J.D. Hansel

1985

The Goonies Review

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From the Traveling Wilburys to Band Aid, the pop music industry has had its share of super groups, but for whatever reason, cinema hasn’t.  For whatever reason, while talented directors have worked together before, we very rarely see a group of different directors with different backgrounds coming together to work on a groups of films as a team.  I think this begs the question: what would a filmmaking super group look like?  Because I’m fond of ’80s cinema, I’d like to imagine something like a family adventure film with a story by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by Chris Columbus (the writer of Gremlins, director of Home Alone), with music by Dave Grusin (composer for Tootsie), and someone like Richard Donner (director of Superman, Ladyhawke, Lethal Weapon, and Scrooged) at the helm.  Fortunately, this is exactly the team assembled for this movie, and what this team produced is just as great a film as one would hope.

I think part of why Goonies is considered to be such a great classic by so many people is that it is very emblematic of ’80s cinema.  Even with a cast of children, the intended age group is entirely unclear because of how dirty some of the humor is, making it a family film in the same category as Ghostbusters in that it’s not really a family film.  It’s also a very good example of Spielberg’s conception of fantasy, giving the viewer the sense that something sort of magical might be found at that old Chinese antique shop, or, in this case, up in the attic.  The most ’80s part, of course, is the theme song by Cyndi Lauper, and the music video that was made to accompany it.  Somehow, even though that video is entirely different from the film, the combination of the two sums up everything that made the ’80s the ’80s, and I think that’s just beautiful.

Once I started watching this movie, it was hard to pause it – and I can say that for very few films – so I think The Goonies, as dated as it may be in some respects, just might be pure entertainment cinema at its very best.

Legend (1985) Review

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I usually avoid explaining the plots to films in my reviews, but just this once, here’s my summary of the story of Ridley Scott’s Legend:

The beautiful Princess Lily is never seen in her castle, nor do we ever see her royal parents, for some reason.  Instead, she prefers to spend her time with the lower class or out in the woods for some reason.  Lily is a completely innocent girl, yet she likes to pull cruel tricks on friends of hers for some reason.  She’s madly in love with a boy named Jack for some reason, and he’s a wild, beastly jungle boy who likes to be among nature and talk with the animals for some reason.  Jack decides to take her to see some unicorns, which are very rare creatures for some reason, but then she decides to touch one for some reason.  Unicorns must never be touched by mortals – even innocent mortals like Lily – for some reason.  She touches it anyway, and in her pride, she challenges Jack to retrieve her ring from the bottom of a deep pond so that he may earn the right to marry her … for some reason.

Meanwhile, a devilish character named Darkness is forced to live down below in the shadows (with limited power) during a period of goodness and light for some reason.  He sends his servants to kill and de-horn the only two living unicorns, which will give Darkness his power back for some reason.  Then an elf shows up to yell at Jack for some reason, and in one version of the film, he challenges Jack to solve a riddle for some reason.  Then the elf says that Jack specifically, a jungle boy he just met and knows nothing about, has to be the hero who goes to the castle of Darkness to save the unicorn, for some reason – and I really would have liked this reason explained to me.  Then a little fairy, whom the elf assumed was just a formless, bodiless ball of light for some reason, reveals herself to be … well, a real fairy with a body and wings and all that, but she makes Jack promise not to tell anyone, for some reason – and I really would have liked to have all this explained to me.  Then she wants him to kiss her for some reason?  And then Lily dances with her sin for some reason as Darkness walks out of a mirror for some reason and reveals that he’s in love with her for some reason?

I know it sounds like this must all make sense in the film.  It sounds like most of this would just seem perfectly natural and unquestioned in context, but there isn’t much context.  In fact, the theatrical cut – the version of the film the studio made to keep people from getting too confused – is more confusing because it has less context.  I understand more about these characters in the director’s cut just because it adds little scenes that give them more dialogue, even when their dialogue isn’t particularly important to the plot.  The director’s cut is unfortunately lacking in some scenes that strengthen the film, including a better ending, but overall, it makes a little more sense.  It’s still pretty darn weird, and I often have no idea what the director’s trying to do, but it makes a little more sense – unless I just felt like it did because it was my second time watching the movie within a few days.  (The director’s cut also has a score that’s surprisingly a bit better – the theatrical version has a cool ‘80s synthesizer score by an electronic band, which I thought I would love, but the director’s cut’s orchestral score by Jerry Goldsmith uses an unusual amount of synth as well.)

