Greystoke: Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)

As someone who is rather a fan of Tarzan I eventually had to get around to seeing the 1984 Greystoke: Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. This is an extraordinarily ambitious film and technically it’s extremely impressive. Sadly however it has to be considered to be not a total success. Part of the reason for its partial failure is its inordinate length - at 143 minutes it’s around 30 minutes longer than it needs to be. There’s just not enough substance to justify such a long film. There are however other reasons for its relative failure which we’ll get to later.

One thing that should be pointed out is that the name Tarzan is never mentioned in this movie. He is always referred to as John (his real name being John Clayton). For convenience I will however refer to him as Tarzan (which seems justified because the name does appear in the movie’s title).

It’s a kind of origin story. We not only get Tarzan’s childhood in the African jungle. The movie goes back even farther, to 1885 when Tarzan’s parents set out for Africa. Tarzan’s father is the son of the Earl of Greystoke and heir to the vast family estates.

We get Tarzan’s childhood in exhaustive detail. Too much detail in fact.

Tarzan’s first contact with civilisation comes when he rescues a Belgian explorer, Capitaine Phillippe D’Arnot (Ian Holm). Eventually D’Arnot figures out that Tarzan is the heir to the Greystoke title and estates and he persuades Tarzan to go to England to find his family and assume his destined position in society.

It’s obvious from the start that Tarzan will have difficulty fitting in. He’s fond of his father, the Earl of Greystoke (Ralph Richardson), but he is aware that he will always remain an outcast. He keeps reverting to ape-like behaviour. Tarzan wants to go home to his jungle but he is persuaded that he has a duty to his family to remain in Britain. The only member of the Greystoke household who is nice to him is the earl’s American niece Jane Porter (Andie MacDowell).

There’s a potential romantic triangle between Tarzan, Jane and the wicked Lord Charles Esker (James Fox) but it isn’t developed. There’s one love scene between Tarzan and Jane but it falls rather flat and is absurdly tame. Which is a pity, because it means we never really understand why Jane would consider giving up her society life to be with Tarzan. We expect a bit of passion but we don’t get it. The whole Jane sub-plot just doesn’t work.

This movie is very definitely not in the spirit of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The movie takes the position that Tarzan’s only home can be the jungle and that the wickedness of English civilisation will destroy him. Burroughs was much more nuanced. His original Tarzan is a man caught between two worlds but capable, up to a point at least, of dealing with the civilised world.

Of course the message of the movie is that the jungle is good and civilisation (especially the English variety) is evil. Apes are good. Englishmen are evil. It’s notable that that there are only two European characters who are sympathetic. One is Belgian and the other is American. Every Englishman in the movie is either a buffoon or a comic-strip villain. This weakens the movie’s central theme.

I can see what this movie was trying to achieve. Early on it tries to give us a vivid picture of the complex social and family life of the apes. When you listen to the audio commentary where the differences between the various ape characters are explained it all makes sense but I doubt if the average viewer would have picked up on most of this stuff. And if your movie includes scenes that only work when the director explains them to you then this has to be accounted a failure. All it really does is contribute to the movie’s excessive length.

It’s a movie that aims at an epic feel, and I can admire that, but the real focus should have been on Tarzan’s dilemma - a man trapped between two worlds. The movie is sometimes in danger of collapsing under its own weight.

One of this movie’s many problems is that it takes itself so seriously. This is a Tarzan movie with no adventure, no fun and no humour. The danger of such an excessively serious approach is that the movie can end up becoming unintentionally ridiculous, which happens at times.

It’s hard to judge Christopher Lambert’s performance as Tarzan. He was clearly giving the performance the director wanted but on occasion it becomes unintentionally silly. Eric Langlois who plays Tarzan at age 12 actually gives a more effective performance.

Ralph Richardson gives one of his standard English Eccentric performances. James Fox is embarrassingly bad as yet another villainous Englishman. Ian Holm tries hard. Andie MacDowell makes a very insipid Jane. It’s difficult not to compare her dull performance with the lively sexy sparkling performances of Maureen O’Sullivan in the early 30s Tarzan movies such as Tarzan and His Mate.

Technically this movie is a stunning achievement. There is of course no CGI. The apes are guys in ape suits but Rick Baker and the rest of the special effects crew really do manage to make them convincingly life-like. Glass paintings are used extensively. The jungle scenes are a mix of studio and location work and look great. This movie is a fine example of the superiority of good old school special effects over CGI.

What this movie desperately needed was some brutal editing. There are too many scenes that are there because they look cool even though they’re unnecessary and slow the film down. Scenes like that belong on the cutting room floor.

Overall this movie is too long, too slow, too dull, too self-indulgent and includes too much heavy-handed messaging. It’s clear that director Hugh Hudson had zero feel for the source material. It’s obvious that Robert Towne (the original screenwriter who wisely had his name removed from the credits) had some good ideas. What was needed was a much better director. It is visually spectacular but I’m not sure I could seriously recommend it.

Dead Calm (1989)

Dead Calm is a 1989 Australian suspense thriller directed by Phillip Noyce, based on a novel by Charles Williams.

It’s a nautical thriller. John Ingram (Sam Neill) is an Australian naval officer whose son was killed in a car accident. His wife Rae (Nicole Kidman) survived the accident. The accident was not her fault. They both need time to recover. A cruise on John’s yacht seems like the perfect answer.

