The Ballad of Narayama (1983)

The Ballad of Narayama (Shohei Imamura, 1983)

In a poor 19th century rural Japanese village, everyone who reaches the age of 70 has to climb a nearby mountain to die. An old woman is getting close to the cut-off age, and we follow her last days with her family.

The Dead Zone (1983)

Note : this review is a contribution to the Kingathon hosted by Movie Reviews 101 and Movie Rob.

The Dead Zone (David Cronenberg, 1983)

A man awakens from a coma to discover he has a psychic detective ability.

Vacation (1983)

Vacation (Harold Ramis, 1983)

The Griswold family's cross-country drive to the Walley World theme park proves to be much more arduous than they ever anticipated.

For almost twenty years I’ve been watching year after year Christmas Vacation and saying to whomever that cares to listen that it is my favorite Christmas movie. But I have never seen the other movies of the franchise and even the original Vacation film that will have some kind of a remake this summer. Since this summer my wife and my daughter will embark on a car trip, not to Walley World but to Wildwood New Jersey, I had the urge to finally watch Vacation and see what it was all about.

Back in 1983, it had a huge box-office success and quickly became a cult classic. Still to this day I can’t figure why I haven’t seen this film on TV before. Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) and his wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo) along their two kids Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and Audrey (Dana Barron) will go on a trip from Chicago to Los Angeles to the famous Walley World park, a ripoff of Disney Land.

Many moments of the John Hughes story are repeated in his Christmas Vacation and makes them like trademark jokes of the franchise. The infamous visit to cousin Eddie and Catherine will become stellar moments just like the pool scene with the girl in the red Ferrari.

The couple of Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo works well because Clark wants to be a good father, a good husband but he is so lefty and wants everything to be so damn perfect that everything is screwed up and she embarks on his mad ideas with a certain disdain but she loves her goofer husband so much that it reminds us of all of our dads and how we are as dads too.

The real genius behind the Vacation franchise is John Hughes and his writing makes it the best imperfect family. It reminds us how the road is half the fun and how the ups and downs makes it for great family memories. Sure it is reflecting a very late 1950’s idealized America but nostalgia and memories are hard to split at some point.

Overall, Vacation is a fun ride with the Griswold family and may or may not have influenced another well known American family : The Simpsons. I think that many elements link those families together and I wish that the Vacation series would be as everlasting as The Simpsons and maybe keep a level of quality that the cartoon did not achieved past a certain number of years.

A Christmas Story

A Christmas Story (Bob Clark, 1983)

Ralphie has to convince his parents, his teacher, and Santa that a Red Ryder B.B. gun really is the perfect gift for the 1940s.

À nos amours

À nos amours (Maurice Pialat, 1983)

Suzanne (Sandrine Bonnaire) is sixteen years old and she sleeps with a different boy every night. This makes her family mad and her parents even split. She seems to be empty and needs the presence of boys to fill a neverending void. Made in 1983, À nos amours is considered as one of Maurice Pialat’s masterworks with L’enfance nue and Van Gogh. Its subject, sex with a multitude of partners in the world of young adults is still an important one and as of nowadays teenagers seem to start having sex in a younger age than ever before. Pialat’s objective camera works like a documentary observer that captures the life of a family that is torn from inside. The love between the father and the daughter, the love/hate relationship of Suzanne with her mother and the older brother that is involved despite his disgust for all of this.

The King of Comedy

The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1983)

Aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin wants to achieve success in showbiz, by resorting to stalking his idol, a late night talk show host who craves his own privacy.

The Top 9 Films of 1983 aka The Year I Was Born - Redux

As a Classic Film lover I am a man/boy who loves traditions. This is the third time I do this list and every year I try to watch films from the year I was born to see a little bit of what happened in this year.

I'm very proud to say that most of the films I wanted to watch I had the opportunity to watch them this year. However, I missed A Christmas Story (Bob Clark) during the last Holidays. It is still on my DVR but I wanted to wait to watch it for December. I'll have a little something coming up for December this year but I don't want to say too much so I'll stop here.

By the way, this is birthday and this is why I annually do this. I invite other bloggers to do this and tell us their favorite films on the day of their birth.

Below you will find my long awaited Top 9 films of 1983, starting from number 1 to number 9.

