oscar@utcsrgv.UUCP (Oscar M. Nierstrasz) (01/04/84)
Here is an annotated list of 1983 films that I have seen.
They are listed roughly in descending order of worth (my own
humble estimations). Some 1982 films that were released later
are also included. Post or mail comments. Please mail me
any queries or requests for more information.
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GREAT FILMS (****)
Tender Mercies (Beresford, Bruce; USA; 1982; 85m)
Robert Duvall is perfectly understated as an alcoholic
Country singer who picks himself and his life up off the ground.
My Dinner With Andre (Malle, Louis; USA; 1982; ???m)
Film about a fascinating dinner conversation -- may be too
"highbrow" (= "dull"?) for many.
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, Ingmar; Sweden; 1983; 197m)
Bergman's "Greatest Hits" -- a fabulous film that has elements
of many of his earlier films.
Circle of Deceit (Schlondorff, Volker; Germany; 1982; 115m)
Angst and Weltschmerz in war-torn Lebanon. Bruno Ganz is a
journalist who has an affair with Hanna Schygulla in Beirut
while people die in the streets.
King of Comedy (Scorcese, Martin; USA; 1983; 110m)
Very few people went to see this unusual and scary film
about a fruitcake (Robert de Niro) who harasses a TV
talk-show host (Jerry Lewis) to let him on his show.
Danton (Wajda, Andrzej; France/Poland; 1983; 136m)
Gerard Depardieu as Danton as Lech Walesa. Wajda's film is more
about present-day Poland than Paris of the 1790s. All the same,
this is essential viewing. Beautifully made.
EXCELLENT FILMS (***)
Star 80 (Fosse, Bob; USA; 1983; 105m)
Mariel Hemingway and Eric Roberts are perfect as Dorothy
Stratten and her manic-depressive boyfriend. This film is
spiritual kin to "King of Comedy" -- no one you can identify
with, but fascinating characters all the same.
Rumble Fish (Coppola, Francis Ford; USA; 1983; 94m)
Great acting, staggeringly beautiful film-making, ok story.
This is an Orson Welles film for teenagers.
Draughtsman's Contract, The (Greenaway, Peter; GB; 1982; 105m)
A draughtsman is hired to draw twelve sketches of an estate.
Or is he? Odd things happen. The movie ends. Life goes on.
Balance, La (Swaim, Bob; France; 1983; 102m)
Great thriller about mean French cops who arm-twist a (nice)
pimp into becoming a stool-pigeon. With Nathalie (*sigh*) Baye.
Moonlighting (Skolimowski, Jerzy; GB; 1982; 97m)
Low-key, grueling film with Jeremy Irons about illegal Polish
workers renovating a house in London when martial law is
declared in Poland. Their leader is the only one who speaks English
and the only one who knows about the events back home ....
Return of Martin Guerre, The (Vigne, Daniel; France; 1983; 110m)
Depardieu as a French peasant who returns to his wife after a
hiatus of about 15-20 years. Or is he an imposter? ...
Diner (Levinson, Barry; USA; 1982; 110m)
Excellent film about a bunch of former high-school buddies who
have trouble growing up. The only problem is the sound of the
deus ex machina creaking as all the subplots are neatly resolved.
Fourth Man, The (Verhoeven, Paul; Netherlands; 1983; 95m)
Unusual Dutch film about a writer who gets involved with a beautiful
woman who is (apparently) collecting and murdering husbands.
Lola (Fassbinder, Rainer Werner; Germany; 1982; ???m)
Fassbinder's "Blue Angel". File next to "Marriage of Maria Braun"
and "Veronica Voss".
Seventeen (DeMott, Joel & Kreines, Jeff; USA; 1982; 120m)
Fascinating documentary about teenagers growing up in Mississipi.
All about drugs, inter-racial strife, unwanted pregnancies and more.
Legal problems have stymied the distribution of this film in the USA.
Angelo, My Love (Duvall, Robert; USA; 1983; 115m)
Very interesting and entertaining film about gypsy life. The story
(concerning a stolen ring and a precocious gypsy boy, Angelo) is
mostly an excuse for not making a documentary.
Return Engagement (Rudolph, Alan; USA; 1983; 89m)
Bizarre documentary about a lecture/debate tour given by
Timothy Leary and G. Gordon Liddy.
Local Hero (Forsyth, Bill; Scotland; 1983; 115m)
A small town on the coast of Scotland is to be bought and destroyed
to make way for oil refineries, until .... Very quaint and funny.
La Nuit de Varennes (Scola, Ettore; Italy/France; 1982; 125m)
France, shortly after the revolution. The wealthy and the noble and
the formerly wealthy or noble are leaving Paris as fast as they can.
Yol (Goren, Serif; Turkey/Cyprus; 1982; ???m)
Several Turkish prisoners have a short leave. We follow each of
them to get an engrossing but depressing picture of modern-day
Turkey. Screenplay by Turkish exile Yilmaz Guney.
State of Things, The (Wenders, Wim; Germany; 1982; 120m)
Wenders made this 8 1/2 -like film about a stalled SF film production
in Portugal while his own Hollywood film "Hammett" was stalled.
This strange film is for cognoscenti and fans only.
