Falling In Love (A C-Jay Only Presentation)

Rating: PG-13

Time: 106 minutes

Release Date: November 21, 1984

Starring: Robert DeNiro; Meryl Streep; Harvey Keitel; and Dianne Wiest

My Synopsis: Two strangers have a couple of chance meetings and then form a friendship. Both are married but they still find themselves falling for one another.

My Grade: 1

I just couldn’t enjoy this movie.  I’m not a huge fan of Meryl Streep but I rarely dislike a DeNiro film. If you’re into chick flicks you might enjoy this one, but I didn’t like it much.

This movie is so bad Darthmerj won’t even watch it…you may want to follow his example and not mine.

We’ve Stepped Away for the Moment

To anyone who is checking back regularly please bear with us. After watching the absolutely horrid Best Defense we both decided to quit…No we really didn’t. In actuality DarthMerj and myself have hit somewhat of a roadblock. We ran out of time with some changes in both our respective lives. We will be back to 80′s Movie watching soon so please continue to keep us in the rotation of blogs you scour.

Trading Places (C-Jay Edition)

Rating: R

Time: 118 minutes

Release Date: June 8, 1983

Starring: Eddie Murphy; Dan Aykroyd; Ralph Bellamy; Don Ameche; and Jamie Lee Curtis

My Synopsis: We open with various shots of Philadelphia…including a sighting of the Rocky statue while it was at the Spectrum (look up the uproar created by Stallone’s “gift” to the city) to  a day in the life of Louis Winthorp III a pompous arrogant jerk (Dan Aykroyd). Then we see a homeless man who supposedly has no legs named Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) begging for money from random people finally begging in front of two old and very rich brothers. Said brothers, Mortimer and Randolph Duke(Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche), own a commodities brokerage, which happens to be the employ of Louis Winthorp III . When Winthorp is leaving Duke & Duke he is bumped by a recently “healed” Valentine and quickly accuses him of trying to rob him. The police get involved and Valentine runs all throughout the Duke & Duke building. He is finally cornered in the head office and the Duke brothers spark up a debate on nature versus nurture. Mortimer believes that Valentine cannot be rehabilitated and Winthorp would pull himself up by his bootstraps if made homeless, Randolph disagrees. The wager is set and the next day they bail Valentine out of jail and promptly set up Winthorp to go to jail and have drugs planted on him. They get an associate named Beaks to pull this off for them. Beaks hires a prostitute named Ophelia to pretend that Winthorp is her dealer when Mr. Winthorp’s fiancé bails him out. The fiancé promptly dumps poor Winthorp and he’s left broke and without a ride to his home. Ophelia pays for the cab with the promise that she will be repaid double when they arrive. Only problem is Valentine has already moved into Winthorp’s home and the butler of the home, named Coleman, pretends he doesn’t even know Winthorp. This all leads to some hilarious pieces of cinema gold. Murphy owns this role and Aykroyd does great. When Valentine assimilates to the cultured life and Winthorp begins living a life of crime Randolph gets his winnings…one dollar. While the exchange is going on Valentine was hiding in the bathroom smoking a doobie, so he hears the whole exchange. This prompts him to find Valentine and seek revenge for the Duke’s dirty dealings. How will they pull it off? What part does Beaks play in the nefarious schemes of the Duke brothers? Does Belushi make a cameo in this epic John Landis film? I’ll tell you this much there is an epic scene in the train that is very humorous, as for the other questions you’ll have to watch and find out.

My Grade: 9

This movie is incredible. It doesn’t seem like it will be nearly as good as it turns out to be. Even when Aykroyd is contemplating suicide the film doesn’t become too serious and is lighthearted enough to make you laugh. In fact you will be laughing all the way through. If you’ve never seen this it is an absolute must see. If you’ve seen it once it’s definitely worth watching again. Heck if you’ve seen it 20 times…

