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

[swo17]

OK, I've checked my usual channels, and nothing. Any suggestions where to find this?

Hmm... I didn't have problems finding subtitles when I looked for it, but alas, I can't find anything now either. Only the unsubbed Chinese release. Makes me wish I kept them. I know they're out there, and they may have originated at KG, although I can't guarantee that.

Um, I was actually able to get a copy of Terrorizers. Great film too. I need to watch it again before the 15th, but I think it will definitely make my list.

And I'm right with you on Come and See. That one should be placing very high for me as well.

[Cold Bishop]

Two more from my top 10

Merry-Go-Round (Jacques Rivette, 1981) Available in an unsubbed (but mostly English) German DVD/Online subs easy to find
If I can compare this to a more well known work, I would call this Jacque Rivette’s Inland Empire. While it certainly isn’t the only time Rivette’s has seemingly disregarded conventional narrative for a more free-form labyrinth of vignettes, and nor is his use of improvisation in the crafting of his story particularly unusual, I don’t know if any of his films (certainly none that I have seen) are less anchored than this. Even L’Amour Fou and the sprawling Out 1, both films were improvisation were key, always had some structure behind it: A 30 page script for the former, a guiding principle behind the experimentation in the latter. In this film, no such principle exists. Basically creating the film as he went along, Rivette had to deal with an incredibly troubled production and couldn’t even rely on his actors, usually key in his improvisational works, to help him in crafting the work. What we have then is Rivette at sea without a paddle, and as a result, Rivette direct and unbound, an unadulterated flow of ideas, images and inspiration straight from the mind of the mad genius himself. Joe Dallesandro and Maria Schneider aren’t always remembered as the finest actors, and their behaviour on set was certainly troubled, but here they emerge as one of the quintessential Rivette couples (the man had a knack for pairs). However, this is Rivette's show, and its him that guides the film through its absurd and unpredictable puzzle of a story.

Rivette’s use of the handheld camera is probably more free and kinetic than I’ve seen in any other of his films, and often takes the subjective POV of the protagonists (a la Lady in the Lake and Dark Passage). The narrative - ostensibly a detective mystery as both of them search for a missing acquaintance who may or may not have been kidnapped by some sinister organization – more or less vanishes as the story unfolds, and goes into many directions, including a conspiracy-mystery revolving around the number 3, and a parallel dream reality in natural environments (jungle, deserts) which act as a counterpoint the menacing urban confines of its double. Showing the way Rivette had to shape his film around the unforeseeable difficulties of the production, Schnieder is replaced by Hermine Karagheuz in this alternate universe, and Rivette manages to pull of this switch without missing a beat. While it’s sprawling, bizarre and probably incomprehensible, it’s also pure, spontaneous and energetic, and features moment after moment of some of Rivette’s finest sequences; the finale in the sand dunes is especially one of the best things he’s ever filmed. I can understand why some people may prefer the more “disciplined” and defined Gang of Four, and Le Pont du Nord sounds like it may be another of Rivette’s masterpieces, but I suspect that Merry-Go-Round is probably his purest film. Messy and strange as it is, it’s the one where the most of him seems to be on film.

The Moon in the Gutter (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1983) Available on DVD unsubbed in France/Online subs easy to find
Another film difficult to write about, being so delirious, bizarre and impenetrable. Maybe the ultimate movie of the usually loathed “Cinema du look” movement. Unlike the more famous Diva, where style serves to prop up a generic potboiler plot, here the style is at the service of something remarkable. And unlike Betty Blue, where what the film believes to be love seems more like twisted obsession, this film doesn’t make any question of the protagonists obsessive quest. Beineix pushes his style to the limit: shooting the film entirely in studio, the film shoots for the same kind of visual ambition that ruined Cimino’s career this decade, and which almost did the same to Carax a few years later with Les Amants du Pont Neuf. Beineix’s unnamed port city dwarfs even the Vegas of Coppola’s One from the Heart as far as glimmering dream cities go. For its style, the film borrows from the shadowy underworlds of 40’s Film Noir, the Technicolor splendor of 50’s Hollywood Melodrama, the lurid, violent style of 70’s giallos, the kind of lavish and fabricated artifice rarely seen outside of Hollywood musicals, and a long list of movies going back to silent cinema – Sternberg’s The Docks of New York being an obvious point of reference, as well as later films like Vertigo, Taxi Driver, Port of Shadows, Touch of Evil and more. In a movement often obsessed with pastiche, this film seems to be at times simply a film about films, looking back at a century of cinema and its depictions of the sordid realities of city life.

