Table for Five does one thing perfectly right: it’s easy for me to see every situation through different sets of eyes and fully emphasise with them and avoids the easy trap of vilifying anyone.
The concept is original and interesting, but the dramatic pacing of the movie could’ve been better and many of the characters – especially the children – remain distant even after spending 122 minutes with the gang.
80s-o-meter: 72%
Total: 70%
I have the uttermost respect for Paul Bartel, often found in either in front or behind the camera in small budget offbeat comedies that stand out from the mass in a charming way.
But Lust in the Dust, his third directorial work of the 80s is a total dud where none of the humour seem to find its target. Or it might, but it’s not anywhere near my alley.
If cowboy comedies are of any interest to you, I’d suggest you to check out Rustler’s Rhapsody or Blazing Saddles instead.
80s-o-meter: 48%
Total: 11%
There’s one piece of trivia for The Accused that’s particularly interesting: when seeing the screening cut of the film for the first time Jodie Foster thought her performance was bad – career ending bad –, and started looking into options what do for the rest of her life.
She would go on to win the Oscar for the best actress in a leading role for her performance in The Accused.
Based on actual events, The Accused is an unscrupulous movie that poses many interesting questions that challenge both the prosecuting lawyer and the viewer.
80s-o-meter: 85%
Total: 88%
Featuring one of the most interesting synopses along with the acting talent provided by Timothy Hutton, Daniel turns out disappointingly pointless exercise.
The movie aims to tell the fictive story of the two children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in US for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. But not only does the movie take liberties in its story (the names of the characters are completely changed), but manages to create a dull rendition of a super interesting piece of American history.
The movie assumes one to be aware of the incident, but still wades in lengthy flashbacks that do not really bring much information to explain what eventually took place or what were the motivations behind the accused acts. Even more disappointingly the movie weasels out and refuses to take any kind of stance on the events, leaving the viewer with pretty much a big pile of nothing.
80s-o-meter: 50%
Total: 21%
Clint Eastwood’s 1984 neo-noir thriller Tightrope has lost its impact over time. The concept of a detective living somewhat suspicious double life might’ve had more edge way back when the movie was released but what exists here would’t cut even as a single episode of a tv series these days.
It doesn’t help much that the antagonist in Tightrope is totally forgettable; I can’t remember a thing about him now just a few days after watching the movie.
I do applaud Clint for playing a flawed antihero kind of character, but Tightrope did not end up anywhere near my favourite Eastwood movie.
80s-o-meter: 68%
Total: 39%
Crimes of Passion is an erotic thriller, which usually is a definite flag for disaster. But when many other erotic thrillers end up just adoringly clumsy, Crimes of Passion really tries to be a real drama with depth and look into the human psyche. And it crashes and burns.
There weren’t too many moments of the movie that I didn’t hate – except for the bit with China Blue visiting a dying man for which I grant the movie the few points it ended up with.
Other than that I really hated Anthony Perkins’ over acted sex maniac priest character straight from a bad small town play and the shallowness of the script that made me feel indifferent about pretty much that took place on the screen.
80s-o-meter: 84%
Total: 31%
Six Pack is pretty useless little family comedy of a pack of orphans who also happen to be technical wizards what it comes to them cars.
They hook up with Brewster Baker (Kenny Rogers) and start competing against Brewster’s nemesis in various races. After the kids is a crooked sheriff who is trying to make some money on the side selling stolen car parts.
There’s two things in Six Pack that are somewhat interesting. First of all, it’s the only theatrical movie to date starring Kenny Rogers (I had to check – it was hard to believe due to the massive amount of made for TV movies he’s starred in) and secondly, it marks the movie debut for Anthony Michael Hall, playing the wizzest of the wiz kids.
80s-o-meter: 68%
Total: 38%
Here’s a movie that presents us with a big mystery, but does very little in explaining that mystery to us.
Furthermore, the movie seems to solely concentrate on glorifying the saintlike, handsome and talented Robert Redford. While Redford is a totally cool dude in my books, the movie offers very little else than him a pedestal performing miracles, expecting for us to stand in awe in front of his greatness.
I thought I was going to see a biographical movie – usually the most interesting approach to what it comes to sports movies – but it isn’t. It isn’t much of a sports movie either; they could’ve picked anything else they wished as Roy Hobbs’ super power. Like knitting, horse riding or firefighting.
For The Natural they decided to go with the baseball.
80s-o-meter: 11%
Total: 43%
When it comes to the sports movies, it’s not about inevitable victory, but the journey there.
With Wildcats, a comedy led by the comedienne Goldie Hawn, the journey there is fun. Ups, downs, underdogs, goofs, training montages with awesome music – it’s all here!
Wildcats does not usually top the lists of the definite sports movies, but it definitely tops the list of the definite sports comedies of the 80s.
80s-o-meter: 89%
Total: 87%
There’s a definite moment in Punchline that made me fall in love with it; as Lilah Krytsick (Sally Field) – a housewife aiming to be a standup comedian – finally comes out of her shell in front of the audience, aided by the talented, but troubled comedian played by Tom Hanks.
John Goodman as her polish husband provides rest of the wholesome, heartfelt moments in the movie. Such a big hearted guy.
80s-o-meter: 91%
Total: 77%
A divorced woman along with his son move to an old ranch in Arizona and forms a deep friendship with an older gentleman.
Just when the relationship starts to form into something more meaningful things get interesting when her scoundrel of an ex-husband shows up, swearing it’s all water under the bridge now and that he is a reformed man. Brian Kerwin’s performance as the charming but petty man child of an ex-husband is perfectly executed and provides the best comedy bits of the movie.