48 Hrs. (C-Jay Edition)

Rating: R

Time: 96 Minutes

Release Date: December 8, 1982

Starring:  Eddie Murphy; Nick Nolte; and James Remar

My Synopsis: This has been called the first “Buddy Cop” film… I guess since Nick Nolte plays a cop it has labeled as such. Jack Cates(Nolte) is a hotdogging police officer who finds himself in a shootout with a really bad dude. Said bad dude kills one cop before meeting Jack in the lobby and another one shortly thereafter…but I’m getting ahead of myself. The bad dude, whose name is Albert Ganz,  was played by none other than James Remar. If that name doesn’t automatically ring a bell then I dare say you aren’t a fan of The Warriors or any of the 9,000 movies he’s been in. Ganz is in the slammer when the movie begins but while working the field with the rest of the felons his Native American “Indian” friend busts him out, killing two cops in the proccess. That means in the first half hour of the movie this fella has killed a total of 4 cops. Cates decides to take him down since he watched his friend and fellow officer shot right in front of him and narrowly escaped a bullet himself. So Cates finds out about Ganz’s “gang”, turns out one of them is still in prison. This is where we meet Eddie Murphy as Reggie Hammond. Cates signs him out of prison for a 48 hour leave which leads to a whole lot of searching for Ganz and the Indian, and a whole lot of racial slurs (something I’ve noticed is a trend in Murphy’s films). During one scene they go into a “honkey” bar and the bartender asks Reggie if he wants a black Russian, Reggie’s reaction to this joke is hilarious and leads to my favorite scene in the film. Mr. Hammond conducts a shakedown of suspicious characters while pretending to be a cop, and in the end gets the information he requires. Ganz is after half a million dollars which just so happens to be in Hammond’s car which is parked in a big pay by the day garage. Only problem is Mr. Hammond doesn’t have the ticket to take it out, his friend Luther has it. Luther is in the process of trying to get it to Ganz because Ganz has kidnapped Luther’s girlfriend. After the shakedown some drama goes down with the Indian’s girlfriend, who doesn’t give the boys any useful information, Cates and Hammond have a fistfight because Cates is sick of Hammond’s bullsh–. Then they decide to go after the bad guys again and find Luther taking the car out of garage it’s been in for 3 years. They follow Luther which leads to a shootout in the subway and Ganz gets away again…will they catch Ganz? Will Hammond get his money back? Will Cates and Hammond become fast friends? Well it does have a sequel…so I think so.

My Grade: 8

The movie that created the mold so to speak. Like the first of anything it isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty darn close.  It’s a great movie, Eddie Murphy is hillarious and Nick Nolte does a great job playing the gruff and domineering cop but at the same time the caring and professional guy. This is a dynamic Nolte completely nails in this film. The movie has something else working to it’s benefit though, James Remar, who plays a great bad guy in this film. He’s not a criminal mastermind, or a rich foreign drug dealer, he’s a common crook who is extremely sadistic and will kill anyone or anything that gets in his way. Though there are a lot of things in the film that bend the rules of reality nothing overtly slaps you in the face like some action films we’ve already reviewed, and some we will soon review. With all of that said this is a solid film which would be worth a rent or two, or maybe worth owning.

48 Hours (Darthmerj edition)

Release date: December 8, 1982

Starring: Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte, Brion James, James Remar

I hadn’t seen 48 Hours in at least 4 months, so I figured I would refresh my memory and watch it again to prepare for my review. It still holds up as one of the better Eddie Murphy movies. It also further bolsters the Darthmerj Corollary. I would guess this is my 15th viewing of this 80′s Classic. This was the perfect launch pad for Eddie Murphy’s film career. He already had a pretty good career going as a stand-up comedian and television star (Saturday Night Live). He then decided to cement his status as Supreme Ruler of the 80′s by beginning a decade long domination of the silver screen. Hyperbole? According to Wikapedia his movies (career) have grossed enough total money to have averaged $104 million per film.

48 hours is the birth of the Buddy Cop genre. We already touched on this subject with Lethal Weapon, but LW was just polishing the product that 48 Hours started. We once again have two characters that are near polar opposites. Nick Nolte plays Jack Cates. Jack Cates’ job is to throw as many lit cigarettes as he can down in the largest variety of locales. He throws cigarettes down on the streets, in prison hallways, in bars, the police station, hotels- you name it, Jack Cates can toss a half lit cigarette down on it. It says so right on his business card. Also, he sometimes engages police work. While on the job he drinks and drives his car in ways that would scare rally car drivers. Jack generally gets his way through brute force and intimidation and has little regard for personal hygiene or rules of any kind.

Eddie Murphy plays Reggie Hammond. Reggie is a convict at San Quentin prison. He is a wisecracking street wise ladies man. This role showcases Eddie’s many talents, from singing along to The Police song “Roxanne” to taking on a honky-tonk hillbilly bar by himself on a bet with Cates.

