Four Mid-80s Movies

Here is another wrap-up post. I noticed that these movies were all made around the same time (I didn't plan that) so I decided to group them together. I'm going to keep these short again as I still have a lot of movies to discuss!

The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
I'm a big fan of the Muppets and have written about two other Muppet movies on this blog. Somehow I hadn't seen this one before.
The Muppets play themselves in this movie, with the only difference being that they are recent college graduates, just like how some of them were reporters in The Great Muppet Caper. The next two Muppet movies would have the Muppets playing characters from famous works. While I love The Muppet Christmas Carol, it is also fun to see the Muppets being... the Muppets!
There is no breaking of the fourth wall which is unusual for a Muppet movie. But to make up for this there are tons of cameos which is what you expect when it comes to the Muppets. This movie features an early role for Gates McFadden who later became famous for her role as Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The song "Together Again" from this movie is one of the best songs by the Muppets. The Muppets Take Manhattan was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song Score but lost out to Prince's Purple Rain.
This is the only Muppet movie to be directed by Frank Oz. It was also only the second movie he directed, with the first being Dark Crystal (1982).
I liked The Muppets Take Manhattan but its just not as good as the other Muppet movies. There is some filler like the Muppet babies segment which apparently only existed to launch the cartoon series which I loved as a kid. This is also the last Muppet movie Jim Henson made as he died in 1990.
The only other theatrical Muppet movies I have left to see are Muppet Treasure Island (I saw it as a child but don't remember much and need to re-watch it) and Muppets in Space.
6/10

The Goonies (1985)
This is a movie that I heard a lot about but had never seen before. The basic story is about a group of friends who stumble upon a treasure map which leads them on a crazy adventure to find the loot that once belonged to the pirate One-Eyed Willie. Although I liked The Goonies, I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more had I seen it as a child.
The cast of  kids features Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Corey Feldman, and Jonathan Ke Quan (Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom).
The villains (the Fratellis) were good and of course I enjoyed the performance of the late John Matuszak, a football player turned actor, as the iconic Sloth.
This is actually only the second movie I have seen (the other being Superman) directed by Richard Donner. However, he did direct several episodes of TV Shows I like such as The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt, Get Smart, and Gilligan's Island.
I'm not sure why people still want a sequel to The Goonies now that its been over 25 years. That said, I'm surprised that it didn't get a follow-up back in the 80s. I guess the reason for this is because The Goonies was only moderately successful and not a giant box office hit. The movie has a sizable cult following so perhaps the sequel wanted by the fans will indeed happen someday. Tron: Legacy did pretty damn well, especially considering it came out 28 years after the original, so maybe there is hope for The Goonies 2 after all.

6/10

Crimewave (1985)
Although this movie is a collaboration between Sam Raimi (director), the Coen brothers (writers), and Bruce Campbell (supporting actor) I came into Crimewave expecting the worst. Don't get me wrong, I love all of these guys, but I have heard that this early work from these directors/writers/actors had a disastrous production that seemed doomed from the start. Director Sam Raimi even disowned the movie due to studio interference, one example being that he wanted Bruce Campbell to be the leading man but the powers that be said no. While that would have made things better, a lot went wrong here and its not a surprise that the movie ended up being bad. Crimewave is still not down there with the worst movies I have ever seen, but it doesn't have that "so bad, it's good" feeling of a movie like Batman & Robin.
The story honestly doesn't make much sense so I'm not even going to bother trying to explain it, especially since its been a few months since I've seen it. Crimewave tries to be a live action cartoon (think Looney Tunes or Tom & Jerry) but the concept just doesn't work and the result is not funny. I remember the movie Mousehunt did the same thing and although its been a long time since I've seen it and didn't love it, it did a better job at that sort of thing than this movie.
Our main character, Vic Ajax, is played Reed Birney. As I alluded to earlier Birney is miscast and doesn't work in the role at all.  Edward Pressman has a minor role as Ernest Trend and is just plain awful. To be fair the guy only has two acting credits including this movie and mostly works as a producer. Can't say I'm surprised!
Bruce Campbell is entertaining as usual and its fun to see him play the heel. However, the studio should have let Campbell be the lead as Raimi intended.
Brion James (Blade Runner, Enemy Mine, The Fifth Element) plays one of the villains. To his credit he does feel like a cartoon character even though overall that idea simply failed.
If you are a fan of Sam Raimi, the Coen Brothers, or Bruce Campbell this is an interesting watch to see how far they came and hints of what they would go on to do. For example, the Hudsucker name is featured in this movie and the Coens would go on to make the movie The Hudsucker Proxy. But if you are not a fan of any of these people you should just avoid it. Still, Crimewave is watchable and I give it credit for trying something different even though I feel it doesn't quite work overall.
4/10