Zelig

Zelig (Woody Allen, 1983)

This smart imitation of the documentaries of specialized History oriented channels has everything of the clever comedies of Woody Allen and the content of his more introspective psychological dramas. With his constant obsession for Freud, Religion, Politics, and social issues Allen continues his streak following Stardust Memories and A Midsummer’s Night Sex Comedy. Portrayed by Allen himself, Leonard Zelig is a character who appeared many times in the news of the 1920’s. His ability to adapt to the world and people around him makes him fit with everyone and everywhere. It doesn’t take long before he is discovered and following the buzz of the 1920’s on psychoanalysis Zelig gets under the “microscopes“ of the Scientifics. Specifically, Dr. Eudora Fletcher a young psychiatrist who wants to help Zelig and use the cure to get some recognition from her peers.

The effects of camouflage of Allen into faux-archived images and real archives is efficient. With the use of cameras, lighting, and scratches on the film, and the use of the dramatic music of the documentaries the illusion is almost-perfect. The insertion of Allen along President Wilson, Adolf Hitler, Babe Ruth, and many more historical figures with the technology of blue screen reused more than a decade later by Robert Zemeckis’ crew in Forrest Gump is as convincing as the later film. Here stops the comparison between the two pictures, Gump is more on the nostalgic, conservatism, and sensible side of the road while Allen exploits absurd situations, satire, and psychological references.

One of the most interesting facets of Zelig, the movie and the character, is how it represents the conformism and our constant will to be liked and appreciated by the people around us. Zelig, the chameleon man, transforms himself to fit to the group he lives in. Adapting the appearance and the ideology of the people surrounding him. His body and personality is malleable. The comment of the film is even more realistic when Zelig is seen with the SS representing the most important movement of fitting into the masses and forming a common nation leaded by only one head that decides everything for the group. This is an interesting critique on totalitarianism and the contemporary societies. In a lower scale than the National-Socialists and in a much much lesser extremist way, the American nation represents the volition to blend its population together even if it’s one of the most mixed bags of human diversity. There is a will to take every Man on the same level.  But we, as a society, like that everyone thinks like us. It is a modern world illness that our society conditions us to react in this way. The weight of the majority, its influence on us is more subtle than we would ever thought. I mentioned the American society because Leonard Zelig is an American in this movie. Yet, it represents a modern-day disease or observation more than a simple exercise of designation. Allen scratch the surface of a problem that the individuality of capitalism is contradicted by the majority of democracy. Just like every good recipe, it takes a good balance between the right tastes and textures.

Allen’s director of photography, Gordon Willis, does an outstanding job with the shooting of false-real archival footage for the set-up of the story in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The mix between his footage and the original archives is hardly noticeable.

The enjoyment of Zelig works on two levels. First, it is a fun satire of the 1920’s that isn’t really that much distant from us. The choice of format, documentary, is surprisingly entertaining and lets the writer-director some leash on the traditional filmmaking and storytelling. On a lesser note, it reminds the cinematic prowess of the storytelling of Annie Hall and the mastery of every trick of filmmaking. Even if Zelig is lesser than the aforementioned masterpiece, it is still a very entertaining and yet smart movie.

The Right Stuff

The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman, 1983)

Presenting the American Space program in its debuts, the first astronauts from the novel of famous author Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff is the celebration of the race with the Soviets to conquer space. Called the star war in the 1960's the film was in competition with Return of the Jedi in 1983 at the Box Office and at the Oscars. However, it was the year of Terms of Endearnment and this movie got all the major awards.

In 1983, Kaufman was a capable director having directed The White Dawn and the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers but he was mostly known for his writing credits on The Outlaw Josey Wales and Raiders of the Lost Ark. The ambitions of The Right Stuff are pretty clear when you immerse yourself into this all-American vehicule made to earn Oscars. It displays the Cold War climate of the time and reflects true American values of commitment to the banner and the cocky seven astronauts. With lesser known actors; Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, Fred Ward, and Barbara Hershey.

However the lack of personal approach and the running time are the two main problems of the film. Even if it's the first Kaufman film I ever saw and that I guess that his directing style is probably sober and "classic" I found his work on The Right Stuff uninspired and outdated for a film directed in 1983. It looked like a made for TV movie although I really liked the use of original footage in the launches of the many spaceships.

