Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Dark City (1998)

Dr. Schreber: Remember John
- never talk to strangers!

Dark City was released on February 27th 1998 and yes, that means it turns 25 today. Which also means I have been waiting for director Alex Proyas to make something as good, to no avail -- not to knock a man when he's down, seeing as it's been six years since he dropped the steaming turd that was Gods of Egypt and he's only made short films since then. I wonder if he's ever been attached to any of the attempted remakes of The Crow? I'm not much of a fan of the original Crow film but he did a fine stylish job there and I know it has its mega-fans, they should let him have another go. The man did have Dark City in him -- he's capable of greatness. Then again he's also capable of Knowing, shudder. Anyway I have pretty vivd memories of going to see Dark City at a midnight screening in college and immediately being blown away -- does it lean a little heavy on its silent-film goth noir influences? Sure, but I'd argue it tangles them into something fascinating and new.  I did get to revisit it on the big screen a few years ago at MoMA and its special effects still look fantastic today -- when in doubt cloak that shit in darkness! A 4K upgrade on this would be more than a little welcome though.

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1987

Picking back up my "Siri Says" series after a couple of busy weeks as we plow into its final stretch of entries -- as I explained one month ago I've only got around a dozen years left out of one hundred total to write up, so maybe we'll finish this series off before the world ends even! Wouldn't that be a hoot? This series, you might or mightn't know, involves me asking my iPhone to assign me a random number between 1 and 100, and then I give you my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds. Anyway that's how I did it for the majority of these posts, but now that we're down to such minuscule options I've just written the remaining years out on slips of paper, and I pick one that way.

Which brings me to this week's selection -- we'll be choosing our favorite movies from the movies of 1987! Which, well, all of these movies are coincidentally turning 35 this year, so prepare your cake-based celebrations accordingly. And you know what else? This is the last year that I had left from the 1980s! Whenever I finish off a decade like this I collect up links to all that decade's entries, so here those are for your glance-back pleasure:

Here are my favorite movies of 1980

Here are my favorite movies of 1981 

Here are my favorite movies of 1982

Here are my favorite movies of 1983

Here are my favorite movies of 1984

Here are my favorite movies of 1985

Here are my favorite movies of 1986

Here are my favorite movies of 1988

Here are my favorite movies of 1989

Personally speaking I have a deep fondness for a lot of 1980s cinema since I saw my first movie in that decade and slowly, across its span, found myself becoming the obsessive who types before you today, but... the 1980s? Not really the greatest decade for movies when it comes down to it. I can admit that. Don't get me wrong, there are heaps of great films, as all of those links above will show you. But when I steep myself in the general sense of 80s Cinema it's a lot of big budget nonsense that dominated, while even foreign art-cinema was in a kind of strange in-between place. But hey if the 80s are your favorite movie decade please let me have it in the comments! And it's possible I'm feeling less than enthusiastic about them today after going through 1987's specific offerings, which were a little wobbly in particular. But I found some great ones! (It's a really great year for horror movies, actually.) On that note here are...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1987

Wings of Desire

(dir. Wim Wenders)

-- released on October 19th 1987 --

Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn

(dir. Sam Raimi)

-- released on March 13th 1987 --

Broadcast News

(dir. James Brooks)

-- released on December 13th 1987 --

RoboCop

(dir. Paul Verhoeven)

-- released on July 17th 1987 --

Maurice

(dir. James Ivory)

-- released on September 18th 1987 --

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Runners-up: Opera (dir. Dario Argento), The Princess Bride (dir. Rob Reiner), Full Metal Jacket (dir. Stanley Kubrick), Moonstruck (dir. Norman Jewison), Raising Arizona (dir. Coens), Fatal Attraction (dir. Adrian Lyne), Adventures in Babysitting (dir. Chris Columbus), Outrageous Fortune (dir. Arthur Hiller), The Last of England (dir. Derek Jarman), House of Games (dir. David Mamet), Near Dark (dir. Bigelow), Dolls (dir. Stuart Gordon)...

... Empire of the Sun (dir. Spielberg), Prince of Darkness (dir. John Carpenter), The Stepfather (dir. Joseph Ruben), River's Edge (dir. Tim Hunter), Hellraiser (dir. Clive Barker), Predator (dir. John McTiernan), The Running Man (dir. Paul Michael Glaser), Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 (dir. Bruce Pittman), Withnail & I (dir. Bruce Robinson), Street Trash (dir. James Muro)

Never seen: My Life as a Dog (dir. Lasse Holstrom), Au Revoir Les Enfants (dir. Louis Malle), Angel Heart (dir. Alan Parker), The Believers (dir. John Schlesinger), Matewan (dir. John Sayles), Making Mr. Right (dir. Susan Seidelman), Ishtar (dir. Elaine May), Who's That Girl (dir. James Foley), The Dead (dir. John Huston), September (dir. Woody Allen), The Last Emperor (dir. Bertolucci)

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What are your favorite movies of 1987?

