Day of the Dead (1985, George A. Romero)

Day of the Dead is a nightmare. Occasionally literally, with writer and director Romero not afraid to rely on a recurring “it was just a nightmare” bit. But more symbolically… Day is about a group of scientists working in a secured location in the Florida Everglades, ostensibly protected by the U.S. Army; they’re on a mission from the government, which started in the early days of the undead plague. It’s unclear how long they’ve been at it—at least a month (Romero’s got a great calendar device). Long enough scientist Lori Cardille has had time to get romantic with soldier Anthony Dileo Jr. and long enough the group has lost something like six men.

There’s a helicopter and its pilot (Terry Alexander, the only Black non-zombie), a radio operator (Jarlath Conroy), the soldiers, the scientists, the zombies they’ve captured, and the zombies above waiting to get into their bunker. The movie opens with Alexander, Conroy, Cardille, and Dileo on a search mission to Fort Myers. Real impressive empty street shots, but it’s the only time the movie’s out of the bunker until the end. As usual, Romero’s got to do what he can on a budget.

We get some of the team dynamic, but mostly Dileo going through a mental breakdown and Cardille unintentionally aggravating the situation. Dileo and Cardille’s relationship status is never important to the plot, but since the other soldiers really hate Dileo and really want to rape Cardille, it gets an early emphasis. The soldiers in question are mostly bully Gary Howard Klar and comical(?) dipshit Ralph Marrero. Klar’s super-duper racist towards Dileo (for being Hispanic, though Klar seemingly has no issues with other Hispanic soldier Taso N. Stavrakis; well, playing Hispanic). It doesn’t help the situation Dileo’s falling apart and can’t do his job, which usually involves keeping zombies from eating his fellow soldiers.

When the helicopter expedition returns to base, we find out the Major has died and, now, Joseph Pilato is in command. Pilato thinks the scientists are wasting everyone’s time and making things more dangerous. Given what it’ll turn out lead scientist Richard Liberty has been doing… Pilato’s not exactly wrong. Cardille’s trying to either reverse the zombie process or at least prevent the continued contagion, while Liberty’s training the zombies as pets. His main project is played by Sherman Howard. Howard won’t single-handedly save the film, but he gives its only transcendent performance. There will be other good performances—there will be abysmal performances—but Howard’s is singular.

The majority of Day is the human drama. It’s the end of the world, you get eaten when you die, there’s nothing to eat but beans. Everyone’s on edge. Romero’s script keeps moving pretty well, but he gives his actors dialogue they can’t possibly essay. Like, again, there’s bad acting. But, holy cow, is Romero’s writing a lot at times. It’s like he’s compensating for the lack of budget both in scope and casting—why give Liberty great (or even good) dialogue when he’s just going to play it like he’s cutting prices on a used car commercial. Eventually, Alexander will get to walk off with the movie (for the humans), but Romero spends a lot of time focused on “protagonist” Cardille. Cardille’s always fine, often good, especially considering how bad the other acting gets.

Pilato’s amazingly bad. Klar, Marrero, and Dileo are all varying degrees of bad, but Pilato turns it into an art form. Day’s all about how much you don’t want the U.S. Army involved in anything. No lies detected and all, but they’re still cartoonish.

Of course, one can easily make the argument no one knows how living in a zombie apocalypse is going to affect id vs. superego when communicating with others (i.e., the Howard Hawks “no one knows how Ancient Egyptians talked” argument from Land of the Pharaohs). It also doesn’t matter because the human drama’s real enough, and the zombie horror is exceptional. Once things go wrong, they go spectacularly wrong. And there’s such good gore. Day’s mesmerizingly revolting.

Exceptional editing from Pasquale Buba is a plus, but the technicals are all solid. Michael Gornick’s photography’s always at least good, sometimes better (though he can’t hide some reused locations), and John Harrison’s score is outstanding. And Romero’s direction’s exceptional.

If only he had the budget to hire some better actors. At that level, he’d presumably have the time to fix the dialogue too. But still, good show. Day of the Dead’s an exceptionally human (and humane) nightmare.

Teen Wolf (1985, Rod Daniel)

Teen Wolf is a rather dire Wolf. The best things about the movie are James Hampton as the dad and the werewolf makeup, which seems entirely designed to allow for a stuntman to play Michael J. Fox when he’s decked out.

Otherwise, it’s never better than middling and often much worse. Some of the problem is the script, though clearly not all of it, unless writers Jeph Loeb and Matthew Weisman introduced subplots to never address later, but most of it’s director Daniel and maybe editor Lois Freeman-Fox. Teen Wolf’s got absolutely no flow. Every scene feels like it’s the first time the characters have ever met… wait, I guess that one is script-related. Loeb and Weisman don’t do character arcs.

