Category Archives: 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Diner
Directed by Barry Levinson
Written by Barry Levinson
1982/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Timothy Fenwick, Jr.: Do you ever get the feeling that there’s something going on that we don’t know about?

Dees anyone come of age in this coming of age story?

The setting is Baltimore in the last days of 1959.  A friend group of twenty-something young men congregate in a 24-hour diner in the wee small hours of the morning after a night of carousing.  This is apparently a usual event.

Eddie’s (Steve Gutenberg) wedding is scheduled for New Year’s Eve.  He will not go through with it unless his intended passes a 140-question football quiz.  Shrevie (Daniel Stern) is already married to Beth (Ellen Barkin).  This is interfering with his love affair with his record collection.  Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) is a burgeoning alcoholic.  Boogie is a ladies man who is being pressed by enforcers on his gambling debt.  Billy (Tin Daly) is visiting for Christmas.  He is the unrequited lover of a TV producer and is the most mature of this bunch.

We follow the escapades of these guys for about two weeks to their natural conclusion.  One wonders how many lessons were actually learned.

I enjoyed this more than I was expecting to based on my first viewing on original release.  Some very mean pranks are played at the expense of women and the movie left a kind of sour taste in my mouth.  But, other than that, the rewatch was kind of fun.  The acting is certainly very good and Levinson lovingly recreates a time and place dear to him.  The soundtrack is fabulous.

Tootsie
Directed by Sidney Pollack
Written by Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal from a story by Gelbart and Don McGuire
1982/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

George Fields: No one will hire you.
Michael Dorsey: Oh, yeah?

I loved it on original release and I love it still.

Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman)  is a very talented but chronically unemployed actor.  He is widely known for being temperamental and hard to handle.  He wants to raise $8,000 to produce a play written by his roommate Jeff (Bill Murray).  This would provide good parts for himself and longtime friend Sandy (Teri Garr).

After he is again assured by his agent (Sidney Pollack) that he is unemployable. Michael decides to take action.  He dresses as a woman named Dorothy Michaels and is hired for a meaty part on a soap opera.

Michael’s need to disguise his identity leads to many hilarious misunderstandings.  But worse is his attraction to co-star Julie Nichols (Jessica Lange).  With Charles Durning as Julie’s father and Geena Davis in her film debut as a radiologist on the soap.

It is possible that I laughed harder this time that ever before.  In fact, I didn’t remember this as particularly funny.  But it is.  The cast is uniformly fantastic with Sidney Pollack’s performance coming as a delightful surprise.  Definitely worth seeing before you die.  There are not nearly enough comedies on The List.

Lange won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  Tootsie was nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress (Garr), Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Song.

Actual theme song

Blade Runner
Directed by Ridley Scott
Written by Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples from a novel by Philip K. Dick
1982/US/UK
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Tyrell: “More human than human” is our motto.

Can’t believe it took me so long to catch up to this.

The setting is Los Angeles, 2019.  Genetic engineering has developed to the point where replicants are identical to humans except for emotions.  Concern about their activities has banned them from Earth.  Tyrell Corporation has been working on the emotions part by giving its advanced creations memories.  Tyrell has designed these to self-destruct in four years to keep them under control.

As the movie begins six replicants have escaped to earth and are eagerly seeking to extend their life expectancy.  The two we focus on are Pris (Daryl Hannah) and Batty (Rutger Hauer).  They are crafty and have superhuman strength.

Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh) contacts ex-policeman/Blade Runner Deckard (Harrison Ford) to “retire” all 6 replicants.  It is an order Deckard can’t refuse.  We spend the majority of the film watching Deckart engage in combat.  Very graphic combat.  We also get a love affair between Deckart and possible replicant  Rachael (Sean Young) for good measure.

This is one major film that has eluded me my entire life.  It was worth waiting for, mainly for the fabulous production design.  I could have done without some of the violence.

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Melissa Mathison
1982/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Elliott: He’s a man from outer space and we’re taking him to his spaceship.
Greg: Well, can’t he just beam up?
Elliott: This is *reality*, Greg.

Steven Spielberg amps up the friendly alien theme of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) to the next level of fantasy.