Burden of Dreams (Blank, Les; USA; 1982; 95m)
A documentary about the making of Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo".
Essential viewing for anyone who has seen "Aguirre, the Wrath of God",
or anything else by your favourite psychotic German filmmaker.
Risky Business (Brickman, Paul; USA; 1983; 95m)
Surprisingly clever and witty movie, much funnier than the
usual run of "comedy" films. Mom and Dad go away for a holiday,
leaving their pre-college son at home. *Everything* goes wrong.
Eyes, the Mouth, The (Bellochio, Marco; Italy/France; 1982; 100m)
A very peculiar sequel to Bellochio's 1965 film, "Fists in the Pocket".
The washed out *actor* (not character) from the earlier film
returns home for the funeral of his dead brother and has an affair
with his brother's girlfriend.
God's Angry Man (Herzog, Werner; Germany; 1983; 46m)
All about W. Eugene Scott, the bible-thumping TV-stationmeister.
Parsifal (Syberberg, Hans-Jurgen; Germany; 1982; 255m)
"Our Wagner": Syberberg's filming of Wagner's opera. Very unusual.
Few will be able to sit through this one.
Year of Living Dangerously, The (Weir, Peter; USA; 1983; 114m)
Australian journalists in Indonesia during the struggle
for independence. Kin to "Casablanca".
Betrayal (Jones, David; GB; 1983; 95m)
Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley as stiff-upper-lip Englishmen.
Irons had been carrying on with Kingsley's wife several years
ago, but the matter has only surfaced now ....
Ballad of Narayama, The (Imamura, Shohei; Japan; 1983; 129m)
When Japanese in this mountain village reach the age of seventy,
they are carried into the mountains by their children to
meet their destiny. Beautiful photography.
GOOD FILMS (** 1/2)
Heart Like a Wheel (Kaplan, Jonathan; USA; 1983; 115m)
Fine bio-pic about race-car driver Shirley Muldowney.
Right Stuff, The (Kaufman, Philip; USA; 1983; 190m)
Very entertaining tale of the first astronauts. The book is great.
Meaning of Life, The (Jones, Terry; UK; 1983; 105m)
The best Monty Python film so far. Very crude at times.
Pauline at the Beach (Rohmer, Eric; France; 1983; 90m)
This talky intellectual farce is fun but not for everyone.
Streamers (Altman, Robert; USA; 1983; 116m)
Dated sixties play about soldiers anticipating Vietnam.
Brilliant production if you can swallow the cliches.
War and Peace (Boll, Heinrich et al; Germany; 1983; 120m)
What Germans think about nuclear weapons on their front lawn.
Birgitt Haas Must be Killed (Heynemann, Laurent; France; 1982; ???m)
A fine thriller about an unsuspecting man who falls in love
with a terrorist.
Dernier Combat, Le (Besson, Luc; France; 1983; 90m)
Pretty good French post-apocalypse SF film. Atmospheric.
Outsiders, The (Coppola, Francis Ford; USA; 1983; 90m)
Overblown rendition of S E Hinton's tale of teenage angst.
FAIR FILMS (**)
Zelig (Allen, Woody; USA; 1983; 80m)
Much better than "Midsummer Night ..." but much tamer
than "Stardust Memories" etc.
Strange Brew (Thomas, Dave & Moranis, Rick; Canada; 1983; 90m)
Bob & Doug McKenzie: cute, funny and charming but doesn't
touch the best of Second City.
Twilight Zone (Landis, John; USA; 1983; 101m)
Vastly entertaining. Don't spend more than $2 though.
War Games (Badham, John; USA; 1983; 112m)
Ditto.
Passion (Godard, Jean-Luc; France; 1983; 87m)
"Ambitious". Godard will never be truly appreciated by more
than a select few. Count me out.
Brittania Hospital (Anderson, Lindsay; GB; 1982; ???m)
Fun & silly. In the vein of "O Lucky Man" but somehow dated.
Return of the Jedi, The (Marquand, Richard; USA; 1983; 125m)
Yawn. The first two were fun, but this was too much like tying
your shoelaces.
Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (Jaglom, Henry; USA; 1983; 90m)
Oh dear, oh my. Karen Black certainly *is* neurotic, isn't she?
Christine (Carpenter, John; USA; 1983; 110m)
The lead is great -- the story is asinine. (I saw it for free.)
Never Say Never Again (Kershner, Irvin; GB; 1983; 130m)
Just as dull as the novels.
BAD FILMS (*)
Hanna K. (Costa-Gravras, Costi; France; 1983; 108m)
Lame apologizing for the PLO.
Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (Oshima, Nagisa; GB; 1983; 122m)
Just like that film about a bisexual interior decorator in a
Japanese prisoner-of-war camp called "Marimekko, Mr Bowie".
Nothing Left to Lose (Glowna, Vadim; Germany; 1983; 99m)
Horrible, preposterous, pretentious film about Germans
running a restaurant in one of the desert states.
Appallingly stupid ending.
Exposed (Toback, James; USA; 1983; 99m)
A real bomb, this one deserves four stars for sheer camp value.
See it by all means!
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That's it. Happy movie-going in 1984!
Oscar Nierstrasz
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