A romantic comedy is always a triumph when it’s something us men can also stomach. Murphy’s Romance definitely falls into this category.
80s-o-meter: 80%
Total: 76%
Missing is a movie about a daring subject: the disappearance of an American journalist after a violent US-backed military coup in Chile and the cover-up that took place afterwards.
Too bad the execution of the the movie is nowhere as interesting as the subject itself; most of the films running time is spent with the father not really grasping the situation, when the gravity of the events has been clear to the audience a long time ago. Also, to me the movie lacked actual context of where (Chile as a location is never mentioned in the movie) the events took place and why and how did they unravel the way they did.
The message of the movie (and its original book) still remains strong and is a good reminder to us small people of the collateral damage approach many countries have driving their foreign policy.
80s-o-meter: 58%
Total: 61%
A young prison escapee tries to make it to Mexico to join with his family with a keen old detective on his tail.
A likeable road movie with some eccentric characters thrown into the mix, Eddie Macon’s Run doesn’t do anything remarkably well – but it doesn’t do anything remarkably badly either.
Both leads Kirk Douglas and John Schneider perform their roles well, with the latter one doing a good job making his character an easy to relate to underdog.
80s-o-meter: 58%
Total: 70%
Writer-director Albert Brooks’ Lost in America suffers from having Brooks himself play the main part.
Similarly to Modern Romance, the neurotic character he plays comes across plain annoying, and Brooks cannot breathe any life or likeable traits to his two dimensional man-child caricature.
Other than that the concept of the movie is very unique and interesting, ending up something of an antithesis of a road movie.
80s-o-meter: 93%
Total: 73%
Produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, Bird is a biographical film about the life of jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker.
The movie is super long for an 80s movie at whopping 161 minutes, and unfortunately it does not work for the movie’s advantage. Even for a person who’s interested in the character – both the movie character and the real musician – the movie seemed to come to full stop at times. Accompanied by dark, murky visuals the movie makes for a dream-like late night watching experience that is at times enchanting and at times enough to make you drowsy. From the current day’s perspective I suspect Bird being hard to follow movie for those that don’t have any previous knowledge of Parker, or jazz in general.
Bird’s performances in the movie are equally intensive and impressive; the saxophone for the sound was isolated from old tapes and brought to modern era by then re-recording all the accompanying instruments, which resulted Bird to win Oscar for its sound – very rightfully so.
80s-o-meter: 8%
Total: 70%
A non-union film shot with family members at the Malibu house of the writer-director Blake Edwards, That’s Life! could be the most professional home movies ever shot.
The movie has that Blake Edwards look and feel to it, but in a positive way. Jack Lemmon carries the movie through making a perfedct example how to play a neurotic character without being annoying to watch, like is often the case.
80s-o-meter: 50%
Total: 62%
After Trotter (Richard Dreyfuss) gambles and bags his second win I kept on wishing out loud this movie wouldn’t be all about him hanging around the race track betting his wins over and over on the horses.
Woefully it is.
Not being a gambler – nor interested in the subject – the plot held zero interest to me. I also missed the cultural references that go with the territory – the aristocrat and worker sides of the race track –– not that I think they’d made the experience any better. Dreyfuss is terrific as always and carries the movie, but still Let It Ride feels like a waste of his talent.
If it’s a movie about gambling you’re after, I’d suggest taking a look at Owning Mahowny instead which is a superb look into the mind of a gambler.
80s-o-meter: 70%
Total: 31%
The director Sam Peckinpah’s attempt for comeback after five years of radio silence was loaded with high expectations. Based on Robert Ludlum’s 1974 novel of the same name, The Osterman Weekend did not meet those expectations.
Sadly, the movie is pretty much on par with many of the made for TV movies of the era. Hidden camera setup has lost the novelty it had in 1983 and it does not help that the movie is not exactly state of the art of its era what it comes to its visions of this hi-tech.
As the movie gets past its first tedious 60 minutes, it does get mildly more interesting as the big web of lies finally starts to unravel.
80s-o-meter: 46%
Total: 52%
White Nights cooks up a fairly lukewarm dish out of some top shelf ingredients: The synopsis is unique and interesting, soundtrack contains multiple tracks from the contemporary chart-topping artists and the movie pictures its Russian locations credibly, thanks to the footage shot actually in location by the Finnish 2nd camera crew. And most importantly, even if watching dancing isn’t your thing – it for sure isn’t mine – there’s no denying that Mikhail Baryshnikov’s seemingly effortless movement on the stage is pretty darn impressive.
Problem is that I felt really indifferent for all the characters in the film. The golden cage they were locked in felt something of a third world problem as they were still better off than 99,9% of the population – and knowing know that CCCP was only a few years away from collapse, the drama in White Nights did not catch me at all.
I could’ve also lived without Gregory Hines’ tap dancing defector character that added absolutely nothing to the story.
80s-o-meter: 33%
Total: 61%
Ironweed is not nearly as grand movie as it wants to be.
Futhermore, the movie is not a triumph for neither Jack Nicholson nor Meryl Streep, who typically can carry any kind of movie, but here they come across multi-millionaires dressed up in rags and pretending to be alcoholic vagabonds. As weak as the story in Ironweed is, the movie could’ve actually gained from not going for the top billing actors, but trying to introduce new talent instead. This way the movie would’ve at least had the advantage of being an underdog.
Now Ironweed remains an expensive exercise that kept Nicholson and Streep on the peak of their careers from undertaking something more substantial – something that the time would not have already forgotten.
80s-o-meter: 21%
Total: 55%