But there’s more underneath its surface than that, although I can’t say its always easy to grasp. I can’t necessarily say it has a clearly defined narrative. It rather moves like a film poem through a nocturnal dream world where fatalism, eroticism, romanticism, romance, alienation, violence and tragedy all rub shoulders. It exists in similarly ravishingly colored dark fantasy worlds as other 80s films like Blue Velvet and Santa Sangre, where the cover of night seems to hold the key to some unspeakable unknown secret. While the cast at times seems like only an extensions of the visuals (although I do mean that as a compliment to Beineix's technique), I feel the three major principles (Depardieu, Nastassja Kinski, Victoria Abril) all put in a great performances. Kinski, as the impossible object of desire, in particular has never looked or been better, and its a shame Depardieu turned on the film after its release, since its some of his best work. Not on par with the Pialats, but wonderful none the less. The movie is difficult, it’s often incoherent, and it’s definitely self-indulgent. It’s also frightening, atmospheric and completely beautiful. The type of film you just need to experience and let wash over you. I can understand why some people might not be able to respond to it, but it’s a film that in no way deserved the beating it received, the manner in which revealed critics to simply have the knives out for Beineix going in. Outside of Jeremy Richey naming his blog after it, I haven’t seen much of a movement to rehabilitate the film, which is a shame. This is a movie destined to find its audience in the future, and I think the time is right for it to start building right now. Whether by fluke or by a freedom and ambition which disappeared after the film failed disastrously, Beineix managed to make a truly great film, and one wishes he was remembered by this as opposed to the two more famous, but lesser works.

[denti alligator]

So domino, did you watch Near Death?

[Tom Hagen]

the Right Stuff Superbly cynical and ambiguous for a big budget prestige picture, which it only barely resembles, this was a pleasant surprise and will definitely be charting high. And Christ, Denis Quaid's smile is terrifying-- there's your Joker, Nolan.

=D> And, of course, one of the enduring joys of the film is discovering where Zooey Deschanel got her eyes from.

BTW, I am predicting meteoric rises for Berlin Alexanderplatz, Mishima, and House of Games on this list.

[PillowRock]

Streets of Fire Holy Christ. This is pretty much what my childhood told me most eighties films looked like. Some catchy songs are about all to recommend in this astonishingly unpleasant "rock n roll action film" (Pretty sure that genre was born and died here) that features perhaps the most abrasive and unlikable characters ever to populate a film. It's pretty hard to name a low point in a film filled with them, but Diane Lane cozying up to a playing-it-straight Rick Moranis probably comes in second behind an inexplicable scene where the "hero" knocks Lane unconscious by pummeling her in the face for no reason. Gee, I can't imagine why this didn't start a franchise

I'm not going to argue this movie is anything like great. However, I did have a much less negative reaction to it. In large part, I think that is due to a different reading of the basic intentions of the film. It had never occurred to me to take Streets of Fire as an attempt at a straight serious drama.

The dialog reads so consistently as an over the top parody of the "hard bitten" dialog of old crime films, from 30's gangster movies to 40's and 50's noirs, that it never occurred to me to take it any other way. That remains true even though the actors are giving most of the dialog straight readings (superficially, anyway). In this respect, this script reminds me of Big Trouble in Little China.

The whole production design just reinforced to me the idea that the whole thing was being done in reference to those older movies. The shapes and designs of all of the sets, props, vehicles, costumes, etc. all have a vague, not-too-specific 1930's -> 50's vibe. The color palette of the entire movie is so desaturated, with certain specific exceptions such as the car and parts of Diane Lane's costumes, that it reads almost as B & W movie. (Granted there is that one walking the streets under a ballad track scene that ignores that motif from the rest of the movie; but that whole scene seems like a mistake to me.)

