Oct 19: "I didn't mean to call you meatloaf, Jack"

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

dir. John Landis (Three Amigos!, 1986)

CAST
David Naughton
Jenny Agutter
Griffin Dunne (My Girl, 1991)
David Schofield (The Wolfman, 2010)
Rik Mayall (Drop Dead Fred, 1991)
Frank Oz (Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (voice), 1980)
Alan Ford (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, 1998)
John Landis (Spiderman 2, 2004)

Oh, man! It's October and were are counting down the days until Halloween. Because it's relevant to a movie I've posted about on here, I think I'll post a picture of myself in costume. It's sort of in that trite theme of a "sexy" something, but hopefully you'll see that I've made it my own. Plus, you all know I wouldn't wear something truly indecent.

So! My first horror movie is a classic that I've been meaning to watch for a while, An American Werewolf in London. Let me tell you, it's not quite what I expected, but it was still some quality stuff.

It's about these two American guys who are backpacking across Europe, except they run afoul of a deadly beast. Jack gets killed, but David is far less lucky (drama!). The transformation scene is quite gruesome. but my favorite parts are when Jack returns to talk to David as a member of the cursed undead. Everytime appearing more and more decayed. Jack keeps pushing David to kill himself, because the victims of the wolf are trapped in Limbo until the wolf's bloodline is severed. Jack is joined by more and more of David's victims, but of course David can't quite bring himself to suicide, because he has someone to live for, Nurse Alex.

And so he runs amok in London. Including through the tubes, as in this particularly well shot scene:

you know I don't usually notice things like camerawork, I'm more about the stories. But this shot was so good I had to rewind a little to look again. You see the wolf just slightly creeping in from the top of the frame, and the victim has fallen down on the escalator and he's frozen in fear. It was very scary. But there are funny parts too, like when David wakes up in the zoo after his rampage:

In the 80s a little bit of public hair wasn't such a big deal. A few times you can sort of see what my little brother calls the tenders, but just quick. That would never happen in a modern movie. No winkies (this is why I don't have a boyfriend) at all, only breasts and butts. I remember the first time I saw a dude's tenders in a movie, it was What Alice Found (2003) which was playing on the Independent Film Channel. I was shocked! I didn't know that was allowed. The first time I saw lady-tenders in a movie was, I think, Animal House (1978, also John Landis), but I don't remember how old I was when I watched that (not old enough!). But in both of those movie the purpose of the nudity was blatantly sexual, and that's not the case here. That's my point: nudity doesn't have to be sexy.

I guess I won't spoil the ending but I will say that it's stark and abrupt. It seems like only modern movies feel that it's necessary to ease you out of the storyworld by letting you know that all the characters are going to be OK.

16 April- "They throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can't come"

The Big Chill (1983)

dir. Lawrence Kasdan (French Kiss, 1995)

starring

Tom Berenger (Born on the Fourth of July, 1982)

Glenn Close (Air Force One, 1997)

Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park, 1993)

William Hurt (Tuck Everlasting, 2002)

Kevin Kline (A Fish Called Wanda, 1988)

Mary Kay Place (Being John Malkovitch, 1999)

JoBeth Williams (Jungle 2 Jungle, 1997)

My mom picked this out at the Borders when she came to visit me. She said she doesn't like "funny" movies, and can I say, she really hit the nail on the head. More than anything this reminds me of a poor man's St. Elmo's Fire (1985), which is odd because you can see it predates that fine film by two years.

Just like in The First Wives Club (1996), this movie begins with a group of estranged college friends being reunited at a funeral. They proceed to hang out for a weekend, hashing out issues of sexual tension and lost idealism.

Mostly angsty with several attempts at comic relief, some of which are successful. Jeff Goldblum is the funniest by far, and Kevin Kline does okay. The ditzy girlfriend of the deceased is also good for some laughs, she also seems to be the most contented of the group, pointing out, "I don't like to talk about my past as much as you all do."