They spot a black schooner. A guy in a dinghy rows across from the schooner. He is Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane). He claims to be the sole survivor of a bizarre tragedy. The other five people on board the schooner died of food poisoning. Hughie claims the schooner is slowly sinking.

John is no fool. He’s spent twenty-five years at sea. He isn’t the slightest bit convinced by Hughie’s story. He locks Hughie into a cabin and rows across to the schooner to investigate. It becomes apparent that very bad very strange things went on aboard that schooner. Meanwhile Hughie has escaped and he’s hijacked John’s yacht, with Rae aboard.

John is stranded on the schooner. There is no wind and the engine doesn’t work. Rae is stuck on the yacht with a guy who could be merely a bit unbalanced but could be a total psycho. The latter seems more and more likely. Either way he’s extremely dangerous.

There are now essentially two stories going on. John, on board the schooner, tries to unravel what really happened on that unlucky vessel. It seems to have been some sort of sex cruise, with some very dangerous games being played.

Rae, on the yacht, has to find some way to subdue or trick Hughie so that she can stay alive and rescue her husband. This is becoming rather urgent. The schooner is slowly sinking.

Hughie’s intentions are frightening because they’re unknown. He might be a killer, he might have been a victim. He may be sexually obsessed with Rae. Or, more worrying, he may have created some weird romantic fantasy in his head, a fantasy in which he and Rae sail the South Pacific together. He may intend to kill Rae. He may intend to rape her.

It’s Rae’s story that becomes the main focus. That puts a lot of pressure on Nicole Kidman who was at that time a young relatively inexperienced actress and unknown outside Australia. She is more than equal to the challenge. This is the movie that demonstrated that Kidman could easily carry a film as a lead actress. And Rae is an interesting character. She’s no action heroine, just a resourceful woman fighting for survival. And she’s fighting to save her man. That will make her fight very hard indeed. Kidman makes Rae likeable and convincing. Rae could make things easier for herself by simply killing Hughie but, quite realistically, she is very reluctant to take that step. She’s an ordinary woman. Killing does not come naturally or easily to her.

Rae has one thing going for her. She’s a Navy wife. She knows boats and she knows the sea.

While Kidman is the standout performer both Sam Neill and Billy Zane are excellent.

These three people are the only significant characters in the movie, in fact for most of the running time they’re the only characters. The three leads had to be good and they had to work well together. They’re all equal to the job.

The cinematography is gorgeous. The location shooting was done on the Great Barrier Reef and the natural beauty nicely counterpoints the unnatural horrors.

The only character developed in any detail is Rae. Having lost her only child she comes to the realisation that her husband is all she’s got, but she loves him so that’s enough. She will do whatever it takes to save him. Nicole Kidman never goes over-the-top but she does a fine job letting us know what makes Rae tick.

We don’t know exactly what makes Hughie tick but that’s a plus rather than a minus. It makes him more frightening. It also means that Rae cannot reason with him.

Dead Calm doesn’t try to do anything too fancy. It’s a suspense thriller and it doesn’t get bogged down with extraneous details to any great extent. It just happens to be an extremely well-executed suspense thriller. It’s obviously a must-see if you’re a Nicole Kidman fan. Highly recommended.

The DVD release is barebones but the transfer is very good. There’s been a Blu-Ray release as well.

Philip Noyce went on to direct the criminally underrated erotic thriller Sliver (1993).

Ladyhawke (1985)

Ladyhawke is a 1985 fantasy film and it really is a bit of an oddity. I think it’s a wonderful movie but I can see why it flopped at the box office. It’s totally out of step with other movies of that genre of that era. It’s also to some extent out of step with the mainstream filmmaking approaches of the 80s.

It was produced and directed by Richard Donner.

The setting is northern Italy. The time period is not specified precisely but references to the exploits of the hero’s grandfather during the Crusades might suggest the 13th or 14th centuries.

A young thief, Phillipe Gaston (Matthew Broderick), escapes from an escape-proof dungeon.

Local authority is vested in the Bishop of Aquila (played by John Wood) and the bishop wants Phillipe recaptured. He sees the young thief’s escape as a challenge to his prestige and authority. The bishop is something of a tyrant and seems to rule mostly by fear.

Phillipe encounters Etienne of Navarre (Rutger Hauer). Navarre is a rather brooding figure, obviously a man in the grip of some obsession, but in his own way he seems to be a decent man who can even be almost kindly at times. Navarre has a hawk, an impressive bird of which he is inordinately proud. There is clearly a bond between the man and the hawk.

But at nightfall Navarre disappears completely and a beautiful lady appears. She is Isabeau of Anjou (Michelle Pfeiffer). She has an animal companion as well, a wolf. There is clearly a bond between the woman and the wolf.

In fact Navarre and Isabeau are the victims of an awful curse. They were lovers, until they aroused the ire of the bishop who called on the powers of darkness to afflict with a cruel and ingenious curse. During the day Isabeau is transformed into the hawk. At night Navarre is transformed into the wolf. They can never be together in human form. They are in fact doomed to be forever together and forever apart.

A nice touch is that in their animal forms they have no knowledge of their human natures. All the wolf knows is that for some reason he must protect this woman. All the hawk knows is that somehow she belongs to this man. They can never communicate. They can only communicate very indirectly, through Phillipe.