Good Morning, World

I cannot in wholly good faith recommend you watch Ivan Passer's 1981 "neo-noir" Cutter's Way, which is now streaming as part of Criterion's "Neo-Noir" series -- which has proved to be an excellent series on there, one of their best -- because Cutter's Way ain't great. Oh its leading man Jeff Bridges certainly looks phenomenal, as you can see there -- indeed I'd say that alongside Richard Gere in American Gigolo in 1980 and William Hurt in Body Heat, also in 1981, that Bridges fills out the trinity of sweaty sorta-sleazy WASPishly sharp-dressed early-80s men.

bike trails

And that might be enough reason to watch the movie on its own -- it got me through it! But other than the noted pleasure of Bridges, his mustache, his beach sweaters, there's not much to recommend... more of recommendation's opposite. For example, and primarily, John Heard gives one of the screen's most irritating performances as Bridges' bestie, the titular Cutter. The character is supposed to be a mess who ruins everybody's lives but Heard forgot to give us anything else and instead dialed "dickhead" up to fourteen. Absolutely exhausting to watch, and you actively recoil from the screen when he pops up. Which is constantly.

And I say that as someone who has found Heard extremely charming in numerous roles before. (I will always think of him as the sleepy theater-director who Bette Midler croons to from a bunny suit in Beaches.) But back to Bridges -- ogling him at his near-peak (which I'd say he reached three years after this in another bad movie, Against All Odds -- but perhaps you've got another pick?) isn't a negligible past-time, so maybe the movie will work for you on that alone. In that spirit let's do some more (and these gifs are from just the opening scene -- there's a lot more Jeff to be ogled later in the film), after the jump...

Who Wore It Best?

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Yesterday I was looking at this week's banner of Patrick Wilson in Little Children (which I'm really personally enjoying, I don't know about you) while simultaneously reading our post on Kathleen Turner's fantastic new interview when a vision of a shot of William Hurt in Body Hurt occurred to me (as it often, often does)...

... and I realized there was an homage to Body Heat in Little Children that I had never noticed before! How perfect! And riddle me this -- wouldn't you kill to see a remake of Body Heat starring Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson? Brains, blown. Anyway I clearly must now ask...

web polls

Quote of the Day

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It was hard to pick just one quote from the interview with Kathleen Turner at Vulture that hit this morning, making this Tuesday into an exponentially greater day right off the bat - she calls Elizabeth Taylor shit, she drags Nicholas Cage and Burt Reynolds and the cast of Friends and all of the method actors, and she does all of this without seeming especially mean about it, just honest. I came out of it angrier than ever that nobody's giving this woman great roles in the movies anymore.
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Alright -- everybody tell me who you think Kathleen Turner is talking about here: pic.twitter.com/WjuXb5ond9

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) August 7, 2018

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Anyway you should read the whole thing but I decided to share this bit  below about her two-time co-star William Hurt (in Body Heat and The Accidental Tourist) because it made me chuckle, and appreciate Hurt more in the process:

Vulture: I read in your memoir that William Hurt was into magic mushrooms. Did he ever try and get you to take them with him?
Turner: No, I never tried any of those things that he liked. Bill can be very odd.
Vulture: How so?
Turner: I remember one night while we were shooting Body Heat we were sitting around, and for some reason he wanted to talk about how we’d each like to die. I don’t remember what my answer was, but he said he wanted to be sucked up into a jet engine. You would find yourself in that kind of discussion with Bill. Then when we did The Accidental Tourist, Bill was sober, so there were fewer discussions like that. God, you did not want to get Bill talking too much.

In related, talk about Great Moments in Movie Staches:

Great Moments in Movie Shelves #129

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Not the usual bookshelves this time around but what's to stop us from giving some love to the video-store shelves of our youth when they make a movie appearance? I assume that this video-store in Brian DePalma's Body Double (1984) is an actual Los Angeles location but not being familiar with L.A. perhaps one of you locals can help me out - anyway it looks much like the ones I was skulking around in the mid-80s myself, and I certainly remember one of them having a cordoned off "Adult" section like this that you'd try to peek into.

