A Great Wall

Peter Wang, 1986 (8.7*)
The first American movie filmed in mainland China is a comedy of culture clashes. A Chinese-American computer worker in California , director Peter Wang, quits his job in a dispute, then takes his family to visit distant relatives in Beijing, China.

Of course, the Americans are now thoroughly westernized Chinese-Americans, so the family they visit in China is pretty much Old World by comparison. The bewilderment and confusion of host and guest alike stem from the language barrier for one, and again when confronted by peculiar foreign customs.

The best laughs come from the point of view of the People's republic, such as students reciting Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in unique English, or an elderly man coping with an electric blanket presented as a gift (and of course with a different current requirement), people debating fallacies about Americans as if factual, just like U.S. disinformation about other nations. This is all good-natured fun, with something to learn on both sides, and the benefit of it all going to the audience.

It’s a crime that less than 1000 people have rated this film at IMDB, it’s an excellent comedy, an excellent American film, and an excellent foreign language film, all three together in one.

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Empire of the Sun

Steven Spielberg, 1987 (8.3*)
Memorial Day War-a-thon film #19
Based on the autobiographical novel of British science fiction author J.G. Ballard, this is the wartime story of a British boy named Jim, played by a young Christian Bale, caught in Shanghai when the Japanese invade, eventually ending up in a Japanese POW camp, along with some other families and some American deserters, led by John Malkovich. The Americans befriend Jim and he becomes a flunkie, or employee, of them - really more like a hired servant - they are black marketeers and live better than other prisoners.

This has some unforgettable scenes - one a collection of British possessions rotting in a large outdoor field. My favorite is a flyer in a P-38 going past Jim on a watchtower in slow motion as Jim waves at the pilot in the middle of wartime action. Much of this actually happened to author Ballard when he was this age, he spent part of his youth growing up in a Japanese camp for captured Brits.

11 wins out of 24 nominations, incl. 6 Oscar nominations with no wins.. some wins were for cinematography, director, actor Christian Bale..

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Full Metal Jacket

Stanley Kubrick, 1987 (8.8*)
This film of the Vietnam war era is in two distinct parts. In the first, a group of Marine recruits are punished in basic training by real army vet R. Lee Ermey as Sgt. Hartman. Vincent D'Onofrio is an overweight and slow recruit who becomes the target of everyone's ire, with unforeseen consequences. This half of the film is pretty basic, and goes on far too long.

The second part follows one of those recuits, Matthew Modine as Pvt. Joker, who now covers the war for the Stars and Stripes military newspaper. His squad is sent into the harrowing streets of Hue during the Tet offensive. This half of the film is much better than the first, which is similar to The D.I. with Jack Webb. The photojournalistic approach works really well with a city war controlled by snipers. There's some terrific war footage here, as well as some riveting and tense scenes.

You're made to feel like a part of this squad from the beginning, so in that regard it's one of the more realistic war films. I would have loved to have seen more of Vietnam and a lot less of basic training, and it would have perhaps been a perfect war film.

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Some Kind of Wonderful

Howard Deutch, 1987 (8.5*)
One of the best sophmoric love stories ever, it's reputation seems to have grown with age. Pretty boy Eric Stoltz has a crush on unattainable and popular Lea Thompson (the mom in Back to the Future), while his best platonic friend Mary Stuart Masterson hides her real feelings from her guy, fearing she may drive him away if she openly displays affection. She actually agrees to chauffeur him on his first date with Thompson.

I'm not sure exactly what it is about this film, but I think it's Masterson's performance that has the audience pulling for her the entire film, while in reality all of us guys fell for the glamour of the high school cheerleader type babes and secretly wanted them instead of our true friends who loved us in spite of ourselves.

This is a mature film, usually described as thoughtful and perceptive, in spite of the high school subjects, and rises far above the pack of typical John Hughes films like Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink. It's endured for two decades now, and is often mentioned as a favorite romance by people today.

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Cobra Verde

Werner Herzog, Germany, 1988 (7.8*)
Another of director Herzog's adventure films in South America with madman actor Klaus Kinski. Kinski here plays a local Spanish bandit, named Francisco Manoel da Silva, but called Cobra Verde by the locale natives, a man avoided by all when he wanders into town.

A local plantation owner decides he is just the sort of man to oversee his slave operation for his massive sugar cane farms. He soon impregnates all his daughters, and as punishment, is sent to Africa to manage slave procurement there, work not completed in a decade due to local uprisings. The authorities are certain they are sending Cobra Verde off to his death.

However, like Herzog's other films with Kinski, this is about a white man surviving and interacting with local indigenous populations. Though not as fully satisfying as Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, The Wrath of God, this is the last of their five films together as Kinski died soon after this release, and is still a worthy entry into what could be called the "South American Trilogy" of the Herzog-Kinski collaborations.

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Baby Boom

Charles Shyer, 1987 (8.5*)
Terrific feel good comedy with Diane Keaton as a corporate executive and career-oriented single woman who inherits her sister’s baby after her death in a car accident. At first she’s the world’s worst mom, as the child interferes with her work, then she gets a chance to be a good mom in a new location, with hilarious results. Sam Shepherd is a local vet who becomes her new friend. This small film says a lot about motherhood, perserverance, ingeniuty, business, and all with a big heart and with warm humor. Very rewarding film, no matter what gender, one of Diane's best.

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Raising Arizona

Joel Coen, 1987 (10*)
This is one the funniest and fastest-paced comedies ever made, and my favorite film of the Coen Brothers. The story starts at breakneck speed, as we get robberies and chases involving lead character Nicholas Cage before the opening titles even roll, about 15 minutes into the film.

