Category Archives: 1980s

Summer School (1987)

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I never went to summer school, and I genuinely enjoyed taking standardized tests. But I still feel an instant kinship for these kids and their world.

I was a high school student decades later, and I’ve only taught in a classroom on a very limited basis. And yet, these experiences made me recognize one of the continual ironies of public education.

Sometimes it feels like the place where learning goes to die, and if not learning, then at least curiosity and passion. Oftentimes, organized education takes all the fun out of learning, assigning letters and tests to each of us and thereby effectively replacing our genuine desire to know more with extrinsic, even mercenary motivation.

If you’re like me, someone genuinely impatient with wasted time, public school is one of the worst time sucks known to man. If you factor in the substitute teachers, passing periods, and busy work, there are very few equals. It’s no wonder kids get bored, and that’s not even factoring in other distractions or genuine learning disabilities. It’s a wonder anyone learns anything at all, and this is a testament to inspiring teachers (and a certain amount of self-dedication).

I initially had to do a double-take because I thought Rob Reiner was the director until I realized it was his father, Carl Reiner (who also has a delightful opening cameo). The movie’s screenplay was written by Jeff Franklin, who created Full House very soon after.

Although there are pretty exchange students, bikini gags, and a few throwaway moments that are regrettably 80s, for the most part, the fact that Summer School feels quintessentially of its time is the highest compliment, given the world and rank-and-file of Ocean Front High School.

The school itself feels instantly placeable from its sun-soaked vibes to the student body’s total devotion to summer and the sweet freedom it represents to every teenager since the dawn of time. 

It might be a testament to what my cinematic diet has been of late, mostly dour and serious “cinema,” but sometimes you want something diverting like this; it delivers on its promise and doesn’t try to overshoot its ambitions as a teen comedy. And yet in delivering the goods, it does what many of its peers can’t always manage. It bends toward heart over crassness, making for a satisfying confection.

Mark Harmon is also such a charismatic lead. As a former UCLA football star, he falls easily into the role of a So-Cal P.E. teacher who has more use for waves to surf than a classroom. The premise works because there’s a sense that he used to be like some of his students. He’s more of a friend than a figure of authority. The latter role is taken on by the cartoonish ’80s villain par excellence, Vice Principal Gills.

Kirstie Alley is slotted in as the teacher overseeing the honors course next door. She watches Shoop with mild interest and then bemusement as she goes for the more intellectual romantic option in the vice principal, but we know who she’s meant to be with. Our hero does too. It’s only a matter of time.

In this way, perhaps it is a fantasy, fulfilling genre conventions, and yet as he’s stuck teaching an English course in Summer School to a room full of failures and misfits, there is a joyous, genuinely hilarious camaraderie that forms. It allows the movie to become something worthwhile above the level of typical drivel. 

I’m completely sympathetic to their desire to break out of the monotony and drudgery of the classroom. At first, they take “field trips” to Knott’s Berry Farm bumper cars and petting zoos, although these plans are eventually curtailed, and they have to either get it together or throw in the towel for good.

Sure, there are complications. Mr. Shoop looks about ready to give up multiple times, even as his cordial advances toward Ms. Bishop are politely rebuffed. The movie develops a nice cadence not through the usual antagonism of a Breakfast Club, but a pact between teens and adults to get to the finish line together.

Their contract of sorts involves “wishes” from all of them, and Mr. Shoop agrees to help them along if it means they will at least try to study and not goof off. However, it becomes more than bargaining because they see a teacher who goes above and beyond, and they begin to form a community where they look out for one another and cheer for each other’s victories.

“Chainsaw” and Dave are two of the worst goof-offs and loafers, but in their deep, abiding love for Chainsaw Massacre and gore in general, we see a passion and expertise in costuming and makeup that’s extraordinary even as it does not fit into the neatly created parameters of vocab tests and SAT scores.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized more and more of the flaws in education. And I loved school, but for some people, they have gifts and talents that will not be showcased in the classroom unless they are given the space to explore what truly interests them. These are the spaces where they can flourish.

This might seem too high-minded for a goofy comedy like this, but I think that’s part of why I was so taken with Summer School. These characters feel inherently decent, and we want to cheer for them as they bond.

