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ohtani's jacket wrote:The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller) -- I watched the theatrical release of this since the reconstructed version doesn't necessarily follow Fuller's vision. This had some obvious tropes and the repeated motifs weren't so clever. In fact, it was probably little more than a B-film in terms of the script (not that I have anything against B-films), but it was an easy watch and entertaining. Was it a great war film? I dunno. For a film based on Fuller's personal experiences, it didn't seem to add anything to the genre that countless other war films hadn't covered in the past. I actually kind of thought Fuller's Steel Helmet was a better overall film, but I did enjoy it and watched it twice in fact.

The Reconstruction comes a lot closer to Fuller's vision than the cut you watched. It located a lot of the footage that had been ditched and matched it to the shooting script. Twenty-four lost sequences were restored. I urge anyone who watches The Big Red One for this list to watch the Reconstruction. It's a much richer film, which develops characters, relationships, and themes far more fully.

Supersuede, on an editor's desk for now (it's a loooooong process with no guarantees, but such is film writing)

bamwc2 wrote: Like his subsequent Os Canibais, the director seems to enjoy tormenting us with extended periods of drudgery that are ultimately redeemed by some of the most amazing moments in cinema that one can envision.

Hehe, I've just watched Os Canibais and found it great, without any drudgery at all. The problem that people seem to have with it - I've looked at some imdb reviews - seems to stem from the fact that this is really a filmed opera, although one that was specially commissioned for the film. And I have to say that the music by Joao Paes is quite wonderful, somewhat in the idiom of Bartok's "Bluebeard" with some Janacek and perhaps early Henze mixed in. So I had no hard time indulging in the somewhat slow-going parts of the film which however were filled with excellent music and singing, and what's more, truly beautiful visuals. The story, as it goes often with opera, isn't much, basically some sort of Gothic novel as seen through the eyes of Bunuel. The title in spite of the funny, surrealist ending seems a bit too sensationalistic to me, as after all, this is basically just a variation on the old romantic beauty and the beast topos. But as filmed opera, it's pretty gorgeous and very sensual. I really think I need to see more from Oliveira.

Going back to Kurosawa's Ran for a moment, that will probably figure highly on my list too for many of the extremely powerful images that Tommaso describes. I still cannot get through the big battle/massacre scene without shedding a few tears! And interestingly, given Kurosawa's stated fondness for John Ford's films, watching Ford's Cheyenne Autumn a few years ago there was an image of Karl Malden walking in an insane daze through the bodies of a massacre at the fort that he was commanding that feels very strongly influential on Hidetora's walk from his burning palace in Ran. I also particularly like the final devastating images of Ran of the loss of God, leaving our remaining character in a precarious position!

However I would just as strongly recommend Chris Marker's film on the making of Ran, A.K.! That film beautifully works as an on-set documentary for fans yet also throws in some fun anachronistic moments (which themselves are now valuable mid-1980s era time capsules), such as the parade of an army of extras in full costume down a road lined by production vehicles!

Yes, indeed. And that army of extras (some thousands in the battle scenes, if I recall correctly) is also a reminder that Ran was one of the last films that used real people in staging those mass scenes instead of relying on cgi technology. Ah, just another sense in which I feel like saying that they just don't do films like this anymore. And now I feel like re-watching "Cheyenne Autumn", because I don't remember that scene you describe at all...

Gregory wrote:The Reconstruction comes a lot closer to Fuller's vision than the cut you watched. It located a lot of the footage that had been ditched and matched it to the shooting script. Twenty-four lost sequences were restored. I urge anyone who watches The Big Red One for this list to watch the Reconstruction. It's a much richer film, which develops characters, relationships, and themes far more fully.

I will chip away at the reconstruction. The reason I was wary of it for this project was that even they followed a shooting script, they still re-cut the film themselves. That involves a certain amount of interpretation. Also, I wonder if a re-cut film really constitutes an 80s film, or is it a later release? My understanding is that the reconstruction is eligible for the list, but I'm not sure how to fairly rate it against theatrical releases from the 1980s.

