Category Archives: 80’s Movies

Burglar (1987)

burglar

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Burglar witnesses a murder.

Bernice who goes by the nickname of Bernie (Whoopi Goldberg) is a cat burglar who gets hired by a dentist named Cynthia Sheldrake (Lesley Ann Warren) who wants Bernie to rob her ex-husband’s apartment and steal back her jewelry. When Bernie enters the apartment she has to hide in the closet when the ex-husband comes home earlier than expected and it is there that she hears him get murdered. Cynthia implicates Bernie in the crime and it is up to Bernie to track down the real killer before the police catch up with her.

The usually entertaining Goldberg doesn’t seem right for the part, which was originally intended for Bruce Willis. Except for a few amusing moments she is not all that funny and seems to be coasting most of the way and even out-of-place. For some reason she wears blue contacts and they look hideous. She also seems just a bit too nice for a career criminal that has spent time in jail and should be little more rough-around-the-edges. Having her constantly concerned about doing the ‘ethical’ thing and only robbing those that ‘deserve’ it doesn’t quite jive.

Bobcat Goldthwait as her dog groomer friend Carl is more of distraction than anything. His quivering, high pitch schtick comes off like someone with a serious psychological or physical problem and more creepy than funny. His line stating that drinking olive oil before drinking alcohol will prevent one from getting drunk later became the amusing basis for the film Calling Bobcat.

The supporting cast ends up being funnier than the two leads. John Goodman and Anne De Salvo have a few good moments as a bickering and perpetually perplexed cop duo. Warren is also good as an all-around bitch and all three performers deserved more screen time.

The film features Whoopi riding a motorcycle and being chased by police down the hilly, winding streets of San Francisco, which to an extent resembled the chase sequence in What’s Up Doc?. However, the chase is so poorly photographed and edited that it becomes hard to follow and nothing more than a collage of jump cuts.

There is another scene where the police try to enter her apartment which is equipped with a steal door, all sorts of booby traps and even a hidden room. On one hand this is kind of funny, but on the other it is wholly unrealistic. If this had occurred in a house that she owned I might have bought into it, but I would think that the noisy construction of all these contraptions would have had her reported to the landlord and she would have been evicted. Also, how is one able to build a hidden room in an apartment building without it affecting the neighboring tenants? There is also the issue that she states earlier that she had just been released from jail, so where did she find the time to build all this stuff?

The story itself lacks intrigue, relies too much on coincidence and eventually becomes implausible. I liked the use of the Bay area locations particularly the fog setting at the end, but otherwise this is just a bunch of overblown nonsense.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: March 20, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 44Minutes

Rated R

Director: Hugh Wilson

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

Ginger and Fred (1986)

ginger and fred

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Aging dance partners reunite.

Amelia (Giulietta Masina) and Pippo (Marcello Mastroianni) are two aging dance partners who haven’t worked together for years. They are asked to reunite for a TV-show special and do a famous Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers routine, but things have changed in their many years apart and the situation becomes more awkward than they imagined.

This is a genuinely amusing satire on television and celebrity status with Mastroisanni being absolutely engaging in every scene that he is in. Masina, who was director Federico Fellini’s wife in real-life, also gives a good performance and together they make a real fun team. The final dance sequence is terrific and the film manages to really come together at that point. The film is also sprinkled with some funny satirical snippets with the best ones including goofy billboards and a woman wearing edible panties.

On the negative end I found the techno music score to be overplayed and it becomes irritating especially at the beginning.  The film is also about a half-hour too long and it takes almost thirty minutes for Mastroianni’s character to even appear.

Overall I found the film to be enjoyable and mainly because the two leads are old pros who know how to work their magic although this is definitely not one of Fellini’s best films and at times it seems like he is just coasting.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: January 13, 1986

Runtime: 2Hours 5Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Frederico Fellini

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

Homer and Eddie (1989)

homer and eddie

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Losers go road-trippin’

Homer (James Belushi) is a mentally challenged man suffering brain damage from being hit in the head by a baseball when he was a kid. He decides to go on a road trip to visit his sick father, but along the way he gets robbed and has to sleep in an abandoned car. It is there that he meets Eddie (Whoopi Goldberg) an embittered, volatile women who is supposedly suffering from a brain tumor. The two trek off in her car to Oregon to meet up with Homer’s parents and also try to track down the men who robbed him.

