1980s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 2)

[Tom Hagen]

After going through my intial list of '80s films, I have a question for the forum: how much credibility will I lose by including not just one, but potentially two, baseball-related films starring Kevin Costner in my top 50?

[tavernier]

After going through my intial list of '80s films, I have a question for the forum: how much credibility will I lose by including not just one, but potentially two, baseball-related films starring Kevin Costner in my top 50?

Bull Durham OK, but please, not Field of Dreams.

[Cold Bishop]

Perhaps the second one is The Untouchables?

[tavernier]

Forgot about that scene....

[tojoed]

A film I think might be overlooked is Paul Mazursky's "Enemies- A Love Story" (Warner, Region 1). If anyone wants to do a domino deal on this, I'd be glad to. This deal thing is actually a good way of getting recommendations, as you are obliged to watch it rather than add to the kevyip.

[Tom Hagen]

After going through my intial list of '80s films, I have a question for the forum: how much credibility will I lose by including not just one, but potentially two, baseball-related films starring Kevin Costner in my top 50?

Bull Durham OK, but please, not Field of Dreams.

Bull Durham is in for sure. Its funny as hell and endlessly quotable. And it even references Susan Sontag for chrissakes! However I am wavering on Field of Dreams. On one hand, it is responsible for perhaps 50% of the multigenerational male bonding in my family and many good personal memories. On the other, it is pure Capracorn schmaltz, and though few moments in cinema are as personally touching for me as "Dad, do you want to have a catch?," I probably can't justify placing it in the top fifty films of the decade.

[zedz]

Bull Durham is in for sure. Its funny as hell and endlessly quotable. And it even references Susan Sontag for chrissakes! However I am waivering on Field of Dreams. On one hand, it is responsible for perhaps 50% of the multigenerational male bonding in my family and many good personal memories. On the other, it is pure Capracorn schmaltz, and though few moments in cinema are as personally touching for me as "Dad, do you want to have a catch?," I probably can't justify placing it in the top fifty films of the decade.

Subjectivity is a safer path to tread - this task is hard enough without trying to reconcile personal favourites with elusive objective value.

[Tom Hagen]

Subjectivity is a safer path to tread - this task is hard enough without trying to reconcile personal favourites with elusive objective value.

Thanks, zedz. My inquiry was targeted as much to get a response on the subjective/objective issue as it was to stir up discussion about the late '80s cinema of baseball. Its good to know that the lists are expected to branch out beyond the canon.

[domino harvey]

I think it boils down to: If you think it's one of the fifty best films of the 80s, put it on your list. Tastes run fairly esoteric around here, and particularly for a decade like the '80s, nothing short of placing Mac and Me on your list is going to generate much genuine outcry.

[toiletduck!]

Can we get some love from the '80s Godard contingent? I know you're out there somewhere.

-Toilet Dcuk

[domino harvey]

Can we get some love from the '80s Godard contingent? I know you're out there somewhere.

You better believe Detective will be in my Top 10, and Slow Motion and King Lear are sure to make an appearance too. Possibly more titles than that will make my list, but those are my three favorites.

For the newcomers to Chabrol, be warned that the 80s are patchy at best for this master's work. The Lavardin films are entertaining but not really worth putting on the list. Story of Women has its fans but does nothing for me and is incredibly uncharacteristic. His best film from this period is one of Chabrol's rare flat-out comedies, though his films are often funny: Masques. Make no mistake, the main reason to see this film is primarily for Philippe Noiret, who gives one of my all-time favorite performances-- and the final punchline is one of Chabrol's best abrupt endings.

[Tom Hagen]

Speaking of New Wavers in the '80s, does anyone know about the availability of The Last Metro? I have heard that Janus has the rights to it, but is there a DVD anywhere else, or do I need track down a VHS copy? I have never seen it, but understand that it is among the better late period Truffauts.

Edit: Netflix has it, as well as Confidentially Yours. What is the general consensus around here about those two films?

[zedz]

Speaking of New Wavers in the '80s. . .

Lest we forget, by some massive fluke (thank you Bluebell Films) the 80s is the Rivette decade (apart from the present one) best represented on subtitled DVD. Unfortunately, my favourite of the period, Pont du Nord remains unavailable, but the three that are are well worth your while. L'amour par terre is like a radical remix of Celine et Julie (the same basic ingredients jumbled up and 'generating' a very different film); Hurlevent is very uncharacteristic, but nevertheless fascinating. I haven't watched the disc of Bande de quatre yet, but my aging memory is that it's another great example of Rivette's oblique conspiracy films, with a wonderful mocking suspense sequence messing around with Hitchcock tropes.

I think it boils down to: If you think it's one of the fifty best films of the 80s, put it on your list. Tastes run fairly esoteric around here, and particularly for a decade like the '80s, nothing short of placing Mac and Me on your list is going to generate much genuine outcry.

