Category Archives: 80’s Movies

Seems Like Old Times (1980)

Posted on April 11, 2023 | Leave a comment

seems

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ex on-the-run.

Nick (Chevy Chase) is a lonely writer working on his novel at a remote seaside cabin, which he hopes will give him the isolation that he needs to allow his creative juices to flow. Unfortunately for him two bank robbers (Judd Omen, Marc Alaimo) stake-out the place and kidnap him and then force him at gunpoint to rob a nearby bank. Nick gets seen on the security camera and a warrant for his arrest is issued. He seeks help from his ex-wife Glenda (Goldie Hawn) a public defender who has remarried to Ira (Charles Grodin) who’s running for attorney general and fears that the notoriety of having his wife’s ex-husband on-the-run from the law could hurt his chances of getting elected. Glenda decides to help Nick by letting him stay in an unused bedroom above their garage while trying to keep him hidden, so Ira won’t find out. This scheme leads to many close calls and misunderstandings while also reigniting Glenda’s feelings for Nick, which she thought she had gotten over a long time ago.

While it may seem hard to believe now screenwriter Neil Simon was at the time, having just come-off his success with the hit The Goodbye Girl , considered chic with young adults particularly on the romance end and this film was the peak of that period as after this his material became increasingly more nostalgic. This works mostly because it remains focused on Simon’s patented one-liners and funny conversational quality, which is quite amusing though it would’ve been nice had it attempted to branch out into other forms of comedy like when Chase and Grodin have a physical fight that is never shown and instead we just hear the noise of it from inside the kitchen while the camera stays stationary in the other room. The visual gags and pratfalls from a funny fight could’ve helped add another dimension to the humor and thus I found this moment to be a missed opportunity.

The acting is uniformly wonderful particularly Chase in a role that takes full advantage of his glib, sardonic delivery probably better than any other film role he’s been in and this most likely was a result of Simon doing a 2-week rehearsal period where he observed the stars interacting with each other and made changes to the script based on the personalities of the performers. It’s good to see Hawn in a more mature role. Before this she played spacey-blondes who were young and on the fringe of society, but here she falls comfortably into a middle-aged setting of a career woman maintaining both a job, home, and marriage and showing the juggling act that this type of lifestyle requires. She’s also not the sole source of humor, but instead reacts to the zaniness around her with funny facial reactions. The supporting cast such as Yvonne Wilder as the heavy-accented Latina maid and T.K. Carter as the wise-cracking chauffeur who hasn’t fully gotten rid of his old ex-con ways are quite amusing too as are the pack of dogs that Hawn owns and proceed to run all over the house at all times.

Grodin was the only character that doesn’t really fit. I found it strange why someone who doesn’t like dogs and can’t stand the way they sleep on the bed that he shares with Hawn would want to marry a woman who was so into them. Outside of the fact that they were both lawyers I didn’t see what else connected them and it seemed like a mismatched marriage. On the other-hand I found it interesting he wasn’t portrayed as a jerk. In most romances were the old partner comes back into the picture the new guy is played-up in a way that makes the viewer dislike them and where you want to see the woman going back to her old flame instead of staying with the cad, but here that’s not the case, which works to some degree, but also hurts it.

Spoiler Alert!

The issue with the second husband really comes into play at the very end when it becomes painfully obvious that Simon couldn’t think up a way to resolve the dilemma and comes-up with one of the dumbest finales imaginable where Hawn and Grodin go driving into the wilderness during a rain storm, have a car accident in which Grodin gets injured and she treks off into the woods only to find an isolated cabin with Chase inside. The movie stops with a freeze-frame of Hawn’s face revealing a broad smile once she sees Chase opening the door making it seem like the two spent a cozy, romantic night in the cabin while Grodin remained suffering inside his stranded car, which wasn’t exactly humane.

Personally if I had written the script I would’ve done it differently, which I realize might’ve been considered ‘too edgy’ for 1980. However, since Chase’s character had been in a Mexican prison for awhile I would’ve had the experience bring out the dormant gay side of him. This could’ve helped explained why the two criminals came to his place to force him into a bank robbery was because they were guys he knew, or former lovers, from jail and they figured out where he lived and hence tracked him down to be a part of their scheme. This would help explain the opening as having them stake out such an extremely isolated place, which didn’t seem to even have any roads leading into it, just to find a willing victim never really made much sense otherwise. The Grodin character could also have some dormant gay desires, which would explain why his sex life with Hawn wasn’t so great. Chase could then take-up permanent residence in the room above the garage where he could, at different times, ‘service’ both Hawn and Grodin and the three could share a happy alternative lifestyle, which being that the story takes place in coastal California wouldn’t have been all that outrageous or unusual.

Another possibility would be to have Grodin played-up as being more into his political career than his marriage and thus pushing Hawn away, or he could just become sick and tired of all the dogs in the bed at night and decide to leave her, which would be understandable as I wouldn’t like sleeping with dogs either. In either case Hawn would be free to run back to Chase and the audience wouldn’t have had any problem with it.