Ostensibly, Teen Wolf is about Fox accepting himself for himself and realizing his best friend Susan Ursitti is the right girl for him even though she’s not glamorous like Lorie Griffin. Griffin’s surprisingly not a cheerleader, instead doing a one-woman version of Gone With the Wind for theater teacher Scott Paulin. The film goes out of its way to suggest Paulin’s abusing her, but it’s always a joke because girls are property in Wolf. Paulin’s terrible. There’s not much good acting in Teen Wolf and some really bland bad acting, but Paulin somehow manages to be bad, bland, and eccentric. He’s atrocious.

Of course, Daniel doesn’t direct the actors. At all. Fox is all over the place, whereas Ursitti and Griffin are nowhere. Hampton handles it because he’s a professional, then other supporting actors just sort of luck into not needing much direction because the script’s so thin, or the film’s cut their characters down to nothing. Mark Arnold’s the bad guy; he’s Griffin’s boyfriend who goes to another high school. He’s on the basketball team, and they regularly trounce Fox and his team.

So, Teen Wolf is a bad high school sports movie with a werewolf subplot. When Fox turns into a werewolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright… well, wait, no. Fox can turn into a werewolf whenever he wants. The movie treats lycanthropy as peculiar but not unheard-of; it’s one of the script’s most successful moves because it allows Arnold to be a credible threat. He hates Fox for being different. The werewolf “curse” is an othering thing, not a bloodlust thing.

Griffin thinks it’s hot, Ursitti thinks it’s not, but Fox wants to be popular, so he’s going with blonde Griffin. But, again, Griffin’s not some popular girl; she’s the one being groomed and abused by the theater teacher. She hates her boyfriend and, seemingly, her life. Small wonder with both Arnold and Paulin treating her like their personal property and then Fox trying to do the same.

Though Fox is also miserable. He’s miserable before he’s the werewolf, miserable after. It doesn’t go anywhere.

Jerry Levine plays Fox’s obnoxious best bro. Levine needs some direction. He’s supposed to be an amusing wiseass. He’s a desperately unfunny one instead. Despite being filmed in Pasadena (in for Nebraska), Teen Wolf feels like a Canadian movie from the era that statement was a pejorative, and Levine seems like the one American who went north trying to make it. And then not.

Also, Daniel didn’t have Fox get rid of his Canadian “sorries.”

Besides Hampton and Arnold, the other decent performance is Matt Adler as Fox’s friend who doesn’t like the werewolf business. It’s not a subplot in the film (probably in the script, maybe even filmed), but Daniel and Freeman-Fox only leave it in the background of the finished product, with Adler not even getting to voice his discomfort. Other people talk about him when he’s not around.

But he’s got an arc.

Also, Fox’s teammates Mark Holton and Doug Savant get an arc. They watch him become an attention-seeking ball hog and don’t like playing anymore. Savant gets Teen Wolf’s biggest diss when he’s shut out of the third act.

Jay Tarses plays Fox’s basketball coach. He’s terrible but funny, like Daniel couldn’t screw up Tarses’s deliveries even when working against them. James MacKrell plays the mean vice principal. He’s bad and not funny.

Teen Wolf is a smelly dog. It doesn’t even help it’s only ninety-two minutes. Daniel and Freeman-Fox constantly use slow motion to drag things out.

Oh, and the original soundtrack… woof.

Rocky IV (1985, Sylvester Stallone), the director’s cut

Sylvester Stallone’s director’s cut of Rocky IV arrives four sequels and thirty-five years after the film’s original release. Stallone says it’s for the thirty-fifth anniversary; Robert Doornick (who voiced Burt Young’s robot in the original cut and owns the copyright on the robot) says it’s because Stallone didn’t want to renew with him and had to cut out all the robot scenes.

So, if “Rocky vs. Drago” replaces the original cut in streaming services… we’ll find out.

There are some other changes to the movie besides the goofy robot being gone, like a trimmed-down version of Rocky III tacked onto the beginning. It’s weird because it goes on way too long and isn’t a good encapsulation of the film–it also emphasizes Stallone’s relationship with Carl Weathers to enlarge their relationship in the Rocky IV footage. Only there’s no actual echoing between the two. Because Stallone doesn’t change Rocky IV’s story or its beats, he just excises a few of them. He doesn’t do anything to fix the problems, which are obviously insurmountable because it’s fairly terrible.

Stallone’s writing, direction, John W. Wheeler, and Don Zimmerman’s editing are all quite bad. There’s no new editor credited with the Rocky vs. Drago cuts, but whoever did Final Cut Proing or Adobe Premiering doesn’t have much in the way of timing. Though, since this version comes after Creed II, which is a sequel to this film, bringing back Dolph Lundgren decades later, you could almost read something into how Lundgren’s cut to see if it implies character development. Only it doesn’t. And Rocky vs. Drago isn’t like cut to tie into Creed II. Stallone’s just cobbling something together here—does anyone believe he didn’t have the full director’s cut of the original in 1985, with that craptacular “We Can All Change” speech to the Soviet people, who embrace Rocky over Gorby? So why not tie into Rocky V. Nothing would be better than seeing all the stupid patriotism end with Stallone brain-damaged. It’d explain his final speech.