When taken as a reference to older movies, it's worth remembering that the "hero" solving a dilemma of a person that he wants to keep out of harm's way, but who won't both stay behind *and allow him to go back to the fray, by knocking that person out ...... wasn't exactly a new invention in this movie.


Like I said, it's not a great movie by any stretch. However, when taken as something of a take-off / parody of "old" movies, I've gotten some chuckles out of it. I count it in the informal category of "guilty pleasure".

[Cold Bishop]

I also like Streets of Fire in a trashy comic book way, but its definitely not a great film, and has nothing on some of the truly great work Walter Hill did this decade (The Long Riders, Southern Comfort, Extreme Prejudice, and especially Johnny Handsome).

I also don't know if I agree on domino's take on Star 80, but I was hoping Michael would chime in and defend it.

Some more listmakers:

Heaven’s Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980) Available on DVD
My favorite American film of the decade. Like Barry Lyndon did with 18th century England, Cimino seems to recreate his period setting so convincingly you’d think he fired up the flux capacitor and was actually filming there. There’s also a very strong sense of community built within the film’s Jackson County which sometimes reminds me of McCabe and Mrs. Miller. For all the flack the cast got, everyone is more or less pitch perfect. Kris Kristofferson is like a post-70s Randolph Scott, containing the hard-bitten stoicism and quiet dignity of Scott, but with all the cynicism and ambivalence of the era. Its Walken and Waterson, however, that walk away with the film. Cimino’s taste for Visconti-and-Lean like grandeur finally pays off, and such sequences as the rollerskate dance scene (!) and the final War itself are perfectly filmed. Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography is probably the finest of his career, and if it was just four hours of scenery, the film would still be worth watching. For all the complaints about length, the films always seems to fly by, and could probably help being expanded to Cimino’s originally intended longer cut (good luck). It may get a little ham-fisted at points, but so what? This is the kind of BIG cinema filmed with an obsessive reckless abandon that we need more of.

Grass Labyrinth (Shuji Terayama, 1983) Available in OOP R3 DVD/Several bootlegs/French narrated version on R1 Private Collections
While including the film on this list is pushing it a little – it was originally part of the ’79 softcore omnibus Private Collections but only released in its original form until 1983 – IMDB odd system of categorizing does the film somewhat of a favor: in many ways this movie belongs to the Japanese cinema of the 80s more so than the decade it bookends. Allowing the surrealism that marked Pastoral Hide-and-Seek to come full center, he also leaves behind that film’s Brechtian pretenses, instead opting for a psychological Oedipal puzzle which bears resemblances to both Seijun Suzuki’s Taisho Trilogy, as well as the more extravagant works of Fellini – specifically Juliet of the Spirits. The protagonist searches for the words to a lullaby his mother use to sing him. The mystery leads him straight into multiple labyrinths – of passion, time, memory - and ultimately the past and present, fantasy and reality, the conscious and subconscious all begin to bleed into each other into a series of startling images. Clocking in at forty minutes, the film has more imagination and beauty than most features of the decade, and is possibly Terayama’s best work.

Dr. Jekyll and His Women (Walerian Borowczyk, 1981) Uncut bootleg available at Trash Palace
Out of his criminally underrated and misunderstood body of work, this take on the Robert Louis Stevenson story is perhaps Borowczyk’s masterpiece. Borowczyk’s odd mix of unapologetic eroticism, genre film luridness and surreal artistry reach their perfect synthesis. Watching it, I feel like I’m looking at the cinematic equivalent of those wonderful early-20th century avant-garde novels which Dedalus and Atlas love so much to put out. Maybe something a Georges Bataille or Gustav Meyrink would have done had they been filmmakers. Like most of my other favorite films of the decade, Borowczyk gives the film a dream like atmosphere which perfectly suits the material. Udo Kier is as wonderful as you would imagine him to be in the role (despite the foolish decision to redub him in the English release). Born a half a century earlier, he could have become a Universal icon on par with Lugosi and Karloff. Surprisingly enough, he doesn’t play Hyde: that task is left to Gérard Zalcberg, an odd looking fellow who would spend the rest of his career in low-budget Euro-trash. He works perfectly here, and Borowczyk plays Hyde as the force of unrestrained violence and sexuality that the original novel hints at, and which most adaptations skirt around. Both Howard Vernon and Patrick McGee almost steal the film from its title pair, and the rest of the cast is wonderfully filled out. Noel Very’s photography is absolutely gorgeous and helps the films haunting, surreal atmosphere. Always the fearless man, Borowczyk never flinches in the films gruesome escapades, yet it never feels exploitative. Fetishistic and grotesque, sure, but never exploitative. This is the best adaptation of the story I’ve seen, and another film that deserves to be rediscovered and find the audience waiting for it. I know this forum’s Michael B. is a fan and I believe there's a few comments of his floating around the forum. This, as well as Santa Sangre, are probably the two finest horror films of the decade and complete masterpieces of the genre.

