They Shot the Piano Player (2024)
Spanish director Fernando Truaba is one of those [...]
Archive for August, 1984
Bolero (1984)
By strange twist of fate, I happened upon the John and Bo Derek sex film Bolero on the exact same day that I saw Until September. Oh, cruel fate! Why do you mock me!? Both films have a commonality. They both feature otherwise talented people trapped in a story that we are expected to believe […]
Careful, He Might Hear You (1983)
About halfway through the Australian family drama Careful, He Might Hear You? I began to realize that my entire reaction to the film was positive only because it was about a little boy who is being jerked around by a world of adults. Who wouldn’t be sympathetic? What hard-hearted churl would frown at a movie […]
Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (1984)
I’ve never heard of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle as a character. I suspect that maybe she’s supposed to be the female equivalent of Tarzan, but if this movie is any indication, I may have an idea of why she isn’t as popular. Sheena Queen of the Jungle is one of the dumbest jungle action […]
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)
Walking into The Adventure of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension sort of requires you to meet it halfway. It seems to be written that way. It feels like you’ve been dumped in the middle of Chapter 12 of an ongoing serial that has already introduced most of the characters and all of the motivations […]
Dreamscape (1984)
Okay, so here’s a clever idea, a movie about people who can enter the dreams of other people and help them deal with their deepest fears. A lot can be done with this idea, and a lot is done on a visual effects level. The nightmare dreamscape of this movie really does look like the […]
Red Dawn (1984)
Red Dawn presents the same kind of nightmare scenario as The Day After but the message is a little different. The latter shows us a ground view of what might happen to middle America if the U.S. and the Soviets got into a nuclear exchange. This movie offers up what might happen to a small […]
The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)
I stand at ringside completely amused by unsolved urban legends, not at the legends themselves but by the people who turn it into a cottage industry. Entire sections of bookstores have been devoted to the exploitation of Roswell, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, the prophecies of Nostradamus, Madame Koi Koi and the legend of Blood […]
The Bostonians (1984)
The Bostonians spends a great deal of time dancing around its central issue – the issue being the emancipation of women which, in 1875, was largely taboo even in conversation. I am to understand that dancing around the issues was par for the course for Henry James. His work took place at a time of […]