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
To Live and Die in L.A. was directed by William Friedkin, the man who also made The French Connection and The Exorcist. I actually still need to see both of those as this is the first Friedkin movie I have seen!
Many of the actors in this movie such as William Petersen, Willem Dafoe, and John Turturro were unknown at the time but later became more famous. At the time Dean Stockwell was the most well known actor in the film and he only has a minor role as a lawyer.
The story focuses on the counterfeiter Eric Masters who is perfect at his craft. While making this film there was actually a real counterfeiter on set, so what we see on screen is accurate. The most interesting part about this is that some of the counterfeit money actually made it into circulation!
Although the basic plot of a lawman hunting down a criminal who killed his partner (which is loosely based on the story of a real Secret Service Agent) is your typical crime thriller, the movie does an amazing job with its in-depth look at our main characters and its unique style for a crime movie.
Masters is being pursued by the authorities and in the process the partner and good friend of our main character, Secret Service agent Richard Chance, gets killed. After this happens Chance vows to do whatever it takes to bring in Masters, no matter what the consequences are. When Chance decides he will break the law if necessary to stop Masters, we see the line between criminals and and the justice system become blurred.
The movie is stylish and has good editing. Some examples of this are when the camera cuts as the counterfeited money is literally cut by a machine and two birds flying together until one flies away when our main character's partner is killed. There is an interesting scene where it appears that Masters is kissing a man but it is revealed to be a woman, his lover Bianca. We later find out that Bianca is a lesbian that he is in love with, (he apparently pays her to be with him as she has her own girlfriend) which I assume is the reason for this editing as he seems to view her as masculine.
I've heard that Miami Vice has a similar arty style but have never seen that show. I guess I should check it out now!

The famous car chase scene is remarkable to watch. Not only is it one of the best chase scenes in the movies, they don't make 'em like much any more since we see more and more CGI and less practical effects in film these days.
Wang Chung did the soundtrack and most of the music in the movie. The use of their song "Dance Hall Days" with the line "you need her and she needs you" being played during a critical scene was brilliant. I know some people don't like 1980s "cheesy" synth pop-rock but I dig it just fine. This is a solid soundtrack that goes well with the movie although its certainly not one of the best soundtracks ever. A cool piece of trivia about Wang Chung's involvement with this movie is that director William Friedkin specifically told the group not to create a theme song. The band later turned in the title track but after Friedkin listened to it he liked it so much that not only did he keep in the soundtrack, he put it in the opening scene! It's a damn shame that Wang Chung is more known for the big hit "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" than their work here.
The setting of L.A. is great and the film gives a great sense of the time and place of the city. Los Angeles basically becomes a character itself and its both the first and last things we see.
I try to avoid spoilers so I'll just say the ending is perfect. It was actually not the original ending in the script as Friedkin decided to change it late in production. The studio did not like the change but I'm glad it turned out the way it did as it fits really well.
9/10

Three 2011 movies

I got around to seeing three 2011 movies as the year was coming to a close. I saw the first of these in theaters and the last two on Blu-ray. I have now seen 11 movies released in 2011.