Has anyone seen the two eligible Vincent Ward films? I haven't seen 'Vigil' but 'The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey' was a profound and moving tale of faith and devotion set alternately in Cumbria, England in 1348 and 1980s Auckland. Plus there's some allegorical parallels thrown in for good measure. His visual flair is quite apparent, but there's some real depth here and is unlike anything you've seen.

ohtani's jacket wrote:I will chip away at the reconstruction. The reason I was wary of it for this project was that even they followed a shooting script, they still re-cut the film themselves. That involves a certain amount of interpretation. Also, I wonder if a re-cut film really constitutes an 80s film, or is it a later release? My understanding is that the reconstruction is eligible for the list, but I'm not sure how to fairly rate it against theatrical releases from the 1980s.

You don't vote for a particular cut of the film. You just vote for "The Big Red One" and everybody's votes for that get added together. This is the only decade where you can vote for it.

Also, I'm not sure why you're slighting the reconstruction for being less than a perfect representation of Fuller's vision when surely the theatrical cut is a far less perfect one.

thirtyframesasecond wrote:Has anyone seen the two eligible Vincent Ward films? I haven't seen 'Vigil' but 'The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey' was a profound and moving tale of faith and devotion set alternately in Cumbria, England in 1348 and 1980s Auckland. Plus there's some allegorical parallels thrown in for good measure. His visual flair is quite apparent, but there's some real depth here and is unlike anything you've seen.

Vigil is among my favorite films of the 80's and remains Ward's single greatest achievement (though I also really like his short film adaptation of Janet Frame's State of Siege, included on the Australian DVD). Navigator is excellent as well but, for me, Vigil is close to perfect. Wish he would/could make something on that level again.

Yes, I'd also say that if you only see one film by Vincent (yeah, I went there) - like, ever - make it Vigil.

Amazon Women on the Moon (Joe Dante / Carl Gottlieb / Peter Horton / John Landis / Robert K. Weiss 1987) Landis and his pals attempt to revive the Kentucky Fried Movie-style sketch comedy movie and fail in such a colossal way that watching this thing unfold is just a slow realization of creeping terror. There's no good reason for this pic to exist except to give goofin' movie stars an excuse to do a favor for some moderately well-known directors. In an era that already brought us SCTV and SNL, where even their worst episode produced more laughs and good skits than this, there's no justifiable reason for this film to be a film. In fairness, Kentucky Fried Movie on the whole isn't very funny either, but that gets overlooked because it has two segments (Catholic High School Girls in Trouble and Fistful of Yen) which are so laugh-out-loud funny that the overall average gets brought up higher in memory. Forget two good skits in this, though: there's not even two good jokes here.

The only funny (more like "Oh, that's funny" though) segment in the whole movie is the one with Ed Begley Jr as the Son of the Invisible Man. As I often find myself doing in movies as dreadful as this, I counted my laughs and came up with yet another "comedy" with one whole chuckle (at Henry Silva's proposed solution to the mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity in the In Search Of/Unsolved Mysteries parody). I even watched the twenty minutes or so of deleted scenes to see what could possibly be considered substandard to what we got and while on the whole nothing was worse, had they included the Peter Pan commercial they'd have doubled the number of laughs in their film, as the premise is actually funny and it lasts about a minute. Had the other sketches bothered to be both those things, then hey, maybe this would have wor-- no, actually, probably not. Half the time the parodists don't even know what they're mocking-- take Joe Dante's VD scare film parody that ends the movie. I've seen hundreds of educational films and none of the actual aspects are recognizable in the cliched, exaggeratedly sloppy mess. What is recognizable is common public perception of such things, half-remembered from parodies of parodies of memories of school screenings from decades earlier. It's like parodying Mad magazine's Naked Gun parody and calling it a parody on Dirty Harry. Cracked magazine actually parodied a Naked Gun movie once. I'm sure whoever was responsible for that thinks this film's fucking brilliant.

