"The Pancatantra" by Visnu Sarma (Date Unknown)

"So, when Chaste had laid her eggs on the strand, the Ocean, who had been listening to the previous conversation of the lapwing pair, now thought to himself: 'Oho!  Well, well, well; if there isn't sound sense in the saying:

"'Fearing that the sky might fall down,

"'the lapwing rests with feet stretched up,

"'Who in the world is not conceited

"'O'er the image he creates of himself!'"

The Pancatantra is a very, very old book, and its author, much like Homer, is probably more a myth himself than an actual person.  If he ever existed he would have lived well over a thousand years ago, and his medium of composition would have been, according to tradition at least, Sanskrit.

The content of The Pancatantra (or "Panchatantra") is a lot easier to describe than its origins.  It is a book (or series of books) written for the instruction of princes in the art of statecraft, with its narratives consisting of animal stories which are nested one inside the other.  It bears a lot of similarities to The One Thousand and One Nights, a much later work which was almost certainly influenced by The Pancatantra.

Visnu Sarma's (or "Vishnu Sharma") work is divided into five sections, each focusing on a particular aspect of a ruler's function and duties.  Each section contains a framing narrative in which the animal (and occasionally human) characters contend with one another, with various characters interrupting the framing narrative to offer stories or parables which illuminate whatever point is being made.  It can be a dizzying read at times, and it's often hard to remember who's talking, or which sub-narrative is being discussed.  The Pancatantra requires a lot of concentration from its reader, and I can't say that I was always up to the task.

This book is also, it must be admitted, extremely misogynistic.  The female characters in the Pancatantra are almost always lascivious, deceitful and easily duped, while most of the male characters, when exhibiting similar failings, are always given the benefit of the doubt.  The status of women in whatever society or societies gave birth to The Pancatantra must have been low indeed, and this low regard for the female sex often mediates against whatever wisdom The Pancatantra's stories are trying to impart.

On top of all this there's the problem of extracting some kind of insight from what is, at its heart, an extremely contradictory work.  For every "thou shalt" offered by its characters there's an equally appealing "thou shalt not," and one can't help but wonder what people in ancient times would have made of The Pancatantra beyond the weird interest to be found in stories of men imitating gods, gods imitating men, and lion kings beset by bad councilors.

As someone with an interest in Indian religion and philosophy who's also read The Upanishads, The Mahabharata and similar works, I can't say that The Pancatantra is required reading.  It does shed a certain light on several works of world literature that came after it, and I did find parts of it memorable, but I wouldn't say that it was, on the whole, worth the effort.

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Still More 90s Movies: 1990-1992

I'll be adding to this as I go along.  These movies are presented in the order I enjoyed them, from most to least liked.

1. Paris Trout (1991)

A small town shopkeeper exacts a terrible revenge after a customer refuses to pay back a loan.  This movie has its issues: the relationship between Dennis Hopper's character and his mother could have been demonstrated better, the ending isn't the slam dunk you want it to be, and I wasn't buying the love triangle, but the performances are great and there are two scenes in this movie that are truly hard to watch.

Paris Trout never arrived in theaters, but instead went straight to Showtime.  It was directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, Jake Gyllenhaal and Maggie Gyllenhaal's father.

In another timeline Dennis Hopper was a much bigger star.  It's almost a shame he was so erratic at pivotal points in his career.  Then again maybe that same eccentricity is exactly what led him to so many memorable roles.

2. Neon City (1991)

Vanity was FINE.

...and I like the idea of a "bright."  In terms of storytelling you could go in a lot of different directions with that one.

Neon City, like Omega Cop and its sequel Karate Cop below, is essentially a Western set in the near future, with the differences being that Neon City had an actual budget, a competent director, people who could act and an above average screenplay.  In it Michael Ironside plays a bounty hunter on a quest for revenge, with Vanity as a bounty he picks up along his way.

It's a surprisingly good movie.  In the city/town scenes the lower production values show, but other than that it's well acted and interesting throughout.

3. The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish (1991)

The most French English-language movie you're likely to see.  The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish offers a very whimsical love story in which Bob Hoskins plays a devotional photographer, Jeff Goldblum plays a would-be Jesus, and Natasha Richardson plays the object of their affections.  It's far from the best thing any of the actors involved have done, but it's very charming nonetheless.

4. Men at Work (1990)

It doesn't really get "funny" until Keith David shows up, but real-life brothers (and mullet aficionados) Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez have a lot of chemistry.  Estevez was also a serviceable director as early 90s comedies go. 

Men at Work was filmed and edited somewhere between the first Young Guns and Young Guns II, at a transitional point in both Sheen and Estevez's careers.  Estevez would go on to do The Mighty Ducks and Another Stakeout, while Sheen's credits include Navy SEALs and Hot Shots!

