Tag: 1985
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FRANCHISE REWIND: Back to the Future, Part II (1989)
Back to the Future, Part II, 1989 (Michael J. Fox) MCA/Universal “Shark still looks fake.” I think Back to the Future, Part II might’ve missed the boat being released four years after the original hit movie. This was part of the sequel mentality, particularly as it began to blossom in 1989. There were more recent…
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Under the Eye: “Late”
“Late” We exist in a world where men with machine guns stand on every street corner and watch you. Where women are bound and gagged so they cannot move or speak. June tells us she was asleep when there were “temporary” inconveniences. When the Constitution was “suspended.” When women en masse were denied their jobs…
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Under the Eye: “Birth Day”
“Birth Day” “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt June distracts herself during the Ceremony by naming off everything she knows about the color blue. We get into a ponderous tradition very quickly with the show about how swiftly the fascism can pierce us so often and with so much…
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Under the Eye: “Offred”
“Offred” Let’s just speculate for a minute. This is our world. This is a world of the Boston Red Sox and Friends on DVD. This is the world of the free press, of Annie Lennox, of Bruce Springsteen, of debit cards, and over-priced soy lattes … but … Our world has gone topsy-turvy. Something has…
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Vintage Cable Box: “The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956”
“Sorry we were gone so long, but we had to pick up Hank!” The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956 (James Stewart), Paramount Pictures In what may have been (for the time) the boldest examination of American exceptionalism and “xenophobia” (though I hate to bandy that term in the wake of overuse), The Man Who…
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Extreme Cinema! “Lazarus Has Risen”
Oh my goodness! What are we doing here? Fifteen episodes in, and we’re at a season finale that brings us to William Friedkin. As brilliant a filmmaker he could be, he chose to spend an enormous amount of money (for the time) with Sorceror. Ambitious, beautifully shot, and nearly unmarketable, Sorceror would’ve ruined big budget…
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Extreme Cinema! “Is It Safe?”
Would ya do me a kindness? Don’t slam the fuckin’ door! So, we usually talk about movie directors on the fringe with their respective peers. The first episode we recorded was about the deceased David A. Prior, low-to-no budget filmmaker, Deadly Prey and The Deadliest Prey. Fred Olen Ray, Mark Goldblatt, Rowdy Herrington. Tonight, we’re…
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Extreme Cinema! “Don’t Use the Same Gun Twice”
Alternate Title: “McNaughton by Nature” Here we are again, nauseating you with another episode of Extreme Cinema – Action and Exploitation movies with Andrew La Ganke and David Lawler. Tonight, my stars, but we have two movies directed by John McNaughton, Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael and How to Make an American Quilt … just joking,…
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Extreme Cinema! “Fu-Man Chews”
Robert Englund makes a cameo as the bus driver in the dream sequence that begins the movie. Christopher Young, an enormously talented film composer, does the score. He did a great score for The Fly II and the Hellraiser movies. I know this because I have several of his scores on tape and compact disc.…
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Vintage Cable Box: Of Unknown Origin, 1983
“Watch and weep, you furry fucker.” Of Unknown Origin, 1983 (Peter Weller), Warner Bros. 1983 was the year of the yuppie. The unusual, one-line Google search engine description defines “yuppie” as a well-paid young middle-class professional who works in a city job and has a luxurious lifestyle. The term, being coined in 1982 by Joseph…
Misadventures in Blissville 