I was impressed with the acting range shown here by Goldberg. Usually she is so likable, but here she is quite edgy and does it in an effective way. I applaud her attempts to work outside of her comfort zone although her fits of anger make the viewer uncomfortable and her crying does not sound authentic.

Belushi is good in atypical role and for the most part he is the best thing about the movie. His lines are consistently amusing, but the film walks an uncomfortable line between making him a sympathetic character to also making fun of him. Despite the fact that these two already worked together in Jumpin’ Jack Flash the chemistry between them doesn’t work.

The supporting cast is interesting in cameo roles. Casting 70-year-old 200 pound Ernestine McClendon as a prostitute gets points simply for its novelty, but seeing her in her grossly oversized panties is a bit much. Karen Black as her pimp has such a small, meaningless role that I was surprised that she even took it. Nancy Parsons has an interesting part as a cold and aloof woman who becomes sympathetic, which is a rarity for her. Director John Waters appears briefly as a robber and I kind of got a kick out of Don Hanmer as a very nervous cashier. Belushi’s real-life second wife Marjorie Bransfield can be spotted in the character of Betsy and this also marked the final film appearance for both Fritz Feld and Anne Ramsey.

The film features a wide-array of musical styles, which works against it. I liked Richie Havens rendition of ‘Home’, which had the nice laid-back beat and folk tinged sound that you expect for a road movie. Some of the more hard rock, heavy metal stuff became too loud and obnoxious and takes the viewer out of the picture instead of wrapping them in.

I liked the scenery and there are a few interesting moments, but trying to mix the surreal with the gritty is misguided. The comical bits get drowned out by the scenes of violence and a very maudlin theme. The result is an uneven film that pales in comparison to the classic road movies.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: December 1, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated R

Director: Andrei Konchalovskiy

Studio: Skouras Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu

The House of God (1984)

the house of God 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Caustic look at medicine.

This is an interesting, honest, and incisive look at the inner-workings of an average, everyday hospital. Here we have a group of interns fresh out of medical school that come face-to-face with the harsh realities of the hospital ‘business’. Their youthful ideals and energy is soon stamped out and replaced by apathy and indifference because of the ‘system’.

Even if you have no connection to the medical field you may still find this relatable. The hospital business really is just like the everyday business world with the same politics and contrasting personalities. In particular there’s the Jo character, which is well played by Lisa Pelikan. She is called a ‘slurpy’ and can best be described as a ‘company person’ someone with no outside life and thus becomes married to her job. She goes “all out” for every patient, even if they don’t want it, simply to hide her own emptiness and need for approval. You can find one in any office as well as an administrator who is completely oblivious to what is going on and tries to solve all issues by simply talking in circles.

The core group of interns is very identifiable. They start out as one, but eventually break apart. Some adopt the system and even play into it. Others begrudgingly learn to accept it while still others decide to simply drop-out altogether.

It is hard to put this film into any one type of category. It starts out as a sort of absurdist comedy, but then becomes much more realistic. There are moments of both satire and drama, but the second half becomes all serious.

There’s no real cinematic style and the overall visual quality is blah. The film can’t really be described as entertaining either. It’s more like an informative film by someone in the know. If you want to be ‘educated’ about what a hospital environment is really like then this needs watching. Charles Haid’s “Fatman” character alone makes it worth it.

Based on the novel by Samuel Shem this film was shelved by its studio and never released either theatrically or on video, which was unusual since this is a quality picture. This was supposedly from pressure by the American Medical Association who felt it painted too much of an unflattering light on hospitals although the book was even more critical. Finding a copy can be difficult although recently it has been broadcast sporadically on THISTV network.

house of God 1

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: None

Runtime: 1Hour 48Minutes

Rated R

Director: Donald Wrye

Studio: MGM

Not available at this time.

Fatal Beauty (1987)

fatal beauty

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Whoopi hates drug dealers.

Rita Rizzoli (Whoopi Goldberg) is a narcotics cop out to nab Conrad Kroll (Harris Yulin) who she believes is behind a recent shipment of a drug called ‘fatal beauty’ that is an unusually pure type of cocaine that can prove to be instantly deadly to those who unwittingly take it. Unfortunately Kroll has too much money and connections and proves to be untouchable, so she starts an uneasy alliance with Kroll’s security man Mike (Sam Elliot) that is amusing, interesting and revealing for both parties.