5. Moon 44 (1990)

Director Roland Emmerich's sixth movie, and the last before his departure from then-West Germany for the sunnier hills of Hollywood.  His following movie would be 1992's Universal Soldier, and from there he'd move on to Stargate and Independence Day.  I think I might like his West German catalog.  Those movies look weird.

And hey there's Michael Pare!  Whatever happened to Michael Pare?  Well, post-The Philadelphia Experiment he did (and is still doing) a whole lotta movies you probably never heard of, unheard-of classics such as Elite Target and Shark Island.

The rest of the cast?  Well, there's the bad guy from Cobra, "Evil Ed" from the original Fright Night and, of all people, Malcolm McDowell.  I guess he was free that weekend.

The "plot" is something like a prison movie meets Top Gun in space - but with helicopters.  Just don't ask me what they're mining on that planet, or why whatever they're mining is so important.  Those parts of the movie don't make much sense.

6. Omega Cop (1990)*

There's "so bad it's good" and then there's "so bad it's better."  This one, along with Moon 44 above, definitely belongs to the latter category.

Star Ron Manchini predicated his brief but obscure career on Chuck Norris once referring to him as "tough," and from a stint in the pages of magazines like Black Belt he went on to do a series of action movies you've probably never heard of.

In Omega Cop the near future is beset by solar flares which inexplicably turn people evil, leaving Manchini to contend with the mutants and/or murderous cancer survivors plaguing Los Angeles.

Manchini, it must be said, was an actor of such ability that he made even Chuck Norris look like a polished thespian, and his entourage of struggling actresses only show him to further disadvantage.

Oh, and Adam West (TV's Batman!) plays Manchini's boss.  The scenes the two of them share are probably the highlights - or maybe I should say lowlights - of the movie.

7. Masters of Menace (1990)

David Rasche (Sledgehammer!) and his gang of Roadmasters terrorize the "straights," with hilarity ensuing.  Alongside Men at Work this is one of the two more professionally produced 1990 films discussed here, even if it features a cast better known from television and went direct-to-video.

That Confederate flag wouldn't, if you'll excuse the pun, fly now, but this movie does a decent job of maintaining that Animal House vibe.  Some of the gags are still funny, and the cast is very engaging.

Fun Fact: Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi and John Candy all appear in this movie.

8. Karate Cop (1991)**

"I'd like to, but my feet are killing me!"

"...and everybody else!"

The sequel to 1990's Omega Cop.

Ron Marchini returns to dispense justice in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, this time with slightly higher production values.  It's not as enjoyably crappy as Omega Cop but it's good for a few laughs.

David Carradine pops up in this one.  In 1991 his career wasn't exactly flourishing.

9. Nothing but Trouble (1991)

I must have seen this back in the day.  As I sat watching it I began to remember some of the lines.  I'm sure I never saw it in the theater, so it must have been on cable at some point.

It's far from perfect, and I'm not sure that the house full of traps is used as effectively as it could be, but Nothing but Trouble is relatively fun and still somewhat amusing.  Director Dan Aykroyd and John Candy do double and triple duty as other characters in the film, and Chevy Chase was always a serviceable straight man.

The part I'd completely forgotten was Demi Moore.  In 1991 she was between Ghost and A Few Good Men.  When you think about "Bobo" and 'Lil Debbull" in Nothing but Trouble, and then flash forward to Moore's role in The Substance, this movie seems very prescient.

And hey, check it out!  Digital Underground!  If you squint real hard you can just make out a young Tupac Shakur in their midst.  This was his first movie, and no, he wasn't in Digital Underground very long.

Fun Fact: This movie was to some extent inspired by Hellraiser.

10. Wilding (1990)

You know you're in trouble when the editor decides to share all the key moments from the movie in the opening credits.  Why?  Because that was all the film they had!  No money left over for a credit sequence!

Helmed by John Travolta's older brother Joey and the inestimable Wings Hauser, this one's so bad it demands to be seen.  It was filmed in Yuma, Arizona of all places, and none of the cast and crew went on to fame and fortune afterward.

11. The Boneyard (1991)

Horror "comedy" that isn't especially funny.  If you ever want to see the difference between actors with presence and actors without this is the film to watch.  Phyllis Diller and Norman Fell weren't exactly Hollywood heavyweights, but even so their short appearances in this movie distract mightily from the other, less emotive actors in their midst.

12. Seedpeople (1992)

Charles Band, that latter-day Roger Corman, brings us this latter-day ripoff of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  It might have been cheesy fun if the gore wasn't constantly interrupted by tedious stretches of soap opera-worthy dialogue.