[domino harvey]

PillowRock, I think your Big Trouble in Little China comparison for Streets of Fire is apt, but of course I don't consider that a defense of either

re: Near Death: Not yet, soon

Tojoed, Blow Out is on Long Wait at NetFlix. True to my word, if it doesn't get shipped, I'll go out and buy the damn thing so I can see it in time

I have Zieglongtitle at home now, Blood Wedding and Come and See are coming. Have I missed anyone who took the challenge?

[Cold Bishop]

I've caught up with They All Laughed (I hope to write about it in my next write-up), but I haven't thought of a good available film to swap. Maybe Heaven's Gate. Or maybe I'll put up something else later today.

[tavernier]

Since Walter Hill is in his pantheon with Spielberg and DePalma, it's not surprising that Armond loves him some Streets of Fire:

Hill’s misfortune–and his unbowed talent–would be the talk of the cultural moment if bad luck and betrayal did not routinely hound serious artists in commercial enterprises like filmmaking and book publishing; or if Hill’s films were better understood by contemporary cineastes. Despite the hip cachet given to action genres there’s been little appreciation for how Hill’s past work like The Driver, The Warriors, The Long Riders, Southern Comfort and Johnny Handsome renewed the form. Critics favor less skilled practitioners Quentin Tarantino, John Dahl, Michael Mann and that totally mindless adept James Cameron. Those piddling careers are firmly established. So it was astonishing last year to see Hill’s Streets of Fire referenced in Emir Kusturica’s boisterous Black Cat White Cat; it contains a scene where one of the clownish gypsy characters compulsively watches Streets of Fire on tv. Although Streets of Fire (a fantasy about rock ’n’ roll mythology intersecting movie mythology) was too compacted with sophisticated cultural allusions to be a hit on home turf, the fact that it got through to the Balkans is testimony to the fecundity of Hill’s imagination and his irresistible cinematic panache. Critics who fall over themselves praising Kusturica’s boondoggles (he may have imitated Streets’ effervescence too slavishly) can’t countenance Hill’s pyrotechnics or his pop poetry.

Their indifference has made obscure what in Hill’s movies ought to have popular currency. His interest in how character develops in imaginary, socially fraught situations displays a more intelligent fascination with art history and cinematic archetypes than any of the genre-saturated experiments by Martin Scorsese or Coppola or Cameron. In The Driver (showing as part of Film Forum’s "Neo-Noir" series on March 6), Hill first achieved his unique combination of myth and personal identity–a chimera of existential crisis as svelte as The Third Man. His visionary films are bound for rediscovery and this damaged Supernova should be one of the most interesting.

Here's the whole article: http://www.nypress.com/print-article-942-print.html

[Yojimbo]

Two more from my top 10


The Moon in the Gutter (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1983) Available on DVD unsubbed in France
Another film difficult to write about, being so delirious, bizarre and impenetrable. Maybe the ultimate movie of the usually loathed “Cinema du look” movement. Unlike the more famous Diva, where style serves to prop up a generic potboiler plot, here the style is at the service of something remarkable. And unlike Betty Blue, where what the film believes to be love seems more like twisted obsession, this film doesn’t make any question of the protagonists obsessive quest. Beineix pushes his style to the limit: shooting the film entirely in studio, the film shoots for the same kind of visual ambition that ruined Cimino’s career this decade, and which almost did the same to Carax a few years later with Les Amants du Pont Neuf. Beineix’s unnamed port city dwarfs even the Vegas of Coppola’s One from the Heart as far glimmering dream cities go. For its style, the film borrows from the shadowy underworlds of 40’s Film Noir, the Technicolor splendor of 50’s Hollywood Melodrama, the lurid, violent style of 70’s giallos, the kind of lavish and fabricated artifice rarely seen outside of Hollywood musicals, and a long list of movies going back to silent cinema – Sternberg’s The Dock of New York being an obvious point of reference, as well as later films like Vertigo, Taxi Driver, Port of Shadows, Touch of Evil and more. In a movement often obsessed with pastiche, this film seems to be at times simply a film about films, looking back at a century of cinema and its depictions of the sordid realities of city life.