When Cates gets mixed up with an escaped convict turned cop killer named Ganz it leads him to Reggie. It seems that Reggie was once in the same criminal gang as Ganz and he may have inside knowledge of his plans. Cates gets Reggie a short term parole. Can you guess the length of time of this parole? Here’s a hint: it is 6 times the square root of 64. The two buddies criss-cross San Francisco trying to track down Ganz while also protecting a large sum of money that Reggie happens to have stashed in the trunk of his vintage Porsche. Along the way they forge a grudging freindship.

Random Thoughts

There are some really nice looking shots of San Francisco. It appears that they spent some time plotting the camera angles to show off the unusual landscape that makes up the city. The villain Ganz is in the running to be the worst shot in the history of cinema. He takes 5-20 shots at very close ranges and misses wildly. Of course most of these shots are taken at Cates, and he seems to be the type of movie cop that doesn’t wear a bullet proof vest. Someone in the music department loved kettle drums. Brion James, one of the great “that guy” character actors of the 80′s, has a small role- minus the horrible fake accent he displayed in Tango and Cash. There is a TON of racism on this movie. It is interesting to see how the attitude on that sort of thing has changed in 27 years. There is also a lot of police brutality, mainly via Jack Cates. After the escape and shooting that gets the movie rolling, one of the fastest police investigations in history occurs. In less than a day they have ballistics reports, coroner’s reports, and dossiers on all involved parties. CSI isn’t even this fast. I wonder if the script called for the police captain to scream all his lines AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS?

Rating: Solid 8- Eddie starts to hone the fine edge of hilarity that he perfects in the upcoming Beverly Hills Cop. Nolte does his best Nolte impression.

April Fools Day (Darthmerj edition)

The Psych episode was much better!

Release date: March 27, 1986

Starring: Biff, nobody else that you have ever heard of (except some of the wacky cast from Just One of the Guys)

Hey guys, want to take a guess as to how I start off this review? That’s right, the good ol’ Darthmerj Corallary! This movie blows. This was the first time I had ever seen it and it will most likely be my last. I love it when a good corallary comes together.

One of the issues that made me not enjoy the movie was the fact that I knew the twist beforehand. There is a twist, and it isn’t very subtle or creative. I won’t spoil it for you, but if you watched a movie called Everybody Dies at the End and the Screen Turns Black and it is Kind of Confusing do you think you might have an idea of the director’s vision? Now that I mention it, I might have enjoyed that movie a bit more than this one.

The movie has a bunch of friends that visit the secluded mansion that a classmate stands to inherit. While there strange things start to happen and eventually bodies start dropping. One by one each of the friends die until there are only two left and the climax occurs and then you want to rip the DVD from the player and crack it into bits only it isn’t yours and damn you Netflix for not warning me!

I almost can’t think of anything wothwhile to talk about in regards to this movie. One of the two dolts from Just One of The Guys spends a lot of time telling other guys that their fly is down. Two guys play one of the dumbest games I have ever seen with a switchblade early on in the movie. The scenes where Muffy watches a Jack-in-the-Box are almost unwatchable. The director’s notes for those scenes must have been something like “play it like you are watching an alien give birth” or something similarly spectacular.

Rating: 2

Watch the Psych episode for a funnier one hour version of this movie. Be thankful that Hollywood doesn’t plan to remake this tragedy of celluloid. Oops, they already did. It went straight to video last week.

April Fool’s Day (C-Jay Edition)

Rating: R

Time: 89 Minutes

Release Date: March 27, 1986

Starring: Thomas F. Wilson; Deborah Foreman; Clayton Rohner; Deborah Goodrich

My Synopsis: A troupe of college kids are going out to a mutual friend named Muffy’s house to spend the week partying. When a group of young people get together in a movie it means one of two things, they form a gang a la the Outsiders or they all get hunted down and murdered by an antisocial psychopath. Well this film just happens to be set on the day of fools…April 1. The date is important because Muffy sets up a series of practical jokes that some of the friends find to be in bad taste. Let’s introduce our cast of characters, we have Muffy whose father owns the house in question but will be giving it to Muffy…maybe. Then we have the group of college friends that know one another, Chaz is the annoying “cool” guy who is always cracking jokes and for some odd reason is carrying a camera around throughout the first scenes of the film. Nikki is the loose woman, there always seems to be a loose woman in 80′s horror films. Arch, who is played by none other than Back to the Future’s own Biff, playing the sex crazed jock who had a past relationship with Buffy(which actually makes for a good line during an interaction between Muffy and Nikki). Then we have the all American couple in Rob and Kit. Then there are a few people who are not friends with the core group but are invited by Muffy anyway. Nan is the good girl who is into drama and was actually a part of Muffy’s drama team. Then we have Harvey who plays the southern (not-so) gentleman. And last but not least Skip who is Muffy’s cousin and the first one to die. Skip’s death is followed by the subsequent deaths of nearly all of our characters until finally Kit is about to be murdered by the assailant and…sorry I just can’t ruin it for you…maybe Darthmerj will, stay tuned for his review which should be posted soon.