The worse scenario though is how it ends here with Hawn selfishly getting it on with Chase, or at least implying this, while the man she’s married to remains stuck in pain inside a cold, damp car for who knows how long. At some point she’s going to have to decide which guy she wants more, or if she’ll just remain hopping between the two, but some finality needed to be given instead what amounts to a pathetic cop-out by a writer who clearly didn’t want the challenge of having to figure it out.

If anything I would’ve had her with a different facial expression. During the movie she was constantly hyperventilating with this shocked look every time she’d see Chase drop-in and that’s what we should’ve seen as the film’s final image.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 19, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 40 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jay Sandrich

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video

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That’s Life! (1986)

Posted on March 25, 2023 | 1 comment

thats1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Wife frets over biopsy.

Gillian (Julie Andrews) is a singer who detects a lesion in her throat and goes to the doctors to have a biopsy done to see if it’s cancerous. The results of it won’t be ready until Monday forcing her to have to worry about it over the weekend. In an effort not to ruin things for the rest of her family she doesn’t tell them about it and puts on a facade like everything is fine. Meanwhile the other family members have their own problems. Harvey (Jack Lemmon), her husband, is depressed about turning 60, and not excited about the impending birthday celebration, or even being reminded of it. Her oldest daughter Megan (Jennifer Edwards) is going through the stresses of being pregnant while her younger daughter Kate (Emma Walton) fears that her boyfriend is cheating on her.

This was writer/director Blake Edwards first attempt at drama since the Days of Wine and Roses, which had also starred Lemmon. It was independently produced and thus requiring both the cast and crew to agree to work below scale, which caused controversy with the cinematographer’s union and created picketing at theaters in Hollywood when the movie was first released. The story was inspired by real-life events and problems that Edwards and his wife Julie were going through at the time as well as things that were happening with their grown children and the whole thing was shot on-location at the family home in Malibu.

Lemmon, the movie’s promotional poster is a play-on the one for Save the Tiger, the movie he won the Oscar for as Best Actor, is the only fun thing about it. His constant bitching about everything is amusing without being forced and his presence helps give it some needed energy and it’s great seeing him do a few scenes with his real-life son Chris Lemmon, this was the only project they did together unless you count Airport ’77 though they never shared any scenes in that one, who also plays his actor son here. The only drawback is that he completely overshadows Andrews to the point that you start to forget about her even though technically she’s the protagonist that we’re supposed to be the most concerned about.

While the movie is meant to analyze the day-to-day realities of the human condition it does throw in some ‘comical’ side-stories that are really lame and end up dragging the whole film down. The first is Harvey’s relationship with Janice (Cynthia Sikes) a woman who has hired Harvey, who works as an architect, to design her dream house though her demands are constantly changing and many times unrealistic. Had this segment stopped there then it would’ve been insightful and humorous as many clients can make unreasonable requests, but since it’s ‘their money’ the person working for them feels the need not to speak up and go along with the crazy demands for fear they’ll lose out on the deal, which happens more than you think. However, the scene also has her coming on to him sexually, which made no sense. Harvey was significantly older than her, looking more like he was 70, with no guarantee that he could perform, which he ultimately can’t, so unless she had some sort of grandpa complex why would this highly attractive young woman, who could easily find a good-looking guy her age, even think about getting it on with this old duffer that virtually any other woman her age would consider ‘gross’?

The second ‘comical’ scenario is equally stupid as it features Lemmon’s actual wife Felicia Farr playing a psychic who has a sexual encounter with him at her place of business all for the measly price of $20 for a ‘reading’, but how often does this type of thing occur. I mean I’ve gone to a psychic a few times in my life, but it never turned hot-n-heavy; am I just missing out? She later has sex with one of Harvey’s friends making it seem like sex was all that she was into, but how long could she realistically retain the psychic facade before it all came crashing down and she was known simply as being the cheap neighborhood hooker? Why does she even bother with the phony psychic act at all? Why not just become a high-paid escort where she could be making a hell of a lot more money.

The third side-story deals with Harvey finding that the priest, played by Robert Loggia, whom he is confessing his infidelities to is actually his former college roommate that he hasn’t seen in decades, which again is pushing long odds not very likely to happen. The old friend angle doesn’t add much and actually would’ve been funnier had the priest remained someone he didn’t know and Harvey could feel that his confessions were completely confidential only to then get called up to the pulpit during a church service, like he does here, to read a Bible passage about infidelity, and thus getting the shock of his life that this supposedly benign man of the cloth may be on to him and his divulged sins not so safely protected.

Spoiler Alert!

The film’s wrap-up has all the problems getting neatly resolved, which gives it a sitcom quality. I was okay with Andrews learning that the lesion was not cancerous, but some of the other dramatic tangents that the family members went through should’ve not all worked out so nicely, because in real-life, which this film is attempting to be, things don’t always have happy endings. In fact this is what works against it as it’s too sterile for its own good. Nothing stands out making it a shallow, flat drama without much depth. Much like Gillian’s lesion it ultimately becomes benign.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: October 10, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 42 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Blake Edwards

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD-R, VHS

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September (1987)

Posted on March 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

september1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Drama at summer home.