There’s a teen pregnancy played for a laugh, and yet the girl has the baby — it’s never a question — even as she decides to give the child up for adoption since she doesn’t feel prepared. Another teen is smitten with her teacher, and it feels like a queasy scenario, yet she’s mature and realizes it is only a phase. Others have their own growth, whether it’s getting a driver’s license or improving their study habits.

What’s more, the message is not perfection or even the pipe dream that now everyone gets straight As and will go off to Harvard thanks to their teacher. The dream is of a different nature. All these kids and their parents gather in the principal’s office as the vice principal accuses Mr. Shoop, like Satan in a suit and tie.

Because the story it’s telling is not about doing all of this so you’ll get into a school of your dreams or get your heart’s content (though there is some wish fulfillment). Instead, it’s saying something more about what it means to truly invest in a community and pour into other people. Sometimes we think it will take everything out of us; we must simply look after our own interests. Except Mr. Shoop gives of himself, and everything else is added to him.

And sure, in his case, he gets a From Here to Eternity embrace with Kirstie Alley in the surf and doggy kisses to boot. But it just goes to show Summer School never forgets its identity while also never totally dumbing itself down to the least common denominator.

I feel like many people might be pleasantly surprised by what this movie has to offer, especially if they’re craving a trip back to the ’80s in all their glory. I never lived through the decade, but with a teacher like Mr. Shoop, I wish I had at least momentarily. Although that probably goes for any era, because teachers are such formative people in our adolescent lives.

3.5/5 Stars

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

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Some Kind of Wonderful announces itself in all its ’80s glory with a montage of drums, synths, working-class grease monkeys tinkering on cars, and a pair of teens making out. There’s no doubt it’s a John Hughes movie, and though Howard Deutch was called back after Pretty in Pink to helm this one, the script has many of the same tenets of the earlier picture, albeit gender-flipped.

Keith (Eric Stolz) is a teen from the poor side of town, and if he weren’t so reticent, the way he watches Amanda Jones (Lea Thompson) and her boyfriend from a wistful distance would be creepy. Actually, it is creepy, but we’re supposed to empathize with him.

The other parts of his life are more relatable. He’s the eldest of three siblings. There’s the young brainiac, the annoying middle child, and he’s the moody older brother. His father keeps on hassling him about the college question; it’s well-meaning because his dad doesn’t want him to wind up selling tires like his old man.

Although he doesn’t have many friends, Keith’s closest companion is drumming tomboy Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson), who eschews high school convention, wearing her hair in a bleached pixie cut. Hughes is also having a gleeful time with the Rolling Stones in-jokes.

All around them, the halls are spilling over with eightiness — the hair, the clothes, and the prototypical tough guy scuzzballs. Every school needs at least one. This one (Elias Koteas) looks like a buff Danny DeVito in his Cuckoo’s Nest era.

We soon learn he’s not half bad. It’s the prima donna preps with their coiffed hair, smooth talk, and pretentious narcissism who are really the dregs. What makes it worse is that people like Hardy (Craig Sheffer) have all the toys and the girls — namely, Amanda Jones. Keith will always be subservient to these jerks in the social hierarchy, left to fill up their gas tanks.

And yet his daydreams about Amanda won’t abate. He fantasizes about being with her and uses any excuse just to be close to her. It backfires when he willfully finds himself in detention, although Hughes sidesteps a mini Breakfast Club set-up when she skips out after cajoling her teacher.

Keith is left doing time with the bruisers and weirdos, but it’s a strange camaraderie that builds within their ranks. The trash have to stick together, and it’s a delightful if mostly unforeseen development.

The other crucial relationship is between Keith and Watts because it’s painfully apparent that there is a sexual tension between them. This girl is devoted to him, and yet she allows her feelings to be stepped over as he seeks her advice in pursuing the object of his desire.

They undergo a practice kiss, complete with embrace and all the trimmings, played against Stephen Duffy’s “She Loves Me.” It’s both uncomfortable and a strange portent. We question him for being so asinine. Surely a real person would recognize this is a bit more than friendship. 

If you start poking holes around, you find the problems and some of Hughes usual shortcomings. Keith exists as a fairly blasé male protagonist who represents the writer’s limitations. The female characters feel like they could have been even more intriguing if the story were from their POV.

Watts is all twisted up inside with unrequited feelings and wounded to boot. Amanda is perceived as a preppy person, and yet she’s dealing with an unfaithful boyfriend and petty friends. And it can’t come down to Stoltz because if he was ditched from Back to The Future, he also gave a stellar performance as Rocky in Mask.

