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Saturday, March 28, 2009

Roxanne (1987) [PG] ****

A film review by Roger Ebert, June 19, 1987.

Roxanne is a gentle, whimsical comedy starring Steve Martin as a man who knows he has the love of the whole town, because he is such a nice guy, but fears he will never have the love of a woman, because his nose is too big. His nose is pretty big, all right; he doesn't sniff wine, he inhales it.

The movie is based on Cyrano de Bergerac, a play that was written in 1890 but still strikes some kind of universal note, maybe because for all of us there is some attribute or appendage we secretly fear people will ridicule. Inside every adult is a second-grader still terrified of being laughed at.


In Roxanne, the famous nose belongs to C.D. Bales, a small-town fire chief, who daydreams of a time when the local citizens will have enough confidence in his department to actually call it when there's a fire.


In despair at the incompetence of his firemen, he hires a firefighting expert (Rick Rossovich) to train them. The expert arrives in town almost simultaneously with a tall, beautiful blond (Daryl Hannah), who is an astronomer in search of an elusive comet.


Both men fall instantly in love with the woman. At first she has eyes for Rossovich, who is tall, dark and handsome. But he is totally incapable of talking to a woman about anything but her body, and after he grosses her out, who can she turn to except Martin, the gentle, intelligent, poetic fire chief?


Martin is afraid to declare his love. He thinks she'll laugh at his nose. He assumes the role of a coach, prompting Rossovich, writing love letters for him, giving him advice. In the movie's funniest scene, Martin radios dialogue to Rossovich, who wears a hat with earflaps to conceal the earphone.


What makes Roxanne so wonderful is not this fairly straightforward comedy, however, but the way the movie creates a certain ineffable spirit. Martin plays a man with a smile on his face and a broken heart inside - a man who laughs that he may not cry. He has learned to turn his handicap into comedy, and when a man insults him in a bar, he counterattacks with 20 more insults, all of them funnier than the original. He knows how to deal with his nose, but he has never learned how to feel about it.


Hannah provides a sweet, gentle foil to the romantic fantasies of Martin and Rossovich. She has come to their small town because the air is clear and she can get a good view of the comet with her telescope. She isn't really looking for romance, and although she thinks Rossovich is cute, she's turned off by lines about her body. She likes his letters, though, and when she finds out the letters are really from Martin, she is able to accept him for his heart and not for his nose, which is the whole point, so to speak, of Cyrano.


All of the corners of this movie have been filled with small, funny moments. Michael J. Pollard, the getaway driver in Bonnie and Clyde twenty years ago, is back as a weird little fireman. Fred Willard is the pompous local Mayor Deebs. Shelley Duvall, as Dixie, the owner of the local cafe, does double-takes at the strangeness of ordinary life. And Martin proceeds manfully ahead, rescuing cats from trees, helping strangers, fighting fires and trying to still the beating of his heart. [Ebert's rating: *** 1/2 out of 4]


Labels: comedy, drama, romance

Internet Movie Database 6.6/10
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=74, viewers=70)

Blogger's comment: Even after thirty years, this film still holds up well because, as Roger Ebert says, it creates a certain ineffable spirit. There are several small supporting roles that deserve mention as well. John Kapelos plays Chuck, the owner of a Nelson, B.C. store named All Things Dead, who has a larger-than-life ego and tries to seduce every attractive girl in town. Shandra Beri plays Sandy, a local bartender and casual friend of Roxanne and Dixie, who is able to befriend Chris because he doesn't have a romantic interest in her, and who has a filmography of only 4 acting credits. Heidi Sorenson plays Trudy, the girlfriend of Mayor Deebs, was Playboy Playmate of the Month in July, 1981 and has a filmography of only 18 credits. And Brian George plays Dave the cosmetic surgeon who refuses to operate on C.D. because he has allergies to anaesthetic, which could be fatal. Brian, of course, has an acting filmography with nearly 300 credits spanning over forty years, including his recent work on The Big Bang Theory as Dr. V.M. Koothrappali, Raj's father.



Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) [PG-13] ****


Peggy Sue is a forty-three years old wife and mother, living in the small California town in which she grew up. She has two teenage children and a cheating husband from whom she's getting a divorce. Peggy Sue is going through a mid-life passage, and she looks back on her life with some regrets. She thinks: It's not so bad. I've got two great kids. I've got my own business. Still, if I'd known then, what I know now, I'd do a lot of things differently. Then, while attending her 25th high school reunion her heart stops, she steps through a time portal and awakens twenty-five years earlier as a high school senior in the year 1960, but with all of her life memories and dreams intact.

As Peggy Sue reconnects with her friends, her parents and sister, and her long-deceased grandparents, she gains a new appreciation of the value of family and friends. However, she also experiences how difficult and frustrating it is to make meaningful changes in her life. The value for all of us, regardless of our age, is to ask ourselves: If I'd known when I graduated from high school that this is how my life would turn out, would I have been satisfied?