Layne (Mia Farrow) has decided to spend the summer at the country home of her mother’s (Elaine Stritch) in order to recuperate after a suicide attempt. With her during her stay is her best friend Stephanie (Dianne Wiest). Layne is also madly in-love with her neighbor Peter (Sam Waterston) who is a struggling author who wants to write a book about Layne’s mother’s life, who was at one time a well-known actress, but who also shot her late husband in self-defense though it was reportedly Layne who pulled the trigger. Howard (Denholm Elliott) is Layne’s other neighbor who is smitten with her though she has no feelings for him as all of her emotions are tucked away towards Peter, who is more into Stephanie, a married woman with children. During the course of one night while an electrical storm occurs and the power goes out everyone makes their true feelings for the other known, but not everyone responds to the revelations the way they’d like.

This movie is unusual, or at least the behind-the-scenes production, in that two to three versions of every scene was shot and then writer/director Woody Allen took all the footage and edited it together only to be dissatisfied with the final result and decided to shoot it again, but with different actors. In the original production Charles Durning played Layne’s stepfather, but in the second version he is replaced by Jack Warden, and Maureen O’Sullivan played Layne’s mother. Since Maureen was Mia’s real-life mother it’s ashame she wasn’t kept on for the second version. Granted Elaine is excellent, but seeing a mother and daughter acting together would’ve given an interested added nuance that unfortunately gets lost with the redo.

The scenario has its share of intriguing elements, but Allen’s concept of trying to create a filmed stageplay was a mistake as the whole thing has a very static feel right from the start. The internal conflicts are not apparent right away and the first act comes-off like nothing more than lingering conversations with no idea what connects them until the second act kicks, but by that time some viewers may have already gotten bored with it. In Interiors, which was Allen’s first drama, the story clicked quickly because there was a main nemesis, which helped create the tension that’s lacking here. Having a few more characters including a couple that was invited over, but calls-in when their house gets flooded, could’ve helped enliven things.

The acting is uniformly excellent especially Farrow, who’s always had a gift for playing vulnerable characters though with this one she’s more assertive. Wiest is fabulous too though with her super short brunette haircut she looks too similar to Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby and for that reason she should’ve been given a different hairstyle. The short cut also makes Wiest’s squinty look where she constantly appears like someone who’s just walked into bright sunlight, more apparent. The male cast is overall wasted. Warden gets one poignant moment where he describes the cold, lonely universe, but otherwise doesn’t have much else to say, or do and overall gets dominated and upstaged by the caustic and brassy Stritch as his wife. Elliot has one good line early on, but then disappears for a good chunk of it only to get a walk-on towards the end, but by that point I had quite literally forgotten all about him.

The film would’ve worked better had it had stronger character arcs, but overall not much really happens. There’s brief moments of confrontations, particularly Layne’s arguments with her mother, where things appear to be getting juicy only to have them pull back and become civil again. Same thing happens when Layne catches Stephanie with Peter, a slight blow-up and then back to mundane. The characters don’t really grow, or change and everything gets treated like a minor, little tiff that quickly blows-over making the viewer feel at the end that there wasn’t much point in watching it.

On a side note I was also disappointed to learn that the whole thing was shot on an indoor sound stage. With the title of September and the location being Vermont I was fully expecting sights of beautiful fall foliage as the northeast can be one of the best areas for that during the autumn. Since Allen’s dramas can get quite talky I thought the scenic locale could help at least visually fill-in the slow spots, but we ultimately get none of that. The intention was to shoot it at Farrow’s Connecticut country house, the house had inspired Allen to write the screenplay in the first place, but by the time he was finished with the script it was already winter and thus the autumn look and feel would’ve been lost. Credit though should go to the lighting and set design as you still get a feel of Vermont during the night time scenes where you hear realistic sounds of crickets and night bugs outside. The light coming through the windows certainly looks like actual sunlight, but why would people keep their blinds closed when most anyone would have them open to take in the majestic countryside. Why bother even having a home in the country if the idea is to close the windows off from it? It’s also not logical for the sunlight to be shining through all the windows from any direction in the house as the sun can only be in one place in the sky, so some of the windows should not have had sunlight coming through though here all of them do.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: December 18, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 22 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Woody Allen

Studio: Orion Pictures

Available: DVD-R, Blu-ray (Region B/2), Tubi, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Movies with a rural setting

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Certain Fury (1985)

Posted on March 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

certain

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Two gals flee police.

Scarlett (Tatum O’Neal) is a teen prostitute brought to court to face charges of killing a prospective customer. Tracy (Irene Cara) the daughter of a doctor (Moses Gunn) is also attending the courtroom that day. She’s there on charges of drug possession and resisting arrest. Before they can be brought before the judge a shootout occurs inside the packed room in which several deputies are shot and killed. During the ensuing melee Scarlett and Tracy and able to escape and get onto the streets. Neither one knows the other and have many differences in their personalities and temperaments, but find they need to depend on each other in order to survive.