Another very nice touch is that Phillipe is a likeable pleasant resourceful young man but he is a chronic liar. That turns out to be useful. Whenever Isabeau asks if Navarre has spoken of her Phillipe assures her that Navarre speaks constantly of the strength of his love for her. That isn’t true. Navarre is a man of few words who could never articulate his feelings in this way. Phillipe tells Isabeau lies, but they are true lies. They are the things that are in Navarre’s heart. When Navarre asks if Isabeau has spoken of him Phillipe tells him the same sorts of true lies. There are things Isabeau cannot bring herself to say but Phillipe has survived as long as he has by being extremely astute. He knows how Isabeau feels about Navarre.

When the hawk is wounded crazy old monk Imperius (Leo McKern) enters the picture. He knows something very very important, but he doesn’t know how to make Navarre and Isabeau believe it.

By the mid-80s the established formula for adventure or fantasy movies was non-stop action, spectacle, some humour and a dash of romance. When the sword-and-sorcery genre emerged the formula remained the same but with a slightly tongue-in-cheek edge.

Ladyhawke ignores this formula completely. The focus is entirely on the love story. There’s some action and some excitement but it’s handled in a low-key way and there are no spectacular action set-pieces. This is a movie that relies on mood rather than spectacle. It’s a beautiful movie but it’s beautiful in a subtle slightly dreamy way.

This is a movie that seems to be aiming for the tone of 19th century medievalism - the romantic harkening back to the days of chivalry of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and of Pre-Raphaelite painting. I think it does this very successfully.

The casting is perfect. Rutger Hauer was a guy who could wear medieval garb and make you think that he’d been dressing that way all his life. He plays Navarre as a brooding but very sympathetic figure. Nothing matters to him except for the woman he loves. It’s an obsession, but a noble obsession. Hauer does not give a conventional action hero performance. He’s much more subtle than that. We feel Navarre’s pain, but the pain is not on the surface. It’s deep within Navarre’s soul. He simply cannot live with Isabeau.

Michelle Pfeiffer is just right. The first time we see her we are struck by her fragile ethereal beauty. And we know that this is a high-born lady. There’s nothing arrogant about Isabeau, just the placid assurance of a woman who has known since childhood what it means to be a lady. Isabeau is definitely not a kickass action heroine or a feisty girl heroine. She has courage, but it is a woman’s courage.

When Phillipe meets her he knows that he is going to devote himself to the service of this lady without any hope of reward. To serve such a lady is an honour. What’s extraordinary is that Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer make this devotion totally convincing. Somehow all three leads are able to make us believe that this world of fairy-tale romance and chivalry is real.

The Bishop of Aquila is not a conventional adventure movie larger-than-life villain. He is a man in the grip of an obession. It has lewd him to do great evil, but the obsession started as love.

Ladyhawke never really had a chance at the box office. It’s a very uncommercial movie. It goes its own way. It’s a beautiful fairy-tale romance and I adored it. Very highly recommended.

Murder Me, Murder You (1983 TV-movie)

Murder Me, Murder You (1983) is one of two Mike Hammer TV-movies which served as pilots for the successful TV series.

Stacy Keach plays Hammer in both the TV-movies and the series.

My full review can be found at Cult TV Lounge.

Xanadu (1980)

Xanadu may be the most 80s movie ever made. This is maximum 80s overload. This is a Gene Kelly-Olivia Newton-John roller-skating fantasy musical romance with goddesses. Goddesses on roller skates.

Although everything is explained eventually it does help if you know that this is a remake of a 1947 Rita Hayworth musical, Down to Earth. This is one of Hayworth’s least admired movies but I actually love it.

In the 1947 movie one of the muses, Terpsichore, takes the form of a human woman and comes to Earth, and puts on a Broadway musical. Terpsichore is the muse of dance. The muses were of course demi-goddesses and their role was to inspire the arts and sciences. It’s a crazy idea for a movie but Xanadu takes that craziness and ups it by about twelve notches.

Sonny Malone (Michael Beck) paints enlarged versions of album covers as promotions for record stores. There’s a cute blonde girl on one of the album covers. She looks just like a girl he just saw. A girl who appeared and then disappeared. The guy who took the original photo doesn’t know who she is - she was just suddenly there in the shot and then vanished.

Of course the reason she keeps appearing and disappearing is that although she calls herself Kira she is indeed Terpsichore, and demi-goddesses can do stuff like that. She’s been sent to Earth on a vital mission - to inspire the ultimate 80s nightclub.

Sonny and Kira make the acquaintance of Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly). He’s a construction tycoon but in the 40s he was a band leader, and had his own nightclub. He got his start with Glenn Miller. He gave up music after a disappointment in love. She was a lovely girl. She looked just like Kira. The audience of course knows that it really was Kira, or rather it was Terpsichore on a previous visit to Earth.

Danny admits that for 35 years he has daydreamed about opening another nightclub. Sonny persuades him to follow his dream. He knows the right place. It’s a derelict art deco wrestling auditorium. Danny has the money and the construction know-how to turn it into the ultimate nightclub. It will be called Xanadu. The name is Kira’s idea. It is of course quite possible that she was the one who inspired Coleridge to write his famous 1797 poem.