But there’s more underneath its surface than that, although I can’t say its always easy to grasp. I can’t necessarily say it has a clearly defined narrative. It rather moves like a film poem through a nocturnal dream world where fatalism, eroticism, romanticism, romance, alienation, violence and tragedy all rub shoulders. It exists in similarly ravishingly colored dark fantasy worlds as other 80s films like Blue Velvet and Santa Sangre, where the cover of night seems to hold the key to some unspeakable unknown secret. While the cast at times seems like only an extensions of the visuals (although I do mean that as a compliment to Beineix's technique), I feel the three major principles (Depardieu, Nastassja Kinski, Victoria Abril) all put in a great performances. Kinski, as the impossible object of desire, in particular has never looked or been better, and its a shame Depardieu turned on the film after its release, since its some of his best work. Not on par with the Pialats, but wonderful none the less. The movie is difficult, it’s often incoherent, and it’s definitely self-indulgent. It’s also frightening, atmospheric and completely beautiful. The type of film you just need to experience and let wash over you. I can understand why some people might not be able to respond to it, but it’s a film that in no way deserved the beating it received, the manner in revealed critics to have the knives out for Beineix going in. Outside of Jeremy Richey naming his blog after it, I haven’t seen much of a movement to rehabilitate the film, which is a shame. This is a movie destined to find its audience in the future, and I think the time is right for it to start building right now. Whether by fluke or by a freedom and ambition which disappeared after the film failed disastrously, Beineix managed to make a truly great film, and one wishes he remembered by this as opposed to the two more famous, but lesser works.

I'm still kicking myself for having had the chance to see 'Moon' on its original release in my local arthouse but passing on it, due to the extremely negative critical reception of the time.
I have the David Goodis source novel ready to read if and when I get the opportunity to see the film, so that I might compare and contrast, but unfortunately my grasp of spoken French isn't good enough for me to risk watching an unsubbed version.

[Cold Bishop]

I'm still kicking myself for having had the chance to see 'Moon' on its original release in my local arthouse but passing on it, due to the extremely negative critical reception of the time.
I have the David Goodis source novel ready to read if and when I get the opportunity to see the film, so that I might compare and contrast, but unfortunately my grasp of spoken French isn't good enough for me to risk watching an unsubbed version.

Well, the film eponymous blog reported that Cinema Libre have scooped up Beineix's films (sans Diva), so there may be some sort of release in the future. If that doesn't show up anytime soon, I've been long planning to transcribe the subtitles from VHS so I can show my friends the film. If that occurs, I'll certainly spread them around.
EDIT: I've actually tracked down english subs, if anyone is interested in tracking down the film.

While it was Goodis's novel that lead me back to the film, this after writing off Beineix as a minor filmmaker based off the two other films and never bothering to even consider watching this film, don't look for fidelity. Beineix uses the basic ideas and characters in the novel, and than runs with it as he pleases. Goodis's simple, direct prose is a far cry from Beineix's hallucinatory film, although in many respects, he captures certain qualities of Goodis's writing (the hypontic feeling especially) better than if he closely followed the story. The films original cut was also around five hours long, unthinkable if he stayed faithful to Goodis rather short novel.

[Yojimbo]

I'm still kicking myself for having had the chance to see 'Moon' on its original release in my local arthouse but passing on it, due to the extremely negative critical reception of the time.
I have the David Goodis source novel ready to read if and when I get the opportunity to see the film, so that I might compare and contrast, but unfortunately my grasp of spoken French isn't good enough for me to risk watching an unsubbed version.

