They Shot the Piano Player (2024)
Spanish director Fernando Truaba is one of those [...]
Archive for February, 1980
Foxes (1980)
Doing some research, I was kind of disturbed by the advertising for this movie. The ads for Foxes sell it as a movie about girls gone wild, about four young teenagers whose preoccupation with sex, drugs and rock and roll were the template for a lurid sex fantasy. Who did they think they were selling […]
Don’t Answer the Phone! (1980)
Don’t Answer the Phone! Is a mystery, a thriller and a horror movie that fails on all three counts. It’s not much of a thriller because we know what’s going to happen, and not really a mystery since we spend a lot of time with the killer. As for it being a horror movie? Well, […]
Cruising (1980)
I sat there trying to figure it all out. I suspect that Cruising wants have a purpose. It wants to say something, but damned if I can tell what it is. This is a movie that gets every intention wrong. Whatever it has to say about the new gay visibility is offensive. Whatever it has […]
Saturn 3 (1980)
Okay, so I have seen three bad movies starring Farrah Fawcett and I think I have nailed down the problem. She’s not a bad actress, she has a nice screen presence. I think the problem may be representation. All three of her films up to this point, Somebody Killer Her Husband (1978), Sunburn (1979) and […]
Being There (1979)
I read a piece recently praising Peter Sellers’ performance in Being There as a matter of his range. I don’t think that’s it. For Sellers, Being There wasn’t an issue of his range but the chance to play a character we had never seen before. Seller’s list of credits proves that he was a great, versatile […]
Midnight Madness (1980)
It is difficult now to think of a time when the Walt Disney company didn’t dominate the entertainment world (or consume it), but there was a moment in the late 70s when the House of Mouse almost became an endangered species. After Walt’s death in 1966, the company spent the next 15 to 20 years […]
The Last Married Couple in America (1980)
The Last Married Couple in America is the most frustrating kind of movie that encounter – the kind in which all of the pieces of a great movies are in place but someone didn’t care enough to pull it all together into anything real. The film comes right off the heels of the success of […]
Hero at Large (1980)
Hero at Large puts me in mind of something that I’ve always wondered. What would happen in real life if Bruce Wayne decided to spend his evenings beating up criminals on the streets of Gotham City – I mean, without all the fancy equipment and over-inflated brute strength – just a guy in tights with […]