Two years earlier Olivia Newton-John had starred in the smash hit Grease. These two movies are very different but they do have one thing in common - a sense of total temporal dislocation. Grease is about teenagers in the 50s, or maybe in the 70s. Or even at times the 40s. Nothing fits into a coherent time period, and that’s why Grease works. It exists in its own fantasy teenage universe. There’s quite a bit of that in Xanadu. It’s the 80s meets the 40s, but with a goddess from a couple of millennia ago thrown in. Nothing fits. That’s what’s so great about it.

I have no idea if the people making this movie were getting into the Bolivian marching powder but this was Hollywood in 1980 and people in Hollywood in 1980 were certainly doing a lot of coke. And Xanadu does have an 80s cocaine-fuelled vibe. When you watch Xanadu the first word that will pop into your head is cocaine.

The casting of Olivia Newton-John works. Her Australian accent helps - it makes her seem out of place in California and of course she is out of place in California. She also has that ability to be adorable and wholesome without being cloying.

Michael Beck makes a forgettable male lead.

Gene Kelly does not make a mere cameo appearance. He’s one of the stars. This is a leading role. He’s out of place here, but he’s supposed to be. He’s a guy who still lives in the 1940s. It works. He’s excellent.

And Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John get to do a romantic dance number together. Miss Newton-John also gets to sport a very nice 40s hairdo.

Visually Xanadu is brash, garish, vulgar and overblown. This is 80s style taken to extremes, but with added art deco elements. And Danny lives in a mansion that once belonged to a silent film star and the mansion belongs to the Edwardian era. This is bad taste elevated into an art form.

Every single thing about Xanadu is just so wrong, but it’s so wrong in ways that make it just so bizarrely fascinating. Don’t try to make sense of it. Just go with it. She’s a goddess, and goddesses enjoy roller-skating as much as other girls do.

The dance sequences seem to have been shot by people who had never shot dance sequences before. The one dance sequence that works is the romantic dance sequence with Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John and I suspect it works because Gene Kelly took control and made sure it worked.

Xanadu was of course a flop. Xanadu is not a trainwreck. It’s beyond that. This is the cinematic equivalent of an earthquake that levels an entire city. It’s so bizarre that you can’t help feeling a sense of wonder that someone gave this movie the green light.

They don’t make movies like Xanadu any more. It’s one of those movies you really won’t believe until you see it. And yet it is weirdly enjoyable. Yes, I actually did enjoy Xanadu and I’m going to highly  recommend it.

I’ve reviewed the original 1947 movie Down to Earth and if you love Xanadu it’s worth checking out (plus you can’t lose with Rita Hayworth as a goddess).

Diva (1981)

Diva, released in 1981, was the first feature film directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix and it also launched the cinéma du look movement in French film. One of the major criticisms of this movement is that it emphasised style over substance. We’ll get back to that.

Jules (Frédéric Andréi) is a young postman obsessed by opera singer Cynthia Hawkins

(Wilhelmenia Fernandez). He has made an illegal recording of one of her concerts. Since she has never made a legal recording this bootleg tape is potentially worth a lot of money although Jules is only interested in it for his own pleasure. There are people who want that tape and they have seen hoodlums after Jules in order to get it.

There’s another tape recording, made by a prostitute, which contains evidence that could bring down a criminal empire based on the smuggling of drugs and women. Just before the prostitute is killed she slips the tape into one of the panniers of Jules’ moped.

There’s another set of hoodlums pursuing poor Jules. They want that incriminating tape.

So there are two plots running in tandem. There are two sound recordings. Two sets of bad guys. Jules will become entangled with two women. Everything in this movie comes in pairs.

The two plots become fairly convoluted. Jules can’t really trust anybody. People are not necessarily what they seem to be. Jules is in over his head.

Gorodish (Richard Bohringer) may be on his side. Gorodish is an enigmatic figure. He seems to be passive but as the movie progresses he becomes more active and more important. There’s also Gorodish’s cute young roller-skating Vietnamese girlfriend Alba although whether she is actually his girlfriend isn’t quite clear. Things are not always as they seem to be in this movie.

Jules is more than a little obsessed by Cynthia Hawkins. He bluffs his way into her hotel room. He steals one of her dresses and gets a prostitute to wear the dress while he has sex with her. Then he gives the dress back to Cynthia. Yes, Jules is an odd young man.

Jules steadily becomes more obsessed by Cynthia.

There’s another murder. There are several cleverly staged chases. Jules has lots of narrow escapes. There’s gunplay. Things get blow up. The two plot strands never quite come together but that adds to the paranoia. Jules doesn’t know which set of bad guys will come after him next.

Apart from the obsession with doubles there’s a running theme of artificiality opposed to reality. Some things are real. Some things appear real. Cynthia will not record her voice because she believes that only a live performance is authentic.

This is certainly a visually stunning movie. The loft in which Jules lives is wonderful - lots of wrecked cars plus paintings of car accidents about to happen (appropriate since Jules’ life is an accident waiting to happen). Other sets and locations are equally impressive and mostly with a touch of the surreal or the hyper-real. There’s not much in this movie that we can confidently say corresponds to normal everyday reality. It’s not a case of dreams being confused with reality but perhaps more a case of art opposed to reality.

