Category: Movies

Dreamscape (1984)

140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

Not at all bad, but could have been great. All the elements are here for fantastic sci-fi movie, but they went more for low-quality horror.

Spoiler-free Movie Review of Dreamscape:

What a missed opportunity this movie is. It’s so close to being great – it just doesn’t quite get there and may have missed out on good in the attempt.

Dennis Quaid plays Alex Gardner, who was a psychic wiz-kid in studies with Dr. Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow) before he tired of being a test subject and went out into the world to use his gifts to become a petty gambler. Just as he’s pushed his luck too far he is recruited/kidnapped to pick up where he left off with his former mentor who is now working in the area of shared dreams. Novotny, along with Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw) is trying to combat nightmares and sleep disorders by linking a psychic to a dreamer where the psychic can diagnose and/or cure the disorder. Of course the mind control possibilities are endless, which is why the research is government funded and shadowy power broker Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer) is maneuvering to get the President of the United States (Eddie Albert) under control.

The potential is all there – it’s a great setup. It sounds better than it is, though and there are a few reasons why:

The marketing is misleading. All of the descriptions I’ve read from the press materials make it seem as though the President is trapped inside the dreamworld and needs to be rescued. That’s just factually untrue, but would have made a more interesting story.
This impression is supported by the gorgeous poster by master artist Drew Struzan, which may be the best thing about the movie. Look at this thing; tell me this doesn’t look exactly like the sequel to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – which came out only a few months earlier and also featured Struzan’s artwork.
The effects are simply dreadful. I really try hard not to pick on older films for outdated effects, but these are fairly poor even for 1984.
The tone is all wrong. The filmmakers seem unsure if they are making a sci-fi thriller, a political thriller or a horror picture. The mix of all three cheapens all.

This last reason is the main problem with the film. It’s less than 100 minutes and that’s not a lot of time to make a good mind-bending movie. So they don’t. There’s hints of some deep psychological/philosophical stuff, but they don’t run with it and that’s a fatal mistake. Instead it lives more in the horror genre where it does ok, but it’s not as effective as other genre films. This was the second film released with the new PG-13 rating and I suspect they were a little unclear on who the audience was going to be and therefore how far to go.

As sci-fi it’s pretty good; as a thriller it stinks. There’s actually a chase scene on a horse racetrack. There’s no real intrigue – you know who the bad guy is and what his game is almost instantly. The pseudo-gangsters aren’t threatening and the whole world seems underpopulated. I don’t know if the low budget is the reason, but the whole affair feels quite small-scale – lots of mostly empty rooms and barren sets with few actors.

There are some other frustrating things about the picture. They got maestro Maurice Jarre to do the score; but he insisted on doing an electronic score. So close to greatness…

Dreamscape is a terribly frustrating picture because it coulda/shoulda been so good. It is still an entertaining movie and I enjoyed it, but the story just doesn’t live up to its premise. There’s a great movie in here, they just couldn’t quite coax it out, and by focusing on the horror elements they cheapened the story. I’d say it’s desperately in need of a remake, but the ground was later covered so much better by The Matrix, Dark City and particularly Inception that there may not be enough legroom. I haven’t read The Dream Master, the novel by Roger Zelazny on which this picture was partly based, but it sounds like it may have enough meat on the bone to justify a re-imaging for another film.

Poster:

Trailer:

Bechdel Test:

Fail

The Representation Test Score: D (2 pts)

(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)

[schema type=”movie” name=”Dreamscape” description=”A young psychic on the run from himself is recruited by the government to save the US president whose mind is trapped inside the dreamworld.” director=”Joseph Ruben” actor_1=”Dennis Quaid” actor_2=”Max von Sydow” actor_3=”Christopher Plummer” actor_4=”Kate Capshaw”]