A suburban family has just been through a divorce.  Children Michael (Robert MacNaughton), Elliott (Henry Thomas) and Mary (Drew Barrymore) are adjusting to life with their now single mother.  Elliott is at the just the age where he longs to do the things teenage Michael does but where he has neither the ability nor Michael’s permission to do them.

One day Eliott’s life changes with the arrival of an alien spaceship.  The occupants are apparently on some sort of exploratory mission.  E.T. is accidentally left behind when the spaceship is forced to suddenly flee.  Elliott has the great good fortune in becoming besties with the homesick little creature.

All the children have many adventures in attempting to conceal their find from grownups.  These intensify when they become responsible for protecting him and helping him to get home.

This, to me, is a perfect children’s movie but not one this grownup needed to see again before she died.  There is something about it that is a little too cute and saccharine for my taste.  I think it belonged on the List though.

Missing theme song

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I am gradually recovering this website.  The links should now work.  Comments are not showing up on the public site but rest assured I do receive them as an administrator.  With luck, this too will be fixed soon.

The Thing
Directed by John Carpenter
Written by Bill Lancaster from a story by John W. Campbell Jr.
1982/US
IMDb page
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
First viewing/YouTube rental

Nauls: Maybe we at war with Norway?

John Carpenter’s “The Thing” blends science fiction, horror, and gore into a neat package.

As the movie begins, we see a helicopter chasing a dog over Antarctic wilderness and shooting. American scientists nearby deduce it is a Norwegian chopper and find its actions weird and alarming. Ace helicopter pilot and general bad ass Mac Ready (Kurt Russell) and the base’s doctor Blair (Wilford Brimley) go out and investigate and find that the Norwegians have burned their base and there are apparently no survivors. The two discover a disgusting thing. Of course, they must take it back to their base for an autopsy.

Before long they find out aliens are among them and are slowly assimilating into the bodies of first dogs and then men. The men become paranoid as it is impossible to tell who remains human.

The selling points of the film are the horrifying and gruesome special effects during transformation sequences. They are truly awesome but not awesome enough for me to want a rewatch of all that blood and tissue.

This time I’m with Roger

Reds
Directed by Warren Beatty
Written by Warren Beatty and Trevor Griffiths
1981/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Witness: I think that a guy who’s always interested in the condition of the world and changing it, either has no problems of his own or refuses to face them.

This was better than I remembered it from original release but is still too long.

The story begins in Portland, Oregon in 1915.  John Reed (Warren Beatty) is a brilliant investigative journalist with a definite leftist slant.  Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton) is a married dilettante that is trying to find a her voice as a writer. When the two meet, sparks fly.  They are kindred spirits and Louise is ready to move to New York with Jack soon thereafter.  She constantly fights for her own career without pursuing it with much vigor.  They also are anti-WWI activists at home.  Neither of these activities make them popular with the authorities.

For awhile, the couple lives in sort of an artists colony by the shore.  One of their best friends is Eugene O’Neill (Jack Nicholson).  O’Neill is strongly attracted to Louise and they have an affair when Jack leaves Louise behind to agitate at the 1916 Democratic National Convention on behalf of Woodrow Wilson, who at the time was an anti-war candidate.  Jack finds out about this and opts to propose marriage.  Simultaneously, he is secretly suffering with kidney disease.

Although there is a rift in the marriage, Jack and Louise make up and he convinces her to travel to Russia with him as his “comrade”. The inspiration the two find in the Russian revolution binds them again as lovers.  Jack illegally enters Russian again planning to stay only several months  and finds leaving is not so easy.  Louise goes through hell trying to join him.  With Maureen Stapleton as Emma Goldman.

I saw this in the theater and after so many years my main memory of it was Jack Nicholson’s performance.  He is still the best thing about the movie according to me.  But it is also very good looking and works well as an epic romance.  The intricacies and importance of infighting within the American socialist movement not so much.  In fact, by the end I felt that a lot of good minds were wasted on a project that never would have succeeded in America in the first place.  The three-hour plus film required an intermission, never a good thing in my book.

Reds won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Stapleton), and Best Cinematography.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor (Nicholson). Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound.

The Evil Dead
Directed by Sam Raimi
Written by Sam Raimi
1981/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Cheryl: [possessed] Soon all of you will be like me… And then who will lock you up in a cellar? [cackles]

Amazing what you can do at 20 years old with a small budget and a lot of talent.

There are about five or ten minutes of exposition in the plot.  Some college students are going on a low-budget vacation in an isolated cabin in the woods.  When they arrive, the cabin is creepy and in disrepair.  The men in the group – Ash (Bruce Campbell) and Scott (Richard DeManincur) – find a strange book and a tape recorder.  The tape contains a recording by a previous owner saying that the book is the key to raising the spirits of demons who possess the living.  It speaks the phrase needed to do so.  As the tape plays forces begin awakening in the woods.

Thereafter the movie is just one horrific jump scare after another.  The students are possessed one by one and Ash becomes the only one left who can defeat them.  Unfortunately, this involves dismembering the bodies of his deceased friends.

My nephew introduced me to this movie and the others in The Evil Dead trilogy.  I believe I saw Evil Dead II first, and that is my favorite.  The effects, makeup, etc. are so over the top in this that I can’t help but love it.  I also find it very scary in the moment despite the cheap makeup and sets.  Raimi doesn’t let you relax for a second.

Body Heat
Written and Directed by Lawrence Kasdan
1981/USA
The Ladd Company through Warner Bros.
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Ned: Maybe you shouldn’t dress like that.
Matty: This is a blouse and a skirt. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Ned: You shouldn’t wear that body.

I reviewed this for the Blog Club almost eleven years ago.  I could not resist giving it a rewatch.  You can see my original review here.  I stand by every word.  Excellent Neo-noir that stands up well to multiple viewings.

I love this movie!

Missing theme song?

Gallilopoli
Directed by Peter Weir
Written by Peter Weir and David Williamson from a novel by Ernest Raymond
1981/Australia
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Di

Major Barton: [to the soldiers] All right men… we’re going. But I want you to remember who you are. You are the 10th Light Horse! Men from Western Australia. Don’t forget it. Good luck.

Good film about a landmark battle in Australian history.

The story takes place in 1915 and begins in West Australia.  Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee) can sprint like a leopard and win a race barefoot against a man on horseback.  He is relentlessly cheerful and idealistic.  Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson) is also a talented runner.  In other regards he is nothing like Archy.  Frank is a cynic who is generally motivated to do anything he thinks will make him look important.

The men’s athletic endeavors coincide with a recruitment campaign for soldiers to serve in Australia’s contribution on behalf of the British Empire in WWI.  This seems far more important than running to Archy, who succeeds in joining up by lying about his age. Dunne sees no reason to risk his skin until he learns that a uniform makes quite the impression on the ladies.

All dreams of glory are crushed when the men are ordered to land on the shores of Gallipoli.

This is a solid war movie and very watchable.  I had been looking forward to seeing it for years.  It did not quite live up to my expectations, perhaps because I am not a huge fan of Mel Gibson.  But he’s not bad in this.  He looks so much younger here than in the Mad Max films.

I’d love to get the opinions of Australians on the film and its historical accuracy.

Chariots of Fire
Directed by Hugh Hudson
Written by Colin Weiland
1981/UK
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/YouTube rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Di

Harold M. Abrahams: If I can’t win, I won’t run!
Sybil Gordon: If you don’t run, you can’t win.

This film is more than its iconic Vangelis score.

The film is set in the period leading up to the 1924 Paris Olympic Games.  Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) is the son of a wealth Jewish financier and can run like the wind.  He is part of a strong track team at Cambridge University.  He is acutely aware of his outsider status and runs to prove something to his comrades and himself.  He also fits in by being a star in Gilbert and Sullivan productions at his school.  He eventually meets and falls in love with actress Sybil Gordon (Alice Krige).

Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) could not be more different from Abrahams.  He is a devout Christian who aims to become a missionary to China.  But he also runs like the wind and believes he was given his talent for the glory of his God.

Both men are training for the Olympics.  Abrahams is so intent on becoming a champion that he hires professional trainer Sam Mussabini.  Both men head off to the games where drama awaits.

I clearly remember first seeing this on a plane.  The experience was memorable because the plane landed before it was finished!  I did eventually see the film and enjoyed it.  The rewatch did not disappoint.  This is a handsomely produced look at sportsmanship back at a time when gentlemen pursued glory on the field.  Very entertaining.

Chariots of Fire won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Holm) and Best Film Editing.