Peggy Sue Got Married is a bit like a time capsule, because we're able to enjoy the early work of many young actors and actresses who have gone on to outstanding careers in the film and television industry, including Kathleen Turner (Peggy Sue Kelcher), Nicolas Cage (her husband Charlie Bodell), Barry Miller (classmate Richard Norvik), Jim Carrey (classmate Walter Getz), Helen Hunt (daughter Beth Bodell), Joan Allen (girlfriend Maddy Nagle), Catherine Hicks (girlfriend Carol Heath), Sofia Coppola (sister Nancy Kelcher), Kevin J. O'Connor (classmate Michael Fitzsimmons), Wil Shriner (classmate Arthur Nagle), Don Stark (classmate Doug Snell), Lucinda Jenny (classmate Rosalie Testa) and Lisa Jane Persky (classmate Delores Dodge).

The supporting cast also includes Peggy's mother and father (Barbara Harris and Don Murray), and grandparents (Maureen O'Sullivan and Leon Ames).

If you enjoy romantic dramas and comedies in which Time itself, plays a significant role - films like The Family Man, Forever Young, The Lake House, Pleasantville and Somewhere in Time - then you will really enjoy Peggy Sue Got Married. 

Labels: comedy, drama, fantasy, Sixties, high-school, romance, space-time, teenager     
Internet Movie Database 64/100
MetaScore (critics=75, viewers=73)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=68, viewers=68)
Blu-ray

The Boy Who Could Fly (1986) [PG] ****


A film review by Roger Ebert, September 26, 1986.

Here is a sweet and innocent parable about a boy who could fly - and about a girl who could fly, too, when the boy held her hand. The lesson the girl learns in this film is that anything is possible, if only you have faith. The movie could have been directed 50 years ago by Frank Capra, except that in the Capra version, the boy wouldn't have been autistic and the girl wouldn't have been grieving because of the recent suicide of her father, who was dying of cancer. Parables have harder edges these days.

The movie takes place in a small town with picket fences, shade trees and mean boys who won't let little kids ride their tricycles around the block. Into a run-down house on one of these streets, a small family moves: a mother, teenage daughter and little brother. The girl looks out her bedroom window to the house next door, and there she sees, poised on the roof, a teenage boy with his arms outstretched, poised to fly.


She learns his story. When he was 5, his parents died in an airplane crash. At the exact moment of the crash, he started to try to fly, as if he could have saved them. But can he really fly? The boy lives with an alcoholic uncle, who swears he has seen the kid fly. But the uncle sees a lot of things, not all of them real.


The Boy Who Could Fly surrounds this situation with small stories of everyday life. The mother (Bonnie Bedelia) goes back to her old job in the insurance industry and discovers she has to learn to use a computer. Her daughter (Lucy Deakins) goes to high school and makes friends with an understanding teacher (Colleen Dewhurst). The little brother (a small, fierce tyke named Fred Savage) plots to overcome the bullies who live around the corner. And next door, the strange boy (Jay Underwood) lives in his world of dreams and silence.


Can anything break through to him? Yes, as it turns out, one power on Earth is strong enough to penetrate his autism, and that power is adolescent love.


He gets a crush on his new neighbor. She cares for him. One day, he saves her life. She believes he can really fly, but nobody else does, and then the kid is taken away from his drunken uncle and placed in an institution, which could crush his spirit.


The movie develops along lines that we can more or less anticipate, and it ends on a note of high sentimentality. What's good about it are the performances, especially Deakins, a warm and empathetic teenager; Savage, a plucky little kid who could play Dennis the Menace, and Bedelia, a widow still mourning her husband.


Movies like this can be insufferable if they lay it on too thick. The Boy Who Can Fly finds just about the right balance between its sunny message and the heartbreak that's always threatening to prevail.

Labels: family, fantasy, teenager

Internet Movie Database  
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=61, viewers=66) 

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) [PG-13] ****

A film review by Roger Ebert, June 11, 1986.

Here is one of the most innocent movies in a long time, a sweet, warm-hearted comedy about a teenager who skips school so he can help his best friend win some self-respect. The therapy he has in mind includes a day's visit to Chicago, and after we've seen the Sears Tower, the Art Institute, the Board of Trade, a parade down Dearborn Street, architectural landmarks, a Gold Coast lunch and a game at Wrigley Field, we have to concede that the city and state film offices have done their jobs: If Ferris Bueller's Day Off fails on every other level, at least it works as a travelogue.

It does, however, work on at least a few other levels. The movie stars Matthew Broderick as Ferris, a bright high school senior from the North Shore who fakes an illness so he can spend a day in town with his girlfriend, Sloane (the astonishingly beautiful Mia Sara) and his best friend, Cameron (Alan Ruck).

At first, it seems as if skipping school is all he has in mind - especially after he talks Cameron into borrowing his dad's restored red Ferrari, a car the father loves more than Cameron himself.