My Grade: 5

I give this a five because it’s mediocre. If you don’t know the killer twist ending it would either be a 6 or a 4 depending on how you feel about the reveal. I however knew the surprise and was watching simply to be entertained. For the most part it isn’t too bad. It doesn’t take too long to get where it’s going and it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s still pretty mediocre overall.

RoboCop (Darthmerj Edition)

Come quietly or there will be trouble!

Release Date: July 17, 1987

Starring: Buckaroo Banzai, Nancy Allen, Red Foreman, Captain Bogomil, the man who killed Laura Palmer

Before I watched this movie in preparation for this review I was unsure of what it was going to do to the Darthmerj Corollary. See, I watched this movie 3 or 4 times as a kid and thought it was great. In the past 20 years I haven’t bothered to watch it at all. I thought that when I watched it again that I would love it as much as I did when I first saw it. This would begin to disprove the Darthmerj Corollary, which states that the total number of times I have seen the movie will be directly proportional to my eventual rating. If I like the movie I will have seen it many times; if I have not seen it more than once or twice (if at all) then chances are it is a stinker.

With that said, in the case of Robocop the Corollary stands firm and true. There is a reason that I haven’t seen this film in may years, and that reason is because it really isn’t that good. There are tiny bits of goodness, but on the whole it plays as a campy stock 80′s action movie.

The plot involves a police officer who, after being brutally shot, is transformed Million Dollar Man-style into a robot cop, who despite having his memory “erased” figures out the whole shebang and exacts revenge on all those responsible. The movie is 103 minutes long, but it seems to take about as long as it did to read that sentence. If you happen to blink in the beginning you will miss the shooting and the transformation into Robocop. Blink again and he is dredging up memories, found his former home, and found those responsible for killing him. Blink again and you find out that the whole weekend was all an elaborate April Fool’s Day joke. Wait, you blinked so long you fell asleep and woke up in my next review!

My point is that the plot moves at a blistering pace and asks that you go along with the gaping holes in it. If there is a convenience store being robbed in a city the size of Detroit mere moments after Robocop heads out for duty we should not be surprised that he pulls up and catches the bad guy in the act.  If two men are pulling a lady into an alley with bad intentions we shouldn’t be surprised to see Robocop pull up, despite there being no witnesses to call it in or cameras to alert the authorities. Robocop tracks down all the bad guys with little to no detective work. He just starts popping up at their current locations. Know this, i can believe that we can take a cop who has been shot with a shotgun at least 35 times and rebuild him as a cybernetic half robot half cop with a gun holster in his leg, but I can’t believe that this “robocop” can pick out the one dance club in Detroit where a member of the gang who killed him is hanging out with seemingly no prior tipoff.

All of this “plot” is merely a device to show us what our future looks like. I understand that this wasn’t supposed to be that far into the future, but the technology portrayed in this movie doesn’t hold up very well after 20 years. When the officers stop for coffee the cups are square. Nothing says “future” like a square cup. The tv’s and video screens that are shown throughout the movie seem to be from 1977, not 1987. The “Robocop perspective” shots are cheesy and not nearly as good as the Terminator shots that they are stolen from. Robocop drives around in a 1986 Ford Taurus. In 1987 that might have been pretty cool, but looking at them today they might as well be Model-T’s.

