Kuukausi: heinäkuu 2020

#1296 Blame It on the Night (1984)

Posted on by admin

Look, I totally get what the team behind Blame It On The Night was trying to achieve by joining together a free spirited rock’n’roll star father and a high-strung son studying in a military academy.

But this obvious setup of mixing two very different elements together, having them going through a set of clashes before each one learns a lesson from each other pressed all the wrong buttons to make its point. The movie features useless and overlong segments of lame adult pop concert footage that serves no purpose after the first time the status of the father as a pop star figure was established and uses only a little time establishing believable relationship between the father and the son. The way the movie sets up the clashed feels very artificial, and the resolution of those clashes feel equally lame and forced.

The name of the movie remains a testament of how much of a misaligned mess Blame It on the Night is, as it has absolutely nothing to do with what’s seen on the screen.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 4%

#1295 Mutant War (1988)

Posted on by admin

A sequel to Battle For the Lost Planet, Mutant War shares the same production values than its predecessor. Meaning, it’s poor.

And while it has the same kind of charming underdog feeling to its predecessor (the team has aimed ridiculously high, including camera and video effects, matte paintings and stop motion animations, all of which way beyond their capabilities), the charm only carries the movies so far.

80s-o-meter: 55%

Total: 31%

#1294 The Breakfast Club (1985)

Posted on by admin

One of the definite teen movies of the 80s, the setup in John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club bears resemblance to the 12 Angry Men (1957). Both movies present us a group of people with seemingly little in common forced to a small room by an external power.

But in The Breakfast Club the roles of the individuals are much more pronounced and relatable for anyone who lived through the high school: there’s the jock, the snobb, the geek, the juvenile delinquent and the weirdo, species of different cliques that usually don’t interact in their day to day life, and when they do, they find out just how much in common they really have.

The Breakfast Club leans on clichés a bit more than it needs to in order to make its point, but even if if the movie may be dated, its themes are definitely not.

And that right there is a sign of a movie classic.

80s-o-meter: 93%

Total: 94%

#1293 Stars and Bars (1988)

Posted on by admin

A somewhat annoying art expert (Daniel Day-Lewis) married to an annoying spouse while working for annoyingly demanding boss is send to deep south to purchase a painting from an annoying eccentric hillbilly family whose annoying unmarried son living at home does annoying things to prevent the sales.

The only thing not utterly annoying in the cast of Stars and Bars is the head of the family, played by Harry Dean Stanton who plays the only character in the movie with some dimensions written into it, and Stanton has the acting chops to make his character likeable despite all of its weird personal traits.

80s-o-meter: 60%

Total: 32%