Stop Making Sense

Jonathan Demme, 1984 (9.2*)
I guess it helps to be a fan of the rock band Talking Heads to really enjoy this concert documentary, but for any fan of concert filmmaking, this will also be a treat. There have been other good concert films, like Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, documenting The Band’s last concert, but for me this one went a little more over the top.

When I saw this in the theater, there were people dancing in the aisles, and the crowd was a huge range of ages. I was already a fan of the band, so for me it was an unexpected treat that I felt like I was also at this concert at the Pantages Theater in L.A., shot over three nights.

The band had just been a more intellectual punk rock band than most, led by the cerebral lead singer-songwriter David Byrne, known as much for his out-of-sync gyrations as much as songs. Then they added two former members of the Funkadelic-Parliament funk bands, Bernie Worrell (keyboards) and Alex Weir (guitar, vocals) and suddenly discovered rhythm, notably from the James Brown school of funk grooves. This suddenly rejuvenated the band and it’s obvious in this concert; they’re now a fusion of musical influences working together to create something unique. My own favorite here is near the end, “Cross-Eyed and Painless”, and I can’t imagine it without the P-funk connection. Of course there’s the hits, “Burning Down the House” and “Psycho Killer”, but just as good are “This Must Be the Place” and “I Get Wild/Wild Gravity”.

Ironically, Byrne is now best known for wearing the big suit around this era. On a live tv interview (Letterman?), Byrne said "a friend told me 'onstage, you're bigger than life', so I said 'oh, then I need a really big suit'"

If you’re just interested in good rock concert films as well, this is one of the best ever (maybe the best) - along with The Police “Synchronicity Concert” (a live concert, unedited, from the Omni in Atlanta, Ga), and the all-time classic, Woodstock (1970) which did it’s best to record both highlights of three days of concerts and also document the event itself. For these reasons, it will likely forever remain the ultimate rock concert film.

Demme is best known for directing the Oscar®-winning best picture The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he also won a directing Oscar®. Demme is currently the 78th ranked director on our top ranked 1000 films compendium of all polls, with 4 titles in the top 1000, with Silence of the Lambs his top-ranked at #47 all-time.

See the full list of top ranked 100 directors here: Top Ranked 100 Directors, 2011 Edition

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The Killing Fields

Roland Joffe, 1984 (8.2*)
Memorial Day War-a-thon Film #10
A western journalist, Sam Waterston, is trapped in Cambodia as the Vietnam war is winding down, but as Pol Pot's regime is beginning to massacre two million civilians in a 'cleansing' of that nations undesirables. He struggles to get out himself but will also not abandon his assistant and friend from Cambodia. This closely mirrored the story of co-star Haing S. Ngor, who was awarded with an Oscar® for basically playing his own life out onscreen.

This is a true story written by a journalist, so the effort was made to film this in a journalistic style. This is not for the squeamish, as rather than soldiers, innocent civilians are often the target of this war. This makes a nice companion piece with Oliver Stone's Vietnam films, Platoon, and Heaven and Earth.

winner of 26 awards out of 44 nominations, including 3 Oscars® for supporting actor (Ngor), cinematography, editing. The film lost best picture to Amadeus that year.

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Repo Man

Alex Cox, 1984 (7.8*)
This has to be one of the more unique cult comedies, basically anything goes in this. It constantly surprises you, you'll find yourself laughing at bizarre lines (see quote), and after it's over I'm sure the most common remark has to be "What the H was that?". Emilio Estevez gets a job doing vehicle repossessions. His parents are religous fanatics who have given all their money to a televangelist, and who eat generic food from cans marked "Food". He is schooled in his new career by a trigger-happy Harry Dean Stanton, whose basic motto is "shoot them before they can shoot you". The ongoing plot surrounds a moving car which has something very powerful in the trunk - those who take a look to see what wish they hadn't, which makes a nice metaphor for mankind and science in general, the old Pandora's Box thing. Tarantino had to have seen this before making Pulp Fiction, they both have the undercurrent of anarchy.
Quote: Let's go do a crime! Let's order sushi then NOT pay!

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The Natural

Dir: Barry Levinson, 1984 (8.1*)
One of those "mythic" sports stories, starring Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs, a terrific pitching prospect whose career is cut short by a shooting (Barbara Hershey). He emerges later as a slugger, with a bat made from a tree struck by lightning (somehow it never gets broken), and with Glenn Close as his inspiration. Kinda Hollywoodish, but also purely enjoyable Americana, as "baseball is the national pastime". From the novel by Bernard Malamud.

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Amadeus

Milos Foreman, 1984 (8.9*)

Best Picture (AA, GG)

Although fiction, and a "danged good yarn" at that, Amadeus attempts to tell one possible theory on the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A deranged and senile court composer, Antonio Salieri, brilliantly played by F. Murray Abraham (Best Actor Oscar), claims from the asylum that he killed "the world's greatest composer", then proceeds to tell his story, which becomes this film.

He is generally angry at God for bestowing supreme talent on a "non-believer", while he languishes in mediocrity himself. Tom Hulce (the one who played Pinto in Animal House) has a star-making turn as a free-spirited 'Wolfie', which shows how brilliant and obsessive Mozart was when composing, and how superficial and irresponsible he could be when he wasn't, generally boozing and womanizing nightly like a true Bohemian. Whether you buy this theory or not, the film becomes addictive, as we witness one Mozart masterpiece after another. Best Director winner Milos Foreman's best film. 8 Oscars

Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest also won best picture and director for 1975, and is another must-see American classic.

Quote: Yes,...too many notes. Just lop off a few here and there.

[Updated 12.11.10]

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Once Upon a Time in America

Dir: Sergio Leone, 1984, long version (9.3*)
This nearly 4-hr epic (avoid the short version like the plague!) was Leone’s tribute to the Godfather saga, and was the last film he made. Robert De Niro ("Noodles") and James Woods are boyhood friends who later become major Jewish Mafia figures. This film traces decades in their lives as a flashback from a middle-aged, portly De Niro who has received a mysterious message from his past. Look for a very young Jennifer Connally, who was 12 at the time, as a boyhood crush of Noodles who spies on her dance rehearsals and dress changes, and for Tuesday Weld as a robbery accomplice and later gangster mol, who liked 'the rough stuff'. Full of a cast of unforgettable characters, well worth the time - in fact, this is one film where its length works to artistic advantage, as the flashback structure allows the story to wander chronologically as it would from an elderly Robert de Niro's viewpoint of his entire life of crime.

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Ghostbusters

Dir: Ivan Reitman, 1984 (8.4*)

This comedic farce came out of nowhere using special effects to combine a world of ghosts, biblical demons, spirits, "autonomous free-form vaporous apparitions", all sorts of nasty stuff from "Tobin's Spirit Guide", especially world destroyer Gozar, who may be gaining entrance through hot cellist Sigourney Weavers apartment. When Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd get fired from a university psychic research job, they form a team of scientific ghost exorcists, and take off with a popular tv ad, "Who ya gonna call?", and investigate all the psychic activity in New York. A howlfest if you don't take it too seriously, and who could, with dialogue like this?:

Annie Potts: So what do you do in your spare time?

Harold Ramis: I'm into molds, spores, and fungi...

Rick Moranis is terrific as a nerdy neighbor accountant who becomes "The Keymaster", Annie Potts as the Ghostbuster's receptionist, Harold Ramis (who co-wrote) as a GB founder.

Quote: I've worked in the private sector, they expect results. (Akroyd)

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