But for a film of his that’s very rarely talked about, Some Kind of Wonderful might be my underrated pick of the lot. It has to do with specific moments. The whole trajectory of the movie is building to a party at Hardy’s place.

Keith knows full well that it’s meant to be a set-up to humiliate him in front of Amanda as payback, but he wants to go anyway. He also spends all his college funds on a lavish gift for this girl. It sounds extravagant and crazy, and yet he does it with a clear-eyed lucidity. Nothing else matters, and this girl feels the weight of it all. She wasn’t able to bring herself to dump him, and now she’s swept up by his candor.

They have an uptight dinner date over caviar at an uber-fancy restaurant, and then he lines up some entertainment after hours at a local museum. It’s closed, but he has some connections and gets a little help on the inside. It’s a bit peculiar and pure Hughes romanticism as the two teens walk through the exhibition rooms in an echo of the tranquility of The Art Institute of Chicago in Ferris Bueller. Keith tells her, “This place is my church.”

I’m not sure what to make of these more ethereal interludes. Although by the time we get to Hardy’s party, we’re ready for a showdown. The most uncomfortable detail is how they refurbish Watts’s ride, and she becomes their chauffeur for the evening. Keith shows his obliviousness by effectively taking two girls out for the evening.

Hardy has his own fall from grace as Hughes goes away from a prototypical roughing-up in favor of something more symbolic. Keith wins the competition because he maintains his reputation and calls the other boy’s bluff. He feels as feeble and phony as all the rest. What’s more, Keith’s detention buddies show up and have his back, staking their flag with the indelible line, “This party is about to become a historical fact!”

The movie’s coasting down the mountain. Keith heads out the door with Amanda on his arm after she gives Hardy a couple of cathartic and well-deserved slaps. However, Keith’s so thick in the head he needs her to tell him that Watts loves him…

It’s a bit frantic as Hughes tries to right the wrong from his earlier picture. The movie’s recognition is the open secret of the whole story, and sure, it’s what we want as an audience, but it feels a bit rushed as Keith chases after the girl who always had feelings for him.

Ask me if it all fits together, and I’d say “No,” and yet as a casual watch, it does seem like Some Kind of Wonderful delivers on the ’80s teen movie experience with a few caveats. It makes me want to go out and watch more Mary Stuart Masterson because this is her movie. She stakes her claim to it through a persona brimming with pathos and charm.

3/5 Stars

Wargames (1983)

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Wargames is a movie for the age of “Star Wars,” and by Star Wars, I’m referring to Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Because, despite detente, these are still the days of the Cold War, mutually assured destruction, and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Warm and fuzzy topics to be sure.

But isn’t this the beauty of movies from the ’80s? They can be packaged in such a way that’s entertaining, somewhat ridiculous, and generally cathartic. Somehow, it seems like there is a greater license for the suspension of disbelief. Wargames could be a certain type of movie that’s easy to place. We’re introduced to a NORAD control center with a brain trust of government employees who keep the country protected alongside gruff cigar-chomping military types.

One of their great assets is technology. Namely, the WOPR, a supercomputer using game theory to calculate all possible outcomes of a WWIII, should we ever come to such a crisis.

However, we also meet David Lightman (Matthew Broderick). He’s seemingly your average Seattle high school student. Unmotivated but intelligent. Broderick plays him as a bit of a likable smart-aleck who also happens to be a video game and technological whizz.

When he’s not in the arcade or goofing off in class, he’s holed up in his bedroom. His love interest is obvious. Peer pressure or crossing social cliques is never an issue in this picture, and they form a relaxed rapport from the outset. Ally Sheedy is your quintessential giggly All-American teenager (Pre-Breakfast Club). She’s lovey-dovey with the family dog and comes jogging past the home in her gym attire to pay a visit.

With a certain boyish bravado to impress a girl, David gets into the school computer and proceeds to change both their failing grades. Jennifer has some amount of personal conscience, but not enough to be a killjoy.  Anyway, these escapades feel relatively mundane given the world we find ourselves in.

To this point, it also sounds like we’re talking about two entirely different movies: one concerned with world affairs and another a lot more juvenile in scale. Where can these worlds collide?  It’s all too obvious.