But, I was probably expecting too much, I though that a film that runs for three hours and fifteen minutes should at least hold us on the tip of our seat. To me it doens't did it. Worth a look.

Pauline à la plage

Pauline à la plage (Eric Rohmer, 1983)


Pauline, 15 years old, is going with her cousin Marion at Granville to spend the rest of her summer vacation at the Beach. This coming of age story is one of Rohmer’s most famous film. The fact that it depicts the summer vacation of two young women and especially the nakedness of the steamy body of Marion may have a certain attraction to the audience. However, Rohmer’s approach to adult relationships, their love affairs and sexual intercourses represents many of his favourite elements to work with in his most successful plots.

In the case of Pauline à la plage, Pauline is the witness of the many intercourses and visions of the adults about love and how they want it, perceive it, and deal with it. On one side you have the recently divorced Marion who cannot love her husband because she knows him too well and she needs to be burning of love. On the other side you have Pierre who’s deeply in love with Marion and who is her masculine reflection. He prefers to fall in love a person he knows and he can trust, a person who is familiar and reliable. Opposed to him Henri, Marion’s other pretendant and the one she will fall for is the representation of the libertine always ready to charm a new woman and be free of obligations and fidelity. Pauline will also have an adventure be she will learn more from the many intercourse between the adults around her. Rohmer represented the adults in their relationships like people who don’t know how to act and react to the confrontations and how they can hurt others and especially themselves. It seems like if everyone isn’t with the right person and how when on a vacation a person you don’t have anything in common can attract you just because it is something new or different. Well, we people go in vacation they want to be disoriented not only by the scenery or from their normal lives but also by the people that surrounds them. It is really clear that Marion is still looking for what she is and what she wants. At the same time, Pauline knows exactly what she wants.

I kind of liked the breezy feeling of the film and even if some scenes sound false the rhythm feels right. As Rohmer always did there are not a sparse scene or a useless technique used. Minimalist and simple are his films and it makes them efficient and easy to catch at the first glimpse.

L'argent

L'argent aka Money (Robert Bresson, 1983)

The final film of filmmaker Robert Bresson was shot when he was 82 years old and couldn't be fresher or more bressonian. While keeping his monotone dialogues, slow paced action of almost boring subjects the themes exploited by his story always bring deep meaning about society. This 1983 release couldn't be more actual, the 1980's were a period of great economic depression and the thought of making fast money by conterfeit or robbery might be something that occured in the mind of many twisted people. A lot like in the 1930's where the gangs like Dillinger's, Bonnie and Clyde, and all those famous robbers.

The case here, is on how fake money can alter and change the life of people and how ironic this trading of money touches everything we do in life. Well, if you are like me; I don't even have money with me anymore, I only carry my credit card or my debit card. Still, this is money and a materialist property. Based on Tolstoy's novel A Fake Coupon, L'argent demonstrates how malevolent and immoral money really is in our society. The themes of greed, corruption, class struggles, and criminality are all provoked by money and the materialist world we all lie in. The christian values of forgiveness, sharing, and charity are all flouted by the greed of the young criminal. I mention christian values because Bresson always exploited themes around the spirituality and the values it represents as another level of reading in his films. This is the focal point of the film and it leads to its final and tragic ending.

However, Bresson's films are so cold and unappealing that it is difficult to fully appreciate and love them, they are must sees and as a filmmaker he influenced a lot of directors of today; just take a look at the brothers Dardennes' films for example. Getting warmer for the Seven Days of the French New Wave in the first days of December...

It's my birthday! Here are the Top 5 films of 1983 - Redux

Top 5 of 1983 aka The Year I Was Born - Redux

Taking from a MEME I've seen this year on some Blogs I've dig through my film memories to try to find all the films I've seen that were made in 1983 aka the year I was born. Well, the first I've seen from this year is without a doubt The Return of the Jedi directed by Richard Marquand(!?!), by automatic mistake we always think it's from George Lucas, it's mostly but he's not credited as the director. I remember the first time, and I'm pretty sure it was the only time, I've seen The Return of the Jedi; my dad and I rented it with the two other episodes on a hot rainy saturday evening of the 1990's...