But compared to Movie 49 this looks like a lost masterpiece! It is completely messy and all over the place but I also liked the shock humour slowly turning into delirious insane mania of the wake-turned into-comedy roast! Or the 'day in the life of a porn actress' in which she does mundane activities such as casually strolling around a shopping mall completely nude, while her inane 'she's got personality too' spiel plays over the top in the form of an empty-headed voiceover! And I enjoyed the "Blacks without Soul" funding drive-turned-mail order compilation album ad!

domino harvey wrote:(at Henry Silva's proposed solution to the mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity in the In Search Of/Unsolved Mysteries parody)

With the brilliantly straight faced narration to the camera of the question in the show's title: "Bullshit...or not?", that segues into a nutty Jack The Ripper parody in which a jaded, seen-it-all Cockney-American prostitute is accosted by what looks like a giant parade float with a ridiculously over-expressive animatronic Nessie face on the front of it (you can certainly see where the show spent its budget!)

And the titular Amazon Women On The Moon film is a weirdly specific parody of the Zsa Zsa Gabor-starring Queen of Outer Space, albeit with the inclusion of a cute monkey sidekick!

Though none of that counts if it's not actually funny.

It reminds me of the 'defences' of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on Criterion's disc: "It's got so and so in it! And all these other great comedians!"; "It cost SO much money!"; "It was a real event when I went to see it as a kid!"; "Some of the stunts are really impressive!"; "They built that service station JUST SO THEY COULD DESTROY IT!" Isn't there enough flop sweat in the film itself without importing it into the critical evaluation as well?

A Bette Midler double:

Big Business (Jim Abrahams, 1988)
Lots of fun in a doubling comedy which gets impressively complex near the end with some great split screen effects with all four characters on screen at the same time. 1988 was a big year for this concept, and Big Business falls between the non-identical twins of Twins and the identical twins (with similar special in-camera trickery) of Cronenberg's Dead Ringers.

Big Business is also part of the 'empowered businesswomen' genre together with the same year's Working Girl, although it is rather anti-business in its preference for down-home values. Though it is also naive enough to seem to believe that a speech about those values would be enough to sway the shareholders and that the business world is a fun and glamorous place to be. It kind of has a problematic approach to nature versus nuture, suggesting that some people are naturally suited to wheeling and dealing and others to more 'simple' things!

But the juggling comic hijinks are beautifully pulled off and Tomlin and Midler are great with a lot of sensitivity towards both of their, albeit comically heightened, doubling characters. Fred Ward is an endearing hillbilly figure and there is a solid supporting cast of great character actors getting to do lots of double takes at seeing double all the time.

And I think that the crazy golf tournament sequence that Fred Ward is involved in at the beginning of this film (complete with the dramatically speaking in hushed tones British commentator) must have been a major influence for the Simpsons' crazy golf episode!

Beaches (Garry Marshall, 1988)
Not a bad film, predictable though professionally pulled off. Kind of a female-centric Love Story, complete with terminal disease finale (you know the heroine is doomed as soon as she goes to a library and asks for every book they have her condition) . Midler is great, though she is playing the more vibrant character with much more to do, including at least four musical numbers, at least two of which are comic vaudeville pieces, while Barbara Hershey just gets left with the 'poor little rich girl' bland WASP-ish lawyer character sadly journeying her disappointing way through life (thinking about it now, it kind of anticipates Forrest Gump in a weird way!). Spalding Gray gets completely wasted as a potential Gynaecologist love interest, but it was nice to see Hector Elizondo in there briefly, who was Garry Marhsall's go to supporting player par excellence during this era.

Les favoris de la lune (Otar Iosseliani, 1984) - Eeesh, hadn't even heard of Otar Iosseliani til fairly recently, but this was incredible. Are other Iosseliai films from the decade this essential?

YnEoS wrote:Les favoris de la lune (Otar Iosseliani, 1984) - Eeesh, hadn't even heard of Otar Iosseliani til fairly recently, but this was incredible. Are other Iosseliai films from the decade this essential?