In 1983 Tatum traveled down to New Zealand to star in a movie called Prisoners where she played the daughter of a prison warden who begins a relationship with one of the prisoners who is under her father’s watch. The film though was apparently so bad, or at least so disliked by her father Ryan O’Neal, that after viewing it as part of a preview audience he decided to buy the rights to it in order to keep it from being distributed and to this day very few people have seen it. This film, which was shot in June of 1984, was supposed to get her career ‘back on track’, by casting her as a streetwise 80’s punk, which was considered ‘trendy’ at the time, but was really just as much of a career killer as the other one and Ryan should’ve had the negatives of this one locked-up too.

That’s not to say it’s all bad. The action moments are genuinely impressive. The shoot-out is realistically handled with the gunshots that wound the police appearing authentic. The chase sequence goes on for quite awhile and includes the two going down into an underground sewer where there’s exciting underwater footage as well as a dramatic gas explosion. I even enjoyed the scenes inside a drug den in what seems like hundreds of people all lying around and shooting-up.

The film falters with the characters who aren’t fleshed-out enough to be interesting.  Cara is quite beautiful and looks great nude during a segment where she is attacked by Scarlett’s boyfriend (Nicholas Campbell), but she’s a bit too goody-goody. I would’ve liked more confrontation between the two and Cara being to be just as bitchy as O’Neal. As for Tatum she’s a caricature who lacks any type of depth to be believable. The only thing remotely unique about her is that she can’t read, but with no explanation as to why; is she dyslexic? She’s also snarly the whole time and thus making the two coming together and forming a friendship seem quite forced and mechanical as no one would want to be friends with her especially after she calls Cara the N-word several times to her face.

IMDb, on it’s storyline section for this film, incorrectly states that it takes place in New York, where most anyone would think a plot like this one would happen, but it was actually filmed in Vancouver. You become blatantly aware of this at the end when the camera pan’s the cities’ anemic skyline (it has since improved). I’m sure for tax reasons it was much cheaper to shoot it there, so that’s why the location was chosen, but for authenticity it’s not particularly believable as having such a vibrant underground punk scene like here it would’ve had to be in a giant metropolis instead of a mini-city. In either case this movie is a great example of how if you don’t have well defined characters it will flop no matter how good the action may be.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: March 1, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 27 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Stephen Gyllenhaal

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Tubi

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Buddy Movies, Movies with Nudity

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The Naked Face (1984)

Posted on February 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

naked1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Is psychoanalyst being targeted?

Judd Stevens (Roger Moore) is a psychoanalyst residing in Chicago who suddenly finds that people he knows are turning up dead. First it was one of his patients, whom he let borrow his raincoat. Then it’s his secretary and soon the police are suspecting him of the killings. Lieutenant McGreavy (Rod Steiger) doesn’t like Judd as it was Judd’s expert testimony that got a cop killer sent to an institution versus a jail cell where McGreavy felt he belonged. In order to get the cops off his back and find the real killer Judd  hires Morgens (Art Carney), private investigator, who seems to get a lead when he calls Judd and tells him that a ‘Don Vinton’ is behind it, but then Morgens ends up dead too, so Judd puts his trust in another police detective named Angeli (Elliot Gould) only to learn that he has ulterior motives.

The story is based on the Sidney Sheldon novel of the same name that was written in 1970 and besides this one has been remade two other times: in 1992 in Ukraine as Sheriff’s Star and then again in 2007 in India as Kshana Kshana. This version was produced by the notorious Cannon Group, which always makes me hold my breath in apprehension every time I see their logo come up before the movie begins as I’m never sure if this is going to be one of their cheaper productions, or one that was given a decent budget. While Leonard Maltin, in his review, describes it as ‘low budget’ I’d say this was one of their passable efforts as the production standards aren’t compromised in any way and if anything is rather slick. The on-location shooting done in Chicago, this was changed from the novel where the setting was Manhattan, is excellent and the plot is well paced with incremental twists to keep it flowing.

The film’s main selling point is seeing Moore playing against type as he was known as an action star, but here plays an intellectual. For the most part he does quite well and even able to hold his own when sharing a scene with Steiger, who otherwise likes to chew up the scenery and everyone else in it, but I didn’t like the big Harry Caray-type glasses that he wears. I guess this was done to make him look ‘smart’, but it wasn’t needed. The best part is seeing him get beat-up by the bad guys. When Moore was playing Bond it always seemed a bit absurd that this aging 50-something would be able to take-on virtually any villain, no matter the size, and come-out on top every time. Here he gets flattened with one punch and it’s kind of funny.

Steiger, with  his intense delivery, dominates. He’s given a lot of screen time during the first half almost making him seem like he’s the star and his stewing anger lends adequate tension, but his good-cop/bad-cop routine doesn’t work because he’s the type of character who’s impossible to like, so he needed to stay bad all the way. I also couldn’t stand the wig. He supposed to be an ugly, unlikable guy, so might as well have him naturally bald, as the rug gives him a campy look.

Gould is the outlier. He was during the 70’s a major headlining star, so seeing him pushed to the background where Steiger takes center stage is almost shocking. I remember him saying once in an interview that he didn’t like the pressure of being a leading man, so maybe this supporting bit was right for him. His character does become more prominent towards the end, but for the most part he comes-off like a faceless walk-on  and a sign of a career decline.