Well, cinematic memories are very important and I think the context of the viewing of a film is very important to appreciate it. The rest of my family, my brother was too to stay up until the third movie of the evening and he isn't as a cinephile as we are so is my mother. I'll always remember those evenings of watching movies with my dad, as long as I can remember we were fans of the Back to the Future the trilogy, Tom Hanks & Chevy Chase comedies, every Spielberg picture around and every action movies too. Well before passing judgments you have to remember that I was around 8-12 years old at the time...

Now you're thinking why does he talks about all those childish memories? First of all, I don't want to brag or anything but it's been three years since I haven't seen my father, it relieves me to talk about it, but mostly because my number one spot is Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia.

Below you will find my long awaited Top 5 films of 1983, starting from number 1 to number 5.

1. Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky)

A wonderful film from a director who made so few movies. The cinematography is awesome and the story is spiritual and meaninful and it as this mysterious feeling to it.

2. Videodrome (David Cronenberg)

Cronenberg's vision of the modern world and all its addictions to television, pornography, violence, and how they are possessing our minds and bodies. Those obsessions are presented in Cronenberg's own uncensored approach to Cinema. I also can't wait to see his next project with the always excellent Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud and the underrated extraordinary Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung: A Dangerous Method.

3. The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)

Well, this is almost cheating, I know. On IMDb it says 1982. But for Marty Scorsese, one of my favorite director, I can cheat a little. The King of Comedy isn't a real comedy but I think the study of character and the presence of Bob De Niro is amazing. I like this little film without pretention.

4. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (Terry Jones)

Here's a fact: I love comedies. I dig them and I am a good receiver of jokes. Monty Python are hilarious and I don't think there even was a group of talented actors and comedians that could have made such funny films as they did. Please read my review of it here.

5. Vivement Dimanche! (François Truffaut)

In my admiration for Truffaut's work there is this hommage to Hitchcock (a director I also worship) called Vivement Dimanche!. It became an instant classic to the master of suspense and a complete success as a simple but enjoyable film with Fanny Ardant and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Runner-up: Prénom Carmen (Jean-Luc Godard)

Since I cheated with my number 3, I will give a little place for this Godard picture that I discovered last year. Love him or hate him the man is stil Godard, another master from the Nouvelle Vague that I greatly admire. Although, opposed to Truffaut, Prénom Carmen lacks in narrative and demonstrate how Godard reinvented himself after his successful 1960's years. An erotic/thriller movie that will challenge your mind.

 
The fims I want to see that may change the order of this list:
Zelig (Woody Allen)
L'argent (Robert Bresson)
Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola)
The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman)
Sans Soleil (Chris Marker)
Pauline à la plage (Eric Rohmer)

...and maybe your suggestions for 1983!

Scarface (1983)

Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983)

This remake of more than fifty years later of the 1932 masterpiece by Howard Hawks, directed by Brian De Palma is probably one of the most overrated pictures in the History of Cinema.

Of the original film, De Palma only kept the names of the characters and the frenzy of Tony Montana (Al Pacino). Many cinephiles consider Pacino’s over the top acting and crazy-incestuous Tony Montana as one of his greatest performances. They should put Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and even The Godfather Part II in their DVD players before considering Scarface. His performance as the Latino mastermind of cocaine in Miami is nothing but annoying. De Palma deliberately asked Pacino to play a despicable character, but the acting got into over acting and in a persona that only inspire contempt and loath.

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (Terry Jones, 1983)

What is the meaning of life? This theorical question stands as the unifying concept around the many scenes or scenettes of this feature film from the hilarious gang of Monty Python.

Like many multi stories films the biggest challenge for the filmmaker is to have in every scene some kind of unity in their quality. In the case of The Meaning of Life, or in comedy, this is a huge challenge. Because you want laughs, you want them good, real and most times you want it early in the scenette to get a hold on the audience. Monty Python's feature takes its time to situate and warm the crowd. With this film you're nowhere near a sitcom where the public can change the channel at all time and where you need a joke a minute. It's a good luck that the Python gang knows how to set-up and tell a story. They bring the viewer where they want.
For those who are not acquainted to them, their humor is sometimes satirical, sometimes black, other times vulgar and always British with their tongue in cheek/dry sense.