If you liked that, there are a bunch of subsequent films in the same light, Tatiesque vein, but mostly from the nineties and noughties: La Chasses aux papillons; Brigands, chapitre VII; Adieu, plancher des vaches; Lundi matin; Jardins en automne. They're all more or less perfect. The other 80s films aren't really in the same vein, except for maybe Et la lumiere fut, but that relocates his gentle, urbane, observational style to Africa, which provides rather a radical upheaval.

swo17 wrote: You don't vote for a particular cut of the film. You just vote for "The Big Red One" and everybody's votes for that get added together. This is the only decade where you can vote for it.

Also, I'm not sure why you're slighting the reconstruction for being less than a perfect representation of Fuller's vision when surely the theatrical cut is a far less perfect one.

I didn't really mean it as a slight. And I thought there was some rule about variant edits.

Withnail & I (Bruce Robinson) -- Surprisingly, I had never seen this. The only thing I knew about it was the somewhat iconic opening with King Curtis' version of A Whiter Shade of Pale. I thought this was really quite brilliant. Well written, well acted, and most importantly amusing. It would have been easy for the structure to fall apart with such a small arc, but Robinson did a stellar job with the script. You could maybe argue that the final act could have done with some minor tweaks about the '& I' character's realisation, but I guess Robinson didn't want to lay it on too thick.

Local Hero (Bill Forsyth) -- another fun Forsyth comedy about an American oilman who heads to a small Scottish village to buy up the coastline and ends up falling in love with the place. There's a really great scene where a Russian guy sings a Country and Western song at a town party. Thinking of the old Howard Hawks adage of three great scenes and no bad ones, there's one of your three scenes right there. The film also stars one of my favourite Hollywood actors Burt Lancaster in a quirky role that may not appeal to everyone, but I could watch Burt play just about any role.

Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme) -- another good film, this time based on the true story of a Utah service station worker who claimed to have saved Howard Hughes' life in the Nevada desert and been rewarded with a share of his fortune. The film is more about the Melvin character than it is the Hughes' will, and tells the story of an affable loser struggling to support his family and get ahead. It reminded me a lot of New Hollywood cinema and being released in 1980 struck me as something of a remnant of that movement.

Coal Miner's Daughter (Michael Apted) -- excellent bio-pic. One of the best I can remember seeing. Sissy Spacek was amazing, and I thought she fully deserved her Oscar. The fact she sung her own songs really makes the film. Tommy Lee Jones is also great in this, but I can't say enough about Spacek. Her range in this is incredible.

ohtani's jacket wrote:And I thought there was some rule about variant edits.

Yes. The rule is that if you absolutely insist on voting for one particular cut of a film because you love that version but loathe all others, then you can, but your vote will not be counted with all of the "regular" votes for the film, and in all likelihood, you'll have an orphan on your hands.

colinr0380 wrote:[...] it was nice to see Hector Elizondo in there briefly, who was Garry Marhsall's go to supporting player par excellence during this era.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe Elizondo has been in every Garry Marshall film since Young Doctors in Love

Viewing Log:

The Beauty & the Beast (Nils Malmros, 1983): This was my introduction to the films of Malmros, and I have to say that between this and Tree of Knowledge, I am very impressed by the director's ability to craft emotionally honest teenage dramas which ring truer to me than just about anything else made in the genre. In this case, the film centers on seventeen year old Anne-Mette (Line Arlien-Søborg) a good girl with a bit of a rebellious streak that constantly annoys her understanding, but protective father Jønne (Carsten Jørgensen). Mette dumps her parentally approved boyfriend in favor of the slightly older Jønnes ven (Michael Nørgaard) who endears himself to her family by passing out drunk at their house and taking topless pictures of their daughter. The film works well as a character study of Anne-Mette, though the final conversation between father and daughter didn't quite work for me.

