Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
The 1980s had a lot of big blockbusters, but I didn’t have nearly as difficult a time making selections for this decade. I narrowed down to 7 and the final 5 made sense. Titles I considered, but did not include: Reds (1981), Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), The Verdict (1982), Victor/Victoria (1982), Terms of Endearment (1983), Amadeus (1984), Platoon (1986), The Last Emperor (1987), Dangerous Liaisons (1988), and sex, lies and videotape (1989).
The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick’s first and only film in the horror genre was a brilliant success. While there were certainly stylish elements in horror prior to this, Kubrick brought a certain level of polish to all of his films, enabling them to influence future generations of filmmakers. Visually stunning, the film employs several thrilling techniques to ramp up the tension and add layers of angst and supernatural influence to the proceedings. It pioneered the use of Steadicam in following the young protagonist through the hotel on his small plastic tricycle. Add in the elevators of blood, the creepy twins in blue dresses, the decrepit woman in a bathtub and several other fascinating symbolic elements and you have a film that’s filled to the brim with inventiveness.
There was likely no better actor to play Jack Torrance than Jack Nicholson. He conveyed the cracking emotional state of Torrance with such conviction that it carried the entire movie. Shelley Duvall plays his frightened wife who must ensure her sons is protected from Jack’s eventual mental decline. Kubrick understood how to let actors pull out the characters in his vision even though he was clearly never an actors’ director. His interest in form and function were ably assisted by his compulsion for perfection and this is a film that shows that attention to detail better than almost any other.
Blade Runner (1982)
Ridley Scott went on from directing one of the greatest sci-fi horror films of all time to one of the greatest science fiction films. Based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Hampton Francher and David Peoples provided the adroit script while Scott provided the tension and visual resonance the film needed to succeed. Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckard, an ex-cop tasked with locating rogue replicants (bioenginereed humanoids) and retiring them. The synthetic humans were intended for remote planetary work in environments hostile to human life, but have come to earth and threaten order and law.
Ford tones down the swashbuckling demeanor that characterized his Star Wars and subsequent roles, giving Deckard an aloof presence that fits the story of a reluctant enforcer. Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos co-star in a stylish, meditative exploration of the nature of humanity and the threat of artificial intelligence to mimic human traits and blend into our society. Dick’s novels have been terrific fodder for films over the years and what Scott did with the material helped elevate the moralistic elements of science fiction into popular culture.
No original review available.
Brazil (1985)
The second of three science fiction films on this week’s list, Brazil is a more fantastical adventure than the other two films, relying on the absurd uses of technology and its trivialization of certain aspects of humanity we hold dear. Terry Gilliam took his experience with Monty Python and turned into a thriving career of strange and unusual films, many of them with strange fantastical elements, as a reflection of some of the more bizarre aspects to human existence.
Jonathan Pryce stars as a hapless government employee who’s mistaken for a terrorist and is subsequently pursued in an effort to bring the perpetrator of a mass attack to justice. As he navigates the dystopian world in which he lives, he uncovers the actual terrorist, yet struggles to clear his name as the government becomes dead set on bringing him to justice. Pryce has never been more effectively used as an actor who can make a ludicrously milquetoast figure into a fascinating victim of an overzealous government.
No original review available.
Aliens (1986)
While Scott showed how to successfully blend horror and science fiction, James Cameron showed how to switch out horror elements and make a sci-fi thriller that was not only faithful to Scott’s original, but moved the franchise forward with inventiveness. Taking place 57 years after the events of its 1979 predecessor, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is rescued and debriefed about her encounter, discounting her far-fetched story. When the colony that was to set up on the same planet the aliens were found on, Ripley reluctantly agrees to join the crew on an excursion to the colony to verify their suspicions and to eradicate the alien threat.
Made on a similarly small budget, Aliens made slightly more than its predecessor, ensuring the long term viability of the franchise. It was also significantly more successful with the Oscars. The first film picked up only two nominations, winning for Best Visual Effects. Aliens pulled off seven nominations, winning two for Sound Effects Editing and again for Visual Effects. Weaver became one of the few actors in Oscar history to be nominated for a genre film and was the first of her three Oscar nominations, the next two coming two years later in both lead and support. The legacy of this series is built on the tremendous success of the first two films, for which Scott and Cameron deserve equal credit. The subsequent films were of varying quality, but there’s no question that the 1970s and 1980s were a genre fan’s paradise thanks in part to these two blockbuster achievements.
Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
The last film on the list for the 1980s is also the film that got me into following the Academy Awards and thus built the foundation on which my awards fascination was built. Released in 1989 as the decade was wrapping a blockbuster decade, Daisy was adapted from Alfred Uhry’s successful, Pulitzer Prize-winning off-Broadway play about a wealthy Jewish woman and her Black chauffeur as they provide each other companionship through a tumultuous post-World War II America from the late 1940s through the early 1970s. Drawing a comparison between the plight of the Jewish people fighting off the discrimination that had persisted for decades in spite the results of Hitler’s pogrom and the struggles of Black Americans to earn equal rights and treatment under the law.
Morgan Freeman reprised his Off-Broadway performance as Hoke Colburn, Daisy Werthen’s chauffeur. Jessica Tandy stepped in for Dana Ivey in a role that had won Ivey several awards. Tandy traded on her lengthy career in Hollywood to sell her placement in the cast and her vast experienced informed her heartfelt and masterful performance as Werthen. Freeman was outstanding in a role that has often been decried as a thinly-drawn Magical Negro stereotype. Whether or not you agree with the assertion, his performance is no less impressive. Dan Aykroyd rounded out the top roles as Daisy’s son Boolie in one of his best screen performances. This is a film that acts as a fascinating time capsule of life in a segregated and discriminatory American past and helps the audience draw understand the position minorities, both racial and religious, face when they are treated as “others,” rather than distinct and important threads of the American fabric.
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