The body of the movie is a lighthearted excursion through the Loop, including a German-American Day parade in which Ferris leaps aboard a float, grabs a microphone and starts singing Twist and Shout while the marching band backs him up. The teens fake their way into a fancy restaurant for lunch, spend some time gawking at the masterpieces in the Art Institute, and then go out to Wrigley Field, where, of course, they are late and have to take box seats far back in the left-field corner. (The movie gets that detail right; it would be too much to hope that they could arrive in the third inning and find seats in the bleachers.) There is one great, dizzying moment when the teens visit the top of the Sears Tower and lean forward and press their foreheads against the glass, and look straight down at the tiny cars and little specks of life far below, and begin to talk about their lives. And that introduces, subtly, the buried theme of the movie, which is that Ferris wants to help Cameron gain self-respect in the face of his father's materialism.

Ferris is, in fact, a bit of a preacher. Life goes by so fast, he says, that if you don't stop and look around, you might miss it. He's sensitive to the hurt inside his friend's heart, as Cameron explains how his dad has cherished and restored the red Ferrari and given it a place of honor in his life - a place denied to Cameron.

Ferris Bueller was directed by John Hughes, the philosopher of adolescence, whose credits include 16 Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink. In all of his films, adults are strange, distant creatures who love their teenagers, but fail completely to understand them. That's the case here, all right: All of the adults, including a bumbling high-school dean (Jeffrey Jones), are dim-witted and one-dimensional. And the movie's solutions to Cameron's problems are pretty simplistic. But the film's heart is in the right place, and Ferris Bueller is slight, whimsical and sweet.

The Ferrari featured in the film is 1962 250 GT California.

Labels: comedy, drama, Ferrari, high-school, teenager
Internet Movie Database
Metacritic 60/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=77, viewers=76)
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Top Gun (1986) [PG] ****


Lt. Pete Maverick Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is a brash, fearless, young naval aviator... in the words of his air wing commander, he’s a hell of an instinctive pilot, maybe too good. While stationed somewhere in the Indian Ocean on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, Maverick and his RIO Goose (Anthony Edwards) fly a dangerous intercept mission and have a daring encounter with a MIG-28, after which Maverick risks their lives and their low-on-fuel F-14 Tomcat to guide his traumatized wingman back to their carrier. As a reward for his bravery, Maverick and Goose are selected to attend TOP GUN the Fighter Weapons School in Miramar, California, where the very best pilots are trained to be even better, to fly their aircraft right to the edge of the performance envelope.

While at TOP GUN Maverick meets and falls for Charlotte Charlie Blackwood (Kelly McGillis), an astrophysicist and civilian contractor. Unfortunately, his reckless bravado also involves him in a fatal aircraft accident, which reconnects him with the pain and loss he felt when his father died in an F-4 Phantom in Vietnam, when Maverick was only a child. Deciding to quit TOP GUN, Maverick first seeks the advice of the school commander, Commander Mike Viper Metcalf (Tom Skerritt).

In a pivotal scene Maverick acknowledges that he flies the way he does because he's trying to clear his father's name. While details of his father's death were classified because of where the aerial dogfight had occurred, the rumor was that he had failed, and a cloud had hung over Maverick all his life. As Viper and Maverick gently slide into the roles of father and son, Viper reveals that he had been in the air with Maverick's father that day, and that the pilot was really a hero. This knowledge allows Maverick to let his father go, to step into adulthood, and to fulfill his potential as a naval aviator.

Top Gun can be enjoyed as a young man's rite-of-passage, as a naval aviation recruiting film, or as a romantic drama. While there are credible performances from Cruise, McGillis, Skerritt and Edwards, and from the supporting cast, especially Val Kilmer, Michael Ironside, Rick Rossovich and Meg Ryan, there is virtually no romantic chemistry between Cruise and McGillis. Featuring a powerful, soundtrack and interesting aerial combat sequences, Top Gun remains an iconic 1980s action film.

Labels: action, drama, flying, romance, tragedy

IMDb 69/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=60, viewers=82)
Blu-ray
MetaScore (critics=50, viewers=74)
James Berardinelli's review (2 stars out of 4)

Top Gun soundtrack:

You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling



Look Both Ways (2022) [TV-14] ***/****

A film review by Aurora Amidon for pastemagazine.com on Aug. 17, 2022.

Natalie (Lili Reinhart) has her five-year plan down to a science. First, she’ll move to Los Angeles with her effervescent bestie Cara (Aisha Dee), then she’ll become a hot-shot animator at a big-name studio. Natalie daren’t leave anything in her life up to chance: From her straight-A report card to her impeccable blonde hair, everything is just the way she wants it.

That is, until she sleeps with her best friend, aspiring rock star Gabe (Danny Ramirez). The two promise one another that their one-night soiree won’t be a big deal; alas, a couple weeks later, as Natalie stands on the precipice of graduating from the University of Texas with immaculate grades, she also finds herself bowed over a sorority toilet seat with pregnancy tests gripped in her hand like a sad bouquet.


