"It's getting light. I'm going to sleep."
After Eckhart Schmidt's moody, dreamlike neo-noir Alpha City first drew me in, fittingly, in the dead of night a few years ago, I keep coming back to it, only because I haven't experienced another '80s film that, for me, functions as an effective 1985 blend of the nocturnal vibe of After Hours, the fictional metropolis strangeness of Trouble in Mind, and the music of Yello. Shot entirely at night in West Berlin and…
"Why don't you go to New York?"
Here's a fun and surprising mid-90s black comedy that an After Hours fan might deem a hidden gem. Griffin Dunne is the goal-seeking protagonist, an aspiring film producer (and loser) named Martin, who is essentially Paul Hackett with a mustache. Moreover, Rosanna Arquette plays Martin's wife, and Martin Scorsese makes a cameo, as a tax accountant, in an early scene in which all three appear together, in other words, a cool little reunion…
One two three... hail T.V.
Watching Dirty Harry made a man of me
Here I stand, T.V. man
I've got all the angels eating out of my hand...
I got the good, bad and ugly traits
But even Dirty Harry was allowed to make mistakes...
(chorus from The Bolshoi's amusing 1987 single "T.V. Man")
I can remember catching the opening scene of Dirty Harry (1971) on TV as a kid one Sunday afternoon in the early '90s and being somewhat…
"It's only a dummy, dummy! Happy Halloween!"
It appears that Mother Nature won't permit us to put out our dummies and fog machines this year. Bummer. I can still watch 31-year-old Halloween-set straight-to-video slashers as a way to tune out the sound of ceaseless Halloween rain.
I would say that Hack-O-Lantern is exactly what I needed after straying from the '80s path for 30 days. This flick did the trick; it's a fun little '80s treat.