You can see how it’s a jumping-off point for the troublemaking charisma of Ferris Bueller that seems to come so easily for Broderick. Instead of a day on the town, his prowess winds up helping him unwittingly break into the government’s defense program.

It turns into a rather illuminating exploration of contemporary technology like computers (green text on a black screen),  library index systems, and newspaper microfilm readers, all tools of the trade for those trying to find any form of information, well before the proliferation of Google and the interwebs. For those with shorter lifespans or attention spans, it’s a reminder of where we’ve been before.

Sure enough, he gets into the program thinking he’s playing a game simulation called thermonuclear warfare, and it is a simulation, one that the computer “Joshua” believes to be real. David pretty much triggers a shot heard around the world.

We get establishing shots of the Emerald City, and later, David is being tracked down by FBI agents. Forget about Sleepless and Seattle. I’ll never think about the city the same way again after War Games. It’s crazy, cathartic, compelling — all of these things — blending the current events with all the facets of what we think of the 1980s coming of age genre.

Why do they leave him unattended in an office with a computer? You could name any number of other reservations with the plot, but then this is a movie with a whole premise based on a teenager who disrupts the United States government’s defense mechanisms. Any of these passing captious nitpicks misses the entire point.

In the era celebrating heroes like MacGyver, there’s something to be said for independent know-how when Google couldn’t answer all your questions, and it’s possible to use your superior intellect to solve seemingly life-or-death situations.

It’s hardly a narrative criticism when they meet an eccentric genius (John Wood) living in obscurity with a clouded past and an infatuation for dinosaurs. He’s living on a remote island under a presumed name. He’s become jaded by the world, and for whatever reason, he believes extinction is just a part of the natural order of things. Add it to all of the film’s other nerdy stereotypes.

Likewise, a game of tic-tac-toe was never so important. Every clock imaginable is counting down. They’re on the hotline with the president, jets are preparing to meet the enemy, and they have open lines of communication with bases all across the continent. And then the game is up, and all the screens burst into fireworks. What do they tell us? “Joshua” has concluded rather succinctly: No one wins in nuclear war. The message couldn’t be any clearer.

So David gets the girl and saves the world from imminent destruction. It sounds like the synopsis to a really bad movie. Believe it or not, I found Wargames rather refreshing. It isn’t imbued with a great deal of social significance, nor does it take itself too seriously, but it has a dose of ’80s-era charm, of Spielberg or Hughes, giving it a sense of good fun and developing an experience we can enjoy and be a part of. There’s also a message.

I’m usually quite hard on the ’80s from a film perspective, but the decade certainly has its share of perks. You only miss something like Wargames when you don’t see it being made anymore. It seems right to say it. They don’t make movies like they used to.

4/5 Stars

Married to The Mob (1988)

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Although he’s not always easy to pin down across his oeuvre, Jonathan Demme’s collaboration with Tak Fujimoto in Married to the Mob elicits a visual style that can most easily be married with their work together in Something Wild. It feels free and easy yet still deeply empathetic through those trademark POV close-ups. In fact, it takes the gangster motif of Ray Liotta from the previous film a bit further.

One of the virtues of Married to the Mob is how it never takes itself too seriously, and it’s this awareness that makes it a pleasure to be a part of. Demme had some kinship with Martin Scorsese, and it’s like he’s readily exploring the other director’s usual milieu without totally giving himself over to the gratuitous nature of it all. Despite an opening hit on a train, plenty of gunplay, and the general immersion in the mob world, he’s not going to fully succumb to it.

Scorsese is fascinated by the dichotomy of the sacred and profane he found in his own boyhood community. However, Demme’s not about to make Mean Streets or even Goodfellas. Instead, he focuses his energies on someone who, in the predominantly patriarchal world, would normally be pushed to the periphery. It seems entirely fitting that he would focus on a mob wife (Michelle Pfeiffer), married into the organization while growing increasingly disillusioned with the lifestyle.

Her husband is one of the local kingpin’s cronies. Their son has been conning all the local kids in their affluent neighborhood out of their pocket change. There are firearms in the junk drawer, and furniture purloined from who knows where. Her husband’s satisfied with the bottom line. She has a conscience and desires a better life for her boy. It all goes back to the influence of one man: His name is Tony the Tiger.

Dean Stockwell, the journeyman who began as a child actor in Classic Hollywood and then famously ran in circles with Dennis Hopper during the counterculture era, left the industry behind only to come back quite spectacularly.