Spoiler Alert!

The twist ending in which it’s found that the crime syndicate was behind the killings due to the wife (Anne Archer) of the crime boss seeing Judd and fearing she may be giving him secret information during their sessions was not particularly original. It also opened up some loopholes. For instance Judd’s patient at the beginning is stabbed on the streets because he was mistaken for being Judd, but later when Judd is kidnapped and in the crime boss’ presence he isn’t immediately killed as they first want him to divulge what his wife told him, but if the idea was to extract information then why was the patient offed right away instead of taken somewhere for interrogation?

At the very end Moore is walking with Archer outside and suddenly she gets hit with a bullet, but not Moore. If she was shot by a hit man for giving out secret info then Moore should’ve received a bullet as well because it was he that she had confided in, or at least that was what they had presumed.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: June 6, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 45 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Bryan Forbes

Studio: Cannon Film Distributors

Available: DVD, Tubi

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in Chicago, Mystery, Thrillers/Suspense

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Overboard (1987)

Posted on February 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

overboard

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rich bitch loses memory.

Heiress Joanna (Goldie Hawn) is a wealthy and snobby woman who hires Dean (Kurt Russell), a carpenter, to remodel the closet that she has on her yacht. Since Dean is a widowed father of four boys (Mike Hagerty, Jared Rushton, Jeffrey Wiseman, Brian Price) he’s more than happy to take on the job in order to bring in extra money, but Joanna, treats Dean poorly, is unsatisfied with his work and refuses to pay him. She ends up throwing him overboard with his tools. Later that night while still on the yacht she goes on deck to retrieve a lost ear ring and falls overboard causing her to hit her head and lose her memory. She is rescued and taken to a local hospital. News shows report on the incident along with pictures of Joanna asking if anyone knows who she is. Dean, who is with friends at a bowling alley, sees the report and concocts a scheme to take advantage of her amnesia by pretending she is his wife and bringing her to his home to do chores and take care of his kids in order to repay her debt to him. The  plan starts out seamlessly, but eventually she begins to bond with both the kids and Dean and then her real husband, Grant (Edward Herrmann) arrives at Dean’s residence in order to take her back with him.

Russell and Hawn began their real-life relationship while working on Swing Shift and wanted to do another picture together. This uninspired script, which was written by Leslie Dixon who had better success with Outrageous Fortune, is a misguided hybrid between Houseboat, a 50’s romantic comedy that starred Cary Grant and Sophia Loren, and Swept Away, a classic 70’s Italian film involving a rich, snotty woman stranded on an island with a working-class man. Unfortunately all nuance gets thrown overboard (pun intended) and we get left with the most extreme caricatures possible. While Hawn is certainly a fine actress her over-the-top character is too cliched and heavy-handed to be even remotely interesting or believable and the film falls hopelessly apart before it even gets going.

The basic premise is full of loopholes. The idea that just anyone could show up at a hospital and insist that some woman is his wife when that women shows no recollection of him and he’s able to bring her home without showing any type of documentation, marriage license, or photograph of the two together is beyond ridiculous. Just saying he recognizes a tattoo on her rear end wouldn’t be enough; maybe the two had a one-night-stand, but it wouldn’t be proof positive that he was married to her and yet for this hospital staff it was. Also, it’s very unlikely that Grant, Joanna’s real husband, would be able to get away with denying her existence as long as he does. He pretends he doesn’t recognize her when he goes to the hospital, so he can then bring young women onto his yacht to fool around with, but his friends and most certainly Joanna’s meddlesome mother, played by Katherine Helmond, would’ve seen the news reports too and gotten on him to go retrieve her, but for some reason in this movie rich people don’t watch the news only the poor folks.

Russell seems to enjoy his part, but like with Hawn his character is a tired caricature that’s not remotely original, or unique in any way. While the movie tries hard to get you to like him I still felt what he does with Joanna by tricking her into thinking she’s his wife was highly exploitive and not forgivable even when factoring in the poor way she had treated him.

The four boys are yet another issue. With the exception of the one who talks in Pee Wee Herman’s voice, which was apparently ad-libbed and not a part of the script, there was no distinction between any of them and they all could’ve been combined into just one. It’s also hard to believe that they’d all agree to play along with Dean and pretend she was their mother when they really knew she wasn’t as most kids are notorious for not be able to keep a secret. I was surprised too that the kids would all accept this new woman into their life and forget that their real mother ever even existed. These kids, or at least one of them, would’ve had some bonding with the real one and been reluctant to just let that go and welcome in her ‘replacement’. The kids were also used to having no rules and doing what they wanted while their dad was away at work, so having a new person come in out of nowhere and start enforcing discipline would most likely caused a rebellion instead of them all embracing this newfound orderly lifestyle.

Had the characters and comedy been more subtle like perhaps having the Hawn character not being a super rich heiress, but just a suburbanite living in a better part of town who has a slight disagreement with Russell when he comes to her house to do some work, then this idea might’ve had potential. However, as it is, the caricatures are too silly and overblown for any viewer with discernable tastes to get into. Also, for such slight and predictable material it takes way too damn long to play-out. Should’ve only been 80 minutes not almost 2-hours.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: December 16, 1987

Runtime:  1-Hour, 52 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Gary Marshall

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy, Movies for the Whole Family, Movies with Nudity, Romance

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Take This Job and Shove It (1981)

Posted on February 22, 2023 | Leave a comment

job

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Modernizing a beer factory.

