote controlled cars or objects. Editor Ken Sallows always cuts the action well. They’re the film’s pay-off moments and they work.

But they really shouldn’t be the film’s pay-off moments. They supersede the characters. For the finale the actors don’t even get to participate in the big action sequence.

It’s a great sequence though and when the actors do come back, they’re able to make up for the lost time goodwill-wise.

Malcolm doesn’t succeed in spite of itself, it just doesn’t aim high enough. It also adjusts its aim lower as the film goes on. Its potential deflates as it goes.

But it’s really cute, really charming, often rather funny. Excellent performances from Hargreaves, Friels, and Davies. Nice score from Simon Jeffres.

Just wish the script were more interested in the characters.

This post is part of the Blizzard of Oz Blogathon hosted by Quiggy of The Midnite Drive-In.

Sid and Nancy (1986, Alex Cox)

It takes a while for anyone in Sid & Nancy to be likable. Even after they’re likable, it’s not like they’re particularly sympathetic. They’re tragic, sure, which is director Cox and cowriter Abbe Wool’s point, but entirely unpleasant to spend time with. The film has a bookend–Sid (Gary Oldman) being taken into police custody for murdering–at that point an unseen–Nancy (Chloe Webb). Oldman makes a visual impression, but kind of gets overshadowed by Cox’s New York cops. They’re all outlandish caricatures, including their costuming, which clashes with Oldman’s punk rock chic.

After the bookend, the action goes back in time to London, with Oldman hanging out with Andrew Schofield (as Sex Pistol’s vocalist Johnny Rotten–the film doesn’t offer any exposition to set up a viewer not at least somewhat familiar with The Sex Pistols) and meeting Webb. Webb’s an American punk rock enthusiast–and heroin addict–with a grating voice and an obnoxious demeanor. But she’s being obnoxious to Oldman and Schofield, so it’s hard to fault her. Oldman’s a moron, arguably–as the film starts–Schofield’s flunky. Meanwhile Schofield comes off as a pretentious poser (needless to say no one thought much of Sid & Nancy’s historical accuracy, not its surviving subjects or even the filmmakers).

But Oldman soon becomes sympathetic to Webb and ends up, after some misadventures, getting high with her. From then on, they’re always together. Much to everyone else’s displeasure; well, not band manager David Hayman, who encourages Oldman’s behavior for the media attention. But much to Schofield’s. Sex is anti-punk so Schofield is anti-sex. Until they’re strung out too long, Webb and Oldman like the sex.

Most of the first half of Sid & Nancy is Oldman and Webb getting high, trying to find money for getting high, getting mad about not finding money to get high (Hayman apparently has Oldman on an allowance without a heroin allotment), Oldman messing up band obligations, Webb pissing off Schofield and others with her demands (which become Oldman’s demands, only he’s way too high most of the time to put much force behind them), Webb and Oldman fighting (usually over drugs, sometimes over the band). The dramatic result comes from the actors in scene more than anything in the script. The intensity, which sometimes means Oldman being almost completely inert, or Webb hitting a new level of annoying, propels the film. As a director, Cox oscillates between indifference and dislike for his protagonists; friction keeps the film in motion.

Until the Sex Pistols go on their U.S. tour–leaving Webb in London–and Cox gets a jumpstart, starting with the first shot of the U.S. tour. He finally finds something cinematic to chew on. The U.S. tour itself, the visual juxtaposing of English punk and cowboy hat wearing Americans, Oldman freaking out on payphone in the middle of Americana… it all becomes visual foreshadowing of the second half. The band breaks up on tour; Oldman and Webb head to Paris for a bit, back to London for a bit, then end up in New York. She becomes his manager. They visit her family. Sid & Nancy gets these moments of absurd hilarity, a pressure release as it tracks its protagonists’ descent. Cox doesn’t glamorize their heroin dependency (he does very little exploring it). As it becomes more and more clear Oldman and Webb can’t survive–they quite clearly can’t take care of themselves–Cox focuses in tighter on the two characters and their relationship. It’s always in a nightmarish setting, but often dreamy.

Oldman’s performance gets better and better as the film progresses. At the start, thanks to the narrative, Schofield overshadows him, then Webb overshadows him. After the tour sequence, when Oldman appears to get some agency, he’s always the narrative’s driving force. If not in scene, than in performance. Even when it’s Webb’s scene, like when they visit her grandparents and extended family and are way too punk rock for the late seventies suburbs. Webb gets to be flashy in those scenes, but they’re all built around Oldman’s eventual contribution.

The second half descent also has the film’s most beautifully edited and realized cinematic sequences, always set to music, sometimes (apparently) diegetic music, sometimes not. Roger Deakins’s photography is always phenomenal, but it’s often phenomenal in its dreariness. In the grand cinema sequences, Deakins never changes the film’s visual tone, he, Cox, and editor David Martin just find a way to hold the moment long enough the intensity burns through the dreary. But not visually, obviously. Cox and Martin are aware, the whole time, how to control the mood (and Deakins’s photography’s affect on it) through length of scene, length of shot. They just don’t start doing much with that knowledge until the second half.

