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Outatime1975
Reviews
Meatballs (1979)
The one and only 'Meatballs' movie and a kind of cinema that will never come back
I haven't read the other reviews but I'm sure (or I want to be so) there's nothing much more to say. It always reminds me of my childhood and, sadly, through the years I've had to convince myself there won't be another movie like this. The perfect mix between a movie that children can watch with adult details that only adults can understand, and the so-called sequels are only a swindle. This movie is only overcome by 'Revenge of the Nerds', one step beyond it in sexuality but the same esence at last. Ivan Reitman and Bill Murray at their best, and no place for Disney and stuff, just pure fun at all costs, with a touch that only existed and will exist at that moment in time. Unrepeatable.
Student Bodies (1981)
Of course this was before 'Scary Movie' but it's more than that
Alan Smithee (Michael Ritchie/Mickey Rose) should be proud of this great and sadly unknown movie. Despite of acting (not as bad because it's totally according to the rest), plot, low budget and anything someone could attack it with, is a really great movie, made by a misunderstood genius. Everything here fits perfectly. No need of great performances or deep thoughts, nothing here is serious and everybody acts like this. Everytime I watch it I have a real feeling of freedom (and melancholia because it's something I'll never see again). When everything was allowed, when the punchlines were really good or so bad that made you laugh, without political correction, or shame, or prejudices, fun and hooliganism in their purest form, but above all: all is really good, I repeat: It's so good that today (almost 40 years later!) it's still fun after a lot of bad, cheesy movies "Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker wannabe" that failed miserably.
I don't know how they made it, I don't know who's the true director or writer or whoever is the genuine author of this film, but I want to thank him/her/it for this, because nobody has been able to overcome 'Student Bodies' in all these years, even there's a scene scarier than others in a lot of horror movies before and after, (maybe almost unintentionally, but it's very effective) and, above all, because this is the best and most surreal horror movies' parody until now, as much as its authors were ashamed of it (maybe because they never imagined what kind of trash was yet to come).
Bright Lights, Big City (1988)
It's just what it pretends to be...
This movie is just a little gift. From a mix between deceased director James Bridges and writer Jay McInerney arrives to us this strange but magical movie, in which everything is anticlimactic (not in the strict meaning of the term), just for me it's like things out of place, situations out of context, environments contrary to facts, serious things in ridiculous situations, and that's its strongest point. The movie is almost the book translated to big screen point by point, but (and there's the magic) is made in a very special way. First of all is the main character played by Michael J. Fox, but...
Do you really think they didn't know who was they were chosing? Do you really think this movie (or the book) wanted to be commercial? At first, they show us these two lovely but hopeless friends, having fun night after night, but while Tad (Kiefer Sutherland) takes it all as a pastime while his future is a sure thing, many painful things have driven Jamie there, and while we can suposse Kiefer Sutherland rol is the one who is a very good friend and a real support, actually Jamie is completely alone, lost in love, still in love with a beautiful smalltown girl who very probably used him to get her objectives, lost in time, lost in life, and he doen's want anything but to know why she left without explanation, and after all to be a good fiction writer at less, but his present is the product of his old and recent past, and he tries to escape from them at any cost (his brother, oblivious and outside of all that tries in vain to understand). Coma Baby is a reflection of him clinging to his immaturity and the premoniton of a hard life before being forcibly thrown into the world, and the reason and the strong tie that he's still united to his mother before and after she dies. Her mother (excellent Diane Wiest between pains) remembers him he didn't want to go out to world when his time to birth arrived.
Maybe most of you will say "yes", but you only have to watch (or read) it twice and you'll realize that in the eighties this wasn't the best topic to make money on screens (OK, maybe it was for people who was close to drugs, success or both of them. It could be said this film is the opposite of 'The Secret of my Success').
But far away from all of this, 'BLBC' is an unique, strange opus, faithfully based in a simple but wonderful book and magistrally composed by a lot of little strange details that make it unrepeatable: from the eclectical soundtrack to the atypical actors, performances, situations and almost everything involved in this great movie, a totally underrated, underestimated and mostly misunderstood masterpiece, with no place for square heads or conventional people ready to see only what they expected. There are no rules here, everything counts here, everything has a reason, and everyone can watch tragedy, romance, comedy, drama... in an all-in-one-movie but in an sophisticated, elegant way, placed in the New York of the 80's, shining like never before, but here on its decadent side, where the bad has always something beautiful, and the good something ugly, where sadness leads to laughter, and laughter is always bittersweet.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 'Bright Lights, Big City'. Please, watch it without prejudice, open-minded, let yourselves go, and then you'll discover this strange and special movie like it really is... and then it will be valued as the hidden jewel many people never could appreciate.
Stealing Home (1988)
I love you, Katie.
This is a minor movie which could be a great movie because the soundtrack seems to be ready for that (I listened to it before watching the film and maybe my imagination cheated me), because the story starts promising you a lot of emotions and hopes, but shortly after this it becomes a bad copy of 'Summer of '42' in a very, very weak way (neither Harmon, nor Foster, nor Ramis can do anything). The worst thing is I love it, but only for the soundtrack, because thanks to it in my mind there's still a better, less superficial and stronger movie that will never exist, but that's the magic only a great David Foster's soundtrack like this can do.
Coldblooded (1995)
One sad, clear and forward example of the finally 90's independent cinema
Independent cinema (as music) has always existed, before Tarantinos, DiCillos,Sollondzes and all that stuff. But there are a few things that I've always thought they left behind: humanity, sensitivity, empathy and, above all, effort. This movie is a forward advance of all those kind of movies that later became fashionable because they changed the independent film label to that kind of dry, cold films, of absurd dialogues, without feelings, and definitely for an all-fairness where the director confused freedom of creation with the law of least effort, no explanation, no thinking, NO SUCH COMEDY, only what his balls are telling him to do. Beautiful. At least it has made me do my first review.