Goldberg is fantastic in the lead and one of the reasons this movie works. Her personality and streetwise humor is engaging.  The role was originally intended for Cher who had enjoyed working with Elliot in Mask and wanted to do another project with him, but for some reason when the part finally got offered she turned it down. I actually had a hard time seeing Cher in the part and felt Whoopi did it better. The only issue of course is that the character is a black woman, but also supposedly Italian, which doesn’t make much sense. The part where Mike tells her how much he enjoys an Italian women’s eyes seems absurd and you would have thought somebody would have realized this and altered the dialogue and the character’s name, but didn’t and this becomes the film’s biggest loophole although it is a relatively minor one that doesn’t interfere with the overall enjoyment.

The pairing of Elliot and Goldberg may initially seem odd, but for me it worked and their ongoing banter is the most entertaining thing about the movie. My only quibble is that as a sort of reconciliation gift the Elliot character buys Rita a $5,000 dress, which seemed way overboard especially when a relationship between the two had not been established.

Brad Dourif is terrific as the bad guy and weaves a nice balance between being campy and sinister. Ruben Blades is fun as Rita’s rather inept police partner and Jennifer Warren gets a funky moment when she gets into a big drawn out physical fight with Rita while in front of some shocked and refined guests at a garden party.

The only part that doesn’t really work is John P. Ryan’s as an overly-stressed police sergeant, which doesn’t gel and is not funny. Cheech Marin can be spotted in a brief bit as a bartender.

The story itself lacks originality and at times gets convoluted and even confusing. Mixing moments of humor with gritty scenes of graphic violence gives the whole thing a very uneven feel. Yet there were still some segments that I like and even got into including the part where Rita finds herself trapped and surrounded while inside a crack house. I found the dialogue to be sharp and witty and am at a loss as to why critic Leonard Maltin describes it as being ‘mind-bogglingly awful’ in his book and my only conclusion is that he just didn’t get the humor and should probably give it another view.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: October 30, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 44Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tom Holland

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

Chan is Missing (1982)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Chan has their money.

This is a story about Jo (Wood Moy) and Steve (Marc Hayasi) two cab drivers who go throughout Chinatown looking for a man named Chan who took their money and then disappeared. If you have never been to San Francisco’s Chinatown district then this film gives you an illuminating look of what it is like. It shows you everything from its atmosphere, to the landscape, and even its people and their attitudes. At times it is almost like a documentary, which this probably should have been in the first place.

The main cab driver who we follow around in his search is fun in a sort of offbeat way. He is old, short, and very dopey looking. He goes about his investigation in a low key sort of way. After a while he starts to grow on you especially when he makes his wry observations.

Unfortunately these are the only two good things about this film, which on the whole is boring and heavy-handed. The search for Chan is merely an excuse by director Wayne Wang to show how difficult it is for Chinese to assimilate into American society and how they are always looked upon as ‘foreigners’, and the lack of opportunities. It is sort of like one of those movies you watched when you were in grade school where the flimsy plot was just an excuse to try to teach you something. This one works the same way where it seems more like a lecture than a movie.

Technically it is inadequate. The majority of the characters are non-actors who seem to be just mouthing the lines that they have memorized. There is also no action and a desperate need for some humor even the low-key kind could’ve helped the flow.

Certainly director Wang has gone on to do bigger, better, more sophisticated things. This film can best be viewed as an early student project, which it resembles in many ways.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 4, 1982

Runtime: 1Hour 20Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Wayne Wang

Studio: New Yorker Films

Available: VHS, DVD

Clara’s Heart (1988)

claras heart

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Clara dispenses her wisdom.

Leona (Kathleen Quinlan) is spending some time at a Jamaican resort trying to recuperate from the sudden loss of her infant daughter. There she meets Clara (Whoopi Goldberg) who is working as a maid there. The two quickly strike up a friendship and Leona then hires Clara to come home with her and take care of her 10-year-old son David (Neil Patrick Harris). David does not like Clara at first, but the two eventually attain a strong bond especially after his parent’s divorce.

After some box office failures with her comical films Goldberg decided to go back to doing drama with so-so results. The whole way that Clara gets hired on as a nanny seems awkward, forced and too quick and screenwriter Mark Medoff should have thought up a better scenario. Clara isn’t completely likable as she has a pushy personality and dispenses her opinions on her employers whether they ask for it or not. Eventually David’s father Bill (Michael Ontkean) stands up to her, but I think others would have confronted her sooner or even fired her.

