The Sting II (1983)

There is nothing really wrong with The Sting II except that it isn't The Sting. The central con is amusing, there is some fun stuff in it, the costumes are great, and Teri Garr is (as always) a delight.

But The Sting II isn't The Sting, and it suffers by comparison. (Why they even bothered with the idea of pretending this was a sequel instead of just crafting it as a standalone caper, I don't really get.) Jackie Gleason is older. He's hilarious, and I love him, but he's no Paul Newman. And Mac Davis... well, Mac Davis is a country star. He's handsome, to be sure, but these guys just don't have the suavity and charm of the Redford and Newman team. This isn't bad, and it definitely doesn't deserve its abysmal reputation. It just lacks a kind of coolness that the original Sting pulls off effortlessly.

Le Retour de Martin Guerre (1982)

The Return of Martin Guerre is pretty wonderful. First, it's beautifully acted by Gérard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye, and it's gorgeously designed. The costumes and the production design are both exquisite. Let me just say again, Nathalie Baye is fabulous in this. It's a nuanced, gentle, surprising performance.

The plot is well known, since it is a sort of famous fable of a sixteenth-century man who comes back after a very long time away. And this retelling of the story must surely be the most accomplished there is. It's just excellent.

I watched this on DVD, but I think it is available to stream on TUBI.

Son of the White Mare (1981)

Son of the White Mare (Fehérlófia) is a trippy, psychedelic, beautiful 1980s animation fantasy based on Hungarian folktales. The opening is jaw-droppingly extraordinary, and if the rest of it isn't quite as exciting as the incredible first ten minutes, it's still pretty amazing.

I watched Son of the White Mare as part of the awesome Art-House Animation series right now on the Criterion Channel.

Under Fire (1983)

Under Fire is really strong. It leans on sentiment a little bit, but way less than it could have. There are some really powerful scenes in this, and it surprised me frequently, though I was not always able to follow the plot carefully – the facts of the uprising were not quite so clear to me as I think they should have been. I thought this was very good.

Trading Places (1983)

Trading Places is a very funny comedy that I enjoyed a ton. It's a cross between the stupid 1930s comedy $1000 a Minute and Calderón's classic La Vida Es Sueño, and it works. The cast is excellent. I fucking love Eddie Murphy and there's just no getting around it. He is so goddamn funny, and this shows off his talents perfectly. There is an unnecessary blackface scene, and Murphy says faggot too many times, and there is also a male/male rape joke involving a villain in a gorilla suit, but listen, this is a funny movie, unlike some garbage like Splash or something – a movie that has plenty of its own problems, mind you. I thought this was great.

Look for tons of excellent actors in very small parts, including James Eckhouse as a cop and Giancarlo Esposito as one of the guys in jail with Eddie Murphy. 

I watched Trading Places on DVD, but I am sure it must be available via VOD.

Project A (1983)

Project A (A計劃) is so much fucking fun. Jackie Chan apparently directed this back in Hong Kong after his first film failed in the United States. It's a blast.

Videodrome (1983)

Videodrome is... kinda great. It's obviously dated, in its effects, in its interests, and in its politics. But it's compelling the entire time. It's also weirdly sexy and totally focused on bodies and their capabilities. I don't think I understand why the film's two villains died the way they died (one explodes? and the other one rapidly crudesces or something?), but I fully liked this. It's creepy and fun and surprising – and it's like a weird sequel to Network.

Un Jour Pina a Demandé... (1983)

Chantal Akerman, whose shots can sometimes feel like the go on too long, whose gaze can occasionally feel unbearable, who lets the camera linger until it feels as though we don't really have permission to keep looking, films Pina Bausch's Tanzteater Wuppertal at work. Bausch's choreography is repetitive and can be painful or difficult. It's a perfect marriage of choreographer and filmmaker. Akerman's work makes here makes it seem as though all of life is choreographed by Pina Bausch. The backstage footage of the dancers simply doing small things like smoking or fixing their hair even seems like Bausch choreography. I loved this.