Frank (Robert Hays) is hired by a conglomerate called The Ellison Group to find ways to improve a beer factory that they own and get it in the black. Since Frank is originally from the small town where the factory is located he excitedly takes-on the task, but soon finds himself at odds with many of the workers, some of whom he was friends with in highs school, but who now look at him as a threat to their jobs. While the ideas that he implements are at first resisted the situation in the factory improves and the place begins turning a profit. Unfortunately it becomes such a success that The Ellison Group decides to sell it to a man with a background in the oil business, who doesn’t know the first thing about beer production, which gets everyone in the factory to rebel from the acquisition in very physical ways when the new owner and his cronies arrive for a visit.

The movie was filmed at an actual beer factory, The Dubuque Star Brewery, in Dubuque, Iowa, that is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and although no longer functioning as a brewery it still stands today. The history of the place is similar to the movie as it was bought by Joseph Pickett in 1971 who implemented a massive renovation when he found that it was still using equipment from the 1930’s. The story itself was inspired by the hit country song that sat on top of the country charts for 2-weeks and was performed by Johnny Paycheck and written by David Allan Coe, both of whom appear in the movie.

The production has some nice on-location shooting of not only Iowa, but also the Twin Cities and I really dug the basketball court in the mansion owned by Eddie Albert’s character. The working class issues and the gritty nature of their jobs and lifestyles is basically on-target, but the movie bills itself as a comedy, and the trailer makes it seem almost like it’s going to be a farce, but in reality it’s more of drama with very little action until the end. There’s not much that’s funny either and the thin, predictable premise gets stretched-out longer than it should ultimately making it boring and a strain to sit through.

The main defect is the Robert Hays character. While he performs the part well he’s not enough of a jerk, or nemesis and thus the confrontational drama is missing. Having him from the area originally was a mistake as he seems too different from everyone else around him and creating him as an outsider from the big city that had little to no regard for the people working under him would’ve created the necessary fireworks that this otherwise benign film lacks. It also would’ve made a more interesting character arch where he’d go from arrogant, city-slicker to a humble man who would learn to appreciate those that he initially looked down on instead of having him already a semi-part of the group to begin with. It also hopelessly wastes the talents of Barbra Hershey, who gets cast as an idealistic, pro-labor lady, a perfect part for her, and I was expecting the two to quarrel over their contrasting viewpoints, but it never gels and she’s seen far too little.

The script also suffers from logic loopholes and continuity errors. While a hotel room door may seem like a minor thing to quibble about it became a big deal for me. The scenario starts out funny enough, possibly the only amusing bit in the movie, with Fran Ryan playing the owner of the hotel touring him around the cramped, rundown room and acting like it’s a more ritzy place than it really is. Later though while Hays is asleep, his buddies from the factory rip the door off its hinges by attaching a chain to it that’s connected to a pick-up truck, but there’s no scene showing, or explaining, how the door ends up getting reattached. The door is also apparently always unlocked as both Hershey and the Martin Mull character walk into the room from the outside unheeded, but most if not all hotel room doors automatically lock when they’re closed, so why doesn’t this one? In the case of Martin Mull he walks in on Hays while he’s still asleep, but you’d think Hays definitely would’ve locked the door from the inside and put the security chain on it before going to bed, so again how is Mull able to just open it? He doesn’t even bother to knock, which is absurd too since he’s never been to that hotel before, so how would he even know for sure he had the right room and wasn’t walking in on a stranger?

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: April 1, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Gus Trikonis

Studio: AVCO Embassy Pictures

Available: DVD-R, Blu-ray-R

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Posted in 80's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Songs, Movies with a Hotel setting, Movies with a rural setting

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The Beast (1988)

Posted on February 20, 2023 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: Tankers stranded in desert.

During the invasion of Afghanistan in 1981 a group of Soviet tanks roll into a small village and callously bomb every home and building to a cinder. One of the tanks, led by Commander Daskal (George Dzundza), orders his driver Konstantin (Jason Patric) to run over an Afghan man to the shock and horror of everyone else. When Taj (Steven Bauer), who is one of the Afghan fighters, returns to the village and sees all the carnage, including the death of his father and brother, he becomes committed to seek revenge. He assembles a small group of fighters to go out into the desert to search for the tank, which they call the beast, and which has become lost when it takes a wrong turn and thus stranding them in the middle of nowhere with no option but to turn around and go back to where they came from, which they want to avoid. As the gas and rations become scarce the tensions mount particularly between Daskal and Konstantin who share widely different viewpoints as well as with Samad (Erick Avari) an Afghan interpreter who Daskal no longer trusts and now considers to be a traitor.