After Natalie pees on the fated stick, Wanuri Kahiu’s Look Both Ways observes two scenarios unfold. In one, the test is negative. In the other, it’s positive. From that point on, the alternate realities play out side by side - a clever gimmick popularized in Peter Howitt’s 1998 film Sliding Doors (itself similar to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blind Chance), which sees a woman living one version of her life after missing a train (that darn sliding door) and another where she catches it. One of the things that makes Sliding Doors so powerful is its emphasis on just how much of life is based around fleeting and seemingly inconsequential moments - sort of like The Butterfly Effect if it was good. But to its detriment, Look Both Ways is concerned with anything but coincidence.


When, in Look Both Ways’ second scenario, Natalie decides to carry the baby to term, her choice feels wildly forced and out of character, to put it lightly. By the time Natalie makes her decision, writer April Prosser has already put considerable effort into hammering home that Natalie and her type-A personality will stop at absolutely nothing to have a successful career. And, yes, I know her choice is necessary for the plot to move forward. But still, couldn’t we have been given just a grain of credibility to cling on to?


Of course, it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that someone like Natalie would decide to continue an unplanned pregnancy. But at the very least, the script could have offered us a reason as to why that was the choice she made - or even simply hinted that it took a day or two of deliberation. Instead, they quickly resolve the issue by having her tell Cara, teary-eyed, I feel like this is something I have to do. Talk about a cop-out!


It’s likely that Kahiu simply wanted to avoid discussing a hot-button issue like abortion in a Netflix rom-com. Still, it is undeniably bizarre for a 2022 film that sees its career-driven protagonist become pregnant to not even mention abortion in any tangible way. At times, Look Both Ways feels like Danny Boyle’s Yesterday, but instead of taking place in a world where The Beatles don’t exist, it features one where abortion doesn’t.

In wiping its hands of the abortion issue, Look Both Ways also sidesteps an indisputable truth: Life is harder with a kid. For a vast majority, it’s a life that’s worth it; for many, it’s a life that’s better. But it is harder.

Not for Natalie, though. Her daughter conveniently disappears whenever the film calls for a scene without her in it, and as her respective careers blossom in tandem across realities. They merely take different shapes, neither appearing substantially more complicated or arduous. Perhaps the film intentionally smuggles in sneaky pro-life undertones, or perhaps it merely doesn’t want to ostracize audiences on any end of the having-kids spectrum. Either way, it feels disingenuous.


The storytelling isn’t the only thing that comes across as sanitized. Everything in Look Both Ways looks like it was scrubbed with Lysol -especially Natalie and Cara’s L.A. apartment, which the girls make a point to describe as a shithole. In reality, you probably couldn’t rent it for less than $4,000 a month. The sterile sets wouldn’t be so obvious if the LEDs hadn’t been cranked up to their highest setting, blasting every inch of space with bright light.


Despite this, it should be emphasized that Look Both Ways is still your boilerplate Netflix rom-com - and because of that, it’s a lot of fun to watch. Each storyline is undeniably engrossing, especially the will-they-won’t-they storylines in each reality.


The actors are up for the part, too. Reinhart is magnetic, effortlessly captivating the audience with her big, soulful eyes. She wears every emotion on her sleeve, and for this role - a woman whose every thought and feeling you want to be privy to - that’s a really good thing. Ramirez also does a solid job as the unsuspecting male romantic lead, playing Gabe as quiet and understated, with a subtle undertone of passion and artistry. Playing Natalie’s neurotic father, Luke Wilson does his best with a script that only ever verges on funny - though he is criminally underutilized.


In a way, though, Wilson’s cautious role is a good analogy for Look Both Ways as a whole. The film boasts a unique and compelling premise, one which could have given honest and provocative insight into what it’s like to be an ambitious young mother. How does the birth of a child change one’s life? What if you could look at how things would have played out if you had eschewed one life-altering event? Instead, Look Both Ways feverishly whittles itself down to ensure that it keeps a wide berth from anything unsavory or controversial. The dishonesty that comes along with that timidity is a much tougher pill to swallow than the truths that might have arisen otherwise. [Amidon’s rating: 3 stars out of 5 = 60%]


Blogger's comment: I totally agree with Aurora Amidon's review. For Natalie to not seriously consider open adoption or even abortion, in the face of a life-altering event like pregnancy, is simply not realistic. Also, to have the child, live with her parents and not have her life impacted more is also not realistic. And the third thing is that I simply did not believe her relationship with Gabe. Natalie is very clearly a structured, goal-oriented girl, as opposed to a go-with-the-flow girl. From that perspective, having sex with Gabe makes no sense at all.

Labels: comedy, drama, fantasy, romance
IMDb 63/100

MetaScore (critics=49, viewers=58)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=55, viewers=78)

Netflix
Amidon’s review



Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) [PG] ****


It’s the late 23rd century, and Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew are in exile on the planet Vulcan, readying a captured Klingon spaceship for the voyage home to Earth, knowing that upon their arrival they will be charged with conspiracy and other high crimes. Regardless, they embark on their journey, and as they approach Earth they hear a planet-wide distress signal. An alien probe is attempting to communicate with a marine intelligence, and, in the process, its high-energy transmission is vaporizing Earth's oceans.

Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) deduces that the probe is attempting to communicate with humpback whales, a species that had been hunted to extinction over two hundred years earlier. With no alternative, Kirk and his crew decide to attempt time warp, in order to return to the Earth of the late 20th century, find a pair of humpback whales to bring forward in time to the 23rd century, so they can respond to the alien probe, save Earth and repopulate themselves.


The film's save-the-whales environmental theme, its sympathetic story line, and its setting in the late 1970s San Francisco Bay Area insured that Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home would be hugely popular when it was released in 1986. The familiar supporting cast includes Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott (James Doohan), Helmsman Hikaru Sulu (George Takei), Communications Officer Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Navigator Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), and is amended by the lovable Catherine Hicks, who plays Dr. Gillian Taylor, a biologist at the Cetacean Institute in Sausalito, CA, which just happens to have two humpback whales in captivity.


There are a number of humorous bits in the film, as well as some memorable dialogue, and despite the film's dated appearance it is easy to understand why Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home has remained a sentimental favorite of Trekkies over a quarter of a century after its theatrical release.


Labels: adventure, comedy, sci-fi, space-time

IMDb 73/100
MetaScore (critics=71, viewers=80)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=70,viewers=78)

Blu-ray

Barbra Streisand: One Voice (1986) [UR] ****

If you love Barbra Streisand's voice and musical styling, and you'd like to take a trip down memory lane, this is a concert not to be missed. Barbra sings a selection of timeless, evocative songs, from Over the Rainbow and People to The Way We Were. Robin Williams does the introduction, and midway through the concert Barbra is joined by Barry Gibb for a duet.

The concert, held at Barbra's home in September, 1986, was a benefit for her foundation, supporting charitable causes in the areas of nuclear disarmament, environmental protection, civil rights and human rights. Attending the concert were a number of celebrities and politicians, giving us a nostalgic glimpse of what they all looked like back in the 1980s... including Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Whitney Houston, Bette Midler, Chevy Chase, Goldie Hahn and Kurt Russell.


Label: music
Internet Movie Database
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=NA, viewers=NA)


A Room with a View (1986) [NR] ****/*****

Delicately combine Edwardian-era English reserve, the pastoral springtime countryside of Tuscany, the beauty of Florence and Puccini's stirring music, and you will have one of the most romantic films ever made.

George Emerson (Julian Sands) is the unique young man who falls in love with the passionate but repressed Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter). George awakens in Lucy the desire to live as she really wants to live, not as other people expect her to live. His love liberates her from her own inner fears, and her awakening is as delicate and beautiful as a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.

The message in this wonderful film is simply: Don't go for what you know you can get... go for what you really want. If you enjoy Helena Bonham Carter, and you like period romantic dramas set in Europe, films like Enchanted April or Wings of the Dove, then you'll love A Room with a View.



Labels: drama, period, romance, rom-drama-faves
IMDb 72/100

MetaScore (critics=83, viewers=74)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=84, viewers=84)

Blu-ray

 

 

About Last Night... (1986) [R] ****

A film review by James Berardinelli, June 22, 2009.

A marriage between the creative talents of playwright David Mamet and director Edward Zwick might seem to be an unlikely union but, in the case of 1986 feature About Last Night..., it is surprisingly effective. Zwick, best known for the emotional resonance he brings to his screen endeavors, is almost the tonal antithesis of Mamet, whose writing is often unsparing. This was Zwick's feature directorial debut (he had a few TV credits on his resume at the time) and it was the first of Mamet's stage shows to be adapted. At the time, the playwright was arguably better-known in Hollywood than Zwick - he had written screenplays for movies starring Jack Nicholson (The Postman Always Rings Twice) and Paul Newman (The Verdict). Nevertheless, he [Mamet] was not involved in the scripting process of About Last Night... That was left to Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue.

Love is easy. Relationships are hard. This simple truth, which nearly every seasoned adult understands first-hand, forms the production's framework. In general, Hollywood doesn't like extending the story beyond the point at which the male and female leads confess their love for one another. Usually, that moment is the cue for the end credits to start. Movies sell fantasy, and the most popular fantasy in romance is the happy ending. Although About Last Night... ultimately concludes on a hopeful note, it doesn't stop at the end of the romance's first act. Instead, it moves beyond that point, chronicling the ups and downs of a post-honeymoon stage relationship - one that ends not with a wedding ring and children, but with heartbreak. Very little that happens in About Last Night… is unexpected, but that's a good thing. The emotional honesty at the film's core demands that it touch on universally familiar experiences. The banality of what happens between the central characters is what makes this movie feel less like a soap opera and more like the page from someone's diary.


For Chicagoans Danny (Rob Lowe) and Debbie (Demi Moore), it's love - or at least attraction - at first sight. They meet at a softball game and end up having a one-night stand. Ultimately, however, one night isn't enough, and it isn't long before Danny's womanizing best friend, Bernie (James Belushi), and Debbie's roommate, Joan (Elizabeth Perkins), are feeling neglected. Then, with little premeditation and less consideration, Danny and Debbie decide to move in together. Bernie and Joan are aghast, but nothing they say dissuades the happy couple. But the concept of living together is a far different thing from the reality, as they quickly discover. The transition from friends and lovers to a couple is filled with deadfalls, and Danny and Debbie fall prey to more than one. Despite the undeniable highs of the arrangement, it soon becomes apparent that the mushrooming difficulties are threatening to choke out the happiness and optimism that brought them together in the first place.