Blue Thunder (1983)

In many ways Blue Thunder was very, very weird. The technology in it is absurd. In fact, it's completely incredible (by which I mean not believable), and the film itself is strangely sexist – not that sexism is strange, but this film is sexist in ways that I thought were really weird.

Also, this film's politics as related to policing are not very well considered. The villains are (as far as I can tell) fomenting racialized violence in Los Angeles as a way to get funding for militarized helicopter patrols for the police... or something like that.

And our hero defeats them, although it is decidedly unclear whose idea this is or whom this militarized police force would benefit.

In other words, this film was still completely relevant 37 years later.

Either way this has some fun editing – there are good car chases – and the effects are pretty cool.

Ingenjör Andrées Luftfärd (The Flight of the Eagle)

Ingenjör Andrées Luftfärd (The Flight of the Eagle) is one of Jan Troell's grand epics. Sometimes I like his mode of storytelling; this one in particular, however, left me a little cold.

It's an odd story to tell anyway, since it is very much about a doomed nationalist project of the late 19th century. But I think the thing that sort of bugs me about it is that Troell doesn't really use his film to analyze how and why these men ended up dying in the middle of a frozen wasteland. Instead we watch their demise in a sort of detached way – not detached from the men's emotional journey but certainly detached from the context of that journey. Troell is interested in the men's experience. Fine! But, he indicts no one, really, except Andrée himself, as if the project was simply one of ego. This is unfortunate, to my mind, and it makes the film a kind of lone-man-against-the-elements movie instead of a real portrait of Sweden in 1897.

The takeoff of the balloon is totally awesome, but the movie (and, of course, the 1897 expedition) both go downhill from there.

Volver a Empezar (Begin the Beguine) (1982)

José Luis Garci's Volver a Empezar (Begin the Beguine) is a sad, charming story about a dying man. It's also very simply told. The film is a kind of tribute to people whose lives were interrupted by World War II, who left Spain and never came back. A generation – as the film says at the very end – whose lives were interrupted. I quite liked it.

Perhaps most improbably, of the 13 films that were nominated for the Foreign Language Oscar in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s – films by Pedro Almodóvar, Carlos Saura, Luis Buñuel, Francisco Rovira Beleta, and Jaime de Armiñán – this is the only film that won the award.

Two other Garci films were nominated for Oscars (Sesión Continua and Asignatura Aprobada), and I've managed to get my hands on subtitled bootleg copies of these movies recently, so I am sure I will watch them soon.

P.S. I have no explanation at all for this rainbow on the poster. Volver a Empezar is not a film about rainbows or floods or peace or homosexuality.

Testament (1983)

I sort of hated Testament? Maybe not. But I guess I also don't really get what this movie was.

There's a nuclear explosion and radiation is everywhere, and then the family we're spending time with slowly dies off. Ok. But... what's the takeaway? We don't really know the family well enough or spend enough time with them for the film to work as a solid character study, and there's a journalling convention that the main character takes up early in the film that totally disappears by the end when it could really have helped us identify with her. Instead, everything in it just sort of happens in a kind of daze. Oh well.

Kevin Costner and Rebecca De Mornay have small parts as a married couple with a young child. It was cool to see them. And this movie was also filmed in Sierra Madre, very close to where I grew up and where my parents still attend church.

Muddy River (1981)

Muddy River (泥の河) is so good. I can't believe we are all sleeping on Oguri Kōhei, and I cannot believe this movie is not in print in English! It is excellent. This film was released in the U.S. in 1983 but is not on DVD at the moment.

 

 It's weird that I loved this as much as I did, too, because lately I have been very impatient with films from children's points of view, but this movie follows a young boy as he learns some serious life lessons. He is the child of a couple who runs a small restaurant, and he befriends a boy whose mother is a prostitute and has set up her riverboat near the restaurant so that she can take in customers. (That's her riverboat on the poster.) Muddy River is about poverty and labor and growing up, and, I think most importantly, treasuring what we have when we have it. It isn't so important that we hold on to what we have, just that we value it when we do... and that we don't let our prejudices get in the way of the love we have for one another.