Body Double is screening this weekend at The Quad as part of their ongoing "Erotic Thriller" series - it's a "Body" triple-feature tomorrow with Body Heat and Body of Evidence all screening right in a row! What a marvelous and magical city that I live in.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Big Chill (1983)

Karen: No... I know that Richard will always be faithful to me.
Harold: That's nice. You trust.
Karen: [shakes head no] Fear of herpes.

A happy 69 to JoBeth Williams!

This doesn't have anything to do with JoBeth...

... but I felt I should also post this picture of

William Hurt & Tom Berenger in this movie, just cuz.

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Today's Mood

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Hurt So Good

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It is the great William Hurt's birthday today and so you need to click on over to The Film Experience to vote on this week's edition of our "Beauty vs Beast" poll, which is all about the great Broadcast News. It's actually Holly Hunter's birthday too! So wish them both a happy day, and vote. And then as a reward you may come back here and look at these pictures of him in Body Heat at prime hotness.

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5 Off My Head - Siri Says 1980

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We normally post our "Siri Says When" series on Tuesdays but everything's been thrown out of whack... well, full stop. Everything in the entire world has been thrown out of whack since last Tuesday. So we're off a day. You're lucky it's just a day and we didn't just drop dead, really. (You might be lucky but I'm not so sure I'm lucky to still be breathing at this point, honestly.) Anyway here we are and Siri told us the number 80, so it's The Movies of 1980 today. A pretty good year! I mean it gave us both Can't Stop the Music and Naked Richard Gere, so clearly. Plus these five movies besides...

My Five Favorite Movies of 1980

Altered States

(dir. Ken Russell)

-- released on December 25th 1980 --

The Elephant Man

(dir. David Lynch)

-- released on October 10th 1980 --

The Shining

(dir. Stanley Kubrick)

-- released on June 13th 1980 --

 Dressed To Kill

(dir. Brian De Palma)

-- released on July 25th 1980 --

The Fog

(dir. John Carpenter)

-- released on February 8th 1980 --

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Runners-up: The Empire Strikes Back (dir. Kershner), Cruising (dir. Friedkin), Stardust Memories (dir. Woody Allen), 9 to 5 (dir. Higgins), Airplane! (dir. Abrahams & the Zuckers), Friday the 13th (dir. Cunningham), Berlin Alexanderplatz (dir. Fassbinder - not technically a movie but a TV miniseries which is the only thing disqualifying it from my main list)

Never Seen: Kagemusha (dir. Kurosawa)

Pepe Luci Bom (dir. Almodovar)

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What are your favorite movies of 1980?

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So Ready For Stedi

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I've been sitting here staring at my computer screen stunned for the past hour or so, trying to focus my brain enough to come up with anything to say that's not THE WORLD IS ENDING ET CETERA but failing miserably... until an email just came through from the Film Society of Lincoln Center that is, announcing a new series that is, to put a finer point upon it, of a kick-ass nature. 

It's called "Going Stedi: 40 Years of Stedicam" and for the first second that sounds a little bit technical and dorky but then you look at the movies they're showing and a warm feeling washes over you (and it's not even that you peed your pants in hot anticipation either) -- they will be screening Martin Scorsese's After Hours (aka my favorite Scorsese) (and on Christmas Day no less!), they will be screening Ken Russell's Altered States, they will be screening Jonathan Glazer's Birth, they will be screening Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, they will be screening Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days, they will be screening Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia and Boogie Nights and Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, and for god's sake they will be screening XANADU.

You can read the entire press release with all the films (yes there are bunches more) over at their site. The series runs December 16th - January 3rd, so if you're in NYC over the holidays you now know where you should spend at least a couple of those hours.

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Body Heat (1981)

Matty: My temperature runs a couple of degrees high, 

around a hundred. I don't mind. It's the engine or something. 

Ned: Maybe you need a tune up. 

Matty: Don't tell me - you have just the right tool. 

Happy  63, William Hurt!

I posted some pleasant pics of him in this movie over here.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Broadcast News (1987)

Tom: What do you do when your real life exceeds your dreams? 

Aaron: Keep it to yourself. 

Broadcast News was released 25 years ago yesterday!

Where do you think Jane and Tom and Aaron are today?

Good Morning, World

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A very happy 62 to William Hurt, ultimate 80s WASP.

Mmm yes I think I might have to watch Body Heat right quick. I've posted some very other fine pictures from this movie before, over here. I stumbled upon a wonderful tumblr for the man with loads more shots of him here, which is where these ones are from. Unf.