Now Very Bad…

Tag: 1984

  • Dreamscape (1984)

    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.

    Dreamscape

    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.

    Dreamscape

    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.

    Dreamscape

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

    1. 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.
    2. 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.Dreamscape
    3. 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 I really try hard not to pick on older films for outdated effects, but these are fairly poor even for 1984.
    4. 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.

    Dreamscape

    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.

    Dreamscape

    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.

    Dreamscape

    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

    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/)

    Dreamscape 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 Dreamscape
    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
  • Red Dawn (1984)

    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.

    Red Dawn

    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

    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.

    Red Dawn

    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.

    Red Dawn

    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.

    Red Dawn

    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.

    Red Dawn

    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.

    Poster:

    Trailer:

    Bechdel Test:

    Fail

    The Representation Test Score: C (4 pts)

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

    Red Dawn Representation Test

    [schema type=”movie” name=”Red Dawn” description=”It is the dawn of World War III. In mid-western America, a group of teenagers bands together to defend their town, and their country, from invading Soviet forces.” director=”John Milius” actor_1=”Patrick Swayze” actor_2=”C. Thomas Howell” actor_3=”Lea Thompson” actor_4=”Charlie Sheen” actor_5=”Darren Dalton” actor_6=”Jennifer Grey” actor_7=”Brad Savage” actor_8=”Doug Toby”]

    Main Cast Patrick Swayze Jed, C. Thomas Howell Robert, Lea Thompson Erica, Charlie Sheen Matt
    Rating PG-13
    Release Date Fri 10 Aug 1984 UTC
    Director John Milius
    Genres Action, Drama, War
    Plot It is the dawn of World War III. In mid-western America, a group of teenagers bands together to defend their town, and their country, from invading Soviet forces.
    Poster Red Dawn
    Runtime 114
    Tagline A full scale military invasion by foreign troops begins. Total surprise. Almost total success . . . .
    Writers Kevin Reynolds (story), John Milius (screenplay) …
    Year 1984
  • Cloak & Dagger (1984)

    Cloak & Dagger (1984)

    140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

    A masterful thriller from a time when family entertainment didn’t need to be cute or dumbed down. 30 years on it still plays extremely well.

    Cloak & Dagger
    “It began as just another harmless game he played many times. Then top secret documents fell into his hands. And real bullets started flying. Now, he’s being pursued by deadly enemies. And they’re not playing around. But no one will believe his incredible story. In fact, there’s only one person left that can save him . . . a legendary agent named Flack. And time is running out.”

    Spoiler-free Movie Review of Cloak & Dagger:

    The 30th anniversary reviews keep coming. I think I’m going to need some serious convincing that 1984 was not the single best year in history for movies. Despite not having a movie with the words Star Wars in the title, it was an amazing run of features.

    There was a Gary Cooper film named Cloak & Dagger in 1946, but the 1984 Henry Thomas/Dabney Coleman movie isn’t actually a remake of that picture, but rather a remake of the film noir The Window (1949). (The Window was itself based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich called “The Boy Who Cried Murder”. The concept of a witness to a murder who needs to be silenced sure appears in a lot of movies…)

    Cloak & Dagger

    If you saw the movie in theaters during the first few weeks of its run beginning July 13, 1984, you saw it as a double feature with The Last Starfighter. I don’t remember if that’s how I saw it, but I vividly remember seeing the picture in the theater and running home to augment my Dungeons & Dragons games with Jack Flack and a spy game. I don’t think it had occurred to me before this that you could have role-playing adventures that didn’t involve swords and monsters. I remember looking through the role-playing supplements at the local bookstore and in TSR ads for any spy modules. I know they had a game called Top Secret, though I never played it.

    Cloak & Dagger came out at that great time when not only was it ok to be into D&D and video games – it was actually cool. Along with pictures like WarGames, Tron & The Last Starfighter, it was a golden age…

    Cloak & Dagger

    In the movie, Davey Osbourne (Thomas) is an 11-year old fan of video games and stories, always wishing real life could be as exciting as the adventures of his RPG hero, Jack Flack (Coleman). Jack doesn’t just star in the Cloak & Dagger RPG and Atari video game of the same name, he is Davey’s imaginary friend who follows our young hero around as the boy tries to inject some excitement in his life. Davey’s real life is mundane and unsatisfying – his mother has recently died and his father Hal (also Coleman) is loving but dull, trying to raise an introverted son while his job as a military air traffic controller requires him to be often absent. Davey spends much of his time at the local gameshop (The Gamekeeper, a real store – in California, not the film’s location of San Antonio) with his younger neighbor Kim (Christina Nigra) playing C&D (I forgot that’s how the kids referred to it in the movie – love it).