During his prison photo shoots he meets a weepy guard played by Holly Hunter, who informs him that "my fi-ants done left me"; what ensues is a whirlwind romance, marriage, then another weepy Hunter disclosure "I'm barn" (meaning barren or infertile). Cage then gets the line of the film: "The doc said her insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase". Roger Ebert said that "people just don't talk this way", but here in Georgia they sure do, and remember the Coen Brothers are from Texas.

The couple reads about quintuplets born to local unpainted furniture tycoon Nathan Arizona, brilliantly played by scene stealing Trey Wilson (who died shortly after filming, causing the film to be dedicated to him), and Hunter convinces Cage to "go get me a toddler! they got too many, we ain't got any".

The rest of the film is a riotous post-crime spree involving a bounty-hunting biker played by ex-boxer Randall "Tex" Cobb, two escaped former inmates of Cages who drop by (John Goodman is surprisingly unfunny in his part), several chases with baby in tow, and everyone else chasing the baby stealers. The dialogue is ripe with great lines, the visual style is as exciting as any action adventure, even the baby is funny, and the result is perhaps the funniest comedy of all time.

Quote: Down at my store we got one motto: "Do it my way or watch your butt!" (-Nathan Arizona, talking to the FBI)
Quote2: Boy, did you know you got a panty on yer head? (a local pickup driver who picks up Nick Cage hitchin a ride just after an armed robbery)

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The Inspector Morse Series

John Madden, various others, British tv, 33 films, 1987-1999 (8.8*)
The highly successful BBC series about a police homicide inspector is popular for one reason: actor John Thaw, always an underrated actor (Goodnight Mister Tom, Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four), and always exactly what he should be for the role, and he carries everything he's in on his shoulders; here he's a lonely bachelor who likes opera, beer, and solitude. His repartee with co-star Kevin Whately as Sgt. Lewis, a likeable family man, keeps the crimes from being all serious; he seems to barely tolerate Lewis' lack of experience, and treats him more like a servant than an equal, looks at him with the disgust of a disapproving father.

Each mystery is actually film length, usually two hours, and each is very well written; the first dozen or so are from novels by the original author Colin Dexter. Some latter years only saw one produced per year. The series begins with The Dead of Jericho and finishes with a 33rd, The Remorseful Day, filmed while actor Thaw was dying. The highest rated by users are 1-Remorseful Day (#33), 2-The Way Through the Woods (#29), 3-Deadly Slumber (#26), 4-The Wench is Dead (#32), 5-Dead on Time (#21). This is as good as British mystery gets.

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Wall Street

Oliver Stone, 1987 (8.5*)
This perfectly cynical look at corporate culture in our wealth-hungry economic system gives us the perfectly anti-heroic capitalist in Gordon Gekko, a role with earned Michael Douglas a Best Acting Oscar. An arbitrageur / corporate raider takes a young Charlie Sheen under his wing, and soon they are attempting to take over and dismantle the aerospace company where Sheen's dad Martin Sheen works. Somehow Stone makes corporate takeover and stock manipulation a tense nail-biter with some substance. This was loosely based on the true story of Ivan Boesky, who was indicted in the 80's for violating securities laws, and unfortunately this is an all too accurate portrayal of the financial system of the U.S. This film, along with Boiler Room and Rogue Trader, are all musts for stock market participants.
Quote: Greed is good. (Gekko, giving a speech)

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The Last Emperor

Dir: Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987 (9.1*)

Best Picture (AA, BAA, GG)

Sweeping historical epic, beautifully filmed, tells the story of the last emperor of the Ching Dynasty, Pu Yi, played by John Lone as an adult. We begin when he's really a playful 'tike' (this kid was wonderful) and takes the throne, and remains sheltered for decades inside the Forbidden City in Peking. Eventually history forces him outside, and he must deal with World War 2 and Maoism. Peter O'Toole plays his Scottish teacher, Joan Chen is terrific as his wife. Bertolucci's most ambitious and successful film, which also shows a major portion of modern Chinese history, though it is perhaps a bit long and slow in parts (over 3.5 hrs). The dvd set has four disks, holy toledo, a bit of overkill perhaps, but disk two has the director's cut, labelled as "The TV Version", while disk one was the theatrical release. 9 Oscars

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House of Games

Dir: David Mamet, 1987 (9.1*)
Just about the perfect con-artist film. Mamet’s wife Lindsay Crouse plays a psychiatrist who writes books, and lets a client know she’s doing one on con-games and their perpetrators. She is then swept into their world by Joseph Mantegna, and gets far more than she bargained for. That's Ricky Jay doing the card tells, technical advisor for Mamet on his con-artist films, and usually given a part. This complex thriller gets you deeper and deeper into the plot until there’s barely room to get out. My favorite script of Mamet's.

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Hope and Glory

Dir: John Boorman, 1987 (9.9*)

This autobiographical film by John Boorman tells of his adventures in England during World War II, and like most childhoods, it was an exciting time of wonder and discovery, with the war just another adventure. From collecting unexploded shells, to German pilots parachuting into neighborhoods during dogfights, to scavenging bombed out houses, the war provided numerous opportunity for youthful fantasies at a time when school was just an afterthought. Look for a scene when his grandad toasts the various loves of his life. Boorman's best, and most uplifting movie.

Quote: Four daughters, what do you do with them, you can't play cricket. The best I could come up with is a string quartet.

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