Month: July 2022

Years after their beach party adventures, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello are married and living a doldrum life in Ohio. During a layover in Los Angeles, they meet up with their adult daughter Lori Loughlin and find their beach fever reignited. Only having a basic knowledge of who Frankie and Annette were back then, I still remember when this film came out and had a passing desire to see it as one of my first experiences of film reboots. I probably shouldn’t have bothered. Maybe in a different mood, it might have hit better, but it essentially is just wall to wall clichés of irritating corniness with strange references (like Annette being obsessed with Jif peanut butter), lame ‘punks’, and annoying narration by the king of the punks, their young son Demian Slade. What little it has going for it is an earnestness and one of the strangest mix of cameos committed to film, from Bob Denver to O.J. Simpson to Pee-wee Herman to Fishbone. 

Gunslingers, including the young braggart Leonardo DiCaprio, reluctant outlaw turned minister Russell Crowe, and mysterious Sharon Stone, descend on the town of Redemption to participate in a shoot-out contest hosted by the tyrannical Gene Hackman. Having mixed reviews when it was released, I hadn’t expected this to be so entertaining and fun. Everyone in the gradually diminishing cast of characters has their moment to shine as the tournament takes each of them out one by one. There are a few silly shots that I could have done without, but the rest is quite cool. I was also not prepared for how young DiCaprio and Crowe would look in this one, but Hackman makes one great bad guy to root against. 

Anthony Edwards meets Mare Winningham, the woman of his dreams, at La Brea Tar Pits, but before they can even go on one date, he accidentally intercepts a phone call that indicates nuclear war will be starting within seventy minutes and spends the rest of the film trying to find Mare so they can somehow escape the apocalypse together. I hadn’t gone into this expecting much. Not having heard anything about it, I thought maybe it would just be another forgotten bizarre 80s film similar to my most recent watch of Society. Instead what followed was a pretty solid end of the world scenario that changes tones frequently but never strays far from its blend of romance and apocalyptic drama. It has an unexpected mix of standouts in its cast including Kurt Fuller, Denise Crosby, and a very young Mykelti Williamson, but the pairing of Edwards and Winningham makes for a kooky but surprisingly appealing lead couple that are hard not to root for.    

Adopted teenager Billy Warlock feels out of place in his Beverly Hills family with a sexy sister and two perfect parents. After his sister’s coming out party, his instincts were spot on. Absolutely screaming its 1980s California setting at every moment, it’s also an unexpectedly bizarre and disgustingly gory film. The writing and acting are rather lame, though the special effects are pretty good for what they’re trying to portray, but in many ways none of that matters after seeing the climax which I cannot imagine anyone saw coming.