    Everything changes, however, when gameshop owner and dungeon master Morris (William Forsythe) sends the kids on an errand downtown and Davey alone witnesses a murder. A dying man in a lab coat gives Davey a Cloak & Dagger videogame cartridge with instructions to bring it to the FBI and give them a code number. MacGuffin successfully passed, the mysterious man dies, thrusting Davey into a real-life Cloak & Dagger adventure as the killers try to silence him and retrieve the cartridge.

    Cloak & Dagger

    Just writing out the synopsis makes me want to go watch the movie again. It’s just so good! A near perfect adventure for kids, the film is surprisingly serious as a thriller. While perfect for a young audience, it works for just about anyone as screenwriter Tom Holland and director Richard Franklin crafted a taut tale that doesn’t flinch from violence and real peril for the main characters. This is the only film either made that is even remotely family-friendly as they were known for pictures like Psycho II.

    The kids are in serious danger for much of the film and are exposed to very adult situations. That no one believes them makes it all the more compelling. This combination of an allegory about growing up and the tone perfect understanding of what it must be like to be a kid in this situation makes the movie not just entertaining for a young audience, but also I think an important step in graduating to more complex material. I’d argue that it is as effective as many of the famous novels in depicting a time in a young persons life when things begin to get scarily adult and would be good in teaching kids to come to terms with this transition.

    Cloak & Dagger

    Due to the video game crash of the mid-1980’s, there never was an actual Atari 5200 Cloak & Dagger video game cartridge produced. The game did appear in arcades (Atari repurposed a game in development, Agent X, as a movie tie-in) which is better than The Last Starfighter achieved. Despite the inability to play the game at home on your Atari, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who re-enacted Jack Flack adventures with pencil & paper or running around the neighborhood pretending to be a spy.

    Cloak & Dagger was one of my all-time favorite movies as a kid, and I’m amazed just how well it still works today as I revisit it. It was spellbinding to my daughter, watching it for the first time, and while I hope they never try to remake it (although I’m certain they will), I think that studying and trying to duplicate the spirit of this movie would be invaluable to modern filmmakers.

    Poster:

    Cloak & Dagger

    Trailer:

    Bechdel Test:

    Fail

    The Representation Test Score: C (6 pts)

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

    Cloak & Dagger Representation Test
    [schema type=”movie” name=”Cloak & Dagger” description=”A young boy, with a penchant for spy thrillers and video games, finds himself in the middle of real espionage when he’s relentlessly pursued by spies after he comes into possession of a video game cartridge containing top-secret government info.” director=”Richard Franklin” actor_1=”Henry Thomas” actor_2=”Dabney Coleman”]

    Main Cast Henry Thomas Davey Osborne, Dabney Coleman Jack Flack/Hal Osborne, Michael Murphy Rice, Christina Nigra Kim Gardener
    Rating PG
    Release Date Fri 10 Aug 1984 UTC
    Director Richard Franklin
    Genres Action, Family, Adventure, Crime, Thriller, Mystery
    Plot 11-year-old Davey, whose mother is dead and whose father doesn’t spend nearly enough time with him….
    Poster Cloak & Dagger
    Runtime 101
    Tagline Davey’s hero was imaginary . . . but the enemy agents were real!
    Writers Tom Holland (screen story), Tom Holland (screenplay)
    Year 1984
  • Purple Rain (1984)

    Purple Rain (1984)

    140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

    How do you judge Purple Rain? The music is a contender for greatest soundtrack of all time. The movie’s dreadfully boring, pretentious mess.

    Purple Rain

    Movie Review of Purple Rain:

    I’m a huge fan of listening to movie scores and soundtracks, but I recognize that there’s a real danger to listening to a film’s soundtrack before seeing the movie. Instead of the music easing you further into the story, the recognition factor pulls you out of the moment. This may be less the case with musicals but it still is jarring.

    Purple Rain In the case of Purple Rain, which is really just a long-form music video, the original audiences for the film probably experienced this to a much smaller degree, as the soundtrack album dropped only days before the film’s release. (Although the single “When Doves Cry” had been out for months.) For me, seeing this movie for the first time after listening to the soundtrack for 30 years, it was hard to get past. I was even more impatient during the filler story scenes than I perhaps would have been otherwise.

    Purple Rain In Purple Rain, Prince plays The Kid (really), an arrogant, pretentious, self-absorbed, misogynist jerk who also is a phenomenally talented songwriter and musician – he’s Prince. Oddly enough, he’s about the only person in the whole movie who doesn’t use his real name for his character. The story concerns his tumultuous family life, love life and band life during his residency at the First Avenue nightclub. His parents are abusive, so he’s abusive and completely unlikable. He also has a puppet.

    Purple Rain Everyone in the movie plays themselves, really, although I have no idea exactly how autobiographical this all is – and I don’t really care. The movie is a joyless mess, with bad pacing and worse dialogue. Absolutely no one in this movie is at all sympathetic and the non-musical scenes are slow and boring. There’s possibly a real movie in here somewhere, with the story of the abusive father, but no one involved in this production knows how to develop it.

