Review XCVIII - After Hours

Review XCVIII
After Hours (1985)

So my boyfriend and I were looking for a new film to watch, and he was feeling a comedy. Now, while he has taste when it comes to every other genre, comedies are not his strong suit. And I'm not a big comedy person in general. So after trying Scary Movie for not even five minutes, I copped out. Instead we settled on a film that I had heard about in passing but had never fully looked into - Martin Scorsese's After Hours. I'm sure you've seen the poster before. I didn't even know it was Martin Scorsese until I happened across it when I was looking for a better film! My boyfriend loves Scorsese, and it was a dark comedy, so it was a win-win situation... I think...

Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) is a word processor who is looking for some excitement in his life. He meets a young woman, named Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), at a coffee shop who invites him over to buy a paper weight from her artist friend, Kiki (Linda Fiorentino - Dogma? Wow). When Paul actually decides to go, his night soon turns into a nightmare where he just wishes he could go home and sleep.

The film was different than the other Scorsese films I've seen. Apparently it was made in response to a film Martin Scorsese would later release about Jesus (the Christian figure, not the Mexican) called The Last Temptation of Christ. Paramount Pictures had cancelled the film's production, and it had completed bummed out Scorsese. Originally to the be directed by Tim Burton, he stepped aside when Scorsese expressed an interest in being the director. Yeah, you know right away Scorsese was putting himself in the film. Paul is stuck dealing with a bunch of crazy people all night where, every time he thinks he may finally be getting home, he somehow gets screwed over. It's humorous; nothing that sends you away crying, but you laugh at some particular moments and the fact that everyone is just so damn crazy. You can see how Scorsese felt he was the only sane individual when trying to get going with The Last Temptation of Christ. In fact, I think the film really exaggerates those times where you're around people who just seem to be against you by taking the craziest way to go about things (this would have to be me when it comes to school projects).

I find it a bit sad that I had never really heard of this film before. If you're a die-hard Scorsese film, I'm sure you'd know it, but otherwise, just a casual fan probably wouldn't know this film. I won't call it his best film since it's really just expressing frustration with dealing with other people, but it's a nice watch if you're feeling something futile, hehe. Griffin Dunne has the best expressions sometimes. When he meets up with the men-that-have-sex-with-men guy, how I did laugh. Seeing him break down to people and how no one cares, yet everyone remembers him for a small mistake he made. And you get a lot of cameos from some familiar people, like John Heard, Catherine O'Hara, and Cheech and Chong! Pretty legit.

No need to check out After Hours after hours (*drum snare*) to enjoy it. A nice little watch from Martin Scorsese that I totally recommend for a casual viewing.

This trailer just sums up the whole film, so skip it if you truly want to go in surprised.

Review LXXXVI - Come and See

Review LXXXVI
Come and See (Иди и смотри) (1985)

I mentioned this film in my last review and, surprisingly, I actually watched it. Come and See, known in Russian as Иди и смотри and in Belarusian as Ідзі і глядзi, directed by Elem Klimov, is notorious for being absolutely heartwrenching and melancholic. In fact, this was the director's last film as he felt he had done all he could artistically after that film. The film stars Aleksei Kravchenko as our protagonist.

The movie begins with an old man yelling at two children to stop digging for rifles in Nazi-occupied Byelorussian SSR. One of the boys, Florya Gaishun (Kravchenko), manages to find an abandoned rifle, allowing him to join the resistance - Soviet partisan forces. He is excited and all ready to leave, even as he is dragged out of his house against his mother's wishes. Soon, however, Florya will be shown the realities of World War II and his innocence and naiveté will be lost forever.

So what did I think about Come and See? Well, one, I'll say that, for a Russian film, it was not too lengthy and slow. If you've ever seen a Russian film or read a Russian book, you know what I'm talking about. This film is not bordering four hours, and sometimes I felt scenes were unnecessarily long, but the film wasn't unbearable. However, it terms of content, well, that's a different story. Come and See's characters were not really likeable, but damn, did that ending just destroy you. I mean, as I always say, it's hard for me to relate and I have been desensitised to such viewings, but the final portraits are hard-hitting. The content itself is depressing and scary. However, I'd have to say that the film as a whole can be hard to digest because of the long shots where nothing really happens. Apparently the artillery is also not realistic (tracer rounds shot five hundred times at one point), but I have no knowledge of that, so I can't really talk about it. But again, you have that hard-hitting ending. And I will admit, the portraits throughout are grand. You get pictures of people's faces and they're well shot. But I can't say this film really met every standard I thought it would have. It's depressing, yes, but I couldn't care for the characters at all. In this way, it really lost a lot of the closeness I expected from it. You see a child forced to grow up and faced with such psychological torture, but if you don't care for the child, you lose a lot out of the film.

I find you would watch this film more for the ending and to say that yes, you did watch Come and See, but as an overall film, it is not that stupendous, minus the brilliant portraits. Now I'm off to enjoy the rest of my last day off for summer 2014. Take care, guys.

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Review XXII - Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins

Review XXII
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985)

Although I enjoy super cheesy films, I don't seem to watch them often. I tend to avoid them in the theatres because spending fifteen bucks on a forgettable film isn't what I would call enjoyable, and when they finally come out on DVD, I forget about them. However, I remember before I started going out with my boyfriend and I was hanging out at his dad's house, he presented this eighties' action film on a VHS (whooah!), claiming it was awesome. We started watching it, but never finished it. Maybe a year or two later, I finally watched it again, and man, it was hilarious. I watched it again last night, and I decided I'd post a review about Guy Hamilton's Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins before I review anything else. Yay, eighties' cheese!

Meet Remo Williams (Fred Ward) - before he was Mr. Makin, a tough cop, but he's chosen to be part of a super secret government organization out to clean up the scum on the Earth. With the help of Conn MacCleary (J.A. Preston), Harold Smith (Wilford Brimley), Maj. Rayner Fleming (Kate Mulgrew), and Chiun (Joel Grey), a Korean Sinanju master, Remo Williams will hopefully succeed in his first mission - bringing down George Grove (Charles Cioffi) and his malfactured weapons being used for the United States Army.

I'd give the film seven stars on ten. If you like action films, and you like a good laugh, go for this film. It's cute, cheesy, and pretty lame, but it works. You can't go into a film like this expecting something more than what it delivers, so you're definitely satisfied. It does bother me a bit that they had a white man play Chiun, a Korean, but the make-up is deserving of its Oscar nomination. Check it out for a good laugh; it's worth it for the snickering construction worker!

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