And once Sid & Nancy opens itself ot cinematic splendor, there’s always a subtle impatience until the next sequence. The first half is so light on them (and so frequently narratively unpleasant), it causes some de facto resentment. Cox could’ve done more with the film and didn’t.

Oldman’s great, Webb’s (annoying as all hell and) great, Schofield’s great (regardless of historical accuracy). None of the supporting performances are bad and there’s a large supporting cast, but they just don’t have much to do. Or they don’t have much to do for long. Sometimes getting out faster is better. Sy Richardson, for instance, has a great scene as Oldman and Webb’s methadone caseworker. But it’s a scene. Meanwhile, Hayman’s around so much without any character development, he suffers. Ditto Xander Berkeley (as Oldman and Webb’s New York drug dealer) and Courtney Love. The more scenes they have, the more it matters they’re caricatures.

Transfixing lead performances, excellent direction, great cinematography, sublime music (original score and soundtrack)… Sid & Nancy is a technical marvel. It just should’ve been more of one, which matters since Cox isn’t invested in the narrative.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Alex Cox; written by Cox and Abbe Wool; director of photography, Roger Deakins; edited by David Martin; music by Dan Wool; production designers, Lynda Burbank, J. Rae Fox, and Andrew McAlpine; produced by Eric Fellner; released by The Samuel Goldwyn Company.

Starring Gary Oldman (Sid), Chloe Webb (Nancy), Andrew Schofield (John), David Hayman (Malcolm), Anne Lambton (Linda), Perry Benson (Paul), Tony London (Steve), Debby Bishop (Phoebe), Courtney Love (Gretchen), Xander Berkeley (Bowery Snax), and Sy Richardson (Methadone Caseworker).

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Love and Rockets (1982) #18

Lr18

The issue opens with the second part of Beto’s Palomar story. Luba is still stuck in a hole, daughter Guadalupe still hasn’t told anyone (or gotten her mom any food), the bruja has brought a plague to town–her baby’s skull is missing–and sheriff Chelo is down for the count. So Chelo enlists Tonantzin as a deputy.

There are three plotlines: Tonantzin and Guadalupe get the big ones, Chelo gets the third. Because Chelo comes in late–to save the day–while Tonantzin is getting radicalized by a guy out to kill Chelo for killing his brother (last issue). Guadalupe catches the bruja sickness and starts hallucinating while out trying to save Luba from drowning; there’s going to be a major storm.

Lots happens, including a cameo from Errata Stigmata (in Guadalupe’s fever dream). Beto also brings back the original Luba–from the first issue of Love and Rockets–to terrorize Guadalupe. It’s intense. Meanwhile Tonantzin’s pal ends up getting more and more dangerous, including to her, and Chelo’s just trying to get the bruja out of town.

Beto paces it for humor after a while. He starts with it being dangerous and, frankly, gross (everyone’s got brusing on their faces from the bruja’s plague). It never loses either of those traits, Beto just brings in the humor eventually. Because Guadalupe is fun. Tonantzin is fun. He puts off embracing it until the last possible moment.

Then he ends it on this ominous, sad, desperate note. Only to do a final page of nine panels showcasing life in Palomar after the plague and the troubles it brought its cast. It’s an excellent comic. And completely different than the first part of the story. Beto’s visual pacing is different, how he lays out the town–visually presents it for the reader to track the action through it–is different. Probably because the streets are mostly empty due to plague and storms.

Locas gets the second half of the issue. A lot happens, including the return of Penny Century, who’s no longer the fun loving pal from earlier issues but now a slightly despondent trophy wife. And she’s dyed her hair.

Jaime also confirms Hopey and Maggie are occasional lovers. He also seems to forget Maggie is (or was) a mechanic. At her new job, her car breaks down and her dude coworker has to fix it for her. The Penny thing is a little strange, because she used to get her own strips and now she’s uncool. Maggie and Hopey getting it on is fine. Not sure why the confirmation is coming here, maybe because Maggie’s moving in with her aunt for a while. But the mechanic thing? It’s bothersome. Really bothersome.

Because it’s not even like Maggie just lets the guy do it. She actually appears to have forgotten her mechanic skills.

The story itself is Maggie and Hopey moving into Terry’s. Their moving day and all the things they have to do; it’s a direct sequel to the previous issue’s entry, with Hopey profusely apologizing to Terry happening off-page.

After twelve pages of Hopey and Maggie getting through the day, which includes a wake, a trip to the guitar shop (bringing further revelations about Hopey’s band), a second appearance from Doyle (who’s got a truck and is helping move), and some Izzy insight too. Jaime does a whole lot.

He’s established an excellent overall pace to the recent Locas strips. They’re slice of life but dramatic and revelatory. There’s not as much ambitious art–no full page silhouette pages, for example–but Jaime keeps busy integrating all those ambitions into the panels. Anything with a shadow is all shadow. It makes everything real sharp, including the humor panels.

Hopefully Maggie remembers she knows how to mechanic soon, because it’s the only concerning thing. Otherwise, awesome. Even when–particularly when–it’s slightly uncomfortable or unpleasant.