With this said, I should clarify that this movie is, somehow, really cool.  That’s the best adjective to describe it – “cool.”  It feels like I’m seeing something fascinating, captivating, hypnotic, artistic, impressive, innovative, and a little bit naughty in nearly every scene.  The problem is that these scenes don’t connect well together.  If watched with the American version of the soundtrack, filled with synth music, the movie might as well be a compilation of ‘80s music videos, because it has that same kind of aesthetic and that same amount of narrative.  It’s safe to say that, if my introduction to the film had been a video clip from any individual scene on YouTube, I would immediately be very eager to watch the whole film because of how awesome it looks, sounds, and feels, not realizing that the context of each scene does not enhance its power in the slightest.
This film has no psychological or emotional logic to it, and it hardly makes sense according to surrealist “dream logic.”  While it remains a cult classic because of how it sticks with the people who watched it as kids, and its imagery is indeed difficult to forget even for adult viewers, it has never been hailed for its story – it hardly has one.  It lacks drama, tension, or any sort of emotion because its pieces feel so arbitrary no matter how they’re put together.  Obviously, I don’t ask to have everything explained to me in detail like in Dark City, nor do I ask for everything in a story to be logical, but it is almost impossible for an audience to become invested in a story if it has bland, lifeless characters that act without clear motivations, scenes that take place without clear purposes, events that unfold without clear causes, and rules that must be followed without clear logic to them.  Other films can get away with a sense of arbitrary anarchy because of a fast pace and/or a sense of intense urgency, such as Big Trouble in Little China, but even with a vague “ticking clock” scenario, Legend never instills the right kind of empathic anxiety in the viewer.  Because of its immensely pleasing artistry and its successful transportation and immersion of the viewers into its distinct, yet familiar, fantasy world, it works very well as a film – just not as a movie.

Ladyhawke Review

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One of the personal projects I’ve been meaning to start working on recently is writing an analysis of a sub-genre of fantasy.  I call it the “Eighties Fantasy Quest”, and it’s basically a genre for films that feel very much like ’80s movies, yet focus on an adventure through a world full of mythological characters, fairy tale creatures, “high fantasy” concepts, or new things that feel like they spring from one of these three territories.  Think of The NeverEnding Story, The Dark Crystal, Willow, Time Bandits, Return to Oz, Legend, Conan the Barbarian, and any other films from the ’80s that don’t just have a fantasy element but in fact seem to drown the viewer in magic, mythology, darkness, and dragons.  Obviously, this is a very diverse group of films, so I’ve been trying to find a way to map them out – separating the little girls from the big brutes and the films from Pythoners from the serious adventure thrillers.  To help me with this, I decided to watch a film that seems related to this genre and that’s considered an ’80s classic: Big Trouble in Little China.

I thought Big Trouble was fun and all, but I don’t think it was quite what I had in mind.  It fits into the genre, but for the most part, I didn’t feel like I was “taken away” to another world – and even Masters of the Universe, which largely takes place in our world, managed to give me that feeling.  As much as I enjoyed how immensely ’80s it is, I needed something with more magic, whimsy, and fairy tale-like qualities.  It also has a protagonist that’s more on the “barbarian” end of the spectrum of the EFQ genre – the place where hyper-masculinity is sold to the male viewers, although I couldn’t tell if the film was sincere about it.  Big Trouble has an odd tonal inconsistency in that Jack Burton is sometimes a joke – an American stereotype who thinks he’s invincible, unbeatable, and irresistible, but is actually an ignorant clown – and sometimes he’s genuinely cool.  Regardless, I needed something a little less macho and a little more “classical.”

Enter Ladyhawke, the high-fructose corn syrup to sugar’s Princess Bride – I know it’s not really quite as good, but at times it’s surprisingly very satisfying.  The Princess Bride certainly has the more memorable scenes, quotes, and characters, but Ladyhawke has a lot in its corner as well.  Conceptually, this is the kind of story one wants from a fantasy romance – something more than the usual “long-lost lover rescues damsel in distress from evil royal person” bit – offering a clever set-up for romantic tension and a unique reason for the audience to be concerned with the characters.  This movie doesn’t have as many fairy tale tropes as Princess Bride, or even Labyrinth, but the high concept at its core (which I refuse to spoil for those who haven’t seen the film yet) puts a distinctly “fairy tale” kind of magic at the heart of the story, making the film feel like a fairy tale storybook for adults.  I think with the benefit of a few trolls, wizards, giants, dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, goblins, or dragons, it would be just the kind of fantasy story I adore.

