They Shot the Piano Player (2024)
Spanish director Fernando Truaba is one of those [...]
Archive for November, 1985
Santa Claus (1985)
There is no crime in making a movie about the origins of Santa Claus, but in this case, I asked a question that I’m afraid that was not to be answered – at least not on the screen. Why did the Salkinds, the producers of the Superman movies, want to make a movie about Santa […]
Rocky IV (1985)
Rocky IV is everything that I feared that this series would become. Cold, lifeless, predictable, bland and lazy. It’s also heartbreaking when you remember the warmth and humanity that Stallone gave to the earlier films. I don’t know, exactly, what the purpose was here, but whatever it is it really has nothing to do with […]
Fever Pitch (1985)
After seeing Richard Brooks’ Fever Pitch I got the very strange feeling that I had missed something. Maybe, I thought, my normally perceptive brain had switched off for a second and I had missed a plot point because what I was seeing could not possibly have come from the pen of a professional filmmaker. Ryan […]
One Magic Christmas (1985)
Geez! One Miserable Christmas. I’m a fan of Christmas movies. I have my small collection of holiday movie treasures that pad my season of tinsel and garland, but I’m afraid that One Magic Christmas will not be one of them. This is a sad, depressing exercise in misery and bad luck that is supposed to […]
Shoah (1985)
When I heard that Shoah was a nine-and-a-half-hour documentary about The Holocaust, I mentally prepared myself. How do you prepare for a movie like this? Well, I thought, maybe it will be wise to take breaks, break up the experience over several days and nights. This is, after all, a film made for German television […]
White Nights (1985)
White Nights is a movie with two wildly different plots competing for space. Once is about two men – a Russian and an America – who use dance to communicate. The other is a real-world thriller about how these two men are caught up in the tensions between the superpowers. Frankly, they don’t need each […]
Target (1985)
Target is a very dumb movie made by and starring very smart people. It was directed by Arthur Penn, the man who directed Bonnie and Clyde. It stars good actors like Gene Hackman, Matt Dillon, Josef Summer and Gayle Hunnicut. And yet, the movie looks and feels like bad television, one of those silly escapist […]
Bring on the Night (1985)
I have to admit that I have never been a fan of Sting or his music. I don’t know, there’s something about his style that doesn’t appeal to me. I find his vocal stylings to be whiney and I have always been put off by his habit of repeating the chorus 200 times. Never-the-less, I […]