The Muppets (2011)
The final movie I saw in theaters in 2011 was The Muppets. It was an interesting experience as I watched at the Movie Tavern, which combines a cinema with a restaurant! Although at first I was skeptical of a system in which viewers are served food at their seats and eat during the movie it turned out to work better than I thought as distractions were kept to a minimum and it was quieter than I expected. That said, I don't think dinner during a movie would work for every film. The Muppets is a good choice for this sort of thing, The Tree of Life not so much!
Getting to the actual movie, The Muppets is a return to form for the series. The last theatrically released Muppet movie was 1999's Muppets from Space which received a tepid response from critics and film goers alike. Aside from a few mediocre TV Specials and being featured in the occasional commercial we haven't heard much from the Muppets in the past ten years. It is great that The Muppets is enjoying critical and financial success as I have always loved the Muppets. However, this isn't the best Muppet movie and I wouldn't even put it in my top three. It's still a good Muppet movie as its funny, has catchy songs, and can be enjoyed by all ages. I think there was a little too much emphasis on the human characters played by Jason Segal and Amy Adams. The song by Amy Adams in the restaurant felt like filler. The human characters usually complement the Muppets but it often felt like they were main characters and not the Muppets. To be fair this was partially because of their connection to the newest Muppet, Walter, who has an different type of back-story for a Muppet. But the bottom line is that this is a fun family movie and a good Muppet movie. I just wish Rowlf and Rizzo had more screen time!
7/10

X-Men: First Class (2011)
It has been years since I've seen the X-Men movies. I really liked the first two, enjoyed the third, and could have done without the Wolverine movie. I skipped this one when it was in theaters since I didn't have much hope for the series at this point and hoped Marvel Studios would eventually be able to make their own X-Men movie. But after hearing good things I decided to give this one a shot and am glad I did. X-Men: First Class takes place in the early 1960s and documents the formation of the first group of X-Men under the guidance of Professor Charles Xavier, better known as Prof. X. The movie is part prequel and part reboot as it seems to take place in the past of the previous movies but also stands on its own. For example, I liked how the opening was the film was an extended scene of the first film's opener. Some of the continuity may not be perfect, but that is probably because when the first three films were made they didn't think about doing prequels. I was impressed with the acting of the two leads: Michael Fassbender as Magneto and James McAvoy as Prof. X. The two did a good job of portraying characters who are friends, but have beliefs which will eventually drive them apart. Kevin Bacon put in a nice performance as the film's main villain, Sebastian Shaw. The 60s era was a good fit for the setting and there was a James Bond type feel at times. I need to re-watch the others before I rank all the X-Men movies, but this one was surprisingly good and I think fans will be pleased. I'm glad that the producers learned from the mistakes of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and made a damn fine X-Men flick!
8/10

Super 8 (2011)
I remember seeing Iron Man 2 in theaters and being surprised with the Super 8 teaser. It looked interesting but so little was revealed at the time that it was impossible to make anything of it, especially with the rumors it was a Cloverfield prequel (I still haven't seen that movie). When the full trailer for Super 8 came out I thought looked great, although I was disappointed when I discovered that the music from the trailer was not the film's soundtrack but taken from James Horner's score for Cocoon (1985). I know that this happens all the time with trailers (Robocop trailer is a classic example) but that music fit so well it sounded like it was made for the trailer and not 25 years old!
The director of this movie is J.J.Abrams who also directed Star Trek (2009) which I liked but didn't love.
Super 8 garnered a lot of comparisons to the early work of Steven Spielberg. Part of this is simply because Super 8 takes place in 1979 and not the present. While I think Spielberg's films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind or E.T. certainly influenced Super 8, its still its own entity and not a pastiche of those films. The characters are the primary concern here to which the sci-fi plot plays second fiddle. Like in Jaws we don't get a good look at our creature until the end of the film which works well.
If a movie has bad child actors I usually give it a pass since this are kids with limited acting experience. On the other hand when I young actors give good performance I think they should be praised even more than usually, as is the case here. Pretty much all of the kids were solid with realistic portrayals, especially the leads Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning (who looks kinda like a young Drew Barrymore, which may have been an intentional nod to E.T.). This is clearly the strongest part of the film as sometimes I actually wished there wasn't a monster out there because the story with our human characters was so interesting! Once we get into the alien part of the story there are more questions than answers. I know that this was done on purpose there is supposed to be an air of mystery around the situation but it goes a bit too far at times. I guess the dogs left town because they sensed an alien threat near them? Or did something in the crash cause them to leave? Why did the alien hang the people up in the hole near the end? I guess I am nitpicking here as it didn't really harm my enjoyment of the film. There is a subplot about Charles liking Alice that is never really explored outside of two short scenes and then forgotten about for the rest of the movie. I wonder if this was originally supposed to be a bigger part of the story or if it was simply added later for more tension. Either way I would have liked to have seen this developed further.
I did love being able to see the zombie movie during the end credits. The zombie movie actually reminded me of Weasels Rip My Flesh, a terrible low budget horror movie also made by kids and filmed on Super 8. Heck, it even was made in 1979, the same year Super 8 takes place! Now I doubt Abrams has seen that movie and the similarities are probably only a coincidence, but who knows!
Despite its flaws I quite liked Super 8 and hope that we get more intelligent character-based family movies like it instead of crap like the Transformers movies.
7/10