The runtime is much too long for such slight and predictable material. The whole second half gets consumed with this deep dark secret about the death of Clara’s son Robbie and when she does finally tell David the story it is a nasty one especially for a supposedly ‘family friendly’ film such as this one. It also brings out the question that if Clara raised a son that was so very troubled why then would she be so confident about knowing how to raise someone else’s?

Harris is outstanding in his film debut and really helps to carry the movie along. The sarcastic and glib comments that he spews out is the film’s highlight.  The big glasses that he wears seemed too reminiscent to the Corey Haim character in Lucas, which came out just a couple of years before this one. I was also confused why during a school swim meet he would be the only one wearing a T-shirt when all the other swimmers weren’t.

Spalding Gray appears in support as Leona’s new boyfriend. The script though does not take advantage of Gray’s unique talents and the film would have been better served had they allowed him to ad-lib and improvise.  Also, the woman who plays Bill’s new love interest looks too much like Leona and in a visual medium such as this it is usually better to emphasize contrast.

The production values are good and I loved the large home that David’s family lives in and the by-the-lake location. However, the material is too formulaic and Clara’s and David’s bonding sessions become strained and corny. The film’s ‘feel-good’ message is lost in an approach that is sterile, mechanical, and by-the-numbers.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 7, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 48Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Robert Mulligan

Available: VHS, Amazon Instant Video

The Telephone (1988)

the telephone 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: I liked the owl.

Vashti Blue (Whoopi Goldberg) is an out-of-work actress sitting inside her dreary small apartment and having conversations with people over the phone. She also argues through a locked door that she shares with the women next door while waiting for a call from an agent for a job opportunity that never comes.

I am all for experimental cinema, which is the best way to describe this misguided project, but to work it still needs an artistic design and focus and this has none. It pretty much comes off as somebody’s cheap home video where a camera is turned on and then someone is allowed to rant and rave without pause for eighty minutes. Some could blame Rip Torn who is an actor turned first-time director here, but in subsequent interviews he has complained that Whoopi wouldn’t listen to any advice or direction that he gave and pretty much made his presence insignificant.  You could also blame the screenplay, which was written by the very odd pairing of Terry Southern and Harry Nilsson. Southern is best known for penning the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove while Nilsson is a famous singer/songwriter whose best work was doing the song ‘Everybody’s Talking’ that was the theme for the classic film Midnight Cowboy. However, Whoopi took great liberties with the material and ad-libbed a lot, so what was originally put down on paper and what is left on the screen could be minimal.

The conversations that Whoopi has over the phone ranges from lame to ridiculous. One includes calling the police and trying to get them to arrest a video store owner because he rented her a tape of Christmas in July with a scene excised is too absurd to be even remotely amusing. The Whoopi character also incorrectly stated that Frank Capra was the director of the film when it reality it was Preston Sturges.  Goldberg puts on a variety of accents including British, Japanese, Indian, and Southern as well as a few others, but her Irish one is suspect and her impression of John Wayne is terrible.

The apartment set is dull and bleak. The viewer feels trapped and with such little visual design their eyes and thoughts are apt to wander. Cutaways are sorely needed, but there are none. An infuriating moment is when there is a sound of a loud car pile-up outside, but despite this being a visual medium the camera never cuts away to show any of it. This was probably due to budget constraints, but what is even more perplexing is that there are sounds of people screaming, police sirens and even rioting and then a half minute later it all suddenly stops for no explained reason.

The supporting cast is eclectic but wasted. Noted character actor Severn Darden, in his last film role, appears in a brief bland bit as Whoopi’s neighbor. Elliot Gould gets a few minutes as Whoopi’s former agent and seems to be seriously slumming as he was a headline star during the seventies and now sadly stuck in this. John Heard is the only one who comes off best as a caustic, brash telephone repairman.

Whoopi’s two pets upstage the human cast by a mile. Her pet owl is very cute and I dug the goldfish particularly when he gets sucked down the drain of her bathtub and she must use a plunger to save him, which is the only time there is any action in the entire movie.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: January 22, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 20Minutes (The DVD cover states it’s 1Hour 36Minutes, but it is wrong.)

Rated R

Director: Rip Torn

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD

Eat the Rich (1988)

eat the rich

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rich feed the poor.

This is an extremely garish mixture of loud music, ugly visuals, and shock comedy. The story is about a waiter, a gay man with a real fun bitchy attitude, who gets fired when he refuses to suck up to the arrogant clientele. He gets revenge by banding together other misfits who return and kill everybody and then feed the dead bodies to new unsuspecting patrons.