The real, covert purpose of this exercise (sharing the love for overlooked films) would be ill served if everyone took the presumed overt purpose (creating an authoritative list of The Best Films) too seriously. The more people contribute, the more the lists tend to gravitate towards consensus favourites anyway, so trying to second guess that consensus beforehand would leach all the fun out of it. I doubt that They All Laughed will topple anything from my own top ten (and vice versa), but I probably would never have seen it at all if domino hadn't splurged.

[denti alligator]

Since I posted his faves in the 70s thread, I'll do so here, too--only because it's an interesting list. Here are Jonathan Rosenbaum's favorite films of the 1980s:

Orderly or Disorderly (Kiarostami)
Too Early, Too Late (Straub / Huillet)
Love Streams (Cassavetes)
Manuel on the Island of Wonders (Ruiz)
Mix-Up (Romand)
Mélo (Resnais)
Where is the Friend's House? (Kiarostami)
Yeelen (Cissé)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies)
A Tale of the Wind (Ivens)
The Asthenic Syndrome (Muratova)

[Via_Chicago]

Can we get some love from the '80s Godard contingent? I know you're out there somewhere.

Can't agree with Domino about Detective (probably my least favorite 80s Godard), but I would like to plug Sauve qui peut (la vie), Prenom Carmen, and Passion. Sauve qui peut was really my introduction to 80s Godard, for which it has a special place in my heart (although I do legitimately think it's one of Godard's best films of the decade). However, Carmen may be the best of the bunch - just raw, visceral, passionate filmmaking, like some kind of strange remake of Pierrot le fou. It's tremendous.

As for the 80s, I'd like to give a shout-out to:

Camp de Thiaroye (Ousmane Sembene, 1987) - One of my three favorite Sembene films is this 1987 masterpiece about the massacre of Senegalese troops (in Senegal!) by their French commanding officers. While over 2 1/2 hours long, this film is so totally engrossing, the characters so meticulously and finely etched, and the mise-en-scene so fluid and precise, that all sense of time just slips away. A complete masterpiece.

White Dog (Samuel Fuller, 1982) - Maybe Fuller's best film, White Dog synthesizes everything that is characteristic about Fuller's cinema: the brash, in-your-face visual style, the often heavy-handed symbolism, and the cartoon dialogue and characters, and forms a kind of ticking time-bomb of a masterpiece. It also features the single greatest animal performance I've ever seen (yes, even greater than the donkey in Balthazar).

[Tom Hagen]

Can't agree with Domino about Detective (probably my least favorite 80s Godard), but I would like to plug Sauve qui peut (la vie), Prenom Carmen, and Passion. Sauve qui peut was really my introduction to 80s Godard, for which it has a special place in my heart (although I do legitimately think it's one of Godard's best films of the decade). However, Carmen may be the best of the bunch - just raw, visceral, passionate filmmaking, like some kind of strange remake of Pierrot le fou. It's tremendous.

This thread has inspired me to finally crack open the Lionsgate set that has been idiling on my shelf for about two months now.

[mattkc]

White Dog ...It also features the single greatest animal performance I've ever seen (yes, even greater than the donkey in Balthazar).

Not only that, but those POV shots are pure Fuller. I completely agree about this film, it's probably the fullest expression of his aesthetic I've seen (but I'm still waiting for Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street).

[domino harvey]

I got a kindly mod to move the They All Laughed thread to the Old Films section, so once people see the film, please post there so we can keep the discussion in one location. I revisited the film last night and then watched it again today, so I feel ready to praise and defend the film at-length as fellow boarders start seeing and hopefully enjoying the movie.

[Michael]

Am I the only one who find Fast Times at Ridgemont High one of the best films to come out of the 80s? It's the real Dazed and Confused. I still watch Fast Times.. too many times to count and I still find much comfort in that film for some reason. zedz, can you please add that to the top recommendation list? The director is Amy Heckerling, who also directed Clueless, another movie I love but that belongs to 1990s.

[SoyCuba]

I began watching movies for the project, mostly from my kevyip. I must warn you that I will list here every 80s movie I watched, how matter how bad or low-brow or whatever they might be.

I was surprised that I liked Huston's Annie. Very well directed and photographed film with a lot of great musical numbers, fun characters and a nice, if flawed, story. Not a great movie but not a failure for Huston either in my opinion.

I really liked Tetsuo, although the R1 DVD might be a PAL to NTSC conversion. I really can't tell for sure because of all the superfast cuts and how they should look. If this indeed is a standards conversion, then this is the kind of movie one should never be done for. The movie is a some sort of mix between the moviemaking styles of Cronenberg and Lynch, and it really works well, although the relatively short running time couldn't really be much longer. Really great atmosphere and use of music.

