Sunset (1988)

Late Blake Edwards is just not good. Sunset boasts a winning, delightfully comic performance by Bruce Willis but not much else. I love James Garner and Mariel Hemingway, but they both feel wooden in this. But, honestly, the entire premise is faulty. It's title is the rather somber Sunset, and it looks on the outside like it should be a neo-noir picture – a kind of Farewell, My Lovely or L.A. Confidential – but it actually wants to be Hail, Caesar!. The Coen Brothers would do this kind of silliness tinged with real issues correctly, but Edwards' version can't make the broad comedy and the mystery–melodrama make sense together.

Little Dorrit (1987)

Christine Edzard's Little Dorrit adapts the Charles Dickens novel into a six-hour film. Until just recently this was the longest film ever to be nominated for an Oscar. Alec Guinness was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. Now, the very idea of him as a supporting actor is relative here. He is, indeed, barely in the first three hours of the movie, but he is truly the star of the final three hours. It's a six-hour film, and there's no doubt he has more screentime in this than all of the Best Actor nominees had in their films, but oh well.

Edzard's approach to the screenplay is very cool. The novel follows three families. Edzard leaves one (mostly) out, and gives us one family's story in the first half of the film, and then rewinds to give us the other family's story in the second half. We see the same story the second time from Amy Dorrit's point of view. It's a smart way to figure the novel onto screen.

But the film is unnecessarily long, I think, and it misses much of Dickens' social satire and societal critique, focusing instead on family dynamics and interpersonal relations. Edzard's film is a much more general critique of capital, wealth, and greed. But there's no edge to it, really, and the film actually extols the basic (Thatcherite) values of hard work and austerity, though it is definitely a critique of the class system and how the wealthy behave.

I enjoyed myself for these six hours, though, honestly, and it's rather a stunning achievement – even though I thought the movie could have been a lot better than it was. But it's a great story, the acting is excellent, and Amy Dorrit is such a wonderfully compelling character.

I rented this on Amazon (it's two separate rentals). It's one of the last three films I need to see to finish off the 1989 Academy Awards season.

Scrooged

I'm afraid my takeaway from Scrooged is that Bill Murray is really quite a bad actor in this. Apparently Murray hated working with that king of holiday movies (The Omen, Die Hard), Richard Donner, and has said that almost none of what we see is Murray's own material. But I just kinda wished this film starred Eddie Murphy the whole time. It's a fine movie, I guess. It got some good laughs out of me when the Ghost of Christmas Present was hitting Scrooge in the face with a toaster. But mostly this was just sort of obvious, sentimental nonsense. I liked Bobcat Goldthwait a lot. And Alfre Woodard. But... meh.

I watched this on Hulu. It isn't exactly the season for such a film, but it's leaving at the end of August.

38: Auch Das War Wien (1986)

The tone of this WWII movie feels really off. Like, it's supposed to be quite suspenseful, and the plot tells us it is, but the director doesn't manage communicating that with us, so things happen that are very dangerous, but they just never feel dangerous. 38: Vienna Before the Fall is interesting as a portrait of theatre people in Austria right before the German invasion, but that's about it.

This movie was very difficult to find. I had to purchase a bootleg.

The Milagro Beanfield War

I loved The Milagro Beanfield War. It's funny and charming and all the performers are great. I found the whole thing delightful and exciting. How did Chick Vennera not have a better career?

Sound and Fury (1988)

No no no. I don't know what this movie is trying to do, but it's not managing it. De Bruit et de Fureur (Sound and Fury) is poorly directed, and it's a downer to boot. It's in fact so much of a downer that it starts to become laughable. 

We watched this as a part of my unseen movie club, and I don't know how my friend Greg got ahold of it, but I think we were all a little embarrassed by it. Greg protested that the director, Jean-Claude Brisseau, was something of a phenom when Sound and Fury came out and that Sound and Fury itself was a Cannes darling back in 1988. I think all of us were skeptical, and then, I'm not kidding, the day after we watched this, MUBI had another Brisseau movie as their film of the day.

Greg later told me, "Well, he did call it Sound and Fury, after all."

"Signifying nothing?" I said.

"Exactly," replied Greg.

Mala Noche (1985)

Mala Noche (Bad Night) is a movie about yearning and unsatisfied desire. It's frustrating for this reason but also very interesting. It's intriguing to note how much earlier than Gregg Araki Mala Noche is, although clearly Araki and Van Sant are very similar. This movie is, in many ways, much better than an Araki movie, but it is definitely not as sexy as an Araki movie. Either way, this was gayportant and I'm glad I watched it.

Un Zoo la Nuit (1987)

I watched Jean-Claude Lauzon's Un Zoo, la Nuit because it has a male rape sequence in it. In fact, the movie opens with this act of violence, which is designed to communicate quickly and directly what kind of world we are in. This works, but then the movie itself turns out to be rather an excellent story that is about a father and son at the same time as it works as a crime film (with a very strange villain who is a gay male cop). The lead performance by Gilles Maheu is wonderful. I see why it is hard to find this movie, but I really enjoyed it.