This film was requested for review by a reader of this blog named Nick (it was requested over a year ago and I do apologize that I got caught up with things and forgot about watching it). What struck me though is how he said it was such a gripping film and one of the best war movies, in his opinion, ever made and yet few people, including myself, had ever heard of it. I figured if the movie was as great as he said it should be better known and feared it might not live up to his billing, but when I watched it I found myself just as caught up in it as he said and impressed with how emotionally compelling it was from beginning to end.

Why this great film fell into obscurity and was dismal at the box office where it managed to only recoup a paltry $161,000 out of an $8 million budget is yet another example of the cruelty of the Hollywood business. It was directed by Kevin Reynolds who had just come-off doing the breezy road comedy hit Fandango and who wanted to follow that up by doing something completely different. He decided to do a filmization to the stageplay ‘Nanawatai’ by William Mastrosimone who was inspired to write the play after witnessing a group of mujahideen fighters capture and execute a Soviet tank crew in 1986. David Puttnam, the then head of Columbia Pictures, loved the script and threw his full support to the project. However, during the course of the filming Puttnam was ousted and Dawn Steel took over. She wasn’t as enthusiastic about the movie and when it was completed it got released to only a few theaters with no promotion. Few people heard or saw it and it went into oblivion only to finally several decades later get the recognition it deserved through the release of the DVD and has now acquired a fairly sizable cult following.

The use of a hand-held camera and graphic violence, including seeing the man get run over by a tank and then afterwards the remains of his mangled body, all help accentuate the harsh realism of war. Having it shot in a desert in Israel helps add to the authenticity as deserts in North America look different and cannot match the distinct topography of a Middle Eastern one. Leonard Maltin in his review, which I didn’t read until after viewing the film, describes the plot as ‘predictable’ and the pace ‘ponderous’ while the characters are in his opinion ‘stereotyped’, which I couldn’t disagree with more. While I haven’t seen every war movie out there I found this one to have many intriguing twists that I wouldn’t have guessed. The characters have distinct personalities and the pace is perfect with each scene and line of dialogue opening up a new story wrinkle.

My only two complaints is that the Afghan townspeople at the beginning are a bit too blissful as after all a war was going around them, which they were aware of, so I’d have thought they’d be more guarded and only cautiously gone outside if completely needed versus behaving as if they’re in a bubble with no worries about the horrors around them until it finally happens. The Russian soldiers are too Americanized. Great effort was put into the Afghans to make them seem authentic including having them speak in their native tongue with subtitles, but actors playing the Russians not only speak in English, but do it with American accents. I’m okay with them talking in English as forcing them all to learn Russian would’ve been too exhausting and requiring the movie to be completely subtitled, so I’m okay with that compromise, which seemed almost necessary. I presume for the project to get financed the studio insisted on American actors to play the parts in order to make it more marketable, so I understand that concession as well, but at least have them sound Russian should’ve been a requirement as many times throughout the movie  I had to keep reminding myself this was a Russian army as outside of George Dzundza’s brilliant performance, the rest hardly seemed foreign in any way.

Alternate Title: The Beast of War

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: September 16, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 51 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Kevin Reynolds

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, Tubi

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Posted in 80's Movies, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with a rural setting, Outdoors, War Movies

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Hide in Plain Sight (1980)

Posted on February 5, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Searching for his children.

Thomas Hacklin (James Caan) is a divorced father of two children who has visiting rights to see his kids every weekend. One day when he arrives at his ex-wife Ruthie’s (Barbra Rae) residence he finds the home abandoned and no one around. He eventually learns that her and the kids have been put into the Witness Protection Program due to her remarriage to Jack (Robert Viharo) a gangster who qualified for the program when he became a state’s witness against the mob. Thomas’ efforts to find his kids prove futile and the authorities are no help, but he becomes relentless and hires a lawyer (Danny Aiello) to represent him in court, but even then the odds remain seemingly insurmountable.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Leslie Waller, which in-turn was based on the actual experiences of Thomas Leonhard who one day in 1967 when he went to pick-up his kids for his weekly visitation found them gone and the house that they had been living in with his ex-wife Rochelle to have been abandoned. This then precipitated an 8-year crusade by Thomas to get them back, which proved to be a landmark legal battle, but on July 4, 1975 he was eventually reunited. The film though changed several things from the true story including adding in a subplot where Thomas gets followed by the mob and eventually leads to a violent confrontation. It also compresses the time span from 8 years to 18 months.

While I enjoyed the movie more than when I first saw it over 10 years ago the issues that I had with it during the first viewing remained the same. Most of it had to do with Caan’s, in this the only film that he directed, non-use of close-ups, which the studio heads complained about during the production. A good example of this is when Thomas and ex-wife are arguing on a public sidewalk the camera does not move-in, like in most movies, to allow us to hear what they’re saying, but instead pulls back, so they go further away, but what’s the point of seeing characters on the screen argue if we can’t hear what it’s about? Another scene has Thomas arriving at his ex-wife’s abandoned home, but instead of having the camera go inside with him as he enters it, it remains outside and then tracks around the home to the back door, which Thomas is seen leaving. This though lessens the impact as having the viewer visually witness the suddenly empty house would’ve been far more dramatic.