Sounds gross and tasteless, but it really isn’t. There’s no nudity or sex and no graphic violence or gore. A little bit more of these things would have actually helped. At least it would have solidified it as the underground shock comedy it seems to be striving to be. Instead it’s cluttered with no real objective or foundation. At times it plays like biting social commentary and at other times nothing more than a silly gross out teen flick

By the time you get to the way off-base ending it becomes obvious that the filmmakers were trying to be outrageous simply as a way to get noticed. There is no real insight to the have and have-nots of society. They simply came upon the idea because they felt it would appeal to the type of audience they were looking for.

This is too bad because had it been a little more polished it might have been a stronger film. Believe it or not there are some clever bits. The jabs at the Queen are a riot. The scene involving terrorism and the Middle East crisis is a true original. The rich characters are so over-the-top obnoxious you have to laugh-out-loud.

The true scene stealer though is Nosher Powell. He is a former stunt man/ stunt coordinator who worked on many of the stunts in the early James Bond movies. Here he plays a sort of Teddy Roosevelt times ten a ‘working class’ politician who bullies everyone and everything. The actor has a rather rough, amateurish delivery which only adds to the saltiness of the character.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: April 22, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Richardson

Studio: Recorded Releasing

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986)

jumpin jack flashBy Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Whoopi plays spy game.

Due to Whoopi Goldberg turning 58 on November 13th and because whenever I watch a clip of ‘The View’ on YouTube she tends to be my favorite panelist I have decided to review each of the films she starred in during the 80’s for the next 7 Mondays. Critically her films in that decade did not fare well and she has even disowned a few, but since this is a 80’s movie blog I feel it is my professional duty to review them anyways whether some of them are torturous to sit through or not.

In this one she plays Terry Doolittle a bank employee who does a lot of transactions and communications through her computer. One day she gets a message from someone using the code name Jumpin’ Jack Flash who asks for her help supposedly to save his life. This sets into motion wild adventures in which she puts her life at risk and gets involved with everything from the CIA to foreign government powers.

Whoopi is the best thing about this otherwise silly and contrived plot. Director Penny Marshall nicely allows Whoopi room to flex her comic muscles while also taking advantage of her sassy and streetwise humor. The part where she tries to decipher the lyrics of the ‘Jumpin Jack Flash’ song by the Rolling Stones is full of all sorts of Goldbergisms and it’s great. Her impressions of Ray Charles and Diana Ross are on target as well, but my favorite part is when she is drugged with truth serum and then goes into a beauty salon and tells everyone there exactly what she thinks. My only complaint to her performance is her unnecessary use of the F-bomb, which turns this otherwise kid friendly story into an R-rated movie.

It is also fun to watch a lot of up-and-coming comic stars in small roles including Phil Hartman, Jon Lovitz, James Belushi, Tracy Ullman and Annie Potts. There is even a surprise appearance by Jonathan Pryce at the very end, but my favorite is when Penny casts her older brother Gary as a detective who has a humorously confrontational exchange with Whoopi inside a police station.

Marshall’s directorial debut is limp. I liked all the movie posters that line Whoopi’s apartment, but otherwise the visuals are dull. Her workplace environment and conversations that Whoopi has with her co-workers seems realistic, but not particularly interesting or amusing. The opening segment limps along while barely being engaging. The part where Whoopi gets her dress caught in a shredder has up-tempo cartoon-like music played over it, which puts the thing too much at a kiddie level.

The story itself is convoluted and confusing with little that is plausible. The shootout inside the office gets particularly ridiculous, but the biggest problem I had with the script is the way the Terry character gets herself involved in the mess in the first place. If she knew the person asking for her assistance to this dangerous mission I might understand it, but she doesn’t. After she is shot at and nearly killed, gets her apartment ransacked and is verbally threatened she decides to immerse herself even more into the precarious situation even when she is given the opportunity to get out of it, which most normal people would’ve.  The viewer starts to lose empathy for a protagonist when they act irrationally, which this one does. The idea that she is doing it because she has ‘feelings’ for this other person even though she has never met him, knows nothing about him and doesn’t even know what he looks like is just plain stupid.

Although the Rolling Stones song from which the movie is named after does get briefly played later on I felt it should have been used over the opening credits. I still prefer the Stones version, but Aretha Franklin’s rendition that is used during the closing credits isn’t bad.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: October 10, 1986

Runtime: 1Hour 45Minutes

Rated R

Director: Penny Marshall

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, YouTube, Amazon Instant Video