Acting Black Blogathon – Hollywood Shuffle (1987)

As you can tell from the banner above this review is part of the Acting Black Blogathon.  When I saw Dell’s explanation of this the very first film that popped into my head was Hollywood Shuffle – Robert Townsend’s biting satire of what it’s like to be a black actor in Hollywood.  And even though it was done almost 30 years ago, things have only marginally improved since then.

The movie’s framework is that a young black man named Bobby Taylor who is an aspiring actor.  We see him go for an audition, a callback, and then during filming.  Interspersed among these base scenes are ones where Townsend’s character daydreams about all the roles he’d like to play, or has bad dreams about the roles he’s afraid he might be forced to do.

Steve’s Selections #7 – My Favorite Year (1982)

This is the seventh of twelve films that Steve at 1001plus has picked for me to watch and review.  He ran across it doing his reviews of Oscar nominated films.  In this case, Peter O’Toole received his seventh (of eight) Best Actor nominations, although he would lose once again (this time to Ben Kingsley in Gandhi).  O’Toole’s performance is mostly comedic – something that is usually bypassed by the Academy – so the fact that he even got a nomination at all might say something.  As a whole, the film is a pleasant experience.  The less comedic/more dramatic moments are understated and fit well within the story.

Steve’s Selections #6 – The Changeling (1980)

This is the sixth of twelve films that Steve at 1001plus has picked for me to watch and review.  It’s the first of two horror films he gave me.  Steve is a bigger fan of horror than I am.  I’m sure this is one of the ones he wondered about giving me.  Well Steve, you’ve got no worries here.  This was a very effective movie filled with plenty of goosebump inducing moments for me.  While most horror films lose my attention when they go for the gore, this one stayed restrained (for the most part – more later) and the film has a much greater impact because of it.  And it actually has more going on than just scares.  It’s three parts ghost story, one part murder mystery, and one part political thriller.

Steve’s Selections #2 – Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1984)

Steve and I each happened to include a martial arts film when we picked movies for each other.  I like these kinds of films, but I think Steve probably likes them slightly more than I do.  Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (don’t bother trying to figure out what the title means) is a traditional genre film from the legendary Shaw Brothers.  Rather than have any number of martial arts skills and weapons on display this one almost exclusively features fighting with lances.  There’s not a lot of plot – it’s a time honored tale of revenge – but there is plenty of fighting to watch.

Movie – Tampopo (1985)

Tampopo is a Japanese film that is clearly rooted in the American Western film genre.  It is set in contemporary Japan, but all of the basic story points are pure classic western.  A mysterious stranger rides into town, helps save a widow and her son, fights the bad guys, and rides off into the sunset.  While it is interesting to see the genre reinterpreted this way, the most fun comes from the comedic aspects of the film itself.

Movie – Purple Rain (1984)

To a lot of people nowadays the 1984 Prince film Purple Rain is probably seen as a kind of kooky snapshot of a very specific time in music – the same way some people think of Saturday Night Fever (1977).  What many of those same people tend to forget, though, is all the very popular songs that came out of both films – songs that will still get people humming, tapping, or dancing along to them.  At the time the film Purple Rain came out it was a phenomenon.  It pretty much took over popular culture for a while with both the movie and the music dominating the airwaves, and the videos dominating this new channel calling itself Music Television, or Mtv for short.  And while Prince had had a few hits prior to this, the combination of this film and the soundtrack shot him into the stratosphere.

Movie – The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982)

If you have never heard of this film before today, I can completely understand.  I never heard of it myself before it was added to the most recent edition of the 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.  It is from writer/director Peter Greenaway (The Pillow Book, Drowning by Numbers) and might be the most normal of the four films of his that I have seen.  Of course, “normal” is a relative term.  For instance, this film has a naked man who is some sort of moving statue that most people cannot see.  He might represent the Green Man from Anglo mythology.  And if you have a penis aversion (would that be “phallophobia”?) then you should know that you see everything.  This is just a small touch of Greenaway’s typical strangeness, though.  The main part of the film involves a slow realization that what we think is going on may be completely wrong.  And it all involves a murder.