21 Feb - "You really think I'm punk!? I mean, it's not as cool as new wave, but it's a lot better than pre-teen!"

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (1985) 
dir. Alan Metter (Back to School, 1986)

CAST

Sarah Jessica Parker (The First Wives Club, 1996)

Helen Hunt (Pay it Forward, 2000)

Shannen Doherty (Heathers, 1988)

Here's an asinine, formulaic movie about the 1980s. It's not quite bad enough to be good, but it's close. Frustratingly, infuriatingly close.

Skip the obvious riff on SJP - she's only a teenager here, gang, and cute in a whiny sort of way.

The plot is that the new girl in town (SJP) befriends the fun-loving class clown (Helen Hunt, or as I like to say, poor-man's Kathleen Turner) The pair then decides to enter a dance competition for the grand prize of winning a spot on DanceTV - which is like the big TV show everyone's into. But the dad is a retired military guy and he's really strict and doesn't think SJP should be competing in a dance contest so she's gotta practice on the sly. There's an obnoxious rich girl who's also trying to win the contest, who hates SJP for no obvious reason than to be antagonistic. And the love interest is SJP's dance partner, who is from public school (gasps!)

Lots of: leotards, lasers, backflips, montages

Not so many: People of color, actual dancing, plot twists

26 Dec - "You call that a knife?"

Crocodile Dundee (1986)
dir. Peter Faiman

CAST
Paul Hogan (Flipper, 1996)
Linda Kozlowski (Village of the Damned, 1995)
Mark Blum (Desperately Seeking Susan, 1985)






Crocodile Dundee II (1988)

dir. John Cornell

CAST
Paul Hogan
Linda Kozlowski
Luis Guzmán (Punch Drunk Love, 2002)
Juan Fernández (Arachnophobia, 1990)
Stephen Root (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1992)

Oh gosh, you guys, sorry about the extended hiatus, but I just couldn't bring myself to blog about the myriad Christmas movies I've been watching (topping the charts: A Muppet Christmas Carol (1992), starring the inimitable Michael Cain). Last night, however, I watched a pair of films of such cinematic excellence that they could not be denied comment.

I may have mentioned before that this is my favorite era of film. Because it still hasn't lost that theatrical aspect of older movies and yet everyone seems so excited about being modern. Of course Bret Easton Ellis's (omigosh I did it again) take on the same era is completely different. He saw the opulence, the modernity, and the high-society lifestyle as something very sinister and corrupting, while the movies I prefer are full of adventure and optimism. And yet you still get echoes of that darkness in Crocodile, I could see Richard, Sue's yuppie boyfriend that she ultimately dumps for Mick Dundee, having an alternate life not unlike Patrick Bateman. Similarly, Sue takes Mick to a high-class cocktail party where everyone is phony and superficial, and a man in the back room is snorting cocaine and Mick naively thinks he has the flu. By the time we get to the sequel, Mick has acclimated to city life, but many of the social mores and regulations remain illusory (The second movie opens with Mick fishing with dynamite on the East River, and the police laugh it off and let him get about his business. Mick copes with the culture shock by transforming New York into the Australian Outback, and playing by the rules that were applicable there, when he interacts with others, who at first don't understand him, he allows them to enter into HIS reality, and they are soon behaving in ways that would have been unusual).

The plots of both stories are a bit contrived, the second (in which the couple is being pursued by Columbian drug lords across the outback) more so than the first (in which a newspaper pays a reporter to interview some random dude in Australia and also pays for his visit to New York City). My favorite scene is at the end of the first movie where Mick and Sue are playing telephone with some colorful characters on a crowded subway platform. This is where Sue confesses that she loves Mick. I love it even more because as soon as this happens the movie ends on a sudden freeze frame with no denouement whatsoever.

One website pointed out that this movie is the only reason for the success of the Outback Steakhouse franchise. I guess that makes sense, they've sort of been riding the Australian fetish for a long time, I don't even think Olive Garden rubs it's ethnicity in your face that much. Of course, the "wild man" aesthetic will NEVER lose its appeal. Even in these movies, where you think it would be obvious enough, FREQUENT references are made to Tarzan, just in case you forgot why lean, wiry Paul Hogan with his leathery face and clear blue eyes was totally irresistible to New York urbanite professional Sue Somethingoranother. It's because he's REAL, he's ADVENTUROUS, and all those parties where the men look like women and the women are ambiguous (unless you're wearing a cocktail dress that leaves nothing to the imagination) and nobody ever says what they really mean and no matter how polite you are you still might be a sick fucker who murders a prostitute or your best friend at the end of the night, well, that stuff just sucks and I think if given a choice between staying in that cesspool or moving to the Outback with a dude who owns a goldmine, there wouldn't even be a contest.