I absolutely loved Altered States, only the third Ken Russell film I've seen. The Hollywoodish ending could have been better, but otherwise this is a sci-fi masterpiece in my book. I especially loved the use of music and the effects of course, including the 2001ish montage at the end.

I can't believe there's a massive fanbase for The Princess Bride. The postmodernism doesn't work at all (all we learn is that little boys don't like kissing parts) and the story is just too random, and I couln't find anything interesting in it filmmaking-wise. I guess it's the "true love" concept that made the movie such a classic (especially among teenage girls I'd guess). Not a bad movie, but pretty average I'd say. The Neverending Story is much more interesting than this, in every way.

Blame it on Rio was fairly entertaining comedy, and definitely better than I expected. This is not really a romantic comedy by the way, just like I wouldn't call pre-code comedies romantic. Plenty of funny lines but not a very interesting story. Ending is awful and it's interesting to see that Siskel and Ebert thought that the "ending almost redeemed it". It's almost as saying that pre-code films are so sought after because of their (usually) happy and teaching endings. This movie just doesn't try to be serious drama.

Silverado was definitely a disappointment. Far too many subplots and characters and too many big stars playing them. Even the action scenes are mostly nothing too memorable. Very average. Oh, and I hated the score and the Costner character is annoying.

I greatly enjoyed Ladyhawke. Now here's a 80s fantasy movie far more deserved to be remembered than Princess Bride. Storaro's cinematography is beautiful and the story is good enough, even if there is some clumsy storytelling and even minor plot holes.

I found the tableaux style of The Legend of the Suram Fortress just as stylish as in The Color of Pomegranates, but just as in the case of that movie, I couldn't really enjoy the movie as much as I would have wanted. The storytelling methods of Paradjanov just don't work that well for me, though I did love the story of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Great experience for the cinematography alone, and I did love the ending at least.

Ashik Kerib is definitely the weakest of Paradjanov's films. The compositions are far less striking than in the previous films, although some of the tracking shots are great.

The House on the Edge of the Park is nothing more than well made exploitation and not even very original at that. I did like the film, but this is nothing compared to Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust which will propably be on my finished 80s list.

[zedz]

For what it’s worth, here are some impressions of the first few 1980s films I’ve been watching

The Shining

Though I’d seen bits and pieces of this countless times on television, this was the first time I’d watched it right through. I’m not a big Kubrick fan at the best of times – his ideas seem pretty adolescent to me and his opulent visual style, though technically impressive and exacting, bores me, with all those oppressive OCD symmetries – but this was particularly hard to take.

No number of ‘perfect’ steadicam or helicopter shots can offset for me the sloppy narrative construction of the film or absolutely godawful performances. And godawful by Kubrick’s standards is awesomely abysmal – unnuanced one-note face-pulling exercises that completely undermine the story (only Crothers emerges with dignity somewhat intact). It’s the same problem when Kubrick pulls the same trick with D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket (which I otherwise remember as a much better film): how can anybody around him be surprised when he cracks? How could they fail to notice that ridiculous ‘psycho retard’ grimace? Does Kubrick really think that’s a scary face? He should have just gone the whole hog and have Nicholson and D’Onofrio pull their lower lips over their nose or turn their eyelids inside out. Now THAT’S scary!

Street of No Return

Sam Fuller’s last film, and another dud. A terrible script, with Keith Carradine as a mute ex-pop singer who comes off as a strange cross between Klaus Kinski and Alejandro Jodorowsky in full frightwig-mime mode. The whole thing is mired in bad 80s fashion, bad 80s music (and music videos) and bad 80s lighting (if you know what I’m talking about you know exactly how this film looks), tacked onto a worthless, ridiculous TV movie script (evil developer wants to spark a race war to lower property values – oops, spoiler). Fuller’s attention to race issues is about the only thematic note of interest, and it’s pretty generically expressed here. He tries valiantly to instil some energy into the editing and camera movement / placement, but it’s a lost cause: the film’s just trash.

The ‘making of’ on the Fantoma disc is nothing special, but it’s much preferable to the feature, simply because Fuller talking is much more interesting, and more cinematic, than anything in the film proper. Roll on White Dog.

L’Amour par terre

This film about ‘free adaptations’ (of one’s life, of the lives and works of others) is itself a free adaptation of Celine et Julie vont en bateau. It takes the same raw materials (two friends, a big old house, a performance in which the two share / swap roles, hallucinations, magic acts, a nested, repeated narrative etc.) and uses them to generate a quite different film.

The film, and its differences from Celine et Julie, seem to be determined by the personalities of its two leads, Geraldine Chaplin and Jane Birkin (just as the earlier film seems, even if it isn’t, an expression of the personalities of Berto and Labourier). They’re both established Francophone English actresses (with that accent that many French people find so darn cute), so the film is more consciously about acting (rather than play-acting) and less anarchic than Celine et Julie. Its mysteries are less profound, but it’s nevertheless pure Rivette and essential viewing for fans.