I did though like that many of the scenes were shot in Buffalo at the exact locations where the real-life incidents happened. The film reconstructs the look and feel of the 60’s quite nicely and many of the participants from the actual events coached the actors on how to perform their roles accurately. The acting is impressive especially by Viharo who’s mafia mobster caricature is right on-target. Kenneth McMillan is quite entertaining as a police detective who initially impedes Thomas’ efforts, but eventually has a change-of-heart. As with any great character actor, which McMillan clearly is, it’s what they add to the part that makes it interesting and here it’s his excessive eating with virtually each scene he’s in has him stuffing his face though I wondered how many takes were required to do each scene and if he ultimately overate and got himself sick while performing the role.

Spoiler Alert!

I was annoyed though with how certain fictional things that got added-in like Thomas’ dealings with the mob got played-down instead of up. The original script by Spencer Eastman called for a lengthy car chase and violent fist-fight, but Caan chose to take the subtle route making these moments less tension filled and possibly too slow and uneventful for some people to sit through. I was also amused how the actual reunion between the father and kids was different from the one in the movie where it’s portrayed as being a happy one. In real-life the kids disliked their father’s rules and ended up moving back with their mother showing how ironic life can be where you fight hard for something and then when you finally get it it ends up not being as great as you thought it would be.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 21, 1980

Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: James Caan

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD-R (Warner Archive Collection), Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Drama, Gangster Movies, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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Circle of Two (1981)

Posted on January 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Old man/young teen.

Ashley St. Clair (Richard Burton) is an aging painter of 60 who has lost his passion and hasn’t either sold, or attempted to do a painting in over 10 years. Sarah (Tatum O’Neal) is an unhappy 15-year-old who’s tired of dating guys her own age as she finds them to be immature and only interested in one thing…sex. She then meets Ashley, first after she sneaks into an adult theater to watch an X-rated movie and then later at a coffee shop. Despite the extreme differences in their ages they still connect through their mutual interest in art. Ashley even begins to paint again and the two share an enjoyable, but platonic friendship. However, once Sarah’s parents (Robin Gammell, Patricia Collins) find out about they put an immediate stop to it by locking her in her room and and in protest Sarah refuses to eat.

Based on the novel ‘A Lesson in Love’ by Marie-Terese Baird this film marks the final one to be directed by famed Greek director Jules Dassin and in many ways this may be the weakest one that he did. The whole way the relationship gets going is very rushed and forced. Bumping into the same person twice in one day, in the big city of Toronto, doesn’t seem likely and then having Sarah fall so head-over-heels for him to the point she starts spouting out the ‘L’ word quite quickly is dingy. A more plausible scenario would’ve had Ashley teaching an art class (he no longer paints, but still has to bring in an income somehow) of which Sarah attends and then through the course of several months a bond is slowly created.

The sex angle is a complete mess. Fortunately Ashley makes no moves on her, but Sarah does aggressively begin to come-on to him and at one point stands completely naked in front of him. In her autobiography ‘A Paper Life’ O’Neal expressed great discomfort in having to do this scene though I didn’t detect this, but maybe that’s just because she’s such a great actress, but either way the scene was completely unnecessary.  It’s also inconsistent with the character as she broke-up with her boyfriend Paul (Michael Wincott) because he was trying to pressure her into having sex and she was still a virgin, so if she didn’t want sex with a guy her own age why would she want it with one who was way older and is this era of pre-Viagra how could she even be sure he could do it? A better scenario would’ve had sex never coming into play and it was simply their other mutual interests that connected them and it was only outsiders, like Sarah’s parents, that presumed the worst when it really wasn’t occurring.

The one bright spot is the acting with both leads being superb. O’Neal proves that her strong and memorable performance in Paper Moon was no fluke and the only thing that keeps the film watchable. Burton is excellent as well. Although he usually has a strong presence here he wisely takes a step back playing someone who’s weak and tentative, which in many ways reflected his own career at the time where many felt he was washed-up and the years of alcohol abuse certainly did age him making him look even older than 60 when he really wasn’t, and thus a perfect fit for the part. The only issue here is that Tatum seems way too mature for 15 both physically and personality-wise and having her play someone who was 17 would’ve been more appropriate.

While the film remains marginally compelling the talky ending in which Burton goes on a long speech like a tenured professor lecturing to a college class practically ruins it. I was also frustrated that we never learn much about the old man, played by George Bourne Sr., an elderly gentleman who agrees to let Ashley paint his portrait for a fee, which in-turn revitalizes his career and I felt this character should’ve been in it more, or at least a few scenes showing what they talked about as his portrait was being done.

Tatum’s abstaining from all food plays-out poorly as well. For one thing she doesn’t change physically, so we’d never know she wasn’t eating if it weren’t mentioned. She then travels to New York and I was fully expecting her to pass-out in the middle of crowded Grand Central Station from a lack of nutrients, but apparently in-between time she had eaten something, but this should’ve been shown and the fact that it isn’t is a sign of shoddy film-making, which despite Dassin’s previous output, this whole movie ends up pretty much being.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: May 7, 1981

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jules Dassin

Studio: World Northal

Available: DVD-R, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Canada, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Romance

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