Movie – Innerspace (1987)

In my last post I reviewed the 1966 adventure film Fantastic Voyage, which had a small submarine and crew being miniaturized and injected into the body of a man.  (You can read that review here.)  Now imagine the same concept, but played for comedy.  What if a miniaturized sub and gung ho test pilot were injected into a random hypochondriac who can’t get anyone to believe that he is feeling weird things and hearing voices?  What if that hypochondriac is played by the master of the nervous twitch Martin Short?  And what if he has to try to thwart a criminal organization intent on getting the miniaturization technology?  The result is the 1987 film Innerspace - a shut your brain off and just enjoy the zaniness kind of movie.

Movie – Das Boot (1981)

The best way to start my Submarine Movies category is with by far the best submarine film ever made – Das Boot.  I consider it not only the best sub movie ever made, but the best war movie ever made, too.  It is a German film (the title translates as “The Boat”) and it easily stands as one of the very best films to ever come from that country.  I would have a hard time picking between it and M (1931) as the best, quite frankly.  That means it is also one of the very best non-English language films ever made – definitely in the top ten, quite possibly in the top five.

Movie – Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

In the fall of 1982 I was a barely 18 year old incoming college Freshman.  The very first night all the students were there the drug dealer on our floor gathered all of us together in his room.  We shot the shit for a while then he whipped out some pot.  He’d let us smoke that night for free.  (All part of creating a market for his product – this was a business school after all).  None of us were brave enough to be the first to get up and walk out, but only one of us was weak enough to smoke his pot.  With his lack of success the dealer started badgering us all the next day about another party.  This time we knew it would be more of a hard sell and a bunch of us wanted no part of it.  We decided to get off campus that evening and in this small town about the only thing we could agree on was to see a movie.  Only one of us had a car so seven guys all piled into it.  The car could comfortably hold two and realistically hold four, but we made it there and back, although probably not legally.  The movie we decided to see was one none of us had heard of, but that looked like fun: Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  It was HUGE.  We talked about it all the way home and were still quoting it weeks later.

Movie – Something Wild (1986)

Something Wild holds a number of firsts for me.  It was the first movie in which I ever saw Jeff Daniels (Dumb & Dumber, Gettysburg), Melanie Griffith (Working Girl), and Ray Liotta (Goodfellas).  It was the first film directed by Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) that I ever saw.  The film contained songs from a number of bands that I was hearing for the first time.  I can’t be positive, since it was more than 25 years ago, but I believe that this film is the first one for which I ever bought the CD soundtrack.  I still own it.  I took it off the shelf and I’m listening to it as I write this.

This film was not always easy to find.  It did get issued on DVD in the early days of the medium, but that disk went out of print.  Thankfully, Criterion recently bought the rights to the film and released it on both DVD and Blu-ray.  They also added a bunch of new content.  Even though I own the original DVD, it doesn’t have those extras on it so I have thought about getting the Criterion edition.

Movie – Mystic Pizza (1988)

Before Pretty Woman made her a household name, and before she got an Oscar nomination for Steel Magnolias, I first saw Julia Roberts flash her famous smile in 1988’s coming of age film Mystic Pizza.  And playing a younger brother in this movie was a seventeen year old Matt Damon in his big screen debut.  This film also features early performances by Lili Taylor, Annabeth Gish, and Vincent D’Onofrio.  Roger Ebert noted in his review that this film might one day be better remembered for the talent within it than for the movie itself.  I think he pretty much nailed that prediction.

Movie – The Night Before (1988)

Before he was an action star, before he was in the Bill & Ted movies, even before a key supporting turn in Dangerous Liaisons, I saw Keanu Reeves in the comedy The Night Before (not to be confused with 1986’s About Last Night.)  It was written and directed by Thom E. Eberhardt as his follow-up movie to 1984 cult classic Night of the Comet.  (You can read my review of that here.)  The Night Before has obvious influences from both Risky Business (1983) and Adventures in Babysitting (1987).  It has just as obviously influenced a whole bunch of later films from a low of Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000) to a high of The Hangover (2009).

