Blow Out (1981)

I really liked Brian De Palma's Blow Out from 1981. I find myself really into De Palma's neo-noir style, and this one is very pleasurable with one truly insane performance from John Lithgow (what is up with his collaborations with De Palma in this period?).

Travolta is great at this kind of thing, and it's a surprise that his career didn't move more in this direction.

Blow Out's mystery, its thriller elements, and its sound and editing are all excellent, although I think the script suffers a bit at the end, and I didn't quite buy the completely jaded finale and worldview that Travolta/De Palma offer us.

I watched this movie back in September 2021 before it left the Criterion channel. I'm not sure why I haven't written about it until now, but I got briefly out of the habit of writing about the movies I was watching for a few months, and this film was one of the casualties.

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

I enjoyed An American Werewolf in London so much. It's quirky and amusing and campy, but it's also very violent and rather merciless in its gaze. The direction is pretty great, and it's a pleasure to be looking at a naked David Naughton as much as this movie wants me to.

Weirdly enough I just watched John Landis's 1983 movie Trading Places and really liked that too. This is a director to whom I have definitely paid no attention, but he really knew what he was doing.

Bubble Bath (1980)

Habfürdő: Zenés Trükkfilm Szívdobbanásra (Bubble Bath: a Musical to a Heartbeat) was one of the weirdest things I've seen. The animation is so cool and surreal. The plot... is not interesting, but the animation makes this a must-see, honestly.

Outland (1981)

This looks like it is going to be a dumb, forgettable action movie in space, but instead Outland is really, really good. It's High Noon but in an outpost on one of the moons of Jupiter. There are some excellent action sequences. The production design is great; the cinematography is great; the score is great. The whole thing is fun. I really enjoyed this.

The Glass Cell (1978)

Die Gläserne Zelle (The Glass Cell) is an adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel. All of the plot synopses on the internet, though, are bogus. What happens in this movie is that a Tom Ripley-like character begins to be very jealous of his wife. He is very likeable, though, and likably played by Helmut Griem. He does not try to turn his kid against his wife or any such thing. Instead, he begins to commit crimes and cover them up, like any good Highsmith character would do. It's very exciting and dangerous and, as usual, I wanted this bad guy to succeed. This is compelling stuff, and I really enjoyed it.

The Fan (1981)

The Fan is a good and somewhat scary genre picture with some big stars but a decidedly B-film vibe. It's well made and campy, and I enjoyed it a lot. There is some typical gay-baiting happening at one point, and this, too, works well. The actual screenplay is not great, but the story is fun. One other highlight is the musical number at the end of the film, in which Lauren Bacall sings about diamonds and hearts and which she'd rather have. It's (unexpectedly) pretty great.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

I want to say again how old Roger Moore looks in these Bond films. He wasn't much older than 50 when he made For Your Eyes Only, but they've paired him with women much younger than he, and he just can't match them, despite his (apparent) skiing abilities, much on display in this movie. Surprisingly, this film – like Thunderball from 1965, which I recently watched – has numerous underwater sequences. The ones in John Glen's film work much better, and For Your Eyes Only is an overall much tighter film than Thunderball. 

The real winner of this movie, though, is Topol, who, ten years after playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, is a fox in this movie.

Oh! There's also an extraordinary mockery of Margaret Thatcher at the film's end that is simultaneously misogynist and delightful. No woman can stay away from Bond, even Mrs Thatcher!

Australian New Wave IV

Gallipoli is almost perfect. I have so many good things to say. In addition to being a wonderful love letter to Australia – like all films in the Australian New Wave – its also a brilliant anti-war film. It does its anti-war work by not showing the war, barely even showing the fighting. This film is an obvious inspiration for both Heartbreak Ridge and 1917 – also both excellent war movies. But Weir's film is also not merciless. Most of the movie is pleasurable, even fun, and the war is made to look silly, in many ways, as, I suppose, so many people treated the war. It's so very silly... until it isn't. The third act of this movie is outright bloody genius. There was a moment, very late in the film, when I screamed at how good Weir's choices were. I literally was just cheering on the way Weir represented the violence of war. (I'm not a normal person.) And the film's end is heartbreaking, devastating. I actually just curled up and sobbed when it was over. I loved this movie.

The Gingerbread Lady

Only When I Laugh is a serious Neil Simon screenplay with jokes, rather like The Sunshine Boys. This is better than The Sunshine Boys, but it's still a difficult watch. Marsha Mason is excellent, but most of this feels stagey and forced. Simon's dialogue often sparkles, and it certainly has the capability of being very funny, but it never quite feels natural, and this is a movie that wants to talk about depression and alcoholism and the losses that can attend it. So this often feels witty, but it never really feels true. Only When I Laugh's racist jokes have also not aged well, and I find it surprising that anyone ever laughed at them. They're not remotely funny.

Joan Hackett, in her final film performance, is absolutely great in Only When I Laugh. She reminded me a great deal of one of the acting professors at my university when I was in college, Leslie Rivers. She rather looked like Leslie and her performance made me think of her. In any case, she's great. She would die of ovarian cancer within two years of making this film.

Incidentally, Only When I Laugh is based on Simon's play The Gingerbread Lady (1970), which starred Maureen Stapleton in the U.S. and Elaine Stritch in the U.K.

Bizalom (1980)

István Szabó's Bizalom (Confidence) is excellent. How it is out of print is beyond me! What a great movie. This was my most recent selection for the unseen movie club. No one had seen it, but we all absolutely loved it.

Spetters (1980)

Well Spetters is a stunning early Paul Verhoeven film from 1980. There is a lot to say about it, but it is especially notable for a storyline in which a young man is beating up gay hustlers and stealing their money in order to appeal to a young woman who only likes guys with money. But then a gang of four men, led by the woman's brother, rapes this young guy, who, as it turns out, was behaving in this homophobic way because he is actually queer. This entire storyline is fascinating, and I expect I'll probably need to watch this film a couple more times.

Magyarok (Magyars)

Magyarok is respectable and moving. It's one of those post-1960s nationalist films that were made all over Eastern Europe during that time (Magyarok was made in 1978 and released in the US in 1981). At first I thought this would be a kind of you-ignored-the-Nazis-at-your-peril kind of movie, but it isn't that at all. Instead it's a powerful portrait of poor farmers in a small town in Hungary and what the war machine did to them.