Some Other Movies From 1989 (2)

For further background on the year in film please refer to the Some Other Movies From 1989 entry.

Some things that happened in 1989:

• The Lexus and Infiniti car brands were launched.
• Serial killer Ted Bundy was executed in Florida.
• Union Carbide payed $470 million to the Indian government as a result of the Bhopal disaster five years before.
• Iran's Ayatollah Khomenei issued a fatwa calling for the death of author Salman Rushdie.
• President Bush met with Deng Xiaoping in China.
• The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred off the coast of Alaska.
• Rain Man won the Oscar for Best Picture.
• The Tiananmen protests took place in China.
• The Berlin Wall came down.

Excellent

1. Lean On Me

As someone licensed to teach in American public schools, I loved this movie.  Also as someone licensed to teach in American public schools, I realize that this movie simply couldn't have happened that way.  Expelling half the school on the first day?  No way, not given the bureaucratic nature of even the most progressive public school.  So while I loved this movie, I realize that it's almost %100 fantasy.  Movies like this make us feel great, but day-to-day teaching is another story.

This said, in Lean On Me Morgan Freeman turns in one of his best performances as the new principal of a failing high school.  Consistently underrated director John G. Avildson assists him in this endeavor, and the rest of the cast is excellent.  

Fun Fact: If you look real close you can see Tony "Candyman" Todd as Freeman's head of security.

2. Do the Right Thing

Let's get everyone in America together in one big room.  Then we'll watch Do the Right Thing.  We'll also watch Lean On Me.  Between the two movies we might actually come to understand each other better.  Maybe.

This might be my favorite of Spike Lee's movies.  I love Malcolm X too - I've seen it multiple times - but Do the Right Thing is also unquestionably great.  The way the characters in this movie come to a slow boil, the way race relations in their neighborhood are illustrated, the way the camera tells the story - it's all as compelling - and as timely - as it could be.  Mad about police brutality?  Watch this movie.  Mad about discrimination?  Watch this movie.  I can't say I've loved every movie Spike Lee has ever done, but this movie?  Yeah.

Fun Fact: Martin Lawrence is in this.  I'd totally forgotten about that.

3. Driving Miss Daisy 

1989. Good year for Morgan Freeman. Not only was he getting noticed for Lean On Me, but he also starred in Driving Miss Daisy.

In Driving Miss Daisy he plays chauffeur to Jessica Tandy's wealthy matron. Both of the leads in this film were well cast, and Dan Ackroyd more than pulls his weight as Tandy's son. I can't say that it illustrates the problems of race relations as well as Do the Right Thing, but as a character study it's just about perfect. It won both Best Picture and Best Actress, and as far as I'm concerned it deserved both honors.

4. The Decalogue (a.k.a. Dekalog)

Polish director Kryzystof "Buy a Vowel" Kieslowski co-wrote and directed this series of one-hour films based on the Ten Commandments.  Biblical interpretations aside, it's best viewed as a series of moral problems, all of which are resolved in surprising ways.  I wouldn't recommend trying to watch it in one sitting, but if you take your time it's very enjoyable.

5. The War of the Roses

Romancing the Stone/Jewel of the Nile costars Kathleen Turner, Michael Douglas and Danny DeVito reunite for this story of a marriage gone bad.  It's arguably the best thing Turner, Douglas and DeVito ever did, and DeVito is/was a good director to boot.  Gotta love that low angle shot of the dinner table as Douglas and Turner are eating.

Some Good Ones

1. A City of Sadness 悲情城市

Taiwanese film about the establishment of KMT rule over the island, and the White Terror that followed.  I liked how this film demonstrated a collective search for identity through a series of conversations, even though it could have been a lot shorter.

And yeah, in real life gangsters ruin everything.  No one follows the rules, and everyone's always out trying to get their individual slivers of every pie.  I've had some Taiwanese gangsters counted among my in-laws, and I shudder to think of a time in which they roamed more freely.

2. Mystery Train

Another one from Jim Jarmusch.  I'm really NOT trying to work my way through his filmography, it's just that his movies keep finding me.  I can't say I'm a fan, but I do like some of his stuff.

In Mystery Train several strangers cross paths in a Memphis hotel.  Critics loved it.  I didn't, but it was OK.

3. Back to the Future Part II

A. Given our current understanding of quantum mechanics, Doc's alternate timeline (or alternate universe or multiverse) theory makes sense.  For each possible event in a given universe there would be nearly infinite alternative universes, limited only by space/time configurations which collapsed in upon themselves.