Well, the film eponymous blog reported that Cinema Libre have scooped up Beineix's films (sans Diva), so there may be some sort of release in the future. If that doesn't show up anytime soon, I've been long planning to transcribe the subtitles from VHS so I can show my friends the film. If that occurs, I'll certainly spread them around.
EDIT: I've actually tracked down english subs, if anyone is interested in tracking down the film.

While it was Goodis's novel that lead me back to the film, this after writing off Beineix as a minor filmmaker based off the two other films and never bothering to even consider watching this film, don't look for fidelity. Beineix uses the basic ideas and characters in the novel, and than runs with it as he pleases. Goodis's simple, direct prose is a far cry from Beineix's hallucinatory film, although in many respects, he captures certain qualities of Goodis's writing (the hypontic feeling especially) better than if he closely followed the story. The films original cut was also around five hours long, unthinkable if he stayed faithful to Goodis rather short novel.

have you read 'Down There', the source of Truffaut's 'Tirez Sur Le Pianiste'
Although that film is largely faithful, in narrative and character terms, the film's tone is so much lighter.

As with Altman's film of 'The Long Goodbye', I can appreciate both on their own terms.

And yes I'd be interested in the subs

[PillowRock]

PillowRock, I think your Big Trouble in Little China comparison for Streets of Fire is apt, but of course I don't consider that a defense of either

That's certainly fair enough.

I know they're pretty stupid flicks ...... but they make me laugh anyway. Quitessential "guity pleasures".

They definitely won't be everyone's taste .... not even close. That's cool.

[Lemmy Caution]

I dug around at my neighborhood quality bootlegger (that's all there is in China), and found a copy of Edward Yang's Terrorizers. But, as Anita O'Day once sang, "alas and alack, like a stab in the back" it turns out not to have English subtitles. Terrorizer comes as a two-fer with (Second Episode) in Our Time (1982) on the same disc. And that film has English subtitles which seemed good ... however the English and Chinese subtitles are burnt in, one above the other, and unremovable.

From a quick in-store preview, the quality seemed reasonable. It looked a bit soft and the colors somewhat faded, but appears to be entirely decent.

Also, in this same series was a two-fer of Don't You Break My Heart & Couples. Both of which don't match up with the English titles of Yang's films on IMDb. I'm pretty sure that would be his first two films Taipei Story (1985) & That Day On The Beach (1983). These films only have removable Chinese and Japanese subtitles.

If anyone wants a copy of Terrorizers/In Our Time, I would be willing to send it cheaply enough. In Our Time isn't optimum, but definitely watchable. And while Terrorizers doesn't have English, you can at least process the visual information. I guess I can make the same offer for the other Yang two-fer as well, if anyone is able to handle Asian languages only, without English.

[swo17]

Have I missed anyone who took the challenge?

Landscape in the Mist, if you haven't already seen it.

[domino harvey]

Added, and zedz's Sherman's March is bumped to the top as well

[Gregory]

Blow Out is on Long Wait at NetFlix. True to my word, if it doesn't get shipped, I'll go out and buy the damn thing so I can see it in time

That one will make my list for certain. It's intriguing on so many levels other than the basic aesthetic one, although it does lose a few small points in that area for the cheesy score and a couple of dated slow-motion shots. But really, those things were the Achilles' heel of so many otherwise excellent films from the era that they almost have to be forgiven. It is such a rich film.

[Cold Bishop]

Cutter’s Way (Ivan Passer, 1981) Available on R1
Released in 1981, Cutter’s Way could be accurately describe as one of the last great American films of the 1970s. The word “last” here is key. Not only does it represent the kind of small, intelligent films that would soon get swept under the sea of spectacle, but it’s also a film that deals with the very fallout of that decade, the sort of picture that could only be made at the tail-end of the era. With strong shades of film noir, the film is at heart the most 70s of film genres: the conspiracy thriller. But it also puts the genre on its head. This isn’t Three Day of a Condor or The Parallax View, where some idealistic hero is placed in a lone quest against the shadowy forces of unstoppable power and corruption. At the end of the decade, corruption has spread to everyone high and low. Unlike the films of the 70s, it is bitterness, not paranoia, that drives the murder mystery at the film’s center, and no one walks out inculpable. The three central protagnisits (all giving career best performances) are the burnouts from the decade before: beach-bum and gigolo Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges), crippled drunk Alex Cutter (John Heard), and his quietly suffering wife Mo (Lisa Eichhorn). These three characters are the damaged, broken pieces of what’s survived from the 60s and 70s, two decades of social conflict, Vietnam, hard drugs, free sex, and destructive cynicism. They’ve rudely awakened with hangover of the decade before, but are unwilling to acknowledge or own up to it as the dark days of the Reagan years slowly approach.

