They Shot the Piano Player (2024)
Spanish director Fernando Truaba is one of those [...]
Archive for December, 1983
Terms of Endearment (1983)
[reviewed February 8, 2016] Historically, I have not been entirely kind to Terms of Endearment. In at least one previous essay, I declared that I was turned off by the cast of pretty unlikable characters. I’ve seen the movie several times over the years but it wasn’t until recently that I have come to appreciate its […]
Yentl (1983)
When Yentl was over, I caught myself smiling. I got caught up in the story and even teared up at one point while Barbra Streisand was singing. I had doubted this movie. What is this? Yet another story about a woman pretending to be a man? I thought of Victor Victoria of which I was […]
D.C. Cab (1983)
I once got into a taxi cab that pulled up with the company logo printed on the side, “We get you there.” I like it when people are direct. My cab driver was a guy named Fred, a very nice man from the Dominican Republic who had decorated the inside of his cab probably more […]
The Man Who Loved Women (1983)
When I bash the good ‘ol boy movies that Burt Reynolds makes, it is only in the hopes that he will make something serious, and often he has. He seems to have this other career that is separate from his buddy Hal Needham where he takes himself seriously and tries to play a role. It […]
Two of a Kind (1983)
I like to think that I am pretty savvy when it comes to the reasons that a movie doesn’t work. I don’t know anything at all about the production of Two of a Kind but my feeling is that after the producers managed to rope John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John into their first screen pairing […]
Silkwood (1983)
I lived the early years of my life in Arkansas and my family often took road trips that took us past the Nuclear Power Plant in Russellville with its singular hyperboloid cooling tower looming over the tree-line and belching smoke (steam, I later learned) into the air. It had been engrained into my head, mostly […]
Scarface (1983)
One of the saddest images in movie history occurs at the end of The Godfather Part II, as Michael Corleone sits out back of his villa contemplating the man that he has become. We’ve seen him as a good and decent man, a man whose soul has been deadened by destiny and circumstance; a man […]
The Dresser (1983)
I have seen marriages that have functioned pretty much like Sir and Norman in The Dresser. Norman, a dresser who devotes his life to the care and feeding of Sir, an imperious Shakespearean actor for whom Norman’s dedication is central to his being though he could hardly be bothered to notice. Norman tends to his […]