B. (Causal) paradoxes would only be a problem if one universe was possible.  Worrying about such paradoxes in the presence of multiverses would be, in itself, paradoxical.  Some time travel movies have attempted to correct for this by positing a "self-correcting" chain of causality (i.e. It's impossible to go back in time and kill Hitler because something always stops you).  These time travel movies always end up being less convincing, not more.

C. This universe fails to take the butterfly effect into account.  The minute Biff's older self travels back into the past, the odds against his profiting from all future sports bets become astronomical.  This is equally true for Marty's travels into the past and future.  The chain of causality involved is simply too vast for them to manipulate.  They would create alternate timelines/universes, but they would be unable to anticipate the results of certain actions beyond a few seconds into the future.

D. Marty's comment on his own guitar solo makes me think about my own kids.  If I could somehow travel into the past and play one of Tosin Abasi's guitar solos at my high school prom, would the reaction be any different?

E. Yes, I'm thinking about this movie trilogy too hard.  Just the same, it can be a fun exercise.  I saw all of the movies in the theater back in the 80s/90s, but watching them now is a whole other thing.  Keep in mind that Part II is partially set in 2015.  It's fun to think about how we advanced and how we didn't advance with respect to that vision of the future.

F. I never loved these movies, I never had the same sense of nostalgia about them, but from a pop cultural standpoint they are essential viewing.  In a sense they are the summation of the late 80s, and even though Part III came out in the 90s it still says a lot about the era of Reagan and Gorbachev.

ˋ4. Kickboxer

Jean-Claude Van Damme travels to exotic Thailand to learn the exotic art of muay thai and kick exotic guys in the face.  All while not missing arm day.

This movie and Bloodsport are the two movies that made Van Damme.  And where I'd have to say Bloodsport is more "So Bad It's Good" (especially given its fictitious origins), Kickboxer is better as a straight-ahead action movie.  Is it Shakespeare?  No.  But it's got the lead, it's got the supporting cast of characters, it's got a good villain and it's got the 80s power ballads.  It looks back to a time when many of us were reading Inside Kung-Fu and obsessing over ninjas.

Fun Fact 1: Dennis Alexio, who plays Van Damme's brother in this film, was a former world kickboxing champion.  Is it me, or are there a whole lot of "former world kickboxing champions?"

Fun Fact 2: There are seven movies in the Kickboxer franchise, with an eighth supposedly on the way this year.  Van Damme only starred in the first one.

Fun Fact 3: "Tong Po," billed in this movie as Tong Po, is actually Belgian-Moroccan actor Michel/Mohammed Qissi.  He grew up with Van Damme in Belgium.  Besides also appearing with Van Damme in Bloodsport and Lionheart, his and Van Damme's first movie was 1984's Breakin', in which they both appear very briefly.

5. Road House

Side kick!  Roundhouse kick!  Knee smash!  Repeat!

Patrick Swayze (R.I.P.) stars as the toughest bouncer in small town Kansas, with the great Ben Gazzara as the town mobster.  Dudes alienated by Dirty Dancing and disappointed by Steel Dawn need look no further than this movie.  It's got all the Swayze you can handle.

Fun Fact 1: Swayze's speech to the bar staff ("Be nice until it's time to not be nice.") has been used as a police training video.

Fun Fact 2: Bill Murray is a huge fan of this movie.

Fun Fact 3: There's a great parody of Swayze's lakeside yoga scene in the 2007 movie Hot Rod.

6. See No Evil, Hear No Evil

I've never been a big fan of the Wilder/Pryor movies, but for what it's worth this one is my favorite.  Gene Wilder plays a deaf man, with Richard Pryor as his blind friend.  Critics hated it, and to be fair it borrows heavily from the earlier Stir Crazy and Silver Streak, but there are some funny scenes in the beginning.

6. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover

Sexual jealousy in a cavernous French restaurant.  Helen Mirren covered similar territory in Caligula, but my main complaint is how easily the bad guy gives up in the end.  He really doesn't put up much of a fight.  Is it good?  Well it's definitely arty, and ending will stay with you.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

1. Santa Sangre

Part Freaks, part Psycho, part I don't know what.  Most people will consider turning this one off about ten minutes in, but I recommend watching at least a third.  Once you get a third of the way in you'll know if you're going to like it or not.  I couldn't sit through Jodorowsky's earlier films, but I found my patience rewarded in this one.  It reminded me a bit of Dario Argento's Inferno.

?

1. Tongues Untied 

A movie?  A documentary?  A series of poems?  Whatever it is, Tongues Untied is a look at what it means to be black and gay.  One of the more interesting things I've seen lately.