With that said, if we shift the focus away from what the film does not do and towards what the film does do, it doesn’t do anything too badly.  It’s playful with the “hero’s journey” arc, giving two (or perhaps three) characters the role of the hero against a villain whom the audience really wants to see killed.  Matthew Broderick’s accent is hilariously inconsistent, but that actually seems to add to the charm of his character, who has some very good dialogue and a cleverly-written ongoing chat with God.  The romance is completely believable, and the movie’s closing has just the right amount of heart in just the right way.  What really sells the story, however, is the score by Alan Parsons, whose band has recorded some of my favorite songs.  The music Parsons brings to the film makes excellent use of the ’80s synthesizer, giving the film that special quality of being both very timeless and very dated in the best way possible.  When all of its odd ingredients are put together, the result is an ’80s classic that will probably hit the spot for anyone in the mood for a truly magical love story.

Creepers/Phenomena Review

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I think I’ve written before about my love for nanar, which is the French term for a movie that’s so bad that it becomes enjoyable.  I know I’ve written before about my love for movies that are nanar in some scenes and legitimately impressive in others.  Since I am finding more and more films that seem to fit this category, I’ll call this type of film a génial–nanar blend.  Usually I only note one of these kinds of films if I absolutely love it, which was the case for Masters of the Universe, but sometimes there are parts that are bad enough to be mildly enjoyable in some scenes and decent in others.  This is a bit more common and less noteworthy, so we don’t often think much of these films, but one that stands out for me is Phenomena, or as it was known in the United States, The Creepers.

Phenomena is the title I use for it because it’s the name of the original, longer version of the film, which is the version that I saw, so those who’ve seen it as Creepers may have seen a much worse film than I did.  This is an Italian film from Dario Argento, a name I didn’t recognize since I’ve never been much of a horror buff, but he seems to be a bit of a name in the field.  The star of the film, however, is not an Italian, but a young Jennifer Connelly, and seeing as how I’m obsessed with Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, I had to see this movie.  She does a decent job with most scenes, but fortunately there’s some cheesy and over-the-top acting in there to make the film nice and campy.  That being said, the consequence of an American star in an Italian film is that most of the characters are dubbed, and very badly at that.  This just serves to make the film exceptionally comical, but also very odd seeing as how the moments of what seem like entirely incompetent film-making are matched with moments displaying cinematic mastery – sometimes both seem to happen at once.

I still haven’t worked out exactly how génial–nanar blends come about, or how they’re even possible, but at least I now know that their home is in classic campy horror films.  There’s something about the desire to create a strong, original, and uncomfortable (yet somehow still fun) affect that is built into the old cheesy horror films, and it seems to be exactly the kind of thing that generates the génial–nanar.  I guess there’s no nanar like nanar noir, and between this and Phantom of the Paradise, I’ve learned that I actually like the horror genre far more than I thought I did.  The trick seems to be to approach cinema with a sense of fun, whimsy, experimentation, and love for entertaining.  I’m still not a big fan of being afraid, but blood as fake as this film’s blood, music as fun as this film’s music, and a script as nutty and lovably stupid as this film’s script, I’m willing to put up with a few jumps and skipped heartbeats to enjoy an experience like this film’s camp.

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Brazil Review

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SPOILER ALERT

I think I finally understand what happened here!  Not what happens in the movie Brazil – I could never understand that – but what happened to Labyrinth and Time Bandits.  Some movie buffs and comedy lovers may know that the Monty Python approach to writing movies was generally to come up with different scenes/sketches that would be funny all centered around a general theme, and then a loose story would be created out of stringing the pieces of the movie together.  Naturally, when someone who approaches screenwriting this way has the challenge of writing a more traditional narrative story (that’s focused on likable characters dealing with a dramatic plot, even if that drama is not meant to be taken seriously) we can expect issues to arise with the flow of the story.  For Labyrinth, Terry Jones’ screenplay had to be doctored in secret by other writers because it needed a lot of work before it could be made into the film Jim wanted (which still had leftover story problems in the end).  For Time Bandits, fellow Pythoner Terry Gilliam made a bizarre family film that makes no sense whatsoever, and is often more awkward and convoluted than entertaining.  For Brazil, Gilliam made an iconic ’80s movie masterpiece, but it had similar flaws.

