Film Review: Into the Night (1985)

Release Date: February 22nd, 1985
Directed by: John Landis
Written by: Ron Koslow
Music by: Ira Newborn
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard Farnsworth, Irene Papas, Kathryn Harrold, Dan Aykroyd, Bruce McGill, David Bowie, Vera Miles, Clu Gulager, Art Evans, John Hostetter, Jack Arnold, Rick Baker, Paul Bartel, David Cronenberg, Jonathan Demme, Amy Heckerling, Jim Henson, Lawrence Kasdan, Paul Mazursky, Carl Perkins, Dedee Pfeiffer, Don Siegel, Jake Steinfeld, Roger Vadim

Universal Pictures, 115 Minutes

Review:

“[to Diana] I need you to appease Shaheen. She will demand blood; yours will do.” – Monsieur Melville

After recently watching Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, I couldn’t help but want to revisit a similar film from the same year by John Landis.

However, after revisiting this, it’s not all that similar other than it’s a “yuppie in peril” story. Also, the girl makes it to the end of this film and it’s more of an actual love story while also being more lighthearted and action heavy. The two films certainly have some parallels but this one is more accessible and probably more fun for most filmgoers.

Personally, I don’t like this as much as After Hours but it’s still a movie that I enjoy quite a bit.

It’s hard not to enjoy a film with Jeff Goldblum and Michele Pfeiffer as its stars, though. Both of them are great in this and I liked their chemistry and kind of wished they were paired up in more movies.

Beyond the two leads, we have a film full of lots of great talent, as well as more than a dozen cameos with other filmmakers and behind the camera legends in small, bit parts. Hell, even this film’s director, John Landis, plays a roll throughout the film as one of the four thugs in pursuit of the main characters.

I really liked David Bowie in this, though. He steals the scenes he’s in and it made me wish that his role was bigger.

The story sees a man, after catching his wife cheating, stumble upon a woman running away from some dudes with guns in an airport parking garage. They speed off together and we’re sent on an action adventure romp through Los Angeles, as they try to figure out how to get her out of trouble and survive all the trouble that’s coming for them.

There are so many great characters in this and every sequence in the film is pretty damn memorable because of that.

It’s strange to me that this isn’t considered one of Landis’ top films but it was also the first film of his to come out after the tragedy that happened on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie. I think that because of that, this wasn’t promoted as well as it should have been and the public already had a bad taste in their mouths and probably, rightfully so.

However, looking at this as its own thing, separate from the grim reality of an unrelated picture, this is a solid comedy that did just about everything right.

Rating: 8.25/10
Pairs well with: After Hours and other “yuppie in peril” movies.

Film Review: The Witches (1990)

Release Date: February 16th, 1990 (Orlando premiere)
Directed by: Nicolas Roeg
Written by: Allan Scoot
Based on: The Witches by Roald Dahl
Music by: Stanley Myers
Cast: Anjelica Huston, Mai Zetterling, Jason Fisher, Rowan Atkinson

Jim Henson Productions, Lorimar Film Entertainment, 91 Minutes

Review:

“Real witches are very cruel, and they have a highly developed sense of smell. A real witch could smell you across the street on a pitch-black night.” – Helga

While this film has grown into a cult classic over the last thirty years, I hadn’t seen it since it first appeared on VHS. Back then, no one really knew about it but I wanted to see it because Jim Henson worked on it. Plus, my mum wouldn’t take me to the theater to see it because she had some weird religious reason not to take me to anything “promoting witchcraft or Satanism.” Funny, as she ended up becoming a massive Harry Potter fan a decade later.

What really stands out about this film is how unique it is. Also, for a kid’s movie it’s damn dark. The director actually had to tone it down after he showed it to his own kid in order to get his reaction. As a kid, I wasn’t scared by it but the imagery was so haunting and over the top that it left a mark on my psyche.

My memory of the film was a fond one and I’m glad to say that my youthful opinion on the film still held up, seeing it now.

Anjelica Huston is pretty close to perfection in this and man, her performance is still damn effective. While this is adapted from a Roald Dahl children’s novel, it feels like the role was tailor made for her. It highlighted her strengths, her ability to intimidate and her intensity. She also got to ham it up and act over the top, which only benefited the movie and her role.

The kid actors are okay, nothing special, and the rest of the acting is fairly average but once the kids become mice, the film almost shifts into a state of otherworldly-ness and that’s after the incredible witch convention sequence.

The special effects in this are incredible from Anjelica Huston’s full witch makeup and prosthetics to the boys’ mice forms. Even knowing how talented Jim Henson was and how great his studio is, the effects work and puppetry still blew my mind for what they achieved here, thirty years ago.

I’m glad that this did become a cult classic, it deserves that status because of how good it is, how much craftsmanship went into it and for it’s uniqueness.

Rating: 7.5/10
Pairs well with: other children’s horror from the ’80s and ’90s.

Film Review: Labyrinth (1986)

Release Date: June 27th, 1986
Directed by: Jim Henson
Written by: Dennis Lee, Terry Jones
Music by: Trevor Jones
Cast: David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, Frank Oz

Henson Associates Inc., Lucasfilm Ltd., TriStar Pictures, 101 Minutes

Review:

Thanks to Flashback Cinema, I got to relive the theatrical experience of Labyrinth for the first time since I saw it at seven years-old.

The film is a classic of children’s cinema and also one of the coolest things that Jim Henson did, even though everything Jim Henson did was beyond cool. It was also produced by George Lucas and Lucasfilm just after they became household names with the original Star Wars trilogy and a few Indiana Jones movies.

The film also stars a very young Jennifer Connelly in the role that first introduced her to the boys that fell in love with her in the 1980s. It also stars messiah-like space alien David Bowie, who has never not captivated audiences in anything. Bowie literally is a god but we saw him downgraded a bit here to the role of goblin-ruling wizard or Jareth, the Goblin King. But when your goblin army is made up of Jim Henson Muppets, you may actually surpass your status as a god.

While the film is fantastic for all the right reasons, thirty-plus years later, it does feel quite dated. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but I don’t feel as if it would be effective for the children of today’s film market. It’s not the children’s fault but when everything they have been brought up seeing is CGI festivals of gigantic proportions, it is hard for something like Labyrinth to compete with that.

However, it does greatly excel at fun, creativity and heart and those are the keys to unlock a child’s imagination. It is hard for me to say how it may effect kids, as no one in the theater was a child. My experience watching this now, involved sitting in a dark room with other people in their thirties. It would have been cool to gauge a child’s reaction to the film on the big screen because I know how it effected those of us in the 80s.

The film is well shot and the cinematography is mostly pretty good. There are sequences that don’t look great, however. The scene with the Fireys didn’t necessarily look good at the time the film was made and it looks even worse now, as the imperfections are much clearer when the mind can’t help but compare it to films today. There are also scenes were you do see puppet strings, which weren’t as easy to hide in 1986. All thing considered, the strings never bothered me though; I know that this is really just a puppet show and it doesn’t really take you out of the magic of the film.

Despite the talents of Bowie and Connelly, the acting isn’t superb. Granted, this is one of Connelly’s first big roles and she was very young. Also, Bowie was playing it up for the subject matter but was still alluring and mesmerizing as Jareth, the Goblin King. The real issue with the acting probably falls more on the script and the directing of Jim Henson, who is more a maestro of puppets than human beings.

With Labyrinth, the positives far outweigh the negatives and it isn’t a film you see for superb acting and pristine cinematography. It is a film about imagination and fun. It accomplishes what it sets out to do and it is still a worthwhile experience.

Rating: 6.5/10