Main Cast	Dennis Quaid Alex Gardner, Max von Sydow Doctor Paul Novotny, Christopher Plummer Bob Blair, Eddie Albert The President
Rating	PG-13
Release Date	Wed 15 Aug 1984 UTC
Director	Joseph Ruben
Genres	Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Horror
Plot	A young psychic on the run from himself is recruited by the government to save the US president whose mind is trapped inside the dreamworld.
Poster
Runtime	99
Tagline	Alex Gardner has an extraordinary gift. To keep it may cost him his life…
Writers	David Loughery (story), David Loughery (screenplay) …
Year	1984

August 17, 2014

Red Dawn (1984)

140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

Much more serious than I remember this being. Decades of people yelling “Wolverines” made me remember the movie as campy & it really isn’t.

Spoiler-free Movie Review of Red Dawn:

Wow, they don’t waste a lot of time on this one – there’s a blitz of exposition blasted on screen too fast to read, then about two minutes of seeing a couple of teenagers, without even bothering to name them before the shooting starts. The action starts in about minute four. Within 6 minutes it’s a full war. I wonder if director John Milius was double-parked or something.

Red Dawn is possibly most noteworthy for being the first film released with the new PG-13 rating. (The Flamingo Kid earned the rating first, but was delayed in coming to market.) What’s interesting about this distinction is that in no way should this have been rated anything but R, whether PG-13 existed at the time or not. I’m a firm believer that any movie containing kids killing kids should earn an immediate R. (I’m looking at you, Hunger Games…) And this is an exceptionally violent movie by any measure (including the tasteless on-screen “Carnage Counter” feature on the DVD), considered at the time to be the most violent movie ever released with a rate of 2.23 acts of violence per minute.

It’s a serious movie. Having not seen this since the 80’s I had vague recollections of this being a slightly more violent The Outsiders. But the age of the protagonists is the only thing that separates Red Dawn from a full-on war film, and a rough one at that. Sure, it has a Outsiders-styled cast, but since the movie spends a minuscule amount of time learning anything about these characters, they could just as easily be 22 year old soldiers. It’s a good thing so many of the cast members went on to be famous, because if I didn’t recognize the actors I’d have no way of telling the characters apart.

It’s fascinating to see a war breaking out in North America, which is really the big draw with this picture. Ever since the introduction of nuclear weapons, it’s been hard to imagine a World War III fought with conventional weaponry and so Red Dawn plays out like an interesting “what if ” scenario. Admittedly, we learn over the course of the picture that limited nuclear strikes have taken place, wiping out major strategic cities, but this bit of exposition is delivered halfway through the picture during a rare non-violent moment and so you might miss it.

And that’s really where a strength becomes a weakness. One of the interesting stylistic choices of the film is leaving these kids so completely in the dark, cut off from all information. It is a very effective bit of storytelling for the first act of the film, but it isn’t really sustainable, so the solution to this problem literally falls out of the sky in the form of downed fighter pilot Lt. Col. Andrew Tanner (Powers Boothe). Tanner is able to interject some perspective and info about what is happening in the outside world. It’s a necessary character to introduce, since the audience has surely been wondering why the Russians and Cubans are bothering with this little town in Colorado of seemingly no strategic importance. But it’s too little too late. We want to see more of what is happening elsewhere. It has been really interesting to see what goes on in one small town in an event such as this and it gives the story weight. But the tantalizing taste of the larger struggle that Tanner’s info suggests made me impatient with the limited story of one group of insurgents. The efforts of these kids are fascinating but credulity starts to wane as the story progresses.

I’m a sucker for a Cold War story and Red Dawn produces images and a scenario not previously explored. It partially slakes my desire for a Cold War land war film. (I’d love it if someone would produce a film version of Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising.) It’s far from a perfect film (I’m not even sure it’s a good film) – it has huge pacing problems, little to no characterization, no real introduction and a non-ending. It also feels a bit like right-wing propaganda with a touch of Lord of the Flies brutality. But it is a unique picture that is better than I remembered it, and I love the Basil Poledouris score.