Bridges plants the seed for the later Lebowski here. Instead of being played for laughs as the Coen’s do, Bridges’ California loser is played for all the tragic apathy and defeatism inherent in such a character; brief glimpses of chilvary and decisiveness arise but are quickly brushed aside and drowned out. A complete revelation, John Heard gives one of the greatest performances of the decade as Alex Cutter. Disfigured, blind in one eye, and consumed by alcoholism, he’s the idealists of the 60s finally swallowed up by bitterness and boredom. When mystery rears its head, Cutter dives head first into a chance to unravel his own conspiracy, and his hostility to all that is rich and powerful (read: corrupt) comes to the surface. While its injustice he claims he’s out to correct, his obsessive quest soon overflows to dark and troubling levels, where notions of guilt and responsibility become of little importance to his revenge. Just as amazing is Lisa Eichhorn. Stuck in a disappointing life that trapped her before she knew what happened to her, suffering under the physical and psychic wounds of her husband, torn between him and Bone and slowly drinking herself to death, she brings to life the tragedy of the character without ever making herself a victim. Then there’s the man at the center of the conspiracy: J.J. Cord, an oil tycoon who falls into the crosshairs of Cutter. Stephen Elliot brings him to life as the sort of monster peculiar to American films, a giant tyrannical symbol of greed and power in the tradition of Charles Foster Kane, J.J. Hunsecker and Noah Cross, with only a limited amount of screen time. A film would be lucky for either one of these performances.

Passer makes great use of Santa Barbara and portrays the city for all its beauty as a sucker’s game, a thin veneer hiding petty monsters and opportunists. The beach and sun has never looked uglier and more sordid. Ivan Passer, who did the great Intimate Lighting before emigrating from Czechoslovakia, creates his best film here. Save for the underrated Born to Win, none of his other American films seem to be particularly well known. He films this movie with a striking complexity and ambivalence which would be sorely missed in American movies after. DVD Times does right in calling it the "anti-paranoid conspiracy classic".

domino harvey: you're a Alan J. Pakula conspiracy film man, so if you want to swap, this is probably the film to do it with.

Mauvais Sang (Leos Carax, 1986) Available on R1
The other great film of the “Cinema du look”. As a member of the movement, Leos Carax always stood apart from his contemporaries. While Beineix and Besson’s films were marked by an overwhelming (and often unbearable) "modernism" and chic-ness (save for the aforementioned Moon…), Carax’s works are marked by nostalgia and the necessity to return to an earlier, purer cinema: the free-wheeling spontaneity of the early French New Wave films, and further back, to the pure cinema-of-images of the silent screen. Yet, his films aren’t simple exercises in pastiche or imitation or cinematic regression. Rather, they’re born out of a want of returning the cinema to what those two epochs represented: a moment where the rules weren’t yet quite defined and where one could explore the narrative and poetic possibilities of film to its limits. Looking at the plot, Mauvais Sang is at first glance a film about a future ravished by the STBO virus (which kills “lovers who make love without feeling love”) and the various factions that hunt for its cure. But in Carax world, plot counts for little. While its science-fiction, Carax treats his worlds and sets as naturally as if he was shooting in contemporary Paris. While the STBO virus seems to point towards an AIDS allegory, it’s only briefly mentioned by name and the cure is nothing more than a MacGuffin. All that stands left is the faction-war which clearly plants the film in the gangster film genre. Yet, while Carax plays with the cliches, motifs, and narrative forms of the genre, he is in no way attempting a meta-crime film the way Godard does a year earlier with Détective.