Less Than Van Dammaging

1. Cyborg

I have the feeling the original script was very different from the movie they ended up filming.  There's a lot of Christ imagery in the story, and whoever wrote the screenplay was probably leading up to a completely different conclusion.

As it is this movie is cheesy as hell at times, and really boring at others.  When Van Damme isn't running around and/or kicking people, he's trying to save a cyborg lady who's carrying the cure for a world plague.

Fun Fact: Director Albert Pyun would go on to helm Captain America the following year.  Yes, THAT Captain America.

Some Bad Ones

1. Field of Dreams

Corny as fuck. I get that it's supposed to tug on my heartstrings - and.I do enjoy watching a baseball game now and then - but this movie is damn silly. The Natural? Sure. Loved it. This one? Eh....

Kevin Costner was perfect casting though. In this movie he either a) experiences a psychotic break and hallucinates the rest of the plot, or b) the souls of dead baseball players return to the world of the living to make things right. And yes, just typing that last sentence made me nauseous.

Fun Fact 1: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon appear as extras in this movie.

Fun Fact 2: Critics loved Field of Dreams. It was even nominated for multiple Oscars.

Fun Fact  3: The field used in this film became a tourist destination in its own right. The land eventually sold for 5.4 million, and MLB games were held there.

2. Kiki's Delivery Service

I know, right?  Who the hell do I think I am?  First I trash talk Field of Dreams, and now I dare to say Kiki's Delivery Service is... bad?  The animation is great of course, and Hayao Miyazaki's fingerprints are all over this film, but I just couldn't concentrate on it.  In it a young witch sets up shop in a small town and... what?  I don't know.  I felt like this movie was missing something.

Fun Fact: The conservative Christian group Women for America boycotted this movie when it (finally) appeared in American theaters 9 years after its initial theatrical run in Japan.  At Disney, which released the movie in partnership with Studio Ghibli, zero fucks were given.

3. Tango and Cash

The late 80s/early 90s: that golden age of self-aware action movies.  Trouble is that this movie is painfully unfunny, and it's hard to care about either Tango or Cash.  In a perfect world this movie would have featured both Stallone and Schwarzenegger, but Schwarzenegger, then the biggest action star in the world, probably thought this movie was beneath him.

Fun Fact: This movie was originally going to feature Stallone and Patrick Swayze.  Swayze, smartly enough, opted to do Road House instead.

4. UHF

Not funny unless you're 12.  If you liked Weird Al's humor this is definitely more of the same, but I can't say it's aged well.  Remember when we all thought he was amusing?

So Bad It's Hilarious

1. Wild Orchid

Things get erotic after international lawyer Carre Otis travels to Brazil to close a hotel deal and overcome her sexual hangups.  

By 1989 costar Mickey Rourke's career was definitely on a downswing.  He hadn't broken his face yet, but movies like Angel Heart and the underrated Barfly were rapidly fading from the public consciousness.  Later movies such as this one and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man also weren't doing him any favors.  To make matters worse, Carre Otis, his soon-to-be ex-wife, was a terrible actress.

But yeah, that group therapy scene in the limo.  The weird Lambada orgy at the "renovated slave quarters club."  The bizarre fight with sailors at the beach.  I laughed so hard people came upstairs to see if I was alright.

Fun Fact: This movie's similarity to 9 1/2 Weeks can be traced to more than Rourke's presence in both movies.  Wild Orchid director Zalman King also collaborated with Adrian Lyne on 9 1/2 Weeks.

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Some Other Movies From 1989

Back in the 80s!  I'm getting there...

As of this entry, I've watched about 510 movies.  Not sure how many hours that would be, but movies after 2000 tend to be 2 hours long, while movies before that year are usually 1.5 hours long.  Even if they were all 1.5 hours long, that would still be about 765 hours, or 32 days.  A month of movies - at least.

And what was I doing in 1989?  Well, half that year would have been my last semester of middle school, and the other half would have been my freshman year of high school.  Imagine if you will a shy, retiring kid with thick glasses.  He's obsessed with comic books and horror movies, and he doesn't know how to talk to girls.  He has friends, yes, but he spends way too much time playing video games and feeling alienated.  That kid you're imagining is me.

The top 5 movies of 1989 were Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Batman, Back to the Future Part II, Look Who's Talking (remember those?), and Dead Poets Society.  I always assumed that Batman was the biggest movie that year, but apparently Last Crusade somehow galloped to first place.  Of these movies I think Dead Poets Society is my favorite, and it's also one of Robin Williams' best films.