Beineix loved comic books and the movie does at time have a slight comic book look.

The Blu-Ray release includes a partial commentary track by Jean-Jacques Beineix. It’s interesting in revealing his thinking and mostly it’s interesting because it reveals just how trite his thinking was. Advertising has become all-pervasive. There’s a conflict between art and commercialism. Industrial design (such as car design) can be art. Wow, that’s all just so deep and profound. It’s what you’d expect from a first year film student.

Which gets us back to the style over substance argument. Personally I think you’ll appreciate this movie more if you see it as an exercise in pure style. Forget the substance. Who needs substance when when you can come up with style as impressive as this?

Diva is a must-see movie purely for its stylistic flourishes. While it came out right at the beginning of the decade Diva does have a very 80s look, but in a good way. And it is a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray looks great and includes lots of extras for those who are into that sort of thing (I’m not).

Romancing the Stone (1984)

Romancing the Stone was part of the 80s mini-craze for lighthearted adventure movies in exotic settings, a craze kicked off by Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Diane Thomas wrote the screenplay and it was not just her first screenplay but apparently her first real attempt at writing. There’s not much chance of a first-time screenplay getting picked up by a major studio but somehow Michael Douglas got to read it and fell in love with it. At the time Douglas was concentrating on his career as a producer and he knew he just had to produce this movie.

Then came another stroke of good luck. He could not persuade any actor to take the lead role so he was forced to play the role himself. Of course he turned out to be perfect and this movie established him as a very major star.

Getting Kathleen Turner as his co-star was a definite bonus. Hiring Robert Zemeckis to direct proved to be a smart choice.

Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) is a romance novelist. It’s clear that she writes adventure romances in which the heroine always end up with a dashing, brave handsome hero.

Now she gets involved in an adventure of her own. Her sister is being held hostage in Colombia. The kidnappers don’t want money. They want a map that is in her possession. It is a treasure map. Joan will have to deliver the map to her sister’s captors.

She arrives in Colombia and everything goes wrong. It’s bad enough being up against ruthless kidnappers but she is also up against an evil secret police chief. Everybody wants the treasure (which turns out to be a gigantic priceless emerald).

Joan quickly finds herself in big big trouble and she is stranded in the jungle. Luckily a rescuer appears just in time. His name is Jack Colton (Michael Douglas).

He’s not quite the kind of hero you’d find in one of Joan’s books. He’s dashing and brave but he’s cynical and entirely untrustworthy. He is in fact a bit of a scoundrel. He doesn’t rescue damsels in distress unless they can pay cash for his services. Joan disapproves of him and doesn’t trust him but she has no choice.

All sorts of dangers and mayhem and narrow escapes follow. Joan and Jack get some help from a friendly cocaine dealer who happens to be a huge fan of Joan’s novels.

Joan and Jack get chased all over the countryside, they fall off cliffs, are swept away by waterfalls, they have to dodge hungry alligators and they get shot at. They get shot at a lot. The action doesn’t let up. I’m not a fan of Robert Zemeckis as a director but this is the sort of thing he could do well.

Michael Douglas seems to be relishing the opportunity to play a non-intense role as a loveable rogue. We believe Jack as a scoundrel but he has real charm and we can see why a girl like Joan would be swept off her feet by him. And Douglas does the hardbitten action hero stuff well. A fine performance.

Douglas’s old buddy Danny de Vito is great fun as one of the kidnappers.

Kathleen Turner is terrific. Joan starts out very demure and very mousey and very nervous. She gradually becomes more confident and glamorous, as you’d expect since she’s now met a handsome hero. Turner is charming and amusing and very very likeable.

The best thing about this movie is the overall concept. Joan writes adventure romances. Suddenly it’s as if she’s living one of her books, and at the end she does in fact turn her real-life adventure into a bestselling romance novel. This is most definitely not one of those movies in which we’re told at the end that it was all a dream. This adventure does happen to Joan. But of course this is a movie and movies are make believe. So it’s like we’re in an alternative reality which is just like an adventure romance novel. We don’t care that the story is far-fetched. That just adds to the fun and the romance.

No-one watching this movie will care in the least about the emerald. We care about the romance between Joan and Jack. We don’t care who gets the emerald as long as these two find love together.

There’s mayhem but no graphic violence. There’s one very very tame bedroom scene. This is a movie aimed squarely at family audiences and I have no problem with such movie as long as they’re as enjoyable as this one.

It’s a wildly romantic movie but it has enough action and adventure (and humour) to ensure that every viewer is satisfied.

This is just such a fun feelgood movie. Highly recommended.

Subway (1985)

Luc Besson’s Subway was released in 1985. This is the movie that established Besson not only as a major force in French cinema but on the international scene as well. Besson has been considered to be part of the late 80s/90 Cinéma du look movement. Opinions on Besson tend to be widely divided. He has been accused of favouring style over substance. He’s also been accused of being too slick and too Hollywood.

I personally much prefer style to substance so that doesn’t bother me.

I do have to admit that The Fifth Element is a total mess. But in its own way it’s a glorious mess.

Subway starts with Fred (Christopher Lambert) on the run after blowing a safe. It’s not clear whether he’s on the run from the police or someone else. The safe belonged to Héléna (Isabelle Adjani). We soon get the feeling that maybe Fred was more interested in Héléna than in the contents of her safe. For obscure reasons she had invited Fred to her birthday party. Héléna is clearly way out of his league. Héléna is very rich, very beautiful and very chic. She is also married.