Movie – Dead Calm (1989)

The Australian film Dead Calm, based on the Charles Williams’ novel of the same name, is the first movie in which I ever saw Nicole Kidman.  She was just 21 years old – pre-Oscar win, pre-Tom Cruise, pre-Hollywood, even pre-boob job, as we find out.  (Don’t worry ladies, there’s equal opportunity nudity for you from 22 year old, full head of hair, buff Billy Zane.)  The two, along with Sam Neill, are pretty much the only cast in this intense thriller, so even though Kidman was relatively new to films she gets a chance to shine.

Movie – Back to School (1986)

Back to School was a comedy vehicle for Rodney Dangerfield.  He had been doing standup for years, but his appearance in 1980’s Caddyshack had made him known to a whole new generation of people.  He also became almost ubiquitous in advertisements for Miller Lite beer in the early 80s.  By the time this film came out he was a full-fledged star.  Not a star yet, but one that soon would be, was Robert Downey, Jr.  He plays a prominent supporting role in this film.  It was the first time I ever saw him in a movie.

Movie – Empire of the Sun (1987)

Empire of the Sun was the first “serious” Steven Spielberg movie that I saw.  Yes, he had done The Color Purple two years earlier, but I never saw that until about a year ago.  Spielberg was tired of being passed over by the Oscars because people thought he only did popcorn movies.  He started doing “serious” movies to change his image, although it still didn’t work until he did Schindler’s List (1993), which even the old grumps in the Academy finally couldn’t ignore.  Empire of the Sun is also the first film in which I ever saw Christian Bale, who plays the lead character.  I consider this movie to be the best Spielberg film that relatively few people have heard of.

Movie – Eating Raoul (1982)

In my prior review I noted that that film (The Insatiable) was probably the least overtly comedic of the films I had written about for my horror comedies category.  This time up the film I am going to recommend is probably the least horrific – at least in terms of what appears on screen.  Eating Raoul is a dark comedy about an ultraconservative couple who find they can kill people for profit and rid the world of “perverts” at the same time.  The film is played straight, not as a spoof.  In other words, it is filled with deadpan humor (and that was a pun, but if you haven’t seen the film, you won’t get it yet.)

Movie – The Lost Boys (1987)

The Lost Boys, combined with the release three months later of Near Dark (1987), signaled that there was a new kind of vampire movie out there and it wasn’t your parents’ creature of the night.  With nary a tuxedo, cape, old mansion, or coffin in sight, these two movies made a major redefinition in how people presented vampires.  These creatures were young, cool, and badass.  As the tag line for The Lost Boys says: “Sleep all day.  Party all night.  Never grow old.  Never die.  It’s fun to be a vampire.”  Don’t think these are cuddly Twilight vampires, though.  They are still brutal killers and there are no sparkles to be found (except maybe from sequins in all the 80s outfits).

Movie – Night of the Comet (1984)

Return with me, if you will, to the early 1980s (aka the Valley Girl Ages).  Frank Zappa’s song Valley Girl had been a big phenomenon and had captured a moment in time of “teen speak” from his southern California daughter and her friends.  It became a bit of a social phenomenon and even Hollywood jumped on the bandwagon.  There were a string of movies about empty-headed valley girls.  Towards the end of this run the movie Night of the Comet hit theaters.  Long before Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame had the thought “what if a monster follows a pretty blond girl into an alley and she kills him?” this film made two valley girls the seemingly sole human survivors of a global catastrophe.  They weren’t empty headed, though, and their military man father had trained them in self defense and how to fire a weapon.  The result was a very tongue in cheek film – one that most horror fans were not ready for.

Movie – Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)

If you have never seen the film Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure then allow me to introduce you to Bill S. Preston, Esquire and Ted “Theodore” Logan, two most excellent dudes who have a great future ahead of them – if they can only pass History.  What their future is, and how they try to achieve it, make up the fun that is this film.  It features an early, comedic role from Keanu Reeves, as well as a ton of catchphrases that entered everyday language, some of them still with us today.