    Purple Rain The musical performances are of course wonderful. Or at least the music is. It can be a little distracting to see Prince acting out all of his lyrics and he has a tendency to point a lot, but I accept this as a minor inconvenience and part of the aforementioned problem with knowing the soundtrack so well. You will also be subjected to two performances by The Time and an unwatchable Apollonia 6 song.

    Purple Rain When I saw the music videos played ad nauseum in 1984, I always thought it looked really funny to see Prince in his leathers and frilly shirts out by the lake. Turns out it’s even more ridiculous over the course of 111 minutes – just a guy and his heels, out in nature…

    Purple Rain Finally, although these are generally spoiler-free reviews, I have to call out the denouement of this one, in which The Kid finally accepts the input of his bandmates and performs one of their songs, thus learning…wait, Prince? Accepting someone else’s input? The ending would have been more plausible if Morris Day turned into a dragon and ate everyone.

    Purple Rain If you have somehow avoided this movie for 30 years, don’t break your streak now. Watch Sign O’ The Times…

    Poster:

    Trailer:

    Bechdel Test:

    Pass

    The Representation Test Score: C (4 pts)

    (http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/) Purple Rain Representation Test [schema type=”movie” name=”Purple Rain” description=”A young man with a talent for music has begun a career with much promise. He meets an aspiring singer, Apollonia, and finds that talent alone isn’t all that he needs. A complicated tale of his repeating his father’s self destructive behavior, losing Apollonia to another singer (Morris Day), and his coming to grips with his own connection to other people ensues.” director=”Albert Magnoli” actor_1=”Prince” ]

    Main Cast Prince The Kid, Apollonia Kotero Apollonia, Morris Day Morris, Olga Karlatos Mother
    Rating R
    Release Date Fri 27 Jul 1984 UTC
    Director Albert Magnoli
    Genres Drama, Music, Musical, Romance
    Plot A young man with a talent for music has begun a career with much promise. He meets an aspiring singer…
    Poster Purple Rain
    Runtime 111
    Tagline
    Writers William Blinn (written by), Albert Magnoli (written by)
    Year 1984
  • Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

    Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

    140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW

    Hard to know what to say about a movie I avoided like the plague for 30 years & only watched because of the anniversary. It was as expected.

    Revenge of the Nerds

    Spoiler-free Movie Review of Revenge of the Nerds:

    After 30 years of indifference, I watched this movie for two reasons:

    1. because it is celebrating an anniversary and I figured that some people who actually liked the movie would be interested to see a review
    2. because it is mentioned in Anorak’s Almanac (http://readyplayerone.com) as one of James Halliday’s favorite movies.
    Revenge of the Nerds
    That’s James Cromwell on the right, billed as “Jamie Cromwell”.

    I didn’t see this in the day, so it’s really hard to be open-minded about this movie. It often is the case that viewing movies for the first time far after their sell-by date makes for a difficult time – it’s really hard to separate how you view it now versus how you think you might have perceived it at the time. But usually when that happens, in my case anyway, it’s because of an oversight – I just haven’t gotten around to seeing a movie – there are a lot out there, after all. In this case it’s a little different, as I have intentionally avoided this movie because it looked horrible.

    Revenge of the Nerds

    So, I don’t know, I might have enjoyed this more at the time because it was the 80’s, or because I was younger and more appreciative of the “humor”. So I really don’t want to be too tough on this movie, even if it lived down to my expectations of sophomoric, moronic, raunchy gross-out humor with absolutely zero cultural sensitivity. The sad fact is that there always have been and always will be stupid movies like this, so long as man craves boobies and bad behavior. This isn’t even the worst of them (by far).

    Revenge of the Nerds

    Watching Revenge of the Nerds for the first time in 2014 was a penance – punishment for never watching this crap movie when I was in middle school and might have found it funny or at least enjoyed the nudity. Instead I spent 90 joyless minutes wondering what on Earth I was going to say about it. And now I’m done…

    Poster:

    Trailer:

    Bechdel Test:

    Fail

    The Representation Test Score: D (1 pts)

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

    Revenge of the Nerds

    [schema type=”movie” name=”Revenge of the Nerds” description=”At a big campus, a group of bullied outcasts and misfits resolve to fight back for their peace and self respect.” director=”Jeff Kanew” actor_1=”Robert Carradine” actor_2=”Anthony Edwards”]

    Main Cast Robert Carradine Lewis Skolnick, Anthony Edwards Gilbert Lowell, Timothy Busfield Arnold Poindexter, Andrew Cassese Harold Wormser
    Rating R
    Release Date Fri 20 Jul 1984 UTC
    Director Jeff Kanew
    Genres Comedy
    Plot At a big campus, a group of bullied outcasts and misfits resolve to fight back for their peace and self respect.
    Poster Revenge of the Nerds
    Runtime 90
    Tagline It’s time for the odd to get even
    Writers Tim Metcalfe (story) &, Miguel Tejada-Flores (story) …
    Year 1984