Whatever his motives Fred took something from the safe (a file) that Héléna’s husband wants back, and he wants it back very badly. The husband is the kind of guy who gets what he wants, or else. It is implied that he is a gangster.

Fred takes refuge in the Paris Métro. He discovers that within the vast underground network of tunnels of the Métro there is a secret world. It is a world of petty crooks and misfits. It is like an entire alternative society.

Fred is both a petty crook and a misfit so he fits right in. Meanwhile he is negotiating with Héléna for the return of that file. Héléna now finds herself becoming immersed in the secret underground world.

Although Inspector Gesberg (Michel Galabru) might not like to admit it he is part of this world. Gesberg is a railway cop, head of the transport police of the Métro. Like Fred and his new friends Gesberg’s whole life revolves around the Métro. He gives no indication of having any private life and displays no interest in anything other than the job, and the Métro. Gesberg has one great ambition in life - to catch The Roller. The Roller is a roller-skating thief who has for months been humiliating Gesberg and Gesberg’s chief subordinate, Sergeant Batman (and yes, there’s an Officer Robin as well). The Roller has befriended Fred. Soon Gesberg has a second ambition - to catch Fred.

It becomes apparent that the biggest danger to Fred is not the police but the goons hired by Héléna’s husband.

Fred doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t seem to care about anything. He is completely alienated from society.

Increasingly Héléna comes to realise that she too is alienated from her life.

Christopher Lambert’s strange disconnected performance works within the context of the movie. It’s not good acting, but it’s the right acting for this movie.

Isabelle Adjani looks gorgeous and she’s excellent. Michel Galabru is huge amounts of fun as Inspector Gesberg. This is a Luc Besson movie so naturally Jean Reno puts in an appearance. He’s The Drummer. Drumming is his life.

The characters are not terribly important, nor is the plot. The focus of the movie is the Métro and on the secret society that inhabits its darker recesses.

This is a stylish movie but the style comes more from the strange atmosphere of the hidden world rather than spectacular visuals. Besson was going for a distinctive feel. And he achieved it.

Subway is odd but it’s fascinating and mesmerising. Highly recommended.

The UK Blu-Ray from Optimum Home Entertainment is barebones but the film looks lovely and the disc is dirt cheap.

The theme of alienation is also dealt with in Besson’s two greatest movies, La Femme Nikita and Léon: The Professional, both of which I’ve also reviewed.

Body Heat (1981)

Body Heat, released in 1981, is one of the great neo-noirs.

This was Lawrence Kasdan’s first film as director and it’s a stunning debut. He also wrote the script. He was a huge fan of classic film noir. Body Heat is an homage to the great films noirs of the 40s but it’s also one of the defining neo-noirs. It’s more than just a recycling of 1940s film noir tropes.

Ned Racine is a two-bit lawyer in a two-bit town in Florida. He’s a lousy lawyer but he has considerable success with women. If he put half as much effort into his job as a lawyer as he puts into chasing skirt he’d be a great lawyer. He’s a loser but he doesn’t yet know how much of a loser he is.

Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) attracts his attention immediately. She is beautiful and she has class. He wants her. His pursuit of her is clumsy. As a ladies’ man Ned has no style but he does have determination. He just doesn’t get the message when she gives him the brush-off. He has to have her.

They have sweaty steamy sex. Soon she’s as obsessed by him as he is with her.

Matty is married. She tells Ned how important it is for them to be discreet. Her husband Edmund (Richard Crenna) is rich, powerful and mean. But they’re not discreet.

They both know that there is only one obstacle to their happiness - Edmund. If Edmund had some sort of accident, of the fatal kind, they could be together. And they’d be rich. Very rich.

It’s a classic film noir setup but there are some subtle differences. This is not just a rehash of Double Indemnity. Matty is a femme fatale but Ned is the active driver of events. He seduces her. He’s the one who suggests murder.

Ned has a plan. It’s ingenious but there’s a fair amount of adolescent wish-fulfilment fantasy in all of Ned’s scheming.

Very early on we get one of the greatest lines in film noir industry. Matty says to Ned, “You’re not too smart are you? I like that in a man.” It’s not just a great line, it’s important. Ned really isn’t too smart. That’s why he’s a cheap lawyer in a cheap town. Had he been smart he’d have been a big-time lawyer in Miami.

And there are genuinely unexpected twists to come. There are no perfect crimes. The cleverer the murder the more things there are that can go wrong.

William Hurt was not yet a star. Kasdan didn’t want established stars for the lead roles. This is the movie that really put Hurt on the map as an actor.

This was Kathleen Turner’s film debut and what a debut. She sizzles.

Everything about the Ned-Matty relationship is steamy, sweaty, sleazy and desperate. And cheap and tawdry.

The biggest single difference between the classic film noir of the 1940s and 1950s and neo-noir is the visual style. One of the most important defining characteristics of classic film noir is the visual style and that visual style only worked and could only work in black-and-white. There are things you could only do in black-and-white and film noir is one of them. It’s all about the shadows.