Random thoughts:

It really isn’t a good idea for two cops armed with small pistols to enter an abondoned mill complex to try and ferret out 6 criminals armed with shotguns. You are going to lose that battle every time, and then one of you just might be turned into a cyborg. It was strange watching Eric’s dad from That 70′s Show and Laura Palmer’s dad from Twin Peaks as bad guys. One of the Classic Movie Scenes of the 80′s occurs in the aforementioned scene where the two guys are dragging the lady into the alley. When Robocop can’t get a clear shot around the lady he targets through her skirt and legs and shoots the fellow in his undercarrige. It was interesting how they sell houses in the future, with the television screens that tell you all about the house. I was confused as to why they leave charred photos and dead plants all through the house, though. The toxic waste death is a high point of the movie, but it is funny in that the barrel is labeled “Toxic Waste” like this is a 1960′s Batman episode. Even in the slack industrial conditions of the 80′s I think someone would have had a problem with a random vat of toxic waste.  I guess since USB ports were not invented yet or commonplace at that time the only other method of data transfer would have to be a 6 inch metal spike. And he found a port for that spike on at least two occasions. What were those ports used for before they invented Robocop? Did anyone see that spike and not know that he would eventually kill someone with it? How funny is it that the ED 209, a technological marvel from the future, is defeated by a set of stairs?

Rating: 5

Watch this movie once just to see the bits that are original and neat, but don’t expect it to hold up with multiple viewings.

Robocop (C-Jay Edition)

Rating: R

Time: 103 minutes

Release Date: July 17, 1987

Starring: Peter Weller; Kurtwood Smith; Nancy Allen; and Ronny Cox

My Synopsis: Setting, Detroit in the near future. Crime is running wild. Big business leaders at Omni Consumer Products (OCP) have a plan to create a new Detroit, but first they have to find a way to stop all the crime. What better way to stop crime than create a big ugly monster with bad animatics to shoot anything that does not comply with your laws? He who has the bigger gun wins right? Well when their robot on steroids kills an innocent man one coked up young executive (all executives were coked up in the 80′s) busts out the best idea ever. Let’s take a dead person and use his brain and give him a robotic body. It just so happens around the same time super-cop Alex Murphy gets in some trouble with some real A-holes (led by a guy named Boddicker) and they blast him. He dies and then out comes Robocop. Problem is the human brain has this little problem, it dreams and has memories so, despite earlier attempts to “wipe his memory” he starts remembering and having dreams, so it turns out the mind wipe doesn’t work and Alex Murphy starts tracking down his murderers. Turns out Boddicker and the Bureaucrats at OCP are in cahoots and Robocop simply can’t have that.

My Grade: 8

Wow I never knew this movie was so bloody and violent. When I was a kid I remember watching this, I even had the Robocop action figure and police car I must have seen the edited version because I don’t remember the intense blood and glorious violence that this film wrought (sidenote, it’s funny that a movie is okay for kids if there is no blood but still the same ammount of action). This is no kid’s movie. The scene that stood out to me is the one where they are in the Boddicker hideout and they shoot Alex Murphy’s hand off then kill him with a shot to the head…powerful scene. It is a great movie that touches on a lot of big issues like human nature, government contracts, science and technology. I say it’s worth at least one viewing, but as for me I’m watching it again right now.

The Fabulous Baker Boys (A C-Jay Only Presentation)

Rating: R

Time: 114 minutes

Release Date: October 13, 1989

Starring: Jeff Bridges; Michelle Pfeiffer; and Beau Bridges

My Synopsis: The Bridges brothers play the Baker Brothers. The Baker brothers play piano in nightclubs, but they aren’t drawing crowds. They aren’t drawing crowds because…let’s face it the piano isn’t a big draw in the 80′s, I mean what decade do these fools think it is the 40′s? So they decide to bring in a female singer to add a little something to the show, they interview like 31 girls then an hour and a half late comes Susie Diamond. In my opinion anytime you want to add a little something to anything you are doing you should dial Ms. Pfeiffer, don’t believe me ask Tony Montana. Jack Baker is the younger brother and he has a habit through the whole movie of never saying much, and when he does talk he mumbles. Frank Baker is nicknamed Egghead, he has a family and is the one who has it all together. But it always seems as though he is less talented than his younger brother.  Well it just so happens Susie catches the fancy of Jack Baker,  this causes a little friction in the trio. Diamond and Jack end up getting really close when Frank is called away to a family emergency. The rest as they say is history, and you’ll have to watch this incredible film to find out how all of it goes.

My Grade: 8

I really enjoyed this movie. It had good music, good acting, and a good story. I don’t have much more to say besides that. This is just the type of movie you could watch on a date, or if you’re married it’s the perfect movie to watch with the mother-in-law.