Get your kicks at the flicks: 1980s edition
Join film programmer Elliot Lavine at Cinema 21 in June for a look at cinema’s “misunderstood decade”
Movies from the 1980s are best known for action classics, with stars such as Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Norris and Willis. It was a decade of blockbusters. But when Elliot Lavine thinks of the ‘80s, it’s more cerebral. He has selected a challenging quartet of films for June. The comedy is dark. The films are edgy, bizarre, even hypnotic. Some of the decade’s films will leave you puzzled, maybe even disturbed. You will not leave the theater amazed by high-tech wizardry. You will also not leave the theater yucking it up. This group of films is good brain food.
This is our monthly look at coming attractions for Cinema 21’s Saturday Morning Classics. Renown film programmer Elliot Lavine selects a theme every month, and we let you know what’s coming to the big screen at our iconic neighborhood theater at 616 NW 21st Ave.
To purchase advance tickets for the Saturday Morning Film Classics series, visit Cinema 21. All showings in the Saturday Morning series are at 11 a.m.
“The King of Comedy” (1982) at Cinema 21 on June 6. Director: Martin Scorsese.
Don’t come for the laughs and don’t mistake the title for a fun biopic. This film may star Jerry Lewis—who actually has been called the king of comedy—but there’s nothing slapstick silly about Lewis in this role of a beloved late night talk show host who is stalked and kidnapped by a failed, delusional stand-up comic played by Robert De Niro.
This may not be De Niro’s best-known role, though Lavine calls his performance “mesmerizing.” Lavine says Jerry Lewis, “in his role of a lifetime,” steals the show. This film is anything but a roaring good time. Rather, it is a disturbing take on fame, celebrity, obsession, fantasy and reality.
The film was a commercial flop when it was released. But Lavine says it has become a cult classic and a film that deserves to be reconsidered. Sarah Bernhard plays De Niro’s “demented accomplice.”
“Do the Right Thing” (1989) at Cinema 21 on June 13. Director: Spike Lee.
This was the film that Lavine says announced Spike Lee’s arrival as an important filmmaker.
The story takes place on a hot summer day and night in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Lavine calls the film an “incendiary masterpiece” and one of the ‘80s most important films. It is a deep reflection and commentary on urban America’s racial divide.
The racial tension is palpable between the neighborhood’s African-American residents and the Italian-American owners of a neighborhood pizzeria. The characters are unforgettable and there is humor in the drama, but the story is also an American tragedy.
The cinematography can be fast and furious, and Lee uses bold colors and exaggerated camera angles, all contributing to the oppressive heat of the summer and the oppressive atmosphere in a simmering corner of America. Lavine writes that on the big screen, “‘Do the Right Thing’ burns hotter than ever.”
According to Lavine, the film was supposed to be released in the summer of 1989 but was delayed until the fall because the studio feared a release in the heat of the summer could inflame audiences, inciting them to recreate the film’s violent scenes.
And let’s not forget the film’s hip-hop soundtrack, featuring Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.” The cast includes Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Danny Aiello, Rosie Perez and Spike Lee himself.
“House of Games” (1987) at Cinema 21 on June 20. Director: David Mamet.
“House of Games” was the first film directed by David Mamet. (He had already won a Pulitzer Prize as a playwright.)
The neo-noir film is a thriller and Lavine calls it “a puzzle impossible to solve—until the very end.” Devious! It’s a story about con men and their con games, but trying to figure out who is conning whom will twist your mind.
A psychiatrist becomes mixed-up with one of her patients, a compulsive gambler. (She had just written a well-received book about obsessive compulsive disorder.) The shrink tries to help her patient but becomes involved in his dark, dangerous, double-dealing world. And she is incapable of resisting the intriguing forces that are entangling her.
The story baffles the mind, and perhaps the mind is its own character? Lavine says of all the films he’s programmed this month, this one definitely deserves to be rediscovered. Starring Lindsay Crouse and Joe Montegna.
“Wings of Desire” (1987) at Cinema 21 on June 27. Director: Wim Wenders.
“Wings of Desire” is the single foreign film this month. It was shot in West Berlin in what was still West Germany. The Berlin Wall is featured prominently—it would not come down for another two years.
German director Wim Wenders wrote and directed this story about angels who wander the streets of Berlin, listening to the private hopes and sorrows of the lonely. The angels cannot interact with the physical world. They can observe life but they can’t experience it. That detachment is challenged when one of the angels falls in love with a beautiful but lonely trapeze artist.
The film has been called a romantic fantasy, but it is also a meditation on what it is to be human and what it is to love.
The angels float over the city. Wenders filmed these scenes with the help of cranes and helicopters to give us swooping shots of the divided city. Reviewers have called the film, Wenders’ elegy to Berlin, seen from the perspective of angels and of everyday people. Most of the actors are European, but Peter Falk plays an interesting part as an American filmmaker in Berlin.
How to describe the film? Lavine admits it really just needs to be seen to be “properly absorbed and processed.” He calls the film “hypnotic,” saying it will linger in your mind long after you leave the theater. “From a film programmer’s perspective, it’s the perfect film to close a series like this one.”
For those of us addicted to drama, the June Saturday Morning Classics gives us that pleasurable high. Comfort not included.