Paris, Texas, Blue Velvet, and even Quantum Leap are hard to forget, and yet, added to the list, you must include Tony the Tiger in Married to The Mob. He’s having so much fun relishing the part of a heavy, and it radiates out of him.

There’s hardly a need to go into the particulars because we’re all familiar with the archetype, and yet when he finally shows up in the movie, there’s something inimitable about him. It’s not what he is but how he does it that matters most.

He has a weakness for pretty girls. He’ll even kill for them, going so far as to knock off a rival. He’s ruthless, and in the same breath, he has a certain moral code of conduct. He believes in family and taking care of those who are loyal to him. Perhaps even those whom he’s hurt. After Angela’s husband is killed, he vows to take care of the man’s grieving widow, although his reach is a bit more hands-on than she would like.

When she gets up and leaves her present life behind, selling all their worldly possessions, and relocating her son to a much humbler neighborhood, it gives the movie something more. This is where it becomes a hybrid rom-com, and Matthew Modine and Michelle Pfeiffer stir up their chemistry.

They meet in an elevator in a grungy apartment building. He’s keeping surveillance on her, and she’s trying to get away from the mob. This is the subtext. She has the forthright honesty to ask him out on a date, and he accepts. It’s easy to suspect his motives, and yet there’s a sense he’s game and obviously smitten once he gets to know her.

This isn’t a rehash of Notorious, where the agent falls in love with the girl even as he belittles her reputation. It’s a lot more innocent and humane than that (although they are still bugging her apartment). We know he must fess up eventually.

Of course, it must hit some inflection point in their relationship. His superior gets involved, she finds out who he really is, and Tony is on the run after an attempt on his life. He carts Angela off to Miami for a weekend as he does his best to dodge his own jealous wife.

Everything must inevitably go wrong for him, but thankfully, it’s just as much about the comedy as it is hammering home the crime drama. Demme never allows us to lose affection for any of these characters, really.

If there’s any mild complaint, it’s only that the movie resolves itself quite easily. But again, it’s not looking to be The Departed. This point of view is not of interest, and so in its send-up, we get something that’s tonally so different and rather endearing.

With each subsequent film I watch of Demme, I’ve been increasingly smitten. Because you start with something like Silence of The Lambs only to feel out the rest of his filmography to find so many countless gems. These are movies with eccentricities, comic verve, wildly phenomenal soundtracks, and an eye for characters (and actors) who would often be disregarded by other directors. Michelle Pfeiffer’s Angela and then Dean Stockwell feel like a case and point in this movie.

4/5 Stars

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

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Back to the Future is a film I have deep reservoirs of affection for, and I know it’s far from a landmark statement — I’m hardly in the minority. However, I will say that as I began to watch Peggy Sue Got Married, I slowly became attuned to its world and the unfolding premise. There seemed to be some very basic similarities.

Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) attends her 25th high school reunion with her daughter (Helen Hunt), reconnecting with old friends even as she rues her relationship with her husband and high school sweetheart (Nicolas Cage). She’s christened the evening’s queen of the class and faints from the excitement. As she drifts away, she wakes up, and it’s 1960 again. No DeLorean or Libyan terrorist necessary. She opens her eyes, and she’s there.

Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner’s screenplay utilizes some of the same time-tested tropes from Back to the Future, like uncanny knowledge that feels sentient to those living in the past, even as it’s common knowledge to those in the future, be it the Moon landing or pantyhose (or Calvin Klein for that matter). These breed rampant cultural miscommunications — the kind you get in these fish-out-of-water stories — engendered by messing with time. Peggy even bemoans the fact that she’s a walking anachronism.

The beauty of the picture is how it becomes something else entirely as it gets beyond these cursory elements to bring us something different — a far more pensive meditation. It’s not bombastic with Zemeckis’s flair for Sci-Fi or Christopher Lloyd’s out-of-this-world performance as Doc Brown. There aren’t the same ticking clocks or steadily increasing stakes that Marty must race against to save his parents (and his entire family’s existence). It’s not about that.

Kathleen Turner’s Peggy also has a poise and foresight Marty McFly was never supposed to have. Yes, they both go from the future into the past, but what a difference their life of experience makes.