My next post will be a run-down of all the 2011 movies I have seen. I have already written about all of them in this blog (click on the 2011 tag at the end of this post to see all the reviews) so I'll simply be posting a title, a few final thoughts, and a score.

Three Christmas Movies

I had seen parts of all these movies before, but never watched them all the way through in one sitting. Christmas gave me an excuse to watch them again, and in their entirety!

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Both this and Mickey's Christmas Carol (nominated for an Oscar for best animated short) are the only film versions of A Christmas Carol that I have seen so far. However they are both excellent! While I usually like the Muppets more when they are playing themselves instead of characters like in this movie or Muppet Treasure Island, it works surprisingly well here. The songs are memorable as I remembered most of them while watching this again despite the fact I hadn't seen this film in years. Michael Caine plays Scrooge completely straight and would have put in the same performance without the Muppets. While this is a Muppet movie, it is also an adaptation of A Christmas Carol, and a surprisingly faithful one at that. The Muppet Christmas Carol was the first Muppet movie made after Jim Henson's death and it was great that the Muppets were able to continue at a high level of quality after his passing. This one ranks up there with The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper as my three favorite Muppet movies. I saw The Muppets (2011) recently and will be discussing it in my next post.
8/10

A Christmas Story (1983)
Every year A Christmas Story gets shown on TBS for 24 hours on Christmas Day. Like most people this was how I was introduced to the movie. And like many people I had never seen the whole movie in one sitting before. I decided to change that this year as A Christmas Story is firmly entrenched in popular culture and is even on Roger Ebert's Great Movies list. While the film has been overexposed with the Christmas marathons, a lot of people still tune in to watch it every year. Although I don't think A Christmas Story is the best Christmas movie ever, it is the best to air on a loop. The film contains many vignettes which are loosely related as they all follow Ralphie's family in the days leading up to Christmas. This makes it easy to start or stop watching whenever you want, which doesn't work with a lot of movies. Although I feel that A Christmas Story is overrated, its still an enjoyable Christmas movie. I usually don't like narration in movies but it works perfectly here and was a direct inspiration for The Wonder Years TV show. Darren McGavin, mainly known for his TV work such as Kolchak: The Night Stalker, puts in a nice performance as the father.
7/10

Santa with Muscles (1996)
I had seen the first third of this movie several years ago but couldn't bring myself to finish it. What can I say, Santa with Muscles is surprisingly boring for a Hulk Hogan flick. Armed with a group of friends who like to mock bad movies and my own higher tolerance for crappy cinema, I was able to make it all the way through this time! The plot is pretty ridiculous, the Hulkster plays a millionaire who gets amnesia and thinks he is Santa Claus. Some orphans then ask for Santa's help since a mad scientist wants to take over the orphanage for the crystals underneath the building. Mila Kunis plays one of the orphans in an early role. We also have Ed Begley Jr., Clint Howard, and Robin Curtis (Saavik from Star Trek 3 and 4). That '70s Show fans will notice that in addition to Mila Kunis, actor Don Stark (Bob Pinciotti - Donna's father) is in this movie as Lenny, Santa's elf and partner in trying to save the orphanage.
When it comes to Christmas movies, this is one of the worst. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Santa Claus are pretty damn bad but at least they each have bizarrely amusing moments. Santa with Muscles is probably better than those two but its not as fun to watch. That said, this movie is It's A Wonderful Life compared to The Star Wars Holiday Special or Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny!
2/10