Before going any further, I must recognize that this is, in some ways, a brilliant film.  As satire, it’s practically perfect in every way, and makes the human race seem hilariously absurd.  At some moments, its comedic criticism of war is better than Stanley Kubrick’s.  Much of the film is good fun, and the performances are perfect.  The world Gilliam created is brilliantly clever, and the visuals are absolutely outstanding.  This truly is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever laid eyes upon, as far as visual art is concerned, because the lighting, the colors, the set designs, and the cinematography are all spot-on.  It’s a masterful work of art that raises the bar for the genre of comedy films, and I can respect it if people love this movie a heck of a lot more than I do.

I, however, just don’t get it.  Every now and again, I encounter a movie that has me saying to myself, “What the heck IS this movie?!” more and more as the film progresses.  It’s a very memorable experience, and it usually means that the movie is going to mean a lot to me for a long time, regardless of whether I think of it positively or negatively.  This film had that special quality to it like no movie I’ve seen in a long time, if ever, and I can’t help but be reminded of the first time I saw Gremlins 2, one of my favorite films, and the first time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of my least favorite.  As blown away as I was with just how perfect certain elements of the film are, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that the story didn’t make enough sense.  Some of that special feeling I mentioned above was coming from a sense of being immensely impressed, but some was coming from being annoyingly confused.  I now understand why Roger Ebert only gave Brazil just two stars saying, “This is a confused and unsatisfying film in which the magnitude of the special effects, and the chaotic implications of the plot, make the movie hard work for any audience to follow, let alone appreciate.”

So, my first criticism is that the movie doesn’t make enough sense.  What starts off seeming like it offers too little with its minimalist plot (which consists of a man trying to meet the woman he’s seen in his dreams) eventually unravels into a psychedelic acid rock song that’s sad about the loss of friendships and angry with society’s constraints.  There is very little correlation between what happens in Sam’s dreams and what he deals with in real life, and this gives the audience too big of a chore when they have to try to find the patterns and the meaning in all this.  Heck, even the movie’s title, and its titular song of the same name, don’t seem to be very connected to the film at all.  There are just too many things that Gilliam did not communicate as efficiently as one would hope.

My second big criticism is directly tied into the first, as it pertains to the lack of satisfaction.  I’m not against a movie that doesn’t end with the characters living happily ever after, but I am against endings that don’t feel “correct.”  I may have written a bit too much about this before, but screenwriter Terry Rossio’s rules about how an ending must be set up, inevitable, and yet unexpected are a good way to figure out why one might feel unsatisfied by a movie.  If the simplistic plot consists of navigating through a dystopian future to marry a dream-girl, there had better be a good reason for missing the one goal we’re rooting for Sam to achieve, but this Gilliam’s only reason seems to be that he wanted to blow one last raspberry at western governments before he had to step down from his soap box.

I think it’s plain to see that I have mixed feelings about this unique work of art.  The various trains of thought that I’ve boarded because of this film are so numerous and labyrinthine that I can reach no final verdict.  I can completely respect the opinion that this is one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, and I can equally respect the opinion that this movie is whiny, bitter rubbish.  Any efforts to unveil what exactly I feel because of Brazil seem to be disappointingly futile, but perhaps the important thing is that it made me feel, and it did so profusely.  When it comes to rating the visuals, however, my feelings are clear: it’s in the 99.9th percentile, A++.

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Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure Review

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Boy, was I ever excited to see this movie.  It’s a cartoony ‘80s comedy directed by Tim Burton!  And did you see its trailer?  It’s bound to be great!

It stunk.  The movie dragged on forever with characters I did not care about and a plot that seemed pointless in the worst possible way.  I know that it’s not right to judge a screenplay based on the movie having not read the screenplay itself, but this movie seems terribly written.  Each scene seems to be without purpose, even to the point that many scenes in the film could be rearranged and it would make no difference.  The plot doesn’t built, the twists are dull or insignificant, the beginning is a waste of time, and the climax, while containing some strong elements, has a scene with Pee Wee rescuing animals from a burning pet store that has nothing to do with anything else in the entire film.  Why in the world should the climax be unrelated?  Who thought this was a good story?

That being said… this movie is so beautiful.  The darkness, the colors, the lights, and all the theatrical visuals make it a distinctly ’80s Burton work of art.  So, so, so many shots in this film are breathtaking, and they inspire me to try to reach their level of majesty should I ever become a filmmaker.  I almost wish that this film did not have Burton as a director.  Had he not done this piece of junk and instead worked on a project with a good story during this time period, he might have made a movie I would have adored.  However, if it led to the ’89 Batman, I guess this movie was meant to be.

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