Some critical favorites of that year were Born on the Fourth of July, Driving Miss Daisy, the above-mentioned Dead Poets Society, The Fabulous Baker Boys and My Left Foot.  I still like all of these movies, though I think The Fabulous Baker Boys was a bit overrated.

Other good movies of 1989 were Lean On Me, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Leviathan, Heathers, Pet Sematary, Great Balls of Fire!, The Abyss, Casualties of War, Black Rain, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Tango and Cash.  My favorite of these is definitely The Abyss, which was definitely the best action /science fiction movie of that year.

1989 was also a big year for horror movie sequels.  This year saw the release of The Fly II, The Toxic Avenger Part II, Fright Night Part 2, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.  The most horrifying of these horror sequels, Police Academy 6: City Under Seige was, sadly, a critical and commercial flop.

My least favorite film of 1989 was definitely Dream a Little Dream, another Corey Haim/Corey Feldman production.  Even in 1989 Feldman's Michael Jackson impersonations were tired, and for both actors it was all downhill from there.

A Great One

1. My Left Foot

If you dropped Daniel Day-Lewis in some incredibly remote location and said "ACT your way back to civilization!" he could do it.  He would.  He'd probably even get there before you did.  You'd find him sitting in the local bar with a big smile on his face.

In My Left Foot he plays an artist with cerebral palsy.  He chews the scenery throughout, and one can only wonder how someone can have so many decades' worth of great performances in them.  He won the first of his three Oscars for Best Actor with this film, and the director of this movie, Jim Sheridan, is no slouch either.

Some Good Ones

1. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child

In terms of practical visual effects, this is one of the most inventive movies I've ever seen.  In terms of creating tension, this movie fails miserably.  It was of course the fifth one, and by 1989 people were getting tired of Freddy, but given that this is the fifth entry in the franchise it's better than it has any right to be.

If you ask me, I think what this film series needed was a larger, more coherent mythos for Freddy to inhabit.  It's kind of the opposite problem from what hamstrings the Hellraiser movies, which have a great mythos but lack a single compelling character.  Combining the two franchises might have been a more interesting than simply crossing over the Nightmare on Elm Street movies with the Friday the 13th movies in Jason Vs. Freddy in 2003.

Actually, now that I think about it, the Friday the 13th franchise was already crossed over with the Evil Dead franchise in Jason Goes to Hell.  Using that as a point of entry, the Necronomicon from the Evil Dead movies could have also provided Freddy with a mythos to work from.  Of course the studio executives who greenlit Elm Street 5 into existence probably weren't thinking that hard, but maybe in the future a screenwriter and/or director with enough vision might do something like this.  Plenty of people still love Freddy, and it would be worth attempting.

Fun Fact: You might want to go back and watch A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.  There's "a frequent debate in gay pop culture circles" as to how "gay" that movie is.  The screenwriter says its "gayness" was intentional, while others dispute this claim.

2. Fat Man and Little Boy

Roland Joffe directed this movie about the development of the atomic bomb.  Paul Newman stars as the general in charge of the project, with Dwight Schultz as Robert Oppenheimer, and John Cusack as one of the scientists working under him.  It's one of the best performances of Newman's career, and even though it's a bit melodramatic it's still a well put together movie.  Critics were not fond of it, but I think it does a good job of telling a very complicated story.

Fun Fact: If you look REAL hard Clark Gregg (a.k.a. "Agent Coulson") is somewhere in this film.

1. An Innocent Man

You just know if Tom Selleck goes to prison he's gonna get them cheeks busted.

Selleck stars as an aircraft mechanic wrongly accused of dealing drugs.  An Innocent Man features some truly bad dialogue and feels very much like a TV movie, but it gets better after Selleck goes to prison.

Fun Fact: The guy that played Jigsaw in the Saw movies is in this for a few seconds.

2. The Package

It's not exactly The French Connection, but this political thriller steadily improves after Gene Hackman arrives in the States.  Hackman stars as a military man tasked with taking a prisoner (Tommy Lee Jones) back to a court martial on the eve of a big "nuclear deal" between the U.S. and Russia.  My biggest complaint is that the military details are unconvincing.  The weapons some of the characters choose, and the portrayal of military procedure, are obviously wrong in many respects.

3. Drugstore Cowboy

Matt Dillon stars as the leader of a gang that spends most of its time robbing pharmacies and hospitals.  It's good, but given the reputation preceding this Gus Van Sant-directed movie I thought it would be a lot better.  It shares a lot of the same themes as Van Sant's later My Own Private Idaho.