The strength of About Last Night... is its perceptiveness. The film tracks the relationship with uncanny precision: the heady, lust-filled early days; the precipitous decision to leap headfirst into the next step without proper thought; and the slow erosion as the foundation begins to crumble. No long-term relationship survives and thrives without a profound commitment on the parts of both members of the couple; in this film, neither Danny nor Debbie is emotionally secure enough to make that commitment. Their relationship fails not because they are incompatible (indeed, their love is genuine), but because they are immature and not yet comfortable enough in their own skins to be able to merge their lives.


Bernie and Joan are the devils that sit on their shoulders and whisper nasty things into their ears. It isn't that these two see the danger inherent in Danny and Debbie’s rash decision. Rather, they are against the match for selfish reasons. Neither wants to lose their best single friend. There's also the familiar element of jealousy that some unattached people feel when one of their own finds someone else. Yet, although Bernie and Joan represent corrosive elements, their interference only hastens the demise of a relationship that could not have stood the test of time.


The ending is something of a cheat. It's the only part of the movie that doesn't ring true; a reminder that downbeat doesn't play well at the multiplex. About Last Night... should have closed on a somber note, with Danny and Debbie moving forward with their lives separately, the way it happens with most couples that split. Instead, because this is a movie and it's still selling a form of fantasy, we are left to believe there will be a happy ending for these two after all. Having emerged through the furnace of failure, they are now ready for success.


Most of the time, when David Mamet is involved on any level in the writing of a movie, even if someone else is adapting his play, the snap of the dialogue is unmistakable. About Last Night... is a rare exception. The only time it's possible to truly hear Mamet is during the opening sequence, in which Bernie tells Danny about a bizarre sexual tryst. (Was she a pro?) For the rest of the movie, Mamet's words have been softened and shaped in such a manner that the distinctive aspect of his voice is dulled.


For the most part, Zwick's efforts are workmanlike. This represents a solid proving ground; Glory would never have been as powerful had the director not cut his teeth here. The most evident flaw in Zwick's approach is his decision to use not one or two but four musical montages. A narrative shortcut set to a pop song, the montage is often employed in romantic comedies and dramas, but Zwick's overuse of it cheapens the dramatic arc. The songs that accompany the montages are forgettable - odd, considering the contributions of well-known performers like Sheena Easton, John Waite, and Bob Seger.


As Danny, bad boy Rob Lowe is cast against type as a guy with a good heart who's insecure around women. In 1986, Lowe was at the peak of his popularity and his being cast in the film virtually assured that it would achieve some degree of box office success. His co-star is Demi Moore who, despite having appeared opposite Lowe a year earlier in St. Elmo's Fire, was considerably less known. At the time, Moore was several years away from becoming a major star (that happened in 1990 with Ghost) and was arguably better known for her stint on General Hospital than for her small body of movie titles. She and Lowe inhabit their characters fully - they are believable and likeable. Their passion rings true, the sex scenes are erotic, and there's real pain in their escalating arguments. (Moore, incidentally, is on record as having been uncomfortable with the nudity. Her attitude obviously changed over the next decade - in 1996, she had no qualms about baring all for Striptease.) James Belushi, who appeared in the stage version of the play, is a force of nature as Bernie, providing sufficient humor to counterbalance the overall seriousness of the material. Elizabeth Perkins, making her debut, is the weakest of the principals, but that's more the fault of the writing than an indictment of her performance. On the supporting side, the script is less concerned with Joan than it is with Bernie.


For its release, About Last Night... received a title change. Originally, it was supposed to bear the moniker of its source play, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, but TriStar chickened out when there were rumors that the phrase sexual perversity might impact newspaper advertising. The new name was vanilla enough to ensure there were no advertising boycotts, and the film proved to be lucrative. It performed extraordinarily well for an R-rated movie, due in part to Lowe's participation and in part because of strong word-of-mouth. The only area in which the movie underperformed was its ability to sell soundtracks. It is therefore somewhat ironic that the only award captured by the film was a BMI Music Award for composer Miles Goodman.


More than two decades after its release, About Last Night... is more of a curiosity than a classic. It stands up well enough to be worth watching but not well enough to demand being sought out. In some ways, it's more interesting as a retrospective of the attitudes and social climate of the era, and as a look at the early days of men and women with long, fruitful careers ahead of them. The core of honesty that distinguishes the production remains unchanged by time, ensuring that, no matter how many years have passed, About Last Night... still works on an emotional level.



Labels: comedy, drama, rom-com-faves, romance
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Children of a Lesser God (1986) [R] ****

A film review by Roger Ebert, October 3, 1986.