Neo-noir starts with John Boorman’s Point Blank in 1967. It hit its stride in the mid-70s. By 1967 black-and-white was no longer a commercial option. A way had to be found to create a new noir aesthetic that would work in colour.

With Chinatown Polanski and his director of photography John A. Alonzo found one solution. Rather than having dark, moody, shadowy black-and-white cinematography that complemented the dark, moody doom-laden subject matter they would go for lots of colour and bathe everything in bright California sunshine as an ironic counterpoint to the dark, moody doom-laden subject matter. It worked brilliantly. It became one of the standard neo-noir techniques. You can see it in Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct almost two decades later.

In Body Heat writer-director Lawrence Kasdan and his D.P. Richard H. Kline found a different solution. Kasdan came up with a masterstroke - setting his movie in Florida. Not the glamorous tourist Florida but a grimy little town in the middle of a heat wave. The kind of fairly unprosperous town in which air conditioning was not yet ubiquitous. Nobody in Kasdan’s small Florida town has an air conditioner. The heat is stifling and oppressive. Everybody is bathed in sweat. The whole town reeks of sweat.

There’s heat but we don’t see much glorious sunshine. Everything seems like it’s seen through a misty heat haze. There’s nothing healthy about it. It has the atmosphere of a foetid swamp.

There’s plenty of eroticism in classic film noir but it all had to be achieved by suggestion. In neo-noir it’s right out there in plain view. The sex in Body Heat isn’t the slightest bit explicit but it’s very sleazy.

Body Heat is superb stuff. Very highly recommended.

Body Heat looks great on Blu-Ray and the disc includes something rare these days - genuinely worthwhile extras.

Union City (1980)

Union City, released in 1980, is a bit of a puzzle. It attracted mild interest at the time since it marked the real beginnings of Debbie Harry’s career as an actress (she had played a few minor roles prior to this). This film then sank without trace. It got a DVD release nearly twenty years ago and then disappeared once again into obscurity. There is still no sign of a Blu-Ray release. It’s rather bizarre. You would think that being a neo-noir starring Debbie Harry would make it well and truly viable as a Blu-Ray release. And it is a very good and extremely interesting movie.

I suspect the problem is that it’s also a slightly weird very quirky movie, the kind of movie that critics are always inclined to treat harshly. It’s also the kind of movie that would have presented a few challenges to the marketing guys. The usual response of studios to such movies is to simply not bother promoting them. And the usual response of critics (including today’s online reviewers) is to assume that such a movie is not worth bothering with.

It probably also didn’t help that this was the only feature film made by writer-director Marcus Reichert. The fact that it was made by a Hollywood outsider was another reason to dismiss it.

Union City was based on a 1937 Cornell Woolrich short story, The Corpse Next Door, and this is a very Woolrichian movie.

It is 1953. Lillian (Debbie Harry) and Harlan (Dennis Lipscomb) live in a seedy apartment in a generic fictional city, Union City. Their marriage is not a great success. Harlan is neurotic and dissatisfied with life and inclined to obsess over trivial things. Lillian has tried to be a good wife but she feels unloved.

Harlan’s latest obsession is the milk thief. Somebody is stealing his milk. He lays an elaborate trap for the thief, with disastrous consequences. As a result his fragile grip on reality becomes ever more tenuous.

Lillian seems to be drifting into an affair with the building’s super, Larry (Everett McGill). Lillian is not really that kind of girl but she’s starved of affection and Larry is much nicer to her than her husband.

Also living in the building is The Contessa (Irina Maleeva). She’s not really a contessa. She’s crazy, but likeable and harmless. She does however add to the movie’s atmosphere of weirdness.

Harlan is in a total panic because of the corpse. He has no coherent plan to dispose of it. His solution is for them to move to another apartment, which would simply make the corpse’s discovery a certainty. He is descending into a world of madness and paranoia.

As I said, this is all very Woolrichian.

I admire Debbie Harry for taking this role because, considering that she was seen at the time as perhaps the sexiest most glamorous woman in the world, it’s a very unglamorous part.

It also requires a very low-key performance. Harlan is the one who is cracking up in spectacular style and Dennis Lipscomb is the one who is called on to deliver a totally over-the-top performance (which he does very effectively).

Debbie Harry has to counter-balance that. Lillian is just a very ordinary woman. She just wanted a happy marriage. She doesn’t daydream about being a movie star or a fashion model or living in a penthouse. She just wants a bit of romance and affection, and it would be nice to have a husband who actually wanted to make love to her occasionally. She doesn’t want very much out of life, but she knows that she needs more than she’s getting.

Debbie Harry’s performance is believable and touching.

Look out for Pat Benatar in a small role. Yes, you get two pop queens in this movie.

Union City certainly has very strong neo-noir credentials but it has a feel that is quite different from other neo-noirs. It has its own totally distinctive style, possibly another reason for its neglect. It doesn’t look or feel anything like other neo-noirs with period setting (such as Chinatown, The Postman Always Rings Twice or Farewell, My Lovely) or other neo-noirs such as Body Heat or Basic Instinct.

Union City has an incredibly claustrophobic feel. It also has a very non-realist look. The use of colour to create mood is extremely interesting. There is no reason in plot terms for this movie not to have been set in 1980 - I suspect the period setting was chosen to achieve a further distancing from reality, from the everyday world. This is a movie that takes place entirely within a nightmare world. This is very obviously true in Harlan’s case but both Lillian and the Contessa can also be seen as inhabiting a world of unreality. Theirs is not a world of paranoia, but but it’s still a world of unreality. For these two women it’s a world of frustrated hopes and thwarted love.