Pelle the Conqueror (Bille August, 1987): After watching Babette's Feast in the last round, I figured that it was time to see the other Danish art house hit from 1987. Here Swedish pre-teen Pelle (Pelle Hvenegaard) and his father Lassefar (Max von Sydow) travel to Denmark in search of work. The illiterate Lassefar regularly finds himself abused and humiliated in front of his son, who also has a hard time with bullies. Little goes right in their lives as any attempts at bettering their situation blow up in their faces, but Pelle fights back in any way he can, making friends with a fellow outcast and refusing to submit to his tormentors. This isn't a film to watch if you're looking for a good time, but it is quite well made.

Recollections of the Yellow House (João César Monteiro, 1989): Monteiro's film speaks in a comic voice reminiscent of Aki Kaurismäki's best work. The film centers on João de Deus (João César Monteiro) a slight, but rascally man with a love of classical music. The film follows João through a series of mostly amusing exploits that often involve a colorful cast of neighbors. However, the film comes to a standstill when

Spoiler

João apparently rapes (and murders?) his police officer/clarinet player neighbor Dona (Manuela de Freitas).

This has no place in comedy and ruined an otherwise very good movie.

Taipei Story (Edward Yang, 1985): In only my third film by Yang, we follow Lung (famed director Hsiao-hsien Hou) as he struggles through life with girlfriend (Chin Tsai) and an old friend with whom he used to be a member of the national champion little league team. The film seems pretty interesting, but I'll reserve my judgment on the matter until I actually find a watchable version of the film. I sat through the horrendous one that's available online. It's obviously a VHS transfer that's had the left and right edges of the screen chopped off. What's more, this often includes the subtitles themselves! What subtitles there are, are often unreadable because of the poor quality of the source. It's pretty damn hard to enjoy a subtitled movie when you can't even read it!

Time Stands Still (Péter Gothár, 1982): In about the umpteenth coming of age film that I've watched for the project, a pair of teenage boys live their mother in 1960s Hungary after their father disappeared during the 1956 uprising. The film is an intermittently interesting portrait of life under a dictatorial rule, where Western influences like rock 'n roll creep in and overtake the imagination of a generation far more effectively than a stodgy state ideology ever could. The boys here yearn for freedom and often talk of making an escape across the border and into free Europe, but will they ever do it? Is there enough for them at home to keep them there? These aren't exactly questions that I cared too much about when all was said and done. It's far from a great film, but I'll give it a very mild recommendation.

Tree of Knowledge (Nils Malmros, 1981): Although this was made prior to The Beauty & the Beast, I only saw it after the other film. This time the story follows a group of slightly younger teens over a couple of years. While it's an ensemble cast, the main focus is on Elin (Eva Gram Schjoldager) the most popular girl of her click at a time when her group of girlfriends begin pairing off with the popular boys in their school. One day, she refuses the pairing that her friends arrange for her, leaving them less and less interested in having her as a friend. She's squeezed out of her circle of friends as they ignore her invitations and stop inviting her to the parties that they hold. It's a heart breaking scenario that highlights the casual, but oftentimes incomprehensible cruelty of youth.

Wolfen (Michael Wadleigh, 1981): Sausage covered this one back on page 26, and I ain't got nothing to add to his synopsis. Like him, I found it to be a fairly forgettable experience, though I found it pleasant to see Gregory Hines again years after his death. I was also on the fence about this one, but I'll fall on the other side of Sausage and say "take a pass".

bamwc2 wrote:Taipei Story (Edward Yang, 1985): ... The film seems pretty interesting, but I'll reserve my judgment on the matter until I actually find a watchable version of the film. I sat through the horrendous one that's available online. It's obviously a VHS transfer that's had the left and right edges of the screen chopped off. What's more, this often includes the subtitles themselves! What subtitles there are, are often unreadable because of the poor quality of the source. It's pretty damn hard to enjoy a subtitled movie when you can't even read it!

Oh, that's disappointing - I was hoping a more watchable bootleg might exist. Now I'll have to rely on faded memories as to whether it really was preferable to The Terrorizers.* While I wouldn't quite put it in the number one spot, it's certainly a contender for the top 80s feature film without a DVD release.

(I imagine some Beckettian scenario of an old man in a world deprived of electricity, who can remember the titles of all the films he's seen, but nothing else about them. A fate that may still await us all.)