I suppose this sounds like the complaint of a crank, but I would have admired Children of a Lesser God more if some of its scenes had been played without the benefit of a soundtrack. If a story is about the battle of two people over the common ground on which they will communicate, it's not fair to make the whole movie on the terms of only one of them.

The movie is a love story, a romance between a young woman who is deaf and a rebellious teacher who believes she should learn to read lips and speak phonetically. She doesn't think so. She's been using sign language all of her life, and her argument is simple: If he loves her, he will enter her world of silence.

Although this disagreement is at the heart of Children of a Lesser God, the movie makes a deliberate decision to exist in the world of the hearing. I know why they made this decision. It was dictated by the box office, but that doesn't make me feel any better about it. There is a certain cynicism at work here: Most of the people who see this movie will be able to hear, and although they may welcome the challenge of a movie about a deaf person, they aren't so interested that they want to experience deafness.

The movie uses a strategy that works well - if you accept the basic premise, which is that everything said on the screen must be heard on the soundtrack. Marlee Matlin, who plays the deaf woman, signs all of her dialogue, and William Hurt, who plays the teacher, then repeats it aloud, as if to himself. I like to hear the sound of my own voice, he says at one point, and indeed he does such a smooth and natural job of translation that the strategy works.

But think for a minute: Hurt can hear and can read sign language; Matlin cannot hear or (she claims) read lips, and can only communicate by signing. In many movies about two major characters, there are scenes from two points of view. In Children of a Lesser God, the scenes between the two of them are from Hurt's point of view, and none of them are played without sound.

I'm not suggesting silent scenes where we have to guess what the sign language means. But how about a few silent scenes in which the signs are translated by subtitles, giving us something of the same experience that deaf people have (they see the signs, and then the subtitles, so to speak, are supplied by their intelligence).

The feeling of seeing Hurt and not hearing him, of looking out at him from a silent world, would have underlined the true subject of this movie, which is communication between two people who speak differently.

By telling the whole story from Hurt's point of view, the movie makes the woman into the stubborn object, the challenge, the problem, which is the very process it wants to object to.

This objection aside, Children of a Lesser God is a good but not a great movie. The subject matter is new and challenging, and I was interested in everything the movie had to tell me about deafness.

Unfortunately, the love story is a fairly predictable series of obligatory scenes, made different only by the ways the characters talk to one another. I kept waiting for scenes in which Hurt and Matlin would discuss honestly the problems inherent in their relationship: If she refuses to learn to lip-read, she will be able to exist freely only at the deaf school, which means she is asking him to sacrifice great areas of his own life. Has she thought this through? We don't know.

I also don't know why the movie ignores all of the other ways the deaf have found to communicate. I am writing this review, for example, on a 4-pound, battery-powered portable computer, and I know that for many deaf people these machines represent an excellent substitute for the telephone.

Children of a Lesser God is not a movie about deafness, but a love story in which deafness is used as a poignant gimmick. I was reminded of such movies as Love Story, with its dying heroine; The Other Side of the Mountain, with its paraplegic heroine, and various other movies in which one of the lovers was blind, lame or from another planet. Most of the movies in this genre seem to treat the handicap as sort of a bonus, conferring greater moral authenticity on the handicapped character. This is a form of subtle condescension.

Despite my argument with the method of Children of a Lesser God, I found a lot to admire, especially in the acting. The performances are strong and wonderful - not only by Hurt, one of the best actors of his generation, but also by Matlin, a deaf actress who is appearing in her first movie. She holds her own against the powerhouse she's acting with, carrying scenes with a passion and almost painful fear of being rejected and hurt, which is really what her rebellion is about.

Among the supporting characters, Piper Laurie does a good job with a thankless role as Matlin's mother. And I enjoyed the studied cynicism that Philip Bosco put into the role of the old pro who runs the school for the deaf.

Children of a Lesser God is a competent, professional docudrama. It could have been more. Film is the medium of the visual and should be ideally suited to a story about a person who cannot hear, but only if the movie invites us inside that world and invites - even forces - us to an act of empathy. Making a sound movie about the deaf is a little like making a silent movie about the blind. It may be well-made, but doesn't it evade the point? [Ebert's rating: *** out of 4]

Labels: drama, high-school, romance, teenager
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Without being maudlin, there is a sense of film history here. 
Philip Bosco (1930-2018), William Hurt (1950-2022), and Piper Laurie (1932-2023) have all passed away. Only Marlee Matlin, born in 1965 is still with us.

Marlee Matlin won the 1987 Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in Children of a Lesser God. She and William Hurt had an affair that lasted for several years during and after making the film. She revealed in her biography I'll Scream Later that her relationship with Hurt was physically abusive on both sides, and that their fights were alcohol- and drug-fueled. She credits Hurt with helping her seek help for her drug abuse.


A Passage to India (1984) [PG] ****


A film review by Roger Ebert for rogerebert.com on Jan. 1, 1984.

Only connect! -- E.M. Forster

That is the advice he gives us in Howards End, and then, in A Passage to India, he creates a world in which there are no connections, where Indians and Englishmen speak the same language but do not understand each other, where it doesn't matter what you say in the famous Marabar Caves, since all that comes back is a hollow, mocking, echo. Forster's novel is one of the literary landmarks of this century, and now David Lean has made it into one of the greatest screen adaptations I have ever seen.