I've probably overanalyzed this. But you know, I like movies about the 1980s.

8 Nov - "Fuck off! For Sure! Like totally!"

Valley Girl (1983)
dir. Martha Coolidge

CAST
Nicolas Cage - Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Deborah Foreman
Joanne Baron Real Genius (1985)
Colleen Camp - Wayne's World (1992)

Valley girl is one of those Nicolas Cage movies I've been trying to get around to watching for a long time. That and Leaving Las Vegas, plus I don't think I ever saw the end of Raising Arizona, although I assume that they gave the baby back. I don't know if this counts as a chick flick in the vein of my last two movies, since Nick is clearly at least half of the protagonists, but it's certainly an 80s teenager movie. I don't think it represents the decade as fabulously as Desperately Seeking Susan.

So We've got a Romeo and Juliet-style story between Julie, a bubbly valley girl, and Randy, a punk from Hollywood. Naturally, her friends disapprove, as does her preppy ex-boyfriend. At some point, the pressure gets to Julie and she breaks up with Randy, and he goes to extreme lengths to win her back. Of course it all comes to a head at the PROM.

I guess the first assumption one would make is that Julie is a vapid and impressionable twit who doesn't know what she wants. But then again, all the characters, even Randy and his punk friends, are kind of dopey and just doing their best to fit in. Maybe Julie just wanted Randy to prove that the she was worth some extra effort. All these girls are just clucking all of the time about who's a babe and who's bodacious and tubular or whatever, and they're fooling around with each other's boyfriends and being conniving all the time. You'll have to recall from yesterday that the moral of Kamikaze Girls is everyone else can just screw off, because you gotta be true to you. And if those dopey teenagers want to be mismatched airheads together, godspeed.

Which is why I think this era is Nicolas Cage at his finest. Face/Off and The Wicker Man, aside, Nicolas Cage has continued to make some quality pictures, usually playing the slightly loopy depressed guy as in Adaptation. and Matchstick Men. It's like a grown up version of the well-intentioned dope embodied by Randy. Some people say they can't stand Nicolas Cage, but I think the real problem is that they can't stand Ghost Rider.

Oct 24 - "You bought a used jacket? What are we, poor?"

Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
dir. Susan Seidelman

CAST
Rosanna Arquette (Pulp Fiction, 1994)
Madonna (A League of their Own, 1992)
Aidan Quinn (Benny and Joon, 1993)
Mark Blum ('Crocodile' Dundee 1986)
Laurie Metcalf (Toy Story (voice), 1995)
John Turturro (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000)
Will Patton (The Mothman Prophecies, 2002)

Michael Badalucco (Sleepless in Seattle, 1993)
Kim Chan (The Fifth Element, 1997)

So I actually watched this a few weeks ago but i didn't want to look like i crapped out on my horror-movie October initiative. So i sat on it. But I think this is better now, as it provides a good transition into my next theme: movies about frustrated teenage girls. Even though this one isn't about teenagers, but twentysomethings.

The problem with these older movies sometimes, is that I recognize too many faces and I want to comment on all of them. Thus the long cast list. Richard Hell was also in there, but he's not generally known for his cinematic portfolio. This movie was rife with the luxe extravagance (redundant?) that I associate with (movies about) the 80s.

Desperately Seeking Susan was a classic story of mistaken identity- so I'm going to sound like I know what I'm talking about when I say that it's like an updated and feminized version of North by Northwest (because everyone sounds smarter when they reference North by Northwest, and yeah, I watched the whole thing). Madonna plays hip, transient hot-mess Susan, who communicates with her erstwhile boyfriend through newspaper personals, Arquette is Roberta, a painfully drab housewife who covets everything that Susan lives and represents. There's a theft, and a murder, and some amnesia, and lots of cute outfits and comic relief and everyone's running around after the wrong person. I gave it 4 stars on netflix.