Rather, his main interests are in his characters, and the plot quickly fades to the background instead focusing on the relationship between Carax’s two favorite muses, Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche. If the “Cinema du look” is often criticized for allowing the image to take primacy over narrative, more damaging is the way they allow style to overwhelm characterization. Carax, in contrast, uses visuals chiefly to serve his characters, to represent their emotional interior worlds. It is his love for his characters, and the expressive power of his images in relation to them which gives his films their splendor. Even the simplest images are imbued with incredibly potent poetry. One example - Denis Lavant dancing madly down the street to Bowie’s “Modern Love” – may be the quintessential moment in all of Carax’s film. That the scene alludes to the earlier Boy Meets Girl isn’t unintentional: this movie builds on, references, and in certain cases, restages moments from his earlier film, making that otherwise wonderful movie seem almost like a trial run. Building on the earlier film, this movie finds Carax more ambitious, more in control of the medium, and more lyrical in expressing his brand of romantic idealism, creating one of the grand and unlikely love poems of the decade and paving the way for his later masterpiece, Les Amants du Pont Neuf (a top 10 contender for the 1990s).

[tojoed]

Tojoed, Blow Out is on Long Wait at NetFlix. True to my word, if it doesn't get shipped, I'll go out and buy the damn thing so I can see it in time

Excellent. It doesn't do to be confident that you'll like it, but I like a gamble. If you don't like it enough to warrant a purchase I'll refund whatever it cost you.

[carax09]

Well Bishop, thanks to your wonderful appreciation, seeing The Moon In The Gutter has now become my holy grail quest. I had no idea Kinski and Abril were in it; they are two of my favorite pieces of euro eye candy!

[foggy eyes]

A couple of recs from me: Sidney J. Furie's wild 'Scope masterpiece-of-sorts The Entity (1982) [double-billed with Peter Tscherkassky's mindblowing Outer Space, of course: link], and William Raban's sublime city symphony Thames Film (1986) [available on a superb BFI DVD].

[domino harvey]

Reds Features a pretty good first two hours or so before it devolves into a variation of a romance from another film. All the complexities and elliptical storytelling of the first half is traded for train station reunions and sad deaths. What a shame. The talking heads are superb and better than even the good parts of the movie. The Hackman cameo was amusing and Jack Nicholson's mustache earned his Oscar nom.

Zigeunerweisen Speaking of reds, the color makes a fine motif in the first half of this peculiar ghost (?) film. A lot of the more eccentric touches ultimately proved to be too much for me though, and my displeasure with these bizarre tangents presumably fed my interest in the most level character in the film, Toshiya Fujita's Aochi. The scene with the sea of red bowls or the phone conversation that pans back and forth in the same room are memorable moments, but they couldn't compensate for the tiring antics of the three blind musicians or the exhausting Nakasago. PS: I could have gone my whole life without having seen an eyeball licked.

[domino harvey]

Rollover Boy, I have to backpedal about my "Worst film by a great director" comment yet again. Pakula moves uncomfortably into the 80s with this horrendous stock market thriller that confuses feeding racist fears with building tension. Jane Fonda inadvertently causes all Arabs to withdraw their money from US banks, which unbelievably leads to the film's apocalyptic ending. Features the single worst score I've ever heard-- It's perhaps worth getting from Netflix just to hear the first thirty seconds of it. Please don't watch more than that. Sole saving grace was seeing Dr. Walter Jerome eat lunch with Jane Fonda.

Oh and Blow Out is out of print, which I guess explains why it's on Long Wait on NetFlix. Anyone have any ideas on where to pick it up in time for the deadline?

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

Relatively inexpensive boxset here.

At least Get Shorty is watchable.

I'm usually pretty quiet on this board, but I also want to express my admiration for Blow Out, one of the best, most believable political thrillers made in this country. Travolta, Nancy Allen and John Lithgow all outdo themselves (Travolta was never better), and the photography has this sinewy, muscular edge to it to that is hard to pin down; the whole package has a tough, somewhat distanced feel about it, until the amazing emotional climax, where you can feel the weight of all that's happened very unexpectedly crashing down on the viewer (not unlike the lead character...). De Palma's most impressive film, and one of the few I actually like.

[domino harvey]

Awesome, that box is in stock at Amazon. Thanks!