Cher stars as lawyer Kathleen Riley. Liam Neeson plays Carl Wayne Anderson, a homeless Vietnam vet who she defends. Dennis Quaid, meanwhile, is an agribusiness lobbyist.
Cher is great, with an undeniable presence, and to the credit of director Peter Yates the film is never formulaic. But there are too many red herrings for the story to truly satisfy. And it's never entirely clear why the plot required Neeson's character to be deaf and dumb.
It’s a little hammy, the villains (including Gary Busey) are woefully one-dimensional and it feels very “TV movie” in places. But Gibson and Glover work well together, with a certain chemistry, even though the macho aspects of the plot are ludicrous. At the end, for example, Gibson engages in a lengthy fight with the villain when he could have simply arrested him.
To some extent, you have to buy into Gibson’s whole style – twitchy and “on the edge” – for the film to work at all. If you can’t engage with his persona, or you find him merely ridiculous, then you’re left with a fairly ordinary thriller.
My copy is the “director’s cut” but I’ve no idea what was removed or added for this version.
It’s worth watching if you’re curious about 1980s blockbusters, as I am, but I don’t ever need to see it again.
Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) and Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) strike up a brief but intense affair in New York City. It soon transpires that Alex is slightly mad, and rather than allowing herself to be merely being dismissed after their weekend fling instead wants more commitment than Dan is prepared to offer. Events escalate and soon become nasty, and Dan’s wife (Anne Archer) and daughter find themselves in serious danger.
Having heard lots about this film over the years I was surprised at how exciting it was. It’s excellently directed by Adrian Lyne, with perfect pacing, and the camera work makes it especially edgy. I like the fact that the story is so simple, without any distracting sub-plots or unnecessary back-stories. It’s a pure, fast-moving narrative that’s handled with great skill.
The two leads are both superb, and Close is all too convincing in her demented/obsessive role. Something about her smile and her eyes makes you believe she’s capable of anything. Douglas is also pretty good as the harassed lawyer trying to hold his life together but watching it slide out of control.
The film sidesteps ethical issues – presumably to focus on being a taut thriller. We’re left unsure how to feel about Dan’s actions. Should his wife forgive him? And didn’t Alex have a point when she accused him of using and discarding her? But the decision to keep strictly to the plot may have been a wise one as Fatal Attraction rattles along excitingly, without any misjudgements, and ends in a satisfying, conclusive manner.
Richard E. Grant striding around barking like Rik Mayall in The Young Ones – but with none of the timing or comic flair that made Mayall so hypnotically watchable – made for a drab and tiresome beginning. For characters to be interesting, you have to be able to relate to them or care about them.
It didn’t help that the DVD sound and picture quality were also terrible. I know it was set in the 1960s, but it looked like it was made in the 1960s as well – a cheap and nasty, faded-TV-drama feel.
I always wanted to know what all the fuss was about with this film, but I’m still none the wiser.
Beneath the slapstick humour there’s a real tragedy about a desperate, childless pair and the lengths they will go to to make a family.
Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter are superb in the key roles. You feel Hunter's longing and completely identify with her, despite the criminality of their actions. It’s just a shame that the usual Coen brothers grotesques appear (John Goodman features as an escaped convict), turning this into a sort of farcical black comedy and robbing it of poignancy.
Brilliant satire of violence and corporate power by Paul Verhoeven, who would later direct the equally superb Starship Troopers. It’s a simple story – dead cop is brought back to life in cybernetic form to fight crime. But he also begins to recall his human life and feelings.
Peter Weller is excellent in the lead role, as is Nancy Allen as his cop partner. It's to the film's great credit that it develops the pair’s relationship without going down the obvious "romance" route.
It’s exciting, and also funny, with the blackest humour imaginable – cheerfully brutal. As the narrative evolves it becomes increasingly compassionate and surprisingly emotional.
Looking like a young Luke Skywalker, Eric Stolz is Keith, a sensitive artist and mechanic from a blue-collar background in suburban Los Angeles. Keith resists his father’s wishes to send him to college. Mary Stuart Masterson is Watts, his tomboy best friend who loves drumming and who has been secretly in love with Keith for years. And then there’s Lea Thompson as Amanda Jones, the girl Keith thinks he’s in love with. But nasty guy Hardy Jenns (Craig Sheffer) has other ideas about who Amanda should be dating.
It's hugely entertaining and very charming. The storytelling is superb. The three leads are all spot-on. It’s extremely earnest and it takes itself very seriously, which seems absolutely the right approach because that’s how teenagers are too. It’s romantic and silly at the same time. The usual 1980s preoccupations with social mobility dominate, alongside some morals about being your own true self rather than being fake with others.
Note: the names Keith, Watts and Amanda Jones are all Rolling Stones references. Presumably the drumming gimmick was also added in reference to Charlie Watts.