The movie also misses out on soundtrack revising, which… I mean, why not. Something to juice it up.

Also, that last fight is poorly done, especially after seeing Stallone learn how to direct action in the intervening decades since he shot this film. It’s not exactly any more embarrassing than the original Rocky IV, but it’s definitely pointless.

Especially since it’s all about Stallone, Weathers, and Lundgren all basically just being toxically masculine narcissists. It might be a little different for Stallone and Lundgren—because Weather’s hubris literally gets him killed, which doesn’t not have a racial component to it. Like, Weather is openly Black here. Bad dad. Stallone’s a bad dad too. Stallone made movies about these guys being bad dads. It’s such a weak revisit.

Maybe I’m just embarrassed I thought it might be any different, like Stallone might’ve actually tried. Because even with the miserable mise-en-scène of Rocky IV, there are obvious places you could just cut it better if you had access to the footage.

Finally, because I can’t any more with the rest of it, does Talia Shire come off as miserable in the original version? Like she’s raising a son and then tending a douchebag husband? Not to mention Young.

Oh, okay, this bit is the last—Young. Stallone stops playing him for laughs but keeps the pratfalls, which just makes him seem like a despondent drunk the whole time.

So fingers crossed Doornick’s for real, and they pull the original, robotic Rocky IV and only Rocky vs. Drago remains. It’s a futile gesture of egomania from Stallone, which, coincidentally, describes the film in either cut.

Rocky IV’s awful.

Witness (1985, Peter Weir)

Witness has a beautifully directed scene or sequence every five to ten minutes. Just something director Weir is able to particularly nail, sometimes with John Seale’s photography’s help, sometimes with Thom Noble’s editing, then probably least of all, with Maurice Jarre’s score’s help. Jarre’s score is good, very pretty, and occasionally redundant; when it sells a scene, however, it stands out. There are a couple where it’s all on Jarre. There just happen to be a lot more leveraging the photography and editing. Though mostly the Seale photography; Witness is often absolutely, intentionally gorgeous.

Weir directs some of Witness like a Western, which isn’t too much of a stretch since it’s got a Western’s story. Harrison Ford is a city cop who ends up having to hide out with the Amish to protect himself and a defenseless witness (eight year-old Lukas Haas) from the bad guys. Haas and his mom, Kelly McGillis, were traveling through the city and Haas witnessed a murder and Ford needs him to identify the killer.

The film opens with McGillis and Haas at home, in mourning—McGillis’s husband has just died and they’re going to visit family, leaving father-in-law Jan Rubes and prospective (whether McGillis is interested or not) new husband Alexander Godunov waiting for their return. The first half of the first act is Haas experiencing the big city, albeit through the train station, for the first time. Pretty soon it’s going to open up to his experience of the police investigation into the murder; once they get back to Amish Country, however, the film’s going to quickly lose track of Haas.

During the police investigation in the city, there’s a lot of procedural as Ford figures out what’s going on after Haas spots the bad guy and a bit of character backstory revelation. The film handles the exposition dump rather affably, given the violence around it; McGillis and Haas have to spend the night at Patti LuPone’s house—LuPone is Ford’s sister—and the next morning McGillis gives Ford the rundown on what LuPone really thinks.

McGillis and Ford have a standoffish relationship until after they get to the country, when McGillis has to nurse Ford back to health, setting them up on an inevitable romance arc. McGillis is risking everything for it, Ford not so much. Weir handles the romance with more distance than anything else in the film. Remote third person. We rarely get to see McGillis and Ford together, usually only for the most cinematic romantic sequences. The distance works, not just for the classy romance novel cover takes on their constrained love scenes, but also because it means Witness doesn’t have to delve too deep into the character development. There’s a never addressed, bulbous subtext about men controlling women—starting with all the Amish and McGillis, then Ford dictating LuPone’s social life, then Rubes dictating McGillis’s… it goes on and on and on. And Weir does his damndest to avoid it.

Because if the first act is Haas and his experience of life among the English, the second act ought to be McGillis’s, only it’s not. It’s also not Ford’s. He gets to do action hero in the third act—in an exquisite sequence from Weir, Seale, and Noble—but the second act is this roaming narrative about the situation of Ford recuperating in hiding, with Weir’s direction giving the film the structure, not the script.

It’s not a character study, it’s not a melodrama, it’s not a mystery. Committing to any specific genre would make the script’s decencies too obvious. So for the toughest spots, Weir just lets Jarre’s music have it and Jarre makes it work.

There are times when Jarre is more part of the team—the fantastic barn raising sequence, for example—and while they work better overall, it’s still cool to see (and hear) Jarre make the problem of disappearing subplots just not matter.

Ford and McGillis are good. The distanced approach works for them. Haas and Rubes are great. Godunov’s good, even though he’s basically a handsome creep. Josef Sommer, Brent Jennings, and Danny Glover are all good as the city cops. Glover gets the best showcase, Jennings gets the least.

Witness is really good. Weir’s direction is solid throughout, but when it’s better than the norm, it’s very special, which scales to the film itself.

Year of the Dragon (1985, Michael Cimino)

Year of the Dragon is going to be so racist it opens with a disclaimer from the distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, basically saying they didn’t realize how racist director Cimino and co-screenwriter Oliver Stone were going to get and they’re sorry. Please enjoy the film.

It came out in 1985. Year of the Dragon was too racist in 1985. Against Asian people. 1985. The disclaimer’s kind of astounding and yet, doesn’t really prepare for the film.

Because it’s about a cop who’s too racist even for the other cops—Mickey Rourke (thirty-three playing thirty-seven to forty—getting assigned to Chinatown to clamp down on gang violence, only it turns out the increase in gang violence is junior gangster John Lone orchestrating a takeover. The takeover thing has to be from the source novel because it makes sense and almost nothing in Dragon makes sense.

Unless you look at it through some very twenty-first century critical lenses; now, a disclaimer of my own. I’m going to pay this film as much respect as it’s due, given the only way Stone and Cimino have to move Rourke’s character—not even character development, just getting his character to be active in the plot—is to make the women in his life suffer. They suffer rape, they suffer murder, their humiliation serves as a stage for Rourke to speak on about how much their suffering affects him. It is a lot. The further Year goes, the more reasons there are not to watch it. Other than a dissection, there isn’t a reason otherwise. Not in the 2021, not after The Wrestler and Rourke finally getting to prove his ability. Because there’s some raw talent in his performance here, but it’s a big swing and a bigger miss.

Now. A plot description, using the most appropriate terms to examine Cimino and Stone’s screenplay. Year of the Dragon is about white guy Chad (Rourke) and an Asian guy Chad (Lone). Rourke is married to a white Becky (Caroline Kava)—from the old neighborhood—but is after a younger Stacy, Asian newscaster Ariane. The newscaster thing is important for a few reasons. First, Ariane’s not even believable as a bad newscaster, much less the up-and-comer she’s apparently supposed to be but they never cover her work because who cares she’s a girl. Second, somewhere in the plot there’s something about Rourke feeding Ariane tips for her reports, only it’s never clear how he’d get the information. Second, Cimino and Stone are going to use the newscaster stuff for exposition through the entire film.

And they do have other ways to dumping exposition. At one point Lone’s bodyguard—who doesn’t appear to be in the credits—does an entire recap of their reason for going to Thailand because it serves absolutely no purpose in the narrative. Unless Stone and Cimino actually thought Lone’s arc was dramatically compelling, which it is not. Though them thinking so might explain a lot.

It’s pretty bad. Like, it’s so bad if Ariane and Rourke had bonded over their love of Chinatown and it ended with a “This is Chinatown, it would’ve been better. Instead, they bond over Rourke’s seduction techniques, which are basically ignoring Ariane or Kava saying no until they stop saying it. Again, no reasons to watch this movie.

Stone and Cimino have some other big macho moments for Rourke and company in the film, like Rourke very obviously suffering from untreated Vietnam-related PTSD (no, man, you don’t get it, see his racism isn’t racism, it’s just applied classical liberalism). But Cimino and Stone don’t believe in PTSD; when concerns about Rourke’s mental status come up—from childhood rival for Kava’s affects Raymond J. Barry, who’s grown up to be a cuck cop boss—they’re dismissed.

Also a car explodes when it crashes.

Year of the Dragon’s bad. It’s very obvious in how it’s bad, like thinking you’re inspecting vegetables for a mold spot only to discover it’s intentionally moldy.

Okay photography from Alex Thomson. They use a too spherical lens to the point if you cropped out the distortion it might actually look better, not a good situation. Really good editing from Françoise Bonnot in the first act, not so much for the other two hours of the movie. Not good David Mansfield music. Cimino’s composition is occasionally decent, but mostly it’s low middling.

Really bad dialogue.

Really bad plotting.

Victor Wong might give the most wholly successful performance as the old guy Lone’s trying to muscle out.

Rourke’s doing his best in a bad part, ditto Lone, ditto Barry, ditto Kava. Ariane’s got the crappiest part—Rourke approaches her because she’s Asian and therefor no one can accuse her station of anti-Asian racism when she runs his stories—and gets an exceptional amount of pointless nude scenes. Cimino doesn’t even pretend. He’s never more artful than her nude silhouette sequences.

So while the film exploits Ariane as an actor and her character in general, Ariane’s still pretty terrible. She exists in the universe where twenty-two year-old newscasters are stars but not star stars. Her amazing apartment isn’t in Manhattan, for instance. Not yet. The apartment appears to have been designed to facilitate the nude shots, which is again more effort than anywhere else in the film gets. Rourke doesn’t even have an office. Most of the transitional dialogue is excuses about him not being at his own police precinct, which is either budgetary or Stone and Cimino just being bad at writing this script.

Dennis Dun is the Asian cop who looks up to Rourke for treating him like a real man, being racist to his face.

Given Rourke’s too racist even for the movie cops, you’d think there’d be some kind of redemption arc. But it’s actually about how no one’s racist enough. Or fascist enough. I skipped the fascist stuff because it’s so insipid.

Year of the Dragon’s like a can of garbage. Some stuff in it used to be good, some stuff in it was never good, some stuff in it should be recycled, but all of its covered in unidentifiable, odious liquid.

Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985, Jim Wheat and Ken Wheat)

Life is profoundly cheap in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. The film’s ostensibly about little human orphan Aubree Miller’s adventure with her Ewok buddy Warwick Davis and the old man (Wilford Brimley) who takes care of them after a group of bad guys appear out of nowhere and destroy the Ewok village and pew pew away Miller’s family, who survived the previous Ewok movie. I believe that one also had Ewoks with names other than Davis’s one (who can speak English here); no names for the Ewoks anymore. Also not much Ewok action. They disappear for a large portion of the movie, when it’s apparently more fun to watch Brimley pretend to be a mean old man to newly orphaned Miller and separated from his tribe Davis.

Davis’s subplot about the missing Ewoks is kind of the important one until evil human witch Siân Phillips—who lives in bad guy Carel Struycken’s medieval castle and has never heard of spaceships before Miller tells her about them—kidnaps Miller so Miller can explain interstellar travel to Struycken. Struycken and his gang are aliens, but extremely cheap ones for a Star Wars product; apparently their species is based on some bad Ralph McQuarrie concept drawings from Empire Strikes Back.

Doesn’t matter.

The first act, ruining Miller’s life and making Davis’s rather inconvenient, is fairly bad. For whatever reason, directors Wheat are quite bad at the action sequence involving Struycken attacking the village. Some of it’s clearly budget—not sure who decided it was too expensive to do matte paintings of the Ewok village (or just use some Kenner playset backdrops)—but some of it’s just bad directing. Rather inglorious farewells to returning actors Eric Walker and Paul Gleason, though Gleason’s is much worse just for being in the movie longer.

The second act’s tedious and cloying, though Miller’s not anywhere near as obnoxious as she could be—initially it seems weird she and Davis treat being on the run from a murderous gang like being on a nature hike, but given how bad it gets when she and Brimley talk about their feelings… I mean, at least the nature walk has pretty scenery. It’ll eventually look just like the forests from Return of the Jedi, but then because they’re obviously using footage from a better movie—even if it weren’t the competent special effects or better film stock, Davis’s costume doesn’t have the weird eyes he gets in this one.

They go really cheap on the Ewok costumes, so it’s pretty impressive when the third act action sequences are actually not bad. They can’t save Battle for Endor (it’s a fairly tepid battle, though based on the variety of alien species, it’d be interesting to know how they all evolved), but once the Ewoks come back into the movie… it’s occasionally entertaining. Even if the Ewok costumes look like pajama sets with matching slippers.

Other bad elements include Peter Bernstein’s music—he’ll occasionally imply some John Williams but never followthrough (it’s a shock when they use actual Star Wars sound effects for thirteen seconds, around the time Brimley gets to pretend he’s Harrison Ford and then they drop it because it doesn’t play because Miller clearly hasn’t seen A New Hope–but then Bernstein turns around and misses an obvious Jaws reference, which reminds me Endor gets very slapstick with its violence at the end. But no less fatal.

Also real bad is Isidore Mankofsky’s photography but what he’s going to do with the Brothers Wheat directing. Eric Jenkins’s editing is fine. Joe Johnston’s production design is not, but how much can you blame on him unless he’s personally responsible for the truly terrible matte paintings.

Brimley isn’t any good but he keeps it together far better than anyone could expect. He earns his paycheck, most definitely. He, Miller, and Davis don’t really embarrass themselves… as opposed to almost everyone else involved.

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985, John Schlesinger)

The best scene in The Falcon and the Snowman is when Sean Penn tries to sell his Russian handlers—a wonderfully bemused David Suchet and Boris Lyoskin—on a coke enterprise. They’ve got embassies all over, Penn figures, so why not make some money moving blow through them up from Peru or whatever. It’s maybe halfway through the movie and before any of the high dramatics start, but it’s this perfect moment in Penn’s performance. One where he, the script, and director Schlesinger sync. They rarely sync. It’s a problem. But this one scene is just magic.

Penn’s the only reason to watch Falcon and the Snowman, unless you want to study middling mainstream eighties writing and direction. Or if you want to see how having an exceptionally bland leading man—Timothy Hutton—hurts when he’s supposed to be the sympathetic one but Penn’s the one you’re always hoping is going to get out of this jam or that jam. It might help if Hutton had any conflict in his subplot. He screws over work partner Dorian Harewood—performatively tattles on him—and nothing comes of it. His father and son subplot with Pat Hingle goes nowhere, which is too bad because Hingle yelling at Hutton at least energizes the scenes. And Hutton romance with Lori Singer is the most miserable, thanks to them both being charmless and terrible.

But then there’s Penn and everything Penn touches is golden. Even a strange almost vignette sequence with Chris Makepeace briefly showing up as Penn’s brother—like a visit—and they go on a car ride together and Penn’s got this fantastic monologue. While Makepeace isn’t a particularly dynamic screen partner for Penn… he doesn’t come with all the Hutton baggage. Makepeace is a little bland, but it’s appropriate for him; he’s barely in it. Hutton’s bland and he’s in the movie a bunch and he’s always bland. He’s always dragging the scenes down, not just the ones with Penn.

Oh, right; the story. It’s the mid-seventies, Nixon’s just been impeached, Hutton is disillusioned but when his temporary post-seminary, pre-college job turns into a top secret government gig, he starts discovering how the CIA is messing with Australia’s elections and politics. Someone has to do something. Who better than Hutton, because he can get lowlife drug dealer best friend Penn to do all the legwork getting the information to the Russians. What kind of information? Details, schme-tails, look how funny it is when CIA satellite ground clerk contractors Hutton and Harewood make margaritas in their paper shredder.

Steven Zaillian’s script treats every anecdote and peculiar detail as one-offs, not indicators of anyone’s personality. Why does Hutton such an interest in falconry, outside possibly a pathological hatred of pigeons? Doesn’t matter. We get these really cool shots done from the falcon’s point-of-view, which are technically well-executed by cinematographer Allen Daviau but not actually very good shots. Schlesinger doesn’t have any very good shots in Falcon. If he were concentrating on the performances, it might be okay, but it’s a very boring looking film and Schlesinger can’t be bothered with the actors.

In some ways, it makes sense. On one hand, you have Penn doing this great thing and on the other, you have Hutton making drying paint look compelling. They even have Hutton driving this weird old pickup to try to give him personality but never establish him getting the pickup so it’s just this pointless quirk. Like when it turns out Singer is a movie theater ticket seller in her last scene. Falcon is so concerned with getting in “real” details everything seems forced.

Or, even worse, those are the fake details.

There’s no misfire so great I wouldn’t believe it to be intentional on Falcon and the Snowman. It’s a competent mess, a waste of Penn’s performance and the potential of the story—presumably the real guys were actually friends. There’s no sign of any history or friendship between Penn and Hutton, which also could just be Schlesinger’s atrocious direction of them together. Hutton’s never worse than in his scenes with Penn… okay, wait, no.

Hutton’s never worse than his scenes with Singer. Those scenes are his worst.

Then his scenes with Penn. But still the ones with Penn need to be the best scenes in the movie and instead they’re always disappointing.

The score, from Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, has a lot of personality. If you use personality as a pejorative.

Good support from Richard Dysart and Priscilla Pointer as Penn’s parents. Joyce Van Patten has nothing to do as Hutton’s mom but she’s not bad. Harewood’s not great. Suchet’s good. Lyoskin’s fine.

Basically everything in the movie needs an overhaul except Penn.

Penn, the locations, and Jim Bissell’s production design (although it does feel like a very anti-seventies-style seventies period piece).

Everything else is middling or worse.

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985, William Friedkin)

If you’ve ever started watching To Live and Die in L.A. and turned it off because it’s terrible or just heard of it and thought you should see it, let me say… there’s no reason to see it. Or sit through it. Not even morbid curiosity. Or unless you want to see John Pankow’s butt. Director Friedkin does seem to be trying to start a macho male nudity thing with L.A.—including… umm… Little William L. Petersen, but he also does some homophobia in other parts. Not anti-lesbian though. Friedkin’s pro-objectification there.

Also… some vague racism. By some I mean anytime someone who isn’t White is around. But all of it—even the dingus—is C-level L.A. shenanigans. They leave far less impression, for example, than the incredible stupidity of Secret Service agents Petersen and Pankow. Though at one point Pankow identifies himself as a Treasury Agent. L.A.’s based on a novel—by co-screenwriter Gerald Petievich—and for some reason I’d assume Petievich would’ve at least looked up the difference. Not Friedkin (the other screenwriter). Friedkin doesn’t even seem aware real guns weigh more than the rubber guns his actors strut around with.

To Live and Die in L.A., when you toss aside whatever is going on with bad guy counterfeiter Willem Dafoe, is about how adrenalin junkie, dirty Secret Service agent Petersen corrupts straight-edge Pankow, teaching him how to blackmail, exploit, and rape comely ex-cons (Darlanne Fluegel gets all the sympathy for being in this one), strut around in tight jeans (though Pankow doesn’t go with two to three inch lifts like Petersen) and shirts unbuttoned to two above the navel, and… I don’t know, act tough or something.

The scary part of L.A. isn’t the idiotic, toxic masculinity is good, actually, sentiment—Friedkin must’ve read some amazing male empowerment books in the eighties—but the idea it’s an accurate representation of the Secret Service. Though, wait, didn’t they get busted for something stupid and… oh. Yeah.

Okay, so it’s probably legit.

Otherwise the movie would be famous for the agency suing them for how they were portrayed. Because they’re idiots. Like, even if you’ve only watched “CHiPs,” you have a better idea of how to run an investigation than this group of dimwits.

The movie starts with a suicide bomber going after Reagan. The stupidest suicide bomber in the world, who comes up with a rappelling thing when he has enough explosive to just take out the hotel or whatever. Once the bomber fails—in an Islamophobic portrayal out of a GOP campaign ad—we get the Secret Service guys getting hammered and Petersen showing off his base jumping.

Every man wants to be a macho, macho man… you know what, L.A. set to Village People instead of Wang Chung (yes, really, it’s got a Wang Chung “score” and, no, it’s not good). But then Petersen’s partner, Michael Greene, three days from retirement, goes off to the middle of nowhere to investigate a counterfeiter who turns out to be Dafoe. Dafoe gets the drop on him because Greene’s an idiot too and so Petersen swears vengeance.

The best performance in the film is probably… Dafoe? Of the leads, anyway. Petersen and Pankow are risible, like they’re doing a spoof of themselves and don’t know it. Dean Stockwell’s kind of okay but then not, which is too bad because he starts better than he finishes. Fluegel’s not good, just sympathetic because she’s so exploited. Robert Downey’s terrible in a stunt cameo. John Turturro… I mean, you can tell he might be good someday but certainly not here. Debra Feuer, despite having the most potentially interesting story, isn’t any good as Dafoe’s muse.

Some of the Robby Müller photography is good. Some of it is not. They go handheld a lot, which would be a questionable choice if there weren’t so many just plain terrible choices Müller and Friedkin make. M. Scott Smith’s editing… is not bad. It’s not good, but it certainly seems like it’d be bad given Friedkin’s vibe here. It’s not. It’s tolerable. So much in L.A. is intolerable—like Lilly Kilvert’s production design and Linda M. Bass’s costumes—the tolerable parts shine.

To Live and Die in L.A. is an excruciatingly bad two hours. It’s hilariously pretentious and full of itself, but it’s got no laugh value; the joke is on whoever’s watching it.

Zone Troopers (1985, Danny Bilson)

The saddest thing about Zone Troopers is Biff Manard gives a fantastic performance and there’s no reason to see it. Nothing Manard could do would make Troopers worthwhile; it’s got so many problems—cast, direction, photography, editing, music, budget (though some of the effects are outstanding)—the thing is a wreck. With a few good ideas, a great performance, and a lot of derivative nonsense.

I got ahead of myself. I was being positive—the second saddest thing about Zone Troopers. When it has those good ideas, it can’t figure out how to execute them. You watch it, getting hopeful, then it fails and you don’t just get disappointed, you feel bad for the movie; you can tell what director Bilson (who co-wrote with producer Paul De Meo) and he just couldn’t figure out how to do it. Zone Troopers, visually, needs a lot of things—it needs cinematographer Mac Ahlberg to light sets better, it needs Bilson to figure out how to shoot his actors, and they need a crane. They really, really, really need a crane. The movie takes place in an Italian forest during WWII and there’s not a single good establishing shot in it. Not even when a crane would have helped. Bilson just can’t do it. He’s got maybe three creative shots and they’re not so much good or even better than the standard bland composition, but they’re creative. Someone thought about them. No one thinks about much in Zone Troopers.

If anyone did, Timothy Van Patten wouldn’t happen. Van Patten is the young guy in the movie. He’s the private, Art LaFleur is the corporal, “top-billed but should’ve had an the ‘and’ credit” Tim Thomerson is the sergeant, an atrocious John Leamer is the inept greenhorn lieutenant, and Manard is the wartime correspondent. LaFleur and Manard are definitely in the forties, Thomerson looks a little too old too, so for the battle scenes before the aliens show up, Zone Troopers basically looks like WWII reenactment with middle-aged men. Bilson’s direction doesn’t help with that feeling either.

Anyway, Van Patten is the young Italian kid who reads sci-fi magazines and talks all the time, especially in dangerous situations, and ignores Thomerson’s orders and almost gets everyone killed over and over again. Until the movie evens out a bit in the second act, the only thing Troopers has to keep one occupied is the hope Thomerson will just shoot Van Patten in the head for insubordination.