13. Amityville 1992: It's About Time (1992)

The clock idea is/was interesting.  Maybe if they'd just taken that, and focused in on every room in the house inhabiting a different time period, or on time moving faster or slower in each room, they could have built up to the idea of each member of the family moving through a different causal loop, with these loops converging in the movie's final scenes.

Yeah, that could have worked.  But instead of that we got (and are getting, and will get) another lame haunted house movie wherein the various characters' actions don't make much sense, both from their own perspectives and from the perspectives of other characters inhabiting the same movie.

14. Liebestraum (1991)

Sometimes "sexy," mostly pretentious film noir offering from director Mike Figgis.  Figgis would be nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Leaving Las Vegas a few years later, and there are elements of that movie in this one, but it's not nearly as good.

15. Short Time (1990)

HA HA HA blood diseases are HILARIOUS!!

Or not.  Dabney Coleman (!) stars as a cop on the verge of retirement notified that he only has a short time to live, with Matt Frewer (a.k.a. "Max Headroom") as his partner and Teri Garr (!) as his ex-wife.

And NONE of it is even remotely funny, despite the fact that this was supposed to be a comedy.

16. Spaced Invaders (1990)

Invading Martians are mistaken for trick or treaters and Halloween hilarity ensues.  Or does it?

This is the kind of movie I remember from the late 80s/early 90s: kid-friendly films with a lot of sequel and merchandising potential.  The scripts for a lot of these movies?  They were beside the point.

17. The Dream Machine (1991)

You've seen Corey Haim in The Lost Boys; maybe you've also seen him in License to Drive or Dream a Little Dream, but what about The Dream Machine?  Have you ventured down that particular rabbit hole yet?

No?  If so, good for you.  This movie just CRAWLS by, with neither a single laugh nor a single titillating moment to be found in its 1.5 hour runtime.  It was obviously made for Haim's teenage fans, most of whom had already deserted him by 1991.

18. Denial (1990)

Robin Wright and Jason Patric mope around and say cryptic things to themselves, each other, and whoever else is handy.  If you've ever had to sit through a particularly tedious drama class, this movie feels exactly like that.  One of the most excruciating things I've seen in a long time.

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Still More 80s Movies 5: Oscar Winners

Still More 70s Movies 5: Oscar Winners

Still More 60s Movies 5: Oscar Winners

Still More 80s Movies 4

*Some sources say 1989, not 1990 on this one.  It was probably direct-to-video, so I doubt it matters much.

**The video on YouTube is of extremely poor quality.  Sadly the Criterion version was not available!

Still More 80s Movies 5: Oscar Winners

Everything said in the intro to the Still More 60s Movies 5 entry still stands.  On to the next!

1980

1. Best Foreign Language Film: The Tin Drum

I read and loved the book.  One of the best novels ever.

The movie version is very faithful to the novel, which makes sense given that Gunther Grass acted as advisor to the production.  The "sex scenes" involving then-11 year old David Bennent were very controversial at the time, and the film was banned in several countries, but The Tin Drum was critically acclaimed, and I've seen much worse in much earlier films.

Fun Fact: Star David Bennent would go on to appear in 1985's Legend alongside Tom Cruise and Mia Sara.  That one role was as far into American films as he ever ventured.

2. Best Music: A Little Romance

An American girl (Diane Lane!) living in Paris falls in love with a French boy she meets on a film set.  Director George Roy Hill also directed The Sting and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, two movies which are featured in this one.  He'd only do three more movies in the 80s: The World According to Garp, The Little Drummer Girl and the Chevy Chase vehicle Funny Farm before going on to teach drama at Yale.

1981

1. Best Foreign Language Film: Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

A factory girl searches for love in Russia's biggest city.  I didn't like this one as much as Dersu Uzala, another Russian movie seen recently, but it was still very enjoyable.  The story is framed as a debate between modernism and traditional Russian values, and I'm not sure that the protagonist makes the right choice at the end, but then again it's not my culture, and her settling down with a man who seems both extremely proud and extremely temperamental makes a certain kind of sense.

Older Russian movies never seem to have the "hook" seen in Western movies: that crucial opening scene present to pique the viewer's interest.  It's a very different approach to storytelling.

2. Best Documentary: From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China

The famous violinist visits China, where he engages in several musical exchanges with musicians there.  It seems lightweight at first, but then the school director is talking about being locked in a closet for 14 months, to the point where his legs stopped working properly.  

China has come a long, long way in 40+ years.  Hopefully the present regime recognizes that some of this progress was due to goodwill exchanges like Stern's trips to Beijing and Shanghai.

1983

1. Best Documentary: Genocide

Like some other Oscar-winners recently reviewed here, these being The Diary of Anne Frank and Black Fox, Genocide once again proves that WWII movies score big when it comes to the Academy.

