Movie review - "The Best of Friends" (1981)

 Famous Aussie flop though the set up is excellent: two best friends of 20 years hook up one night and she gets pregnant and it changes things.

The script was highly regarded but has flaws. It needed to spend more time setting up the friendship of the two - like When Harry Met Sally began with the two friends meeting. A little montage or some set up scenes would've worked wonders. Establish their ground rules, set up how it works, etc As it is they root 15 minutes in which is too early.

Graeme Blundell is ideally cast as they guy but Angela Punch McGregor  is hideously miscast in a role that needed Jackie Weaver or anyone skilled with comedy - Pamela Stephenson, Kate Fitzpatrick, Robyn Nevin. 

Another problem is the second half of the film dispenses with the central concept - can friends make it as a couple - and becomes about the difficulty of a woman dating a Catholic.

Movie review - "Breaking Loose" (1988) **1/2

 Phil Avalon's sequel to Summer City is a bit of a mess and doesn't develop its relationships - Vince and Peter Phelps for instance, or Phelps and Abigail, Phelps and Abigail's daughter, Phelps and his gilfriend. The subplots aren't resolved.

 But the film has its charms. A reminder of a time when living on the coast was cheap, and towns small and violent. Good surfing footage.

Movie review - "Minnamurra" (1988) **

 John Sexton had success with the horsey Phar Lap but this didn't do so well despite a lot of good things - the beautiful photography, horses, locations, costumes. Imported star Jeff Fahey fits in fine. The problem is the story. The female lead Tuskha Bergen doesn't have anything to do except be passive-  she should be galloping around being feisty.

Movie review - "Turkey Shoot" (1982) *** (rewatching)

 I watched this out of the corner of my eye on a computer, and that's the best way to see it - distracted, so you can asborb the atmosphere, it's not hard to follow the story, there are explosions and sex.

The film is actually very emotionally satisfying with the prisoners rising up - Olivia Hussey's character has a journey from coward to revolutionary (she seems innocent and adds to tension), Steve Railsback brings intensity, Michael Craig and Carmen Duncan are terrific, Lynda Stoner is sweet. It's a very well cast film. 

The rape and murder of Stoner is still yuck but watching it distracted works. It looks great. Impressive production value at the end.

Movie review - "Melvin Son of Alvin" (1984) ** (re-watching)

 Of its time. Early 80s teen sex comedy influenced - nudity, fat best friends, little actual sex. Gerry Sont too good looking and inexperienced. Female co star also too inexperienced. 

David Argue in this. Imagine him as Melvin! Different film. Nice colours. Tries to entertain. Quite respectful of the original. 

Movie review - "The Coca Cola Kid" (1985) **

 This film was so annoying. Why did it exist? What was it's point? I didn't get it as a kid. I don't get it now. Greta Scacchi is spectacularly beautiful and looks splendid naked. So much of it is unfunny - a waiter who thinks Eric Roberts is a secret agent, Eric Roberts, the confusing battle.

Bill Kerr does everything he's asked for . Pretty pictures. Nicely shot. Interesting people turn up in the cast like David Argue and Tim Finn.

Can Dusan Makavejev direct? Maybe this would've worked in the 70s.

This movie is dumb. An offensive waste of money. 

Movie review - "Razorback" (1984) ***1/2 (rewatching)

 Every still is like a painting. Arkie Whiteley so lovely. Bill Kerr tremendous. Chris Haywood and David Argue heaps of fun, if awful people. Script feels odd in places. Kerr gets a depressinh death. Why kill the dog. 

Movie review - "Stanley: Every Home Should Have One" (1984) *

 Oz attempt at Arthur has Peter Bensley as the titular man child who goes to live with an ordinary family - Graeme Kennedy (who would've been idea for the lead when younger), Susan Walker, Joy Smithers and David Argue (who would've been better if more aggro). He romances Nell Campbell and the two don't have any chemistry.

The film cost $4 million - there are some pretty shots of Sydney Harbour but I'm not sure where it all went. 

The plot might've been okay for a half hour kids thing. There is adult stuff with Kennedy being busted at a gay bar with Harold Hopkins, Walker having an affair, Smithers being pregnant to an Aboriginal and Argue being a drug dealer... actually isn't this the plot of Bliss?

Over time the film's lack of comedy, endless cut aways of Max Cullen stalking Bensley and lack of chemistry between Bensley and Campbell got on my nerves and I started to hate the movie.

Book review - Hardy#3 - "The Marvellous Boy" by Peter Corris

 Corris rips off The Big Sleep  as a rich old crone asks Hardy to look for a missing relatives. He still smokes here. Gets knocked out. There's well described violence. An abortonist. Some weirdos.

Old Cinema Papers interview with Bryan Brown

 

Movie review - "Early Frost" (1982) *

Notorious as a film with no director credit - it was Brian McDuffie - and with the novelty of being set and shot in Blacktown and featuring a young Jon Blake. There's also Guy Doleman, Kit Taylor, Danny Adockc and some vaguely familiar female leads who I think did a lot of TV.

Various women are turning up dead but there's no suspense, no style, no gore, no nudity.

Movie review - "The Empty Beach" (1985) ** (re-watching)

 Bryan Brown is very good. So too is John Wood. Nice to see faces like Ray Barrett, Nick Tate (Coolangatta Gold connection with Joss McWilliam). Kerry Mack's Hilde is a pleasing nod to series continuity for the Cliff Hardy books.

But the  story is hard to follow and doesn't seem to make sense. The final shoot out is fine as a shoot out but the character's actions aren't logical.

Movie review - "Cactus" (1986) **

 Paul Cox's run of art house successes enabled him to get $1.5 million and an imported star (Isabelle Huppert) for this but response wasn't that strong. It's not one of his better films although there's plenty of good things - it looks gorgeous, has a pleasant mood, Robert Menzies makes an impressive star debut.

I agree with co writer Bob Ellis that the basic set up is silly - Huppert is visiting friend Norman Kaye when she has her accident and sticks around in Australia to get better. If she was having lots of operations or had a job out in Australia, signed a contract or something , I'd get it, but she doesn't seem to work.. It's the sort of irritating, easy to fix script problem that marked many Cox movies.

Huppert has star factor but she's a debit to the movie, I feel - she doesn't seem engaged, whether it's being friends with Normal Kaye (why are they friends?), or going blind, or falling for Robert Menzies. I kept thinking "Wendy Hughes would've been better in this". I understand the useful ness of having an imported star, I just wish they'd gotten one whose presence made more sense and who was more connected to the story. French movie stars don't have a great track record in Australian films.

Other Cox movies have intriguing subplots that are typically under exploited. Not this one. Norman Kaye and his wide are dully. There's an extended scene where they watch some old ducks including Maurie Fields sing songs. I did like the satire of the community meeting. That felt very real and funny. 

I liked the scene where Menzies revealed Huppert was his first girlfriend. That was touching. Really the film should've been about him - a blind man falling in love for the first time. That has stakes. Huppert doesn't seem to care. She's required to go nude of course just a little.

 

Movie review - "My First Wife" (1984) ***1/2

 There's a genre of films called "here is my penis" movies made by auteurs who stand naked in from the camera going "here is my penis". This is one of them. That's not to say the films aren't good - this is very good, exquisitely acted, done with honesty, it's just Paul Cox standing nude in front of the camera. John Hargreaves even has a Cox style beard.

He goes balls to the wall as does Hughes. The behavious is unsettling - Hargreaves is self centered, violent, sulky, a lousy husband and father. It's no mystery why Hughes cheats on him and leaves him.

The lack of concern by the police when Hargreaves abducts his daughter is all too believable as is Hargreaves' focus on Hughes' infidelity rather than her problems.

Hughes goes naked as she seemed to be legally required to do so. But it's a very good performance even though Hargreaves is the one who carries on.

I'd be inclined to go with four stars but the dude really should have had more of a comeuppance.

Movie review - "Man of Flowers" (1983) ****

 Paul Cox's biggest hit perhaps - a film made with his own money, or at least so he said, about things he was interested in set in a world he knew, with his friends. Norman Kaye has the role of a lifetime as a cultured man who enjoys watching Alyson Best be naked.

The film has a strong support cast - Barry Dickins as a lively postman, Ellis as a whining shrink, Chris Haywood superb as Best's egotistical artist boyfriend, Sarah Walker as Bests' friend who falls in love with her.

The film became an arthouse hit, in part because of all the nudity - Best, Walker, Victoria Eagger, even Norman Kaye. Werner Herzog makes a cameo. 

I mean it's made by dirty pervs. You can sense that. But it's got a solid story and pay off.

Movie review - "Island" (1989) **

 Paul Cox can't write. Good setup - three women on a Greek island. Man arrives turns ex druggie Eva Sitta into drugs. Deaf mute friend Chris Haywood kills guy. They cover it up. Nothing done with it. No betrayal, or other baddie coming. Lots of hanging around a pretty island. Sri Lankan character who is noble and wails. Irene Papas as Greek woman full of fire. Norman Kaye is in it and Takis Emmanuel. It just sort of ending. 

Good on Cox for making his movies. He made a lot. I think he struggled outside his comfort zone, i.e. urban Melbourne. There's a difference between hanging out in a place and living there.

Seven AFI nominations. Seven!

Movie review - "Jenny Kissed Me" (1985) *

 A fascinating melodrama, key in the career of Brian Trenchard Smith because it was a departure in one way, being a melodrama, but in another way being a stock Trenchard Smith movie, full of action and incident. It also shows what held back his career - a lack of understanding about story and character.

Jenny Kissed Me is full of pace and character but is just too... off. Ivar Kants is such a perfect person, hard working, devoted to the child (his partner hints at incestuous feelings but this isn't developed), upstanding, muscular, handsome. And when he abducts the kid she's all for it.

Deborrah Lee Furness' mother is hot but lazy, she can't find a job, bored, best friends with a hooker, has an affair with Steven Grieves, neglects her daughter, yells at her daughter, leaves with Kants.

Trenchard Smith seems terrified someone will get bored so something's always happening - there's nudity (from Furness and others), sex scenes, a scene in a brothel pool, drugs (Nicholas Eadie is Paula Duncan's sleazy boss), drug busts, Wilbur Wilde as a handyman, fights, slaps. One hour in Kants is revealed to have a terminal brain tumour, he gets arrested, out on bail, brings a gun to abduct Jenny, a car chase ensues.

The film is so unsympathetic to Furness and so sympathetic to Kants it's unfair. Well, that's fine if it's the story you want to tell, it's just uncomfortable to watch. Kants never takes any blame for the breakdown with Furness because none of it is shown to be his fault. Kants' behaviour at the end is fairly reprehensible - having him kidnap a kid and engage in a car chase that almost kills her in a crash and take her on the lam in the bush. But at the end Furness asks for his forgiveness and teaches her how to parent.

This has been pitched at as a melodrama in the Douglas Sirk tradition but those films were aimed at women, women aren't going to like this, the woman is the villain. This film's natural target audience is divorced dads. Especially with its mean female magistrates and social workers.

The acting is pretty good. Tamsin West is terrific.

The film could've worked. Give Furness a troubled background. Like a drug habit. Make Jenny's dad a character - a real piece of shit. He gets Furness back on drugs, he gets her ito the brothel. The film needs a real baddie.

Movie review - "Coda" (1987) ***

 Liked it. I got it. I don't think Craig Lahiff then had the skills to pull it off, quite - or the budget. But I love its ambition, the Hitchcock riffs. I love it being set at an Adelaide Uni and the second wave feminism of its four leads being women. There's something endearing in that three gave off mature age student vibes. Penny Cook can look gorgeous but here was mumsy. Liddy Clarke was like a pot smoking single aunt. Olivia Hamnet was also mumsy. Anna Marie Winchester however was spot on - campy, big, scary.

I wish Lahiff had had a little extra money to do a blood and guts feature version. A hot guy or two might've helped - if onyl to have a red herring.

Opening murder well done - one long take. Other stuff is choppy. The tight budget hurt. But endearing.

Movie review - "Capuccino" (1989) **

 Not a good movie, in writing or even acting (odd for a valentine to actors) but it just wants you to have fun,it likes its characters. I feel it would've been better as a play. I enjoyed the references to things like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It's about four friends - John Clayton, Barry Quinn, Rowena Wallace and Jeanie Drynan. Plus Clayton's girlfriend and some cops. People like Ernie Dingo make cameos.

Movie review - "Backlash" (1986) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

 Improvised film benefits from an electric performance from David Argue, a tightly wound livewire who constantly seems he's about to explode and often does, jabbering away, strutting around in underwear, brandishing his gun. Gina Carides matches him.- young, gorgeous, a believable law student. Bill Bennett was clearly less sure with Lydia Miller, who admittedly is inexperienced but isn't given the chance to do much.  Brian Syron's pursuer is an ideal threat.

As in many of his movies Bennett runs out of story - it would be better as an hour. Or it needed another subplot. I like that Argue was killed because of what he did in the past but it needed something else, like Carides and her boyfriend, or Miller's kids/husband or something.

The scene where Carides and Argue get the confession out of the publican's wife is a little awkward but it did make me laugh because the cops are so outrageously unethical.