Category: 1980s

Casually working through Richard Pryor’s filmography, I stumbled upon this one where he is a con artist who attempts to get committed to a mental hospital to avoid jail. Instead he finds himself stuck at the hospital during a severe hurricane, impersonating a visiting doctor who was unable to make it in the storm. Pryor isn’t in top form here and the film mostly fails to connect, not really knowing if it wants to be a comedy or drama and deciding to stay in a safe , but boring, middle level. It’s by no means awful but it is entirely forgettable.

Naïve prep schooler Andrew McCarthy is encouraged by his new roommate, Rob Lowe, to find someone to first have sex with. Unfortunately the one person he finds is Lowe’s still-married mother Jacqueline Bisset. The relationship between McCarthy and Bisset is oddly sweet, a meeting of two individuals currently at odds with their current life situations. Unfortunately the rest of the film settles for being a fairly typical 80s sex comedy which results in a very disjointing tone trying to put those two parts together. Along with McCarthy, the film does mark the debuts of a number of the generation’s actors: Virginia Madsen, John Cusack, and Casey Siemaszko.

Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold just wants to have the perfect traditional family Christmas at home, unfortunately that means including his family. This is the highwater mark of the Vacation series. It’s not a necessity, but watching the earlier entries adds flavor to this one from the always different Griswold kids to rehashed gags to the reappearance of cousin Eddie. Here the jokes are endless and hit all the right notes in ways that will resonant with anyone celebrating the holidays with family even at their most ridiculous. There are so many memorable gags that it’s easy to watch the entire film with a smile on my face.    

Based on Nora Ephron’s semi-autobiographical novel about her marriage to Carl Bernstein, this film has Meryl Streep as a writer who despite her reservations marries Jack Nicholson. While pregnant with their second child, she discovers he’s been having an affair with a New York socialite. Directed by Mike Nichols, it seems like it’d be a recipe for a solid hit, but it seems that Ephron might have been writing about a subject way too close to her. It feels like she wanted to lay bare what she experienced in her marriage, but instead we have a boring of events with no chemistry between the leads, no character development or arcs, and no reason to care about any of it. There are tiny sparks with the supporting cast (Catherine O’Hara as a delightful gossip queen, couple Stockard Channing and Richard Masur, and Yakov Smirnoff as a remodeler) but they are quickly snuffed out. I did find it incredibly sweet to see Streep interacting with infant Mamie Gummer and I’ve always loved the two Carly Simon songs featured during the film.

Based on the film poster and stills, I went into this expecting it to be a comedy similar to Once Bitten. I could not have been more wrong on that. Nicolas Cage is a young executive who believes he has been turned into a vampire by Jennifer Beals. Cage gives a completely committed, unhinged performance, terrorizing all those around him especially his secretary María Conchita Alonso as he descends into thorough madness. It’s a thoroughly memorable performance in a career of memorable performances.

In a world that is a strange amalgam of 1950s rockabilly culture and every 1980s post-apocalyptic trope, Michael Paré and a ragtag group of misfits are hired to rescue his former girlfriend, kidnapped rocker Diane Lane, from Willem Dafoe and his biker gang by her boyfriend manager Rick Moranis. It’s as magnificent as that sentence can possibly convey. It also has an excellent soundtrack, especially the songs performed by the music acts featured in the film.  

Robert DeNiro is a Los Angeles bounty hunter hired to bring in Chicago mob accountant Charles Grodin. What should have been an easy job becomes a cross-country road trip with the two being followed by mob enforcers, the FBI, and another bounty hunter trying to get in on the score. Grodin plays a cunning, neurotic mess with De Niro coming behind at every step. The whole affair is an amusing buddy comedy with a supporting cast that includes Yaphet Kotto, Joe Pantoliano, and Philip Baker Hall.