Genocide, narrated by Orson Welles and Elizabeth Taylor, is a study of the Holocaust.  Like the other films listed above, it's not an easy watch, but you'll walk away from it with a renewed appreciation of how easily fascism infiltrates most democratic societies.  "Making Germany great again" indeed.

2. Best Documentary (Short Subject): Close Harmony

One choir composed of young children and another composed of senior citizens come together in song.  The end result is somewhat cacophonous, but the interviews with the children about how they perceive both age and aging are interesting.

1984

1. Best Documentary: He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin'

The founder of the National Dance Institute prepares a class of a thousand kids for a dance performance narrated by Kevin Kline.  Not sure why this one deserved an Academy Award, but it's OK.

2. Best Documentary (Short Subject): Flamenco at 5:15

I begin to realize that the kind of "flamenco dancing" seen in ballroom dance competitions is at best a pale reflection of the real thing.  The combination of music, dance and sheer timing in the performances is truly impressive.

1985

1. Best Foreign Language Film: Dangerous Moves

This movie didn't scream "Oscar" to me, but the ending is cool.  I also enjoyed seeing Liv Ullman, who some may remember from several Ingmar Bergman movies.  The story is centered around a series of chess matches between two Grandmasters for the World Championship.  I'll agree that it sounds boring, but it flows along nicely and the battle of wills between the two protagonists is interesting.

2. Best Documentary: The Times of Harvey Milk

I liked 2008's Milk, and Sean Penn deserved the Best Actor Oscar for it, but Gus Van Sant's movie doesn't do the best job of demonstrating why people cared so much about Harvey Milk.  This searching documentary provides a more thorough examination of that topic, and will leave you with a lot to think about.

1986

1. Best Actress: Geraldine Page: The Trip to Bountiful

An unhappy woman ventures back to her hometown after a overlong sojourn in the city.

And hey, isn't that Rebecca De Mornay?  Who once made me so "hornay?"  She appeared in Risky Business two years before, and after The Trip to Bountiful she'd go on to appear in both Backdraft and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.  She's still around, by the way.  The last thing I can remember seeing her in was Netflix's Jessica Jones, which aired around 2019, but she's been in movies as recent as last year.

Geraldine Page?  I'm not that familiar with her.  Her film career stretched all the way back to 1953, and her last movie hit theaters in 1987.  She may not have won an Oscar until the end of career, but she was nominated many, many times before that.

2. Best Documentary: Broken Rainbow

Strap yourself in, because this one gets intense.  Broken Rainbow details the history of exploitation between the Hopi, the Navajo and the U.S. government, at the time of filming most directly expressed as the forced relocation of Navajo people from Hopi lands as part of a mining scheme.  The part about birth defects resulting from uranium mining is particularly hard to watch.

1987

1. Best Foreign Language Film: The Assault

A man struggles with childhood memories of World War II while unexpected acquaintances keep reappearing in his life.  I felt like the structure of the story probably worked better in the novel.

2. Best Documentary (Short Subject): Women for America, for the World

Several women urge against complacency with regard to nuclear proliferation.  I was 11 years old when this came out, but I can still remember that sense of imminent threat.  Movies like Threads and The Day After hit us hard.

1988

1. Best Documentary: The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table

A series of interviews regarding an influential lunch club that took place in New York's Algonquin Hotel.  Several of those in attendance went on to fame as poets, actresses, playwrights, journalists and authors of note.  This one was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be, touching as it does upon many social issues prevalent in the 1920s.  Quite a party while it lasted.  Too bad the Great Depression was waiting in the wings.

2. Best Documentary (Short Subject): Young at Heart

A pair of octogenarian painters share their personal philosophies.  Their thoughts on aging: 1) don't spend too much time mourning or looking backward, and 2) make yourself busy.

1989

1. Best Foreign Language Film: Pelle the Conqueror

Quite depressing as foreign movies go, but beautifully filmed with enough twists and turns to keep the viewer interested.  I agree with the critics: this one's great.*

2. Best Documentary: Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie

The only movie here I didn't finish.  It gets bogged down in a lot of details regarding the French Resistance, and never elevates itself above decades-old quarrels which will never be resolved.

Besides, I'm getting tired of Nazis.  The Third Reich will put you at least 1/4 of the way toward your Oscar dreams, but only so many Nazi-themed movies can be viewed in the same time period.

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Still More 70s Movies 5: Oscar Winners

Still More 60s Movies 5: Oscar Winners

Still More 80s Movies 4

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*If you're watching this movie via the link provided be warned: the subtitles only work via PC or laptop, and the auto-generated text is hard to decipher.