I haven’t enjoyed a "youth" film this much since Teen Wolf.
It’s an enjoyably silly saga about an evil prince (Chris Sarandon), who wants to marry a princess named Buttercup (Robin Wright). But Buttercup is in love with farm-boy Westley (Cary Elwes) a.k.a. Dread Pirate Roberts.
The action plays out in castles, forests, a swamp and a pit. It’s deliberately slightly ridiculous, and yet it’s played straight – which makes it funnier. It’s both a good-natured action romp and an expert parody of that sort of thing.
Christopher Guest is impressively “evil” as Count Tyrone Rugen, and there are also roles for Mandy Patinkin, Peter Cook, Mel Smith and Billy Crystal.
It’s extremely self-referential and post-modern. At one point the characters have to watch Spaceballs itself to find out what happens next.
The "story" is largely irrelevant. You just wait for the gags – some of them so basic and obvious that they can’t fail.
Martin plays a tense marketing executive hoping to get home for Thanksgiving. He finds his efforts thwarted by severe weather, plane cancellations, traffic chaos and other frustrations. Candy, who travels with him, is a salesman who means well but has annoying habits. The film explores their strained relationship as Martin slowly becomes more tolerant and accepting of his companion. There’s also a class thing going on, with the well-to-do Martin sneering at someone who has less than him yet who is more in touch with his emotions.
There are some very funny moments, but other parts don’t work – such as an aggressive scene in which Martin swears at a woman in a car-rental company. This really jars and stands out as a misjudgement.
Kevin Bacon has a baffling cameo as a New Yorker running for a cab. Because he’s a famous actor I expected him to pop up again later, but he never did.
When Britain declares war on Germany on 1st September 1939, everything changes for Billy Rowan (Sebastian Rice-Edwards) and his family. His father Clive (David Hayman) signs up, leaving his mother Grace (Sarah Miles) struggling to come to terms with her new circumstances. Meanwhile, his older sister Dawn (Sammi Davis) gets involved with a Canadian soldier (Jean-Marc Barr). For Billy, the war is a thrilling adventure that excites and troubles him at the same time.
The details are beautifully observed. Billy joins a gang of boys who go through the bomb wreckage taking delight in breaking things. His grandfather (Ian Bannen) is appealingly eccentric, and his role in a game of cricket is one of the highlights. Most moving is probably the moment when one of the children loses a parent in the bombings, only for the other children to leap on this piece of information as valuable gossip/currency to exchange. It seems inevitable that the film is semi-autobiographical. I especially like the way it presents the strange freedoms that the war offers – suddenly the old rules no longer apply – but doesn’t sentimentalise or romanticise the horrors either.
As good a film about WWII and its effects as any I have seen.
A shoddy script offers one-dimensional characters that are hardly fleshed out at all. They issue stupid one-liners to accompany scenes of gratuitous violence. You get to see lot of oiled muscles, almost fetishistically presented.
The “rules” about the Predator’s invisibility seem to come and go. It’s difficult to take a monster seriously when it is revealed to have boots and dreadlocks. Likewise, why does its hi-tech heat-sensing equipment fail to “see” Arnie when he’s smeared with mud?
I’d heard this film talked about a fair bit over the years, but didn’t realise how disappointingly mediocre it would turn out to be.
It’s an engaging story, but a few flaws stop it being remarkable:
1. The very “1980s” music by Ennio Morricone is impressive in places, but is sometimes used jarringly. For example, a crucial encounter at the Canadian border is accompanied by “adventure” music that completely undercuts any dramatic tension that has been built up. I think of this as “Steven Spielberg syndrome” – see Jaws.
2. There are points at which it seems like an episode of The A-Team in the slightly sentimental way it assembles a gang of diverse “good guys against the world” – even though this apparently really did happen, albeit with a slightly larger gang. The fact that one of them is a nerdy accountant who conveniently happens to be handy with a shotgun makes it a little harder to take seriously.
3. There’s something awkward and not-quite-right about Patricia Clarkson as Kevin Costner’s wife. Or maybe her role is just underwritten. Plus, the way the script (by David Mamet) focuses on Eliot’s loyalty to his wife and daughter leads you to think they will end up playing a greater part in the story (kidnapped or murdered) than they ever do.
4. The motivation of Jimmy Malone (Connery) is unclear. Why does he risk everything to help Costner? Why is he so morally upstanding when all the other policemen are crooked? And what’s going on with his Irish-Scottish-American accent?
These points aside, it’s highly enjoyable. De Niro is reassuringly nasty as Capone, gaining weight especially for the role, and Kevin Costner surprises by being highly watchable. Plus, there’s a particularly dynamic scene set in Union Station that involves a mother with a pram being caught in a crossfire.