The Tartan Video DVD is long out of print but affordable copies can still be found. I found my copy without any great difficulty. The anamorphic transfer is OK. The only extras are Debbie Harry’s screen tests and it’s easy to see why Reichert wanted her - she nailed the part perfectly right from the start.

Union City is a very unconventional neo-noir but it is still very much a neo-noir. It’s a slightly arty very moody film that makes no concessions to the conventions of cinematic realism. It’s a strange brilliant little movie and it’s very highly recommended.

Carny (1980)

Carny is a movie that seems to have fallen through the cracks somewhat. It’s a terrific movie but it’s easy to see why it’s so often overlooked. It’s an oddball movie and it that doesn’t fit neatly into a particular genre. Such movies don’t go down well in Hollywood, or with mainstream critics. Studios are left wondering how to promote such movies and too often solve the problem by not promoting them at all.

There’s some comedy, almost enough darkness to qualify it as film noir, there’s an unconventional love story, at times it flirts with both the crime and horror genres. And it’s a bit of an oddity in Jodie Foster’s filmography.

This movie seems to have been a labour of love for Robbie Robertson, better known as the guitarist and main songwriter of The Band. He produced the movie, he co-wrote the story, he plays one of the three lead roles and he contributed some of the music. He had been a carny in his younger days and that is undoubtedly one of the things that gives this film an air of authenticity.

Foster plays Donna, an 18-year-old waitress who goes to a travelling carnival with her boyfriend. She’s starting to realise the boyfriend is a jerk. She meets Frankie (Gary Busey). Frankie is more or less the carnival’s geek. He wears clown makeup and calls himself Bozo and sits in a cage insulting the patrons who throw baseballs at a target. If they hit the target Bozo gets dumped into a pool of water. The more Frankie/Bozo insults them the keener they are to pay their money to try to dunk him. He’s a weird guy but Donna takes a liking to him.

Donna dumps her boyfriend and sleeps with Frankie.

Frankie shares a caravan with his buddy Patch (Robbie Robertson). Patch is suspicious of Donna. She’s not a carny. He thinks it’s a bad idea for Frankie to get involved with her.

Various dramas disrupt the life of the carnival. The carnies are used to that. They’re used to having to deal with corrupt cops and city officials. They’re used to irate marks causing trouble. Donna’s arrival is another disruption, threatening the friendship between Frankie and Patch.

Donna tries to become a carny. She gets a job in the girlie show. That causes more dramas.

There isn’t really a strong central plotline. The focus is on the three lead characters. That puts a lot of pressure on the three leads but they’re than equal to the challenge.

I see this movie as playing a part in Jodie Foster’s career similar to that played by Sky West and Crooked in Hayley Mills’ career. In both cases you have successful child actresses starting to make the move into grown-up roles. This is really Foster’s first romantic leading lady role. Both movies are coming-of-age movies of a sort. Both deal with girls who are outsiders. Both deal with girls trying to cope with making the move into womanhood and finding the transition difficult. In both cases the result was superb performances by the actresses in question in very fine movies.

Donna is a nice girl but she’s a teenager and she’s a bit unpredictable, as all teenagers are. Foster makes her likeable and charming. One doesn’t normally think of Jodie Foster as a sex symbol but she has her moments in this movie.

Donna is an outsider who desperately wants to find her place in the world but she knows she’s never going to fit in to conventional society. She dislikes that world and has deliberately chosen to reject it. But she needs to fit in somewhere. She has to decide if the carny world is the world for her. She is also aware that she will have to prove her ability to be part of the world. The carny world is based on fierce in-group loyalty. In the scene that was undoubtedly responsible for the movie’s X rating she has to decide if she is capable of that absolute loyalty. She has to decide is she is prepared to whore herself out to a crooked local official in order to save the carnival.

Gary Busey goes over-the-top but that’s the right way to play his role.

Robbie Robertson strike the right note of cynicism, but while Patch is cynical he has a fundamentally decent side that he tries to hide. The carnival is Patch’s whole life. He is initially hostile to Donna because she’s not a carny. He doesn’t dislike her as a person. She’s just not a carny. If Donna can persuade Patch to accept her as a carny then everyone else will accept her but the sexual attraction between them complicates things.

What really makes the movie work is the three-way chemistry between Foster, Busey and Robertson. They work together beautifully.

This movie is an odd mix of romanticism and cynicism. The carny world is amoral and not overly honest but they are loyal. The movie doesn’t try to push the viewer into making a judgment on them. By the end of the story you will have to make up your own mind. It's also refreshingly free of moralising about sex.

There have been quite a few movies dealing with the outsider world of the carnival. I wouldn’t necessarily say Carny is the best of them but it is the one that feels most honest and authentic. And I think it offers the most complex look at that world. It is a bit episodic but this is a movie that is character and relationship-driven rather than plot-driven. And the characters and relationships are fascinating. The relationships cover the whole gamut of human relationships - friendship, group loyalty, love and sexual relationships.

Carny really is a movie that should get a lot more attention. I love this movie. Very highly recommended.