Oct 18
Stanley Kubrick’s vision for Stephen King’s The Shining is a compelling one, a decidedly distant one. His is a world of ice, long and spacious hallways, obscured themes, and strange-looking people that don’t quite fit together. With his 1980 picture, Kubrick has created a world of mystery and anguish. It breathes with torment and inner torture, the type of stuff that makes for a perfect Halloween picture.
What can be said about Friday the 13th? The film spawned an enormous series of sequels and even a recent reboot, exacting the teen-in-peril scenario and reflecting the sort of puritanical sexual values the slasher genre would embrace. Want to get into serious trouble in a horror film? Be a teenager and have sex. Sean S. Cunningham embraces the notion all over this 1980 picture.
Inspired clearly by John Carpenter’s masterful Halloween, Cunningham’s film doesn’t try to do too much. It’s repetitive and quite boring in its reliance on the same old set-ups in each scene. Harry Manfredini’s violin-heavy score doesn’t help much, sounding like the Psycho string-chops on steroids. The cast is essentially fodder for quick disposal, although a young Kevin Bacon makes a somewhat notable appearance.
Fame is kind of a variety show of a movie. It’s uneven and unfocused, but it manages to be occasionally interesting by virtue of the artists at work. I’m not talking about the “actors,” unfortunately. No, the actors in 1980′s Fame film ham it up with the best of them and act every bit the part of the student looking to make a big splash. Maybe that was the point, but I doubt it. I think actors playing students playing actors should come across as natural and not pretentious and showy.
What Fame tries to do is follow a group of students through their tenure at New York High School of Performing Arts. Alan Parker’s picture splits the action into segments and lets us follow the students as they try to learn their respective crafts while figuring out what life is all about. The film was successful enough to earn a spin-off television series, which I’ve heard is better than this movie, and a musical. A recent update of this motion picture was released in 2009 to mostly negative reviews.
Apr 4
1980’s Airplane! is the blueprint for every single piece of spoof comedy to follow it. In order to fully understand and appreciate, if possible, television shows like Family Guy and movies like Scary Movie, one has to see Airplane! at least once. Directed and written by David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams, this film takes its basis from the 1957 flick Zero Hour!, with the Zuckers and Abrahams getting the rights to the picture in order to make Airplane!. Before we go any further, I’m also painfully aware as to how excited I’m likely to sound writing this review. I assure you that any additional points of exclamation will be offered in full recognition of their importance! Okay, that was the last one. Maybe.