Great novels do not usually translate well to the screen. They are too filled with ambiguities, and movies have a way of making all their images seem like literal fact. A Passage to India is especially tricky, because the central event in the novel is something that happens offstage, or never happens at all -- take your choice. On a hot, muggy day, the eager Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee) leads an expedition to the Marabar Caves. One by one, members of the party drop out, until finally only Miss Adela Quested (Judy Davis), from England, is left. And so the Indian man and the British woman climb the last path alone, at a time when England's rule of India was based on an ingrained, semi-official racism, and some British, at least, nodded approvingly at Kipling's East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet. In Forster's novel, it is never clear exactly what it was that happened to Miss Quested after she wandered alone into one of the caves.

David Lean's film leaves that question equally open. But because he is dealing with a visual medium, he cannot make it a mystery where Dr. Aziz is at the time; if you are offstage in a novel, you can be anywhere, but if you are offstage in a movie, you are definitely not where the camera is looking. So in the film version we know, or think we know, that Dr. Aziz is innocent of the charges later brought against him -- of the attempted rape of Miss Quested.

The charges and the trial fill the second half of Lean's A Passage to India. Lean brings us to that point by a series of perfectly modulated, quietly tension-filled scenes in which Miss Quested and the kindly Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft) sail to India, where Miss Quested is engaged to marry the priggish local British magistrate (Nigel Havers) who is also Mrs. Moore’s son, in a provincial backwater. Both women want to see the real India -- a wish that is either completely lacking among the locals, or is manfully repressed. Mrs. Moore goes walking by a temple pool by moonlight, and meets the earnest young Dr. Aziz, who is captivated by her gentle kindness. Miss Quested wanders by accident into the ruins of another temple, populated by sensuous and erotic statuary, tumbled together, overgrown by vegetation and populated by menacing monkeys.

Miss Quested's temple visit is not in Forster, but has been added by Lean (who wrote his own screenplay). It accomplishes just what is needed, suggesting that in Miss Quested the forces of sensuality and repression run a great deal more deeply than her sexually constipated fiancé is ever likely to suspect.

Meanwhile, we meet some of the other local characters, including Dr. Godbole (Alec Guinness), who meets every crisis with perfect equanimity, and who believes that what will be, will be. This philosophy sounds like recycled fortune cookies but turns out, in the end, to have been the simple truth. We also meet Richard Fielding (James Fox), one of those tall, lonely middle-aged Englishmen who hang about the edges of stories set in the Empire, waiting until their destiny commands them to take a firm stand.

Lean places these characters in one of the most beautiful canvases he has ever drawn (and this is the man who directed Bridge on the River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia and Ryan’s Daughter among his 19 directing credits). He doesn't see the India of travel posters and lurid postcards, but the India of a Victorian watercolorist like Edward Lear, who placed enigmatic little human figures here and there in spectacular landscapes that never seemed to be quite finished. Lean makes India look like an amazing, beautiful place that an Englishman can never quite put his finger on -- which is, of course, the lesson Miss Quested learns in the caves.

David Lean is a meticulous craftsman, famous for going to any lengths to make every shot look just the way he thinks it should. His actors here are encouraged to give sound, thoughtful, unflashy performances (Guinness strains at the bit), and his screenplay is a model of clarity: By the end of this movie we know these people so well, and understand them so thoroughly, that only the most reckless among us would want to go back and have a closer look at those caves. [Ebert’s rating: **** out of 4 stars]


Labels: adventure, cross-cultural, drama, history, period


Blogger’s comments: A Passage to India is set in 1920s India, after World War I. The British Raj, the rule by the British Crown in the Indian subcontinent, began in 1858, and we can see evidence in the film of the civil unrest which would become Mohandas Gandhi’s non-violent resistance and, finally, independence for India in 1947.

Maurice Jarre (1924-2009) composed the soundtrack, which is very reminiscent of his work as composer for David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and especially Ryan’s Daughter (1970).

A Passage to India won two Oscars in 1985, for Best Supporting Actress (Ashcroft) and Best Music, Original Score (Maurice Jarre). The film was nominated for nine additional Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director (Lean), and Best Actress in a Leading Role (Davis).

In the film's final scene, Richard Fielding (Fox) returns to India over a decade later and finds Dr. Aziz (Banerjee) living in Srinagar, Kashmir, married with two children and with his own medical clinic. Fielding has brought with him his wife Stella (Sandra Hotz) the daughter of Mrs. Moore (Ashcroft). In this picture we see Fielding introducing Stella and Dr. Aziz.




In an interesting bit of trivia, Sandra Hotz was married to director David Lean. They relationship began in 1966, when Hotz (b. 1946) was 20 and Lean (1908 - 1991) was 58. They were married from 1981-1984 and divorced presumably after filming wrapped. Hotz had a non-speaking role in the film, and according to her IMDb page, it was her only acting credit.