The sketchs evolve around the cycle of the human life from birth to death. It's a little annoying that they needed to actually answer the theorical question at the end of the picture while the answer lies within the so-call cycle of life. Wider audiences would have probably been chocked to exit the theaters without a simulacre of something like an answer to this philosophical question that stands as a context and a link between the hilarious situations.

The actual weaker aspect of The Meaning of Life is the uneven sketchs that populate the film. As funny as some are, others just feel flat and link to the next one. Well, the comedy genre is hard to get through the ages and sometimes something that was efficient in 1983 could have lost its charm in 2011. However, the funny moments are really great and many jokes still work and create good laughs. It's Monty Python after all, those guys can do anything! This classic comedy stands strong in the pantheon of its genre.

On another subject I'm interested to know what's your favorite classic comedy? And why?

Prénom Carmen (1983)

Prénom Carmen (Jean-Luc Godard, 1983)

Personnally adapted from the opera Carmen, Prénom Carmen (First Name: Carmen) tells the story of a young woman, Carmen (Maruschka Detmers), who participate in many robberies with a group that ressembles of a group of rebels or mercenaries. When in an assault to rob a bank she promply falls in love with of the guards; Joseph (Jacques Bonnaffé). To live their lives together they must escape and they go hide outside of Paris at her internate uncle's (Jean-Luc Godard) house. But with the time passing by, their passion changes and their relationship becames a Love/Hate one. Carmen will betray Joseph and exclude him from all the plans of her group of robbers.

The many scenes including the two lovers remembers Carl Th.Dreyer's Gertrud, the two characters take still poses that reflects the evolution of the relationship. It reveals how the film should be read and how Godard was thinking it too. In 1983, Godard was more than in complete possession of his Art, he was Cinema. Every frame and every editing of Prénom Carmen is dense and full of meanings. Godard's mastery, editing, is fully exploited here and many scenes are sliced up so well with the concertos intermissions and the many changes of scenery.

 

Prénom Carmen is the kind of film you let yourself immerse into it. However, it's also the kind you must watch again and rewatch again, because the many meanings and levels of the story just gets better everytime. One last thing, the copy of Prénom Carmen I had in hand was not in the ultimate condition, but I had a recommendation of the 3-discs Jean-Luc Godard Boxset from Lions Gate. It comes with Détective and Passion two other notable 1980's films from Godard.

Top 5 of 1983 aka The Year I Was Born

Taking from a MEME I've seen this year on some Blogs I've dig through my film memories to try to find all the films I've seen that were made in 1983 aka the year I was born. Well, the first I've seen from this year is without a doubt The Return of the Jedi directed by Richard Marquand(!?!), by automatic mistake we always think it's from George Lucas, it's mostly but he's not credited as the director. I remember the first time, and I'm pretty sure it was the only time, I've seen The Return of the Jedi; my dad and I rented it with the two other episodes on a hot rainy saturday evening of the 1990's...

Well, cinematic memories are very important and I think the context of the viewing of a film is very important to appreciate it. The rest of my family, my brother was too to stay up until the third movie of the evening and he isn't as a cinephile as we are so is my mother. I'll always remember those evenings of watching movies with my dad, as long as I can remember we were fans of the Back to the Future the trilogy, Tom Hanks & Chevy Chase comedies, every Spielberg picture around and every action movies too. Well before passing judgments you have to remember that I was around 8-12 years old at the time...

Now you're thinking why does he talks about all those childish memories? First of all, I don't want to brag or anything but it's been three years since I haven't seen my father, it relieves me to talk about it, but mostly because my number one spot is Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia.

Below you will find my long awaited Top 5 films of 1983, starting from number 5 to number 1, I will post reviews of these films each week before my birthday and the final review, the number 1 of this list Nostaghia, will be posted August 2, which is my birthday by the way.

1. Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky)

2. Videodrome (David Cronenberg)

3. The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)

4. Scarface (Brian De Palma)

5. Vivement Dimanche! (François Truffaut)

Not yet included: Prénom Carmen (Jean-Luc Godard)


The ones I want to see that may change the order of this list:
Zelig (Woody Allen)
L'argent (Robert Bresson)
Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola)
The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman)
Sans Soleil (Chris Marker)
Pauline à la plage (Eric Rohmer)

...and your suggestions for 1983!

Michaël Parent