After Hours (1985)

After Hours (R)

"8% is a bitch!"

A yuppie in New York working a dead end job gets a promising phone number from a young lady in a diner, setting off a bizarre chain of events in Soho that keeps him up all night amidst a paranoid nightmare in Martin Scorsese's funniest black comedy After Hours.

Featuring an all star cast of character actors, heavily featuring beautiful 80s actresses all playing ding-bat nutjobs like the stunning Rosanna Arquette (whom he'd feature in his masterpiece part of New York Stories a few years later), with lead Griffin Dunne (American Werewolf in London) pinballing between skirts in the early hours of the morning on a desperate chase for poon-nanny and subway-fare home.  The freaks come out at night, as do the paranoid, the psychos and the vigilante neighborhood watches apparently.  The unfortunate chain of events keep getting weirder and darker as the denizens of this New York City burrough stay up later and later.  If you ever wanted to see a Scorsese film featuring a weasle of a protagonist running for his life from a merrily tinkling Ice Cream truck, this is it.  It's light, it's dark, it's funky, it's also a Scorsese flick featuring a weaselly protagonist running for his life from a merrily tinkling Ice Cream truck, so big draws all around.

Meanwhile Scorsese's signature camera moves are turned up to eleven.  The complicated tracking shots, swish pans, push ins and zooms are in mass effect, almost a comedic echo of Hitchcock's nervous noir lens.  Comedy has never been his strong suit, but seeming to learn his lesson from The King of Comedy, the script and visuals sail through the zany lives and oddities on screen with an unconventional abandon and tightly edited.  The whip crash never leaves a dull somber moment, the dialogue's twists and turns veer from wry amusement to laugh out loud absurdity.  It all balances out and works, with its lovely quick pace and short run time, into one of Scorsese's most successful and efficient, yet overlooked, pieces of cinema art.  After Hours is his deepest foray into the surreal yet funny world of his favorite city; woe unto those who stumble into that world of artists, thieves and degenerates.  The Night Owls that stalk those streets don't suffer trespassers lightly.

8.5 Rat Traps, Beehives & Cream Cheese Bagel Paperweights out of 10 (GREAT)

To Live and Die in LA (1985)

To Live and Die in LA (R)

"West Coast Miami Vice"

A Secret Service agent's partner is gunned down by a nefarious counterfeiter, leading to a violent and reckless chase through Los Angeles alleyways and gutters that shows the very best director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) had to offer in 1985s lush cop noir, To Live and Die in LA.

William Peterson, a year before his breakout in Michael Mann's Manhunter, grinds through a great role and performance as Agent Chance.  A bungie jumping, scarf and jersey wearing man's man, Chance bends the law (and a few ladies) to get the bad guy, no matter the danger to him or his fellow agents.  Trying to stay alive is his new partner Agent Vukovic played by John Pankow (TV's Mad About You best friend Ira).  They are up against a very young raw Willem Dafoe (The Last Temptation of Christ, Platoon), a modern artist who burns his own canvas and prints his own money when he needs it.  Dafoe's trade  is challenged when his funnymoney mule John Turturro is busted and sent to prison.

Twisting and slithering through the dusty streets of LA fueled by the golden-synth tunes of Wang Chung, this forgotten buddy picture is a hard edged nightmare of pure 80s that can often seen to be an no punches pulled imitation of Mann's breakout hit Miami Vice.  The true life gritty memoirs of a Secret Service man's career leads Friedkin down a dark path, which is where William excels.  Having produced several masterpieces (and many forgettable pieces), his To Live and Die is a shock to the system.  The violent death, the Neon pink fonts, the metro-sexuality of the villains, the new wave pop music, the strutting and the whimpering male egos, the best car chase since his own French Connections, it all congeals into an artform that is almost dead and almost never was.  There are some slices to the film that haven't aged as well; the arty music video jump cuts in the opening montage, dancers in spandex and face paint, the Poprock soundtrack, the now cliche doomed dude who is "3 days from retirement", but honestly TLADILA most likely was one of the first to dip into those tropes anyway.  Plus with a movie so different in tone (a dark realistic look at the 80s filled with brutality and unforeseen twists all filmed in sunny California) and has such an uncompromising stance on story and speed of narrative, Friedkin's To Live and Die in LA is beautifully untypical crime and coppers caper that is fast, cheap and almost out of control.

