Movies I Watched in June, Part 2

There are a lot of ‘80s movies that look extremely EIGHTIES in retrospect – “Less Than Zero,” “Wall St.,” “The Lost Boys,” “Flashdance” – but one that frequently gets left off that list is this little gem from 1986. It’s not as flashy as, say, “The Lost Boys” (is anything?), but it sums up the decade in  a less colorful, possibly less subtle, definitely more racist way. Michael Keaton, at the height of his first wave of star power, plays the Michael Keaton-type guy trying to bring a Japanese automaker to a dying Pennsylvania town. The Japanese are tight-assed workaholics, the Americans are half-drunk goofballs, and it’s hard to really root for either side (though in 1986 you’d better believe you were supposed to be on the side of the good ol’ red, white and blue!) Plot, clichés and feel good ending aside, it’s a strange movie, one of those films that’s not funny enough to be considered a comedy and not involving enough to be a drama. Keaton is great, of course, but you wish the screenplay (by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel) had given him something interesting to do, and that director Ron Howard had figured out an original way to show it, other than stage half the film in music video-style montages. The cast is interesting (though largely wasted) with guys like George Wendt (obvious) and John Turturro (what?) playing the autoworkers and Gedde Watanabe (a year after playing, ahem, Long Duk Dong in “Sixteen Candles”) as Keaton’s Japanese equivalent. They’re all fine in their roles, but the movie isn’t really about anything, least of all the changing auto industry. Everyone fights, then shakes hands and digs in and wins some arbitrary challenge and it’s happy endings for all, except, of course, the one mean guy you were rooting against the whole time. I saw this in 1986 in the theater, and then I watched it in June. Maybe I’ll watch it again in another 33 years.

Solid little film noir that I’d never seen before, presented (of course) by the great Eddie Muller on (what else?) TCM’s “Noir Alley.” It was aimed at making a big star of Ann Sheridan (giving her a title role ala Joan Crawford’s in “Mildred Pierce,” but oddly enough, the main character isn’t Nora. Instead, it’s a mild-mannered, straight-laced buttoned-up doctor played by Kent Smith (who co-stars in two of my favorite movies, “Cat People” and “The Fountainhead.”) Smith’s character, Richard Talbot, falls head over heels for Nora after treating her for a minor injury, then tears his entire (previously swell) life to pieces trying to make their relationship a reality. Among the things that set this movie apart: One, Nora and her various shady friends don’t try to swindle Talbot or otherwise do him harm, as is usually the case in noir. (See, for instance, “The Woman in the Window” or “Scarlett Street,” where Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea wreck Edward G. Robinson’s life.) Instead, it’s all Talbot’s own stupid fault. Two, Talbot comes up with the craziest scheme I’ve ever seen to escape the law, then (of course) it all backfires on him. And three, the cinematography is by the great James Wong Howe, meaning no matter how dumb the main character is or how goofy the plot gets, it all looks spectacular.

Up next: A horror classic, a horror cult classic and a classic cult classic.