Eat lead, slackers!

Back to the Future Part II

(1989)

Once we leave the rather too broad and indulgent future vision (Zemeckis admits it didn't interest him much, and it's telling that he was most fired up by the camera trickery required for multiple Michael Js) this is first rate, justly recognised as a sequel that doesn't rest on its laurels.

For such a densely-packed script it's surprisingly the shortest of the trilogy. The nightmare 1985 is probably the highlight, but the revisiting of the first film is sharp and inventive. What doesn't work, and smacks of desperation, is the decision to imbue Marty with a character failing he has to overcome (in the third film). The whole "No one calls me chicken" bit just seems like lazy writing, and, since we've already hit upon what causes all Marty's problems in the film (greediness), unnecessary.

Indeed, one could argue that the film is a reaction to the shallow materialism of the ending of the first film. The hero is punished for wanting even more (the sports almanac); no need for the lame "chicken" business.

****1/2

Here's the trailer for Part II:

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They'll think I've lost control again and put it all down to evolution.

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I never strangled a chicken in my life!

Rope (1948) (SPOILERS) Rope doesn’t initially appear to have been one of the most venerated of Hitchcocks, but it has gone through something of a rehabilitation over the years, certainly since it came back into circulation during the 80s. I’ve always rated it highly; yes, the seams of it being, essentially, a formal experiment on the director’s part, are evident, but it’s also an expert piece of writing that uses our immediate knowledge of the crime to create tension throughout; what we/the killers know is juxtaposed with the polite dinner party they’ve thrown in order to wallow in their superiority.

Oh, you got me right in the pantaloons, partner.

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You must have hopes, wishes, dreams.

Brazil (1985) (SPOILERS) Terry Gilliam didn’t consider Brazil the embodiment of a totalitarian nightmare it is often labelled as. His 1984½ (one of the film’s Fellini-riffing working titles) was “ the Nineteen Eighty-Four for 1984 ”, in contrast to Michael Anderson’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from 1948. This despite Gilliam famously boasting never to have read the Orwell’s novel: “ The thing that intrigues me about certain books is that you know them even though you’ve never read them. I guess the images are archetypal ”. Or as Pauline Kael observed, Brazil is to Nineteen Eighty-Four as “ if you’d just heard about it over the years and it had seeped into your visual imagination ”. Gilliam’s suffocating system isn’t unflinchingly cruel and malevolently intolerant of individuality; it is, in his vision of a nightmare “future”, one of evils spawned by the mechanisms of an out-of-control behemoth: a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. And yet, that is not really, despite how indulgently and glee

Miss Livingstone, I presume.

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A herbal enema should fix you up.

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I'm an old ruin, but she certainly brings my pulse up a beat or two.

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You’re easily the best policeman in Moscow.

Gorky Park (1983) (SPOILERS) Michael Apted and workmanlike go hand in hand when it comes to thriller fare (his Bond outing barely registered a pulse). This adaptation of Martin Cruz Smith’s 1981 novel – by Dennis Potter, no less – is duly serviceable but resolutely unremarkable. William Hurt’s militsiya officer Renko investigates three faceless bodies found in the titular park. It was that grisly element that gave Gorky Park a certain cachet when I first saw it as an impressionable youngster. Which was actually not unfair, as it’s by far its most memorable aspect.

I don’t like fighting at all. I try not to do too much of it.

Cuba (1979) (SPOILERS) Cuba -based movies don’t have a great track record at the box office, unless Bad Boys II counts. I guess The Godfather Part II does qualify. Steven Soderbergh , who could later speak to box office bombs revolving around Castro’s revolution, called Richard Lester’s Cuba fascinating but flawed. Which is generous of him.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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