Tag Archives: 80s

Nov 07 2024
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Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies

The Hitcher (1986).

The landscape offers a lot to work with, ripe vistas aplenty, but there’s no enduring image from the cinematography side of things. 

I was expecting tension and chills; this was mainly boring and unimaginative. Nothing seemed to be at stake despite all the bloodshed, and the lack of any dynamic between the driver and the demented hitchhiker is a letdown. I couldn’t locate a personality in anyone here in what in essence is a variation of the same violent road encounter occurring every 10 minutes.

The laziness of writing pisses me off, be this in a slimy thriller like we have here or a mega bucks operation. It’s not difficult to insert a few character traits and attempt to build depth but nah, apparently it’s too much of a Herculean task. 

Rutger Hauer could be a scary man, though. And what happened to C. Thomas Howell? 

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Feb 03 2023
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized, United States

The Guest (2014) is a phenomenal homage to cool.

It’s silly and ludicrous and daft and nonsensical but it works because of the music cues and the overarching unapologetic style of it all which screams ‘This is the 1980s’.

But it isn’t. We can, however, pretend otherwise.

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Aug 05 2021
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Art, Cinema, Film, Movie, Movies, Music, Uncategorized

The Thing (1982) is a riot and defines John Carpenter.

There exists an incredible canon of Carpenter movies from the ’70s and ’80s – Carpenter pulling out one sublime picture after another. A wee bit of snobbery swirls around commentary on him, that he can’t do a period drama or handle anything another other than horror and thrills, which is making an obvious point. And I keep referring to him in the past tense. Because I haven’t seen a new movie from the lad for decades.

As much as I would ascribe the term ‘auteur’ to the truly multi-skilled Carpenter, folk read way too much into these films, always seeking for the allegorical or the profound statement. They are all cult B-movies where very little acting nuance is needed, high-concept affairs elevating the primacy of the image and the economy of the edit. You’re in it for 90 minutes and then afterwards that’s that. It’s not Antonioni.

And to The Thing (1982) and that score, the landscape, the constant menace, and yet with the wackiest visual effects, brilliant for their time and curiously not dated at all.

The Thing is his peak.

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Apr 08 2021
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Architecture, Art, Cinema, Crime, Film, Movie, Movies, Uncategorized, United States

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) is AWESOME.

An introduction to Wang Chung could not be scripted, but here we all are. It’s such a great movie to the extent that I am impressed with the soundtrack; the music choices are usually embarrassing with these pictures and I suppose the ’80s are mostly like that. Manhunter (1986) springs to mind as an example, a film that approaches implosion through the worst possible jukebox selections.

This oozes seductive style, Los Angeles a sun-blitzed glossy furnace of cops and criminals. Friedkin has, in spite of his occasional forays into turkeys, always understood the need to carve out a credible world for the narrative and impose a vision on the environment. So few directors appear to care for how their movies look; they are merely the point-and-shoot variety. This bloke, though, has a handle on the material. And the detail without being overbearing.

And the car chase in the film is another rarity; like Friedkin’s own The French Connection (1971), it’s backed up by actual character motivation. Apparently, one of the most recent Fast & Furious … things raked in a billion. The production cast and crew shut down half of Edinburgh a few years back with their silly antics. It will no doubt make a fortune, yet To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) recouped a pittance.

Audiences know nothing.

Further reading/viewing:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/to-live-and-die-in-la-1985

https://thespool.net/reviews/movies/to-live-and-die-in-la-anniversary/
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Sep 22 2019
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Film, Movie, Movies, Television, TV, TV series, Uncategorized

Cobra Kai is rather AWESOME.

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Nostalgia kicked in mega-heavy with this absolutely mental show; fuck knows how it even came into being. I have seen The Karate Kid (1984) 19 times and this somehow beats it. Through the complexity of the characters (they actually have three dimensions), the subtle middle fingers (plural) to the WOKE/SJW political correctness of this age, and the sheer hilarity of some of the scenes, it’s the best show for quite some time.

I always thought Johnny Lawrence got a bad rep; 35 years later he gets the treatment he deserves.

First episode here. It’s a corker:

Further reading/viewing:

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/04/cobra-kai-review-season-2-youtube-premium-1202127560/

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Sep 16 2018
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Cinema, Edinburgh, Film, Movies, Uncategorized

The Predator (2018) is hell in a cinema.

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I’ve had shites that were more enjoyable than The Predator (2018), and one time in 2014 in Tokyo I shat out nothing but green water for 11 straight days. How can you go from peak Arnie circa 1987 to this garbage? I thought right-wing US governments were meant to bring about a seismic change in film discourse? Like, proper satirical stuff masquerading as flag-waving propaganda. Apparently not.

This film was so fucking atrocious I fell asleep for half an hour, spilled Coca-Cola on my £11 Sainsbury’s jeans, and had a dream about Warwick Davis dropkicking Kenny Baker into the Death Star. My movie-watching colleague had to wake me up with smelling salts.

Worst film I’ve seen in years.

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Feb 18 2018
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Cinema, Film, Uncategorized

Tron: Legacy (2010) and Daft Punk.

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Tron (1982) was some kind of game-changer, a belter that pronounced there were existential possibilities within the personal computer to explore, shambolic micro worlds which parallel our own with power structures at their core (fascism in a motherboard).

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For a mass-entertainment movie it is one deep experience, and even the Reagan-era state-of-the-art special effects weirdly haven’t dated. It was, with War Games (1983) and The Terminator (1984), one of the first movies to confront what is now a pre-eminent disaster scenario – a virus in the works.

Tron: Legacy (2010) has nothing on the original, though it does at a Disney-level ponder the impossibility of perfection and the dangers of so-called ‘Artificial Intelligence’. Visually, however, it is the peak of sleek, images that would make the 1984 Macintosh weep like George Orwell at the Night of the Long Knives.

The score is CR7 with a football –  a technological cutting-edge marvel of electronics and orchestra. The images mirror a Sergio Leone shoot-out in their synchronicity with the music. And if the mise en scène were set to a James Horner sesh I’d turn the spectacle off.

FYI: I could listen to this score whilst taking a Harry Dunne dump and it would be cinematic. Incredible sounds.

 

 

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