*Actually, I am pleased to report that even a quick perusal of a muddy two-minute clip on YouTube (presumably taken from the same VHS) brings a strong flavour of its excellence flooding back. It's a common observation that Yang, in contrast to the often pastoral Hou, is a quintessentially urban filmmaker. His real success is in capturing a sense of restless (yet listless) existence in a fast-developing metropolis: the doorways, corners and glass vistas of the city's buildings are as much the stars of the film as the actors who wander through them. He can be read as a humanist, but also, against the grain (and that would be my preference), as an anti-humanist, observing the species with ironic distance, albeit less aggressively than someone like Kubrick. (The obvious precedent, at the risk of Eurocentrism, is the Antonioni of L'eclisse.)

bamwc2 wrote: Recollections of the Yellow House (João César Monteiro, 1989): Monteiro's film speaks in a comic voice reminiscent of Aki Kaurismäki's best work. The film centers on João de Deus (João César Monteiro) a slight, but rascally man with a love of classical music. The film follows João through a series of mostly amusing exploits that often involve a colorful cast of neighbors. However, the film comes to a standstill when

Spoiler

João apparently rapes (and murders?) his police officer/clarinet player neighbor Dona (Manuela de Freitas).

This has no place in comedy and ruined an otherwise very good movie.

Spoiler

I'm pretty sure this didn't happen in the film. He does in a very John Waters-esque scene get raped and nearly murdered himself, but the reverse doesn't happen until the next feature. Dona just leaves the film in disgust over the son.

zedz wrote:My Twentieth Century (Ildiko Enyedi) - This will probably be the most beautiful film on my 1980s list: stunning black and white cinematography wrapped around a subject that delivers extraordinarily photogenic material every few minutes (frosted windows, lightshows, low flights over perfectly reflective lakes, trains, Victorian libraries etc.)

The story is a kind of ludic, erotic fable in which twin waifs are separated in childhood but wend their way back together in Budapest a decade later, by which time one has become a glamorous con artist and the other an anarchist. In spectacularly cinematic fashion, they finally rediscover one another

Spoiler

in a hall of mirrors.

In the meantime, Tarkovsky alumnus Oleg Jankowski plays a disciple of both Edison and Tesla (the film is also concerned with burgeoning 20th century technologies) who runs into both women at different times and, naturally, mistakes then for a single, peculiarly inconsistent, person - at least until the confusion is sorted out by a magical donkey. The presence of totemic animals adds to the fable-like atmosphere. That donkey mysteriously materializes in real life from out of a childhood dream, there's also a significant pigeon or two, a flashbacking chimp, and a stunning non sequitur sequence in the middle of the film featuring a dog that seems to be auditioning for The Parallax Corporation.

I have no idea whether her later features are any good, but this is a spectacular debut.

I couldn't agree more, and a bunch of thanks for the recommendation, zedz. The film conveys a sense of wonder and enchantment which simultaneously reminded me of Chytilova's "Daisies" and Scorsese's "Hugo". Apart from the outstanding visual quality of the film, I enjoyed its somewhat 'light' and playful character - almost like a fairy tale - which doesn't however obscure the more serious questions about modernity or the role of women which are behind it. Lots of the story-telling is rather elliptic and not all of the scenes were clear to me after only one viewing, but that didn't interfere with my delight at all. So far, quite definitely the greatest film that I learned about in (and only through) this round of listmaking.

Knives,

Spoiler

It's been about two weeks since I saw the film, but I don't remember Dona on screen after the alleged rape. The rape scene itself is not very clear, with João talking with her, then ripping the bra off of her unconscious body. It's shot in a very odd manner that allows for a fair bit of interpretation, but everything that I read about the movie seems to agree that he definitely raped her. Would the reaction of her neighbors screaming for the police as he jumps out the window and runs away make that much sense if they didn't at least believe that an assault had taken place?

That's from The Last Dive, not Recollections of the Yellow House though. The character you cite leaves the film after finding the politics and morality of Joao and his son vile. The scene as you describe it does not occur.