Even the mechanisms of the time travel itself feel less important and mostly immaterial. We get beyond them quite quickly to focus on something more. Peggy marvels at seeing her parents as they used to be, as she remembers them when she was younger, and cherishes reconnecting with her baby sister (Sofia Coppola) as time has yet to sour their relationship.

At school, her whole outlook is different, too. Yes, she’s not prepared to redo her academics in the classroom, but her values are more intrinsic, and her social outlook is much more sincere. She’s cast off the insecurity we all have at that age to see the landscape with much greater lucidity.

She befriends the outcasts (one’s a nerd and a future billionaire); it’s not because she wants to capitalize on his future success, but because she knows he will believe her crazy reality. The other is a free spirit who scoffs at the literature they’re inculcated with in textbooks, instead nourishing himself on the self-expression of Jack Kerouac. It’s creative fodder for his own poetry as he seems to embody the dreams she never managed to pursue.

Also, she fosters an alternate relationship with her high school sweetheart: the man she married out of high school and ultimately divorced. She recognizes and even appreciates new contours to his character she was never prepared to notice before, just as she comes to forgive his flaws.

The casting as a whole might feel tighter than Back to the Future (which even famously included Michael J. Fox as an eleventh-hour replacement). There are so many faces who show up and give the right essence to the roles, whether it’s a young Jim Carrey, a very young Sofia Coppola, or Barbara Harris and Don Murray.

I will say, I’m not sure if Nic Cage’s characterization is to the benefit of the movie. His voice, his whining, almost petulant nature. He’s aged with makeup to near-comic proportions. And even this and his connection to the director (Coppola is his uncle) lend themselves to a kind of rapport. Because what is he supposed to be if not a mixed-up, angsty, regretful high schooler? Somehow, even this has less of the winking humor of Back to the Future. Miscast or not, it has an alternate level of sincerity.

And of course, there’s the instance when Peggy meets her grandparents. Leon Ames and Maureen O’Sullivan are impeccable. It’s such a pleasure to watch them because, being an Old Hollywood aficionado, they’ve been offered to me in so many films of yore. But the very rhythm of Peggy Sue visiting her grandparents is such a meaningful and cathartic one. It’s as if she’s somehow reclaiming these moments she always wished to have back, even as she willfully shares her out-of-body experience and gains a rapt and receptive audience in her elders.

In their eyes, she’s not crazy. It’s as if any skepticism has evaporated with time, and all that’s left over is a heavy dose of wonder and congeniality. True, I was a bit weirded out by her grandpa’s lodge, even as Bruce Dern’s secret society in Smile unnerved me. Here, it still manages to fit into the time travel narrative even as it lacks the level of import of Hill Valley’s clock tower. Again, that’s hardly the point.

When Peggy returns to her present, back to her daughter, her estranged husband, and everything else, whether through dreams or some other uncanny supernatural force, she has changed. This is what matters. It’s not butterfly effects or space-time continuums or quantum mechanics or anything like that. I can hardly speak to any of these. The movie speaks to what is universal: It’s the gift of getting to redirect your life, saying “I love you” to those you wish you had more time with, and reclaiming the mistakes gnawing at you. It feels like the most serendipitous type of science fiction.

When you have the likes of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, or even The Conversation to your name, Peggy Sue Got Married is never going to enter into the conversation of Coppola’s best films. It’s mostly subdued and full of the joy and jubilation of a different time. But Coppola actually examines some fairly profound themes.

What’s more, although Kathleen Turner is mostly pigeonholed as a siren or a beauty, she’s quite good in a role that’s not flashy, and yet allows her to offer up a performance with subtle aplomb. It’s easy for these types of period movies (or movies from the ’80s in general) to feel like pastiche — mostly inane and made thoroughly for consumption. Even Back to the Future is ’80s Hollywood at its very best.

Here it feels like great care is being taken, and there’s a level of reflection and maturity that’s hard to discount. It’s saying something when we follow this woman through time and space, and we pretty much leave that device behind. What’s not lost is her emotional journey.

4/5 Stars

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

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“The Cast and Crew of Star Trek wish to dedicate this film to the men and women of the spaceship Challenger whose courageous spirit shall live to the 23rd century and beyond…”

The opening remarks of The Voyage Home honoring the “courageous spirit” of those lost on The Challenger is a perfect encapsulation of the ethos of Star Trek.

Because it was always very much a franchise that was a social allegory for our world and by taking place in a sