Category: 1989
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The Fabulous Baker Boys opens with pseudo-protagonist Jeff Bridges saying goodbye to his latest cocktail waitress one-night stand (always his decision, never hers–Baker Boys is all about taking advantage of patriarchal privilege). Under the opening titles, he walks to work. Baker Boys takes place in Seattle and regularly features its skyline, but director Kloves is…
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About the only compliment I can pay Ghostbusters II is the first half or so doesn’t reveal how terrible the movie’s going to get. The film had a troubled production, which might explain the special effects looking rough for the third act. II’s third act apes the third act from the first movie, only without…
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Spoiler: there’s no trial in Trial of the Incredible Hulk. Except maybe the viewer’s difficulty getting through the TV movie. Or producer, director, and star Bixby doing a special effects heavy (but not for Hulk Lou Ferrigno) backdoor pilot for a “Daredevil” TV show starring very special guest star Rex Smith. Ferrigno’s so shoe-horned into…
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Despite The Terminator not offering much (if anything) in the way of entertainment, much less artistry, I’m still intrigued by the series. Like, where’s the bottom? This issue has a guest penciler, Robin Ator, who’s probably the series worst (so far). The script’s from Jack Herman, who’s written more issues than anyone else at this…
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Black Rain features one of the worst action movie fight scenes. It’s unnecessary—they could’ve just worked around it since participants Michael Douglas and Matsuda Yûsaku are bad at it, the fight choreography is terrible, and it manages to be the most embarrassing thing director Scott oversees in the film and Black Rain’s chock full of…
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Truth be told, I have a hard time motivating myself with The Terminator. It’s not bad in peculiar ways related to the licensed property, and it doesn’t have some undiscovered talent doing fantastic work on it. But it’s had its moments. It’s also had irregular writers, with the original writer (and copyright holder on new…
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The Terminator, at least with writer Jack Herman steering the series… okay, it’s not good, but it’s not terrible. It’s not bad. While Herman never resolves the culturally appropriating white male Terminator who goes to the South American jungle and puts tribal markings on his fake(?) flesh to terrorize the locals, it’s at times thoughtful-ish…
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At its best, which isn’t often, The Big Picture is a vaguely charming Hollywood satire about young director Kevin Bacon discovering making it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But also not. Because Picture skips over Bacon’s “making it” period, other than being a dick to best friend Michael McKean and driving a Porsche…
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There’s no way to talk about Karate Kid Part III without, pardon the expression, kicking it while it’s down. There are no good performances, no good technical aspects, no interesting writing, nothing. Pat Morita doesn’t humiliate himself, mostly because he seems disgusted at the whole thing, which is at least understandable. The film takes place…
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What is it with Halloween sequels and hospitals? This time it’s Danielle Harris spending most of the movie in the hospital. Sure, it’s officially a children’s clinic and appears to be shot in a converted house, but it’s still a Halloween movie where the lead damsel in distress is in a hospital bed. The plot…
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The scary thing about Tango & Cash is its ability to improve. Not sure who wrote or directed the end of the second act, when Kurt Russell gets to act opposite people besides Sylvester Stallone and you remember it’s actually an achievement to make him so unlikable for so long, but it’s a lot better.…
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When The Killer introduces second-billed Danny Lee, it certainly seems like Lee’s arc is going to be the most important in the film. He’s a Hong Kong cop who starts chasing professional hitman Chow Yun-fat and gets in the middle of Chow’s fight with crime lord Shing Fui-on, with tragic results for everyone involved. And…
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Erik the Viking is a great example of when the director doesn’t know how to direct the script. What makes it peculiar is… director Jones wrote the script. The film, an absurd comedy about a group of Vikings trying to end Ragnarok so they people will stop killing each other, starts with the the very…
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Lords of the Deep exists for reasons. Some of them seem interesting enough I’m disappointed the trivia section on IMDb doesn’t offer any explanations. But just going on what it’s like watching the film and what it’s good for? You hate top-billed Bradford Dillman and want to simultaneously be reminded why you don’t like him…
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Affably performed but charmless ninety draggy minutes of Jeff Goldblum as an American actor in London who can’t catch a break because he’s a… tall American. When the movie’s about Goldblum wooing seemingly proper British nurse Emma Thompson, it’s all right. When it’s about Goldblum trying to manage absurd stardom–or at least steady work–and his…
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Right until the action-packed finale of The Mighty Quinn, there’s nothing the film can do lead Denzel Washington’s charm can’t forgive. But the finale, which incorporates poorly choreographed and poorly shot capoeira (from obvious fight doubles), a helicopter, a machine gun, suddenly awful music from composer Anne Dudley, and a handlebar-mustached M. Emmet Walsh in…
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There’s no point to Great Balls of Fire! As a biopic it’s shaky–lead Dennis Quaid only gets to be the protagonist when he’s not being too despicable, which isn’t often and the film has to distance itself from Winona Ryder, playing Quaid’s love interest. And thirteen year-old cousin. So it’s understandable director McBride and co-screenwriter…
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My Left Foot is told in flashback. There’s the present–kind of glorified bookends–when Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a successful adult and flirts with his nurse (Ruth McCabe)–and then the past, which recounts Brown growing up poor, with cerebral palsy, in 1940s Dublin. Hugh O’Conor plays Brown until he’s seventeen or eighteen, then Day-Lewis takes…
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The issue starts with Maggie trying to join Hopey and Tex’s new band. They’re delayed getting back to California, which might not even be on Hopey’s radar. It’s a Maggie and Hopey story, a little different given Hopey’s hair, but also because it’s two pages and (roughly) twelve panels a page. Maggie runs into Ray’s…
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Love and Rockets Bonanza collects short Love and Rockets miscellanea from, approximately, 1985 to 1988. The first issue of 1985 was #10, the last issue of 1988 was #28. All these little stories–the longest ones are six, some are just single pagers–appeared in other Love and Rockets publications, like the collections or in the color…
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Love and Rockets #30 stands out for a couple reasons. First Jaime does a retcon. He does a flash forward and a retcon, like he’d written himself into a hole and couldn’t find a way out. And also because Beto, in one chapter, turns in a layered, complex tragedy in the Luba origin and it’s…
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Beto’s back to Palomar in Love and Rockets #29. Well, he’s back to some kind of Heartbreak Soup, maybe not Palomar. He’s got the first chapter of Poison River, which recounts this terrible tale of migrant workers. Eventually. It opens with a housekeeper thinking she’s rescuing a baby from the father burning it with a…
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DeepStar Six is a bad looking movie. There’s maybe one decent special effects moment–very limited, slightly gory–and it comes at the end, after the film has flubbed bigger effects sequences and other gore moments. Director Cunningham pretends he’s doing “Jaws at the ocean floor” for a while, though it’s never even clear if there’s one…
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Puppetmaster has some great stop motion. The stop motion is nowhere near enough to make up for the rest, but there’s some excellent stop motion. The stop motion is so good, in fact, the lighting on it is better than Sergio Salvati’s lighting for the rest of the film. Salvati’s lighting is a problem. He…
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There are no clocks in Do the Right Thing. The film takes place over a twenty-four hour period; all the action is on one block, most of the characters live on the block. It’s a Saturday. Some people are working, some people aren’t. It’s a very hot day. And for the first ninety minutes of…
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Bungling direction from Nyby does in this PERRY MASON outing, which is unfortunate since many of the guest stars–except main guest star Pernell Roberts–at least try to give a good performance. Even without Nyby’s bungling, the movie would have some major problems thanks to writer Robert Hamilton’s exceptionally problematic, sexist writing of third lead Alexandra…
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Raymond Burr does a fantastic job in Perry Mason: The Case of the Musical Murder. He’s got it down. He even sells some of the sillier one liners in George Eckstein’s teleplay. At times, it seems like Eckstein is trying to goof on the idea of a Perry Mason TV movie. Or maybe he’s sincere…
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Quintessential middling TV movie has Mason (Raymond Burr) teaching law school and his star pupil (William R. Moses, ingloriously replacing William Katt as the series’ blond P.I.) falsely accused of murder. Way too little Burr (he’s good when he’s around), way, way too little Barbara Hale. Moses’s arc involves his rich girl-poor boy romance with…
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I always forget how much Neil Gaiman threw himself into the DC Universe when he’d write in it. This Secret Origins Special is all about Batman’s villains; a TV investigative journalist has come to Gotham to do a special. Gaiman seems to enjoy writing those scenes–the ones with the behind the scenes, the Batman cameo,…
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A Grand Day Out is about as close to pure magic as a movie can get. It’s this fantastic story, gentle in the right parts, sharp in the right parts, but it’s also this adorable and technically masterful bit of animation. Director Park brings this delightful Britishness to it; from Peter Sallis’s performance to the…
The Stop Button 