And Van Patten is objectively terrible. No one could watch what he was doing and think it was a good idea, not even in a movie where the script has commercial breaks in the second half, like Bilson and DeMeo were plotting a three or four-part cartoon… though it’d be a lot better as a three or four-part cartoon. Van Patten wouldn’t be in it.

The effects work is bad when it comes to the lasers and the humanoid aliens are silly, but the bug-monkey alien is at least a good suit and the script handles that character surprisingly well. Again, Bilson and DeMeo have some decent ideas, they’re just in the muck of bad performances and lifts from E.T., The Thing, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and… something else no doubt. They don’t have any lifts from Empire Strikes Back, which is weird because composer Richard Band rips off its score mercilessly. It and Raiders. Clearly likes his John Williams.

And if it’s not going to be a four-part cartoon pilot, Zone Troopers does seem much more like a Spielberg movie. Just an amateur one. A poorly directed and acted amateur one. With WWII re-enactors.

Return to Oz (1985, Walter Murch)

Return to Oz has gumption. It’s got confidence and professionalism too, but its gumption is something different. Director Murch is making it work with what he’s got—a scale limited by budget and reality—because he’s sure of the project. Gumption.

He knows he’s got the right lead—eleven year-old Fairuza Balk as Dorothy. He knows the special effects he’s going to rely on are going to be impressive, whether the grand claymation as stop motion finale, the various mechanical aspects of the suits (Return raises the question of whether it’s people in costumes or people in suits), the talking chicken as second lead for the beginning of the second act, all of it. Except the street gang villains, who have wheels attached to their hands and feet. The effects are fine because they’re doing it and the design of the outfits is… inventive, but they’re still nerdy white guy street gang villains from the eighties. It’s campy—eighties camp. And Return’s never campy.

Also impressive are the voice performances. Denise Bryer as the chicken, Sean Barrett as the steampunk robot, Brian Henson as the effects-heavier Scarecrow-stand in, Jack Pumpkinhead. Murch knows how to time the effects shots to get the later effect. Return is beautifully edited; director Murch cut his teeth editing before directing it and the film editor Leslie Hodgson has some wonderful cuts. The film’s technically strong. It’s principal cast is good. Balk’s great. So what’s the problem. Besides the budget and effects only being able to do so much? It doesn’t have a good ending. It’s way too small. While the film isn’t a sequel to The Wizard of Oz: The Movie, it does acknowledge that film’s legacy. Return is grittier, late nineteenth century Kansas far less idealized, Balk is a tween in definite danger, there is a villain who takes off their head, and there’s electro-shock therapy. And there’s Piper Laurie as Aunt Em, which is an interesting casting decision and maybe not the best one. Laurie’s playing a literal “Piper Laurie mom-type” to the point I wondered who they got who looked so much like Piper Laurie. Because I assumed Laurie would be able to handle the accent and she’s not. It’s not good. It’s a missed opportunity. Same goes for Uncle Owen (sorry, Uncle Henry) Matt Clark. Missed opportunity. Clark’s fine, but he’s got no added value presence. Return is a perfect franchise starter thirty years too soon; Murch is too busy focusing on how they’re going to realize the magic to worry about the supporting performances. Same goes for Jean Marsh as the bad witch. She’s got no charm, no energy.

On the other hand, Nicol Williamson is amazing as the villain. Like, Murch gets it with Williamson, because he’s voicing the villain; the visual villain is an effects sequence and Murch knows he’s got to sell that effects sequence. So Williamson’s performance matters. Again, bigger budget, more time, it’d probably have been fine. But Return is very much a victim of reality. Besides the budget, there’s the weight of the de facto sequel, there’s the state of special effects. Most of Return is really, really good. They just don’t have the ending. It’s too little. The film’s promising Balk’s Return to Oz, Oz meaning her friends—and the familiar characters—it’s promising the magic. Balk finds herself having to fight through a lot of darkness to find the happy again. She’s got a hero arc and needs a solid resolution to it. Murch doesn’t have the money for it and rushes it, minimizes it. Maybe it could be rushed, maybe it could be minimized, but it can’t be both. It’s too little for what the film’s built up.

And then the epilogue is sweet enough but not strong enough. Return to Oz is almost there. It’s so close and for a good while, it seems like it’s going to make it. And you want it to succeed because, maybe Henson’s Jack Pumpkinhead aside, the new sidekicks are good enough, especially in the grittier Oz.

Finally, David Shire’s score. It’s a perfect metaphor for the film. It gets really close to clicking, then doesn’t. Shire’s music is perfectly adequate for a “kid in the olden times” picture, but not for a magical adventure.

Return to Oz is rather awesome, but it’s also a bummer. They made the magic, they just didn’t know what to do with it.

This post is part of the Wizard of Oz Blogathon hosted by Rebecca of Taking Up Room.