The Boys from Fengkuei

I should really call this All the Youthful Days, since that’s the English title that actually appears on the print, but that name seems to have fallen by the wayside.

There’s an incredible leap in ambition and accomplishment between Hou’s previous film, The Green Green Grass of Home, and this, his first fully mature work. Those cool long (in more than one sense) shots are a key part of his aesthetic here, and the thematic preoccupations (youth at a loose end, the rhythms of rural life) are emerging. The opening pool hall scene would be recalled in his ‘summing up’ work Three Times. Some of this film’s reflexive flourishes also look forward to later work. Ah-Ching’s ‘silent movie’ flashbacks to his father’s accident are a distant antecedent of the use of silent syntax in the second episode of Three Times, and they’re consciously evoked by cinema. There’s also a wonderful sequence where the boys, in Kaohsiung, are duped into paying for a movie that turns out to be a Cinemascope view of the city. Of course, what they get is far closer to Hou’s vision of cinema than the porn they expected.

It’s amazingly assured. The way in which Hou captures the atmosphere of small-town life has the evocative stillness of early / classic Antonioni (or the Po Valley of Ossessione). Actually, if you can imagine I Vitelloni directed by Antonioni then you’re not far off this film. The only misstep, and only by the standards of later Hou, is the classical score (Vivaldi) – it’s too much and it tramples over the much subtler mood of the actual scenes.

[Hopscotch]

I honestly didn't care for Godard's Detective at all. Maybe I was in a restless mood, but it took probably 20 minutes for me to start fidgeting and wondering when it was all going to end. It really didn't deliver for me on an emotional level, excepting at most one or two scenes between Emile and Francoise. Again, it might have been my state of mind while watching the film, but I found the plot almost as convulted as the (ridiculously convulted) Made in U.S.A., which didn't help me get as well "immersed" as I feel with, say, Hail Mary (probably my favorite 80s Godard --anyone else feel this way?). I throw "immersed" in quotations because I understand full well that typical mindless escapism is the last thing Godard wants viewers to experience with his movies, but Detective made me feel like I was... miles away from it all. I just didn't care. How's that for scholarly criticism?
The music manipulation was also pretty bombastic, even by Godard standards. All those crashing piano chords and what not...
Anyone want to riff on why they really like Detective?

I also felt a similar, awful restlesness towards the end of Prenom, though that movie had a much higher ratio of the sublime to the ridiculous. King Lear will probably be the next 80s Godard that I see.

[domino harvey]

It really didn't deliver for me on an emotional level

And there's where you went wrong, looking for emotional investment in a Godard film is like looking for Happy Meals at a Five-Star restaurant.

The film was a "commercial" project taken by Godard to fund the finish of Hail Mary, and Godard clearly had nothing but contempt for the material he was given. Thus he rewrote on set anything he could and failing that, heightened the most idiotic aspects of the mystery film and the gangster film to absurd levels-- the wonderful finger to those in the audience who cared about the "mystery" by having it solved by the most ridiculous unfounded guess at exactly the moment needed is maybe my second-favorite ending to any Godard film (behind Slow Motion). It is an audacious film, and one that shows how brilliant Godard is: even on projects he detested which didn't originate with him, he was able to deliver something that fit the contractual obligations of the producers while delivering a movie entirely his own. I mean, who else but Godard would mock the actors already contractually attached to the film before he signed on by separating the "stars" from the "actors" in the opening credits?

[Hopscotch]

I feel fully capable of getting emotionally invested in films like My Life to Live, Hail Mary, and even Pierrot le Fou.
I understand that Godard requires of his viewer a kind of continually distanced, critical perspective -- one that doesn't really leave room for useless titillation and all that -- but didn't Gorin or someone say that Godard films deliver best "on an emotional level" when they get some feeling out of the viewer despite the obtrusive distancing techniques, suggesting of course that Godard's films can and do occasionally move the viewer, however unconcerned with moving the viewer or didactic they may be? You can't possibly believe that Godard wants his cinema to function sans emotion.
I don't know. While I agree that Godard's making it clear that he detested the source material of the project was at least fun to see, it certainly didn't improve my viewing experience very much.

[domino harvey]

Finally watched Love on the Ground, as I'd been waiting for the right moment to savor it. Not as quite as good as Gang of Four but still rich with much to appreciate and love, this film will likely have a cozy spot on my eventual list. And wow, Lazlo Szabo doesn't appear to have aged in the twenty years between this and his Godard films! The sequence where he paints a sunset on Birkin's forehead with the iodine and the ensuing trip to the kitchen was the highlight of the film for me.