4. Steel Magnolias

I suppose there's something schizophrenic in the fact that I can genuinely enjoy both A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 and Steel Magnolias, but there you go.  If you're at all familiar with Hollywood tearjerkers, you'll see how this movie sets up its sacrificial lamb early on, but the cast is great and the performances are first-rate.  Julia Roberts starred in this the year before Pretty Woman, with Sally Field, Shirley Maclaine, Dolly Parton, Olympia Dukakis and Daryl Hannah in supporting roles.

5. Scandal

Joanne Whalley-Kilmer.  Whew.  I totally get why Val Kilmer wanted to "Kilmerize" her.  No idea what she looks like now, but back in the late 80s that woman was stunning.

In Scandal Whalley-Kilmer stars as a woman who does some swinging in early 60s London.  John Hurt costars as her confidante and erstwhile pimp.  This movie was filmed the year after Willow, when Whalley-Kilmer's career was still on the upswing.

6. Roger & Me

If you find yourself wondering why the hell Michael Moore is still famous, I suggest going back and watching Roger & Me.  It's still a great documentary about life in a small town after the local corporation has left.  Moore, with all his grandstanding and love of confrontation, has definitely rubbed me the wrong way before, but this movie offers a fairly balanced portrait of what was going on in Flint, Michigan in 1989.

One That's Either Not Very Good or Ahead of Its Time

1. Society

Opinions vary on this movie.  Critics point to the "humor," though it's debatable as to whether the humor is intentional or if it's a kind of absurdity based on metaphor.  For my part I liked it, and it's worth watching for the ending alone.  I'd like to share some details regarding the plot, but it's hard to do this without giving the ending away.  Let's just say that all is not as it seems for a high school student in Beverly Hills.  Brian Yuzna directed, and this movie is in some ways similar to the Re-Animator films he produced.

Fun Fact: the star of this movie, Billy Warlock, might be familiar as one of the lifeguards in the Baywatch TV show.

Some Bad Ones

1. Blaze

Hey it's Paul Newman again.  In this one he's playing the governor of Louisiana, a man enraptured with Blaze Starr.

And whatever happened to Lolita Davidovich?  And for that matter Robert Wuhl?  Wikipedia tells me that Davidovich and Wuhl are doing TV these days, their 80s glory days long behind them.

This movie starts out good, but the relationship between Newman and Davidovich isn't enough to sustain the whole thing.  I thoroughly enjoyed the first half hour - and Davidovich is just as beautiful as I remembered - but after that first 30 minutes this movie is dead in the water.

2. Chances Are

One of the corniest, most contrived things I've seen in a while.  Robert Downey Jr. stars in this latter day version of Heaven Can Wait, with Cybil Shepherd and Ryan O'Neal in supporting roles.  Critics liked it, but I found it excruciating.

3. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

I'm a little hazy on the geography here.  Apparently Crystal Lake was much larger than the first seven movies in this franchise suggested?  And apparently it's possible to travel from Crystal Lake to New York via boat?

The biggest problem with this movie is that it's boring.  Honestly, who gives a fuck about these high school kids and their boat trip?  Who gives a shit about their personal dramas?  People watch the Friday the 13th movies to watch these people get fucked and killed, and in this film there's precious little of that.

And the soundtrack - straight from the darkest heart of the 80s.  It really kills the horror vibe.  Not sure what they were thinking there, but maybe someone owed someone else a favor.

Fun Fact #1: Kelly Hu, who played Lady Deathstrike in the second X-Men movie, is also in this film.  This was her first movie.

Fun Fact #2: According to this movie, the sewers of New York flood with toxic waste every night.  Who knew?

4. Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

Mostly a lot of screaming and running around.  There's a little girl with some kind of psychic link to Michael Myers, but no one listens to her because she's a little girl and she's mute for most of the movie.  Then there's Donald Pleasence, who no one listens to either because he's a crazy old man who likes endangering children.  Everyone else in this movie?  They die in predictable ways.

So Bad It's Good

1. No Holds Barred

Long before Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was starring in blockbusters, WWF superstars like Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan were trying to parlay their superstardom into movie careers.  I think Roddy Piper had a ton more onscreen charisma than Hogan, but you can't fault Hogan for trying.

In No Holds Barred Hogan stars as a wrestler courted by a big television network.  It was 89, so even though Hulkamania was on the wane Hogan was still a household name.  It made sense for "Shane Productions" (i.e. the WWF) to cast him as the lead in their first movie.

The strangest thing about this movie isn't Hogan's dialogue or the ridiculous action scenes (one in which Hogan takes on an armed robber with... pies), but rather the extreme behavior of the television executive who wants Hogan for his show.  Between The Emperor from the Star Wars films and this guy, I'm not sure who's more EVIL.

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