8 Wrong Ways on an LA Freeway out of 10 (GREAT)

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)

Santa Claus: The Movie (PG)

"Ho Ho, Oh?"

After the megahit Superman: The Movie and subsequent sequels, the Produvers, the Salkinds, who were instrumental to that franchise getting off the ground turned towards another world wide figure and poured millions of dollars into special effects, grand sets and marketing into their new film target: Santa Claus.  A resounding box office failure, SC:TM is razzed for its dark take on Claus' origin story, cynical product placement in a film about the spirit of Christmas and over the top goofiness of both actors Dudley Moore and John Lithgow hamming it to the max.  The starving hobo kids drooling over McDonalds through the windows at the super satisfied fastfood patrons could have been sarcastically painted by Norman Rockwell as a portrait of 80s corporate greed and is completely deaf to the reason of the season.  This much money spent, this much whizbang technology utilized leads to a nice looking movie with entertainment (a million monkeys at a million typewriters...), but kind of misses the whole point of a Christmas movie.  Santa mixed with a kind of strange biblical spirituality, an anti-corporate message (brought to you by a huge Hollywood juggernaut),  and overthought/overspent script and set design really skew a simple story of a fat man who crawls down chimneys in the middle of winter.

5 Seriously, Just use the Xmas story we already know out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)

Crimewave (1985)

Crimewave (PG-13)

A ridiculously disappointing farce from Director Sam Raimi (Evil Dead) and his writing buddies the Coen Brothers (Blood Simple).  Fraught with financial problems, Raimi's second feature was edited without his approval leading to a film where you don't know where to lay the blame.  There are moments of delight, but the rest is a sloppy, cartoonish mess with bizarre noir-sensibilities (think Three Stooges meet Miller's Crossing).  Raimi's peanut butter to the Coen's chocolate frankly tastes like garbage, whereas a script made solely by the Coens could have been something watchable, or a totally wacky Raimi affair without the subtle quirkiness embedded in the script may have succeeded as the slapstick romp (at least for Raimi, others probably still wouldn't have liked it much).  Instead, and after heavy studio interference, we get a madcap rampage of two strangely over-dubbed murderous exterminators who happen into the path of a luckless milquetoast and his newly found "independent woman"  love interest, one of whom gets mistakenly sent to death row in an unwise wrap around segment.  The action is relentless, the comedy lackluster and childish, the set pieces interesting, and Bruce Campbell hams up his bit part as only he can.  The only true reason to see the film is the brilliant acting by the two villains, played by the late-great Paul Smith (Dune) and Brion James (Bladerunner).  Even with their odd Looney Tunes voices and constant howling fat men closeups, they bring a black energy to the proceedings that rises above the putrid frustration of the production.

3 Oldsmobile Delta 88s out of 10 (BAD)

The Last Dragon (1985)

The Last Dragon (PG-13) - Review

"Kiss my Converse!"

A thick slice of 1980s cheese, The Last Dragon is a amalgam of MoTown and Martial Arts, a musical reverse-exploitation film from the sunnier side of the century.  Bruce Leroy (newbie actor Taimak) has almost reached enlightenment through kung fu, like his idol Bruce Lee.  He wears coolie hats around his hood of New York City and fights injustice in the form of Sho'Nuff, the lambastic Shogun of Harlem.  Lots of music video moments and pretty high class martial arts happen throughout the film, with Leroy trying to keep his lady love and baby brother out of Sho'Nuff's hands.  The final confrontation where the mystical Glow powers arise is not to be missed.  Famous for its cultishness and musical soundtrack, everyone can find something to love about the film, even if for the ham & eggs acting or the heavy 80s goodtime nostalgia.

7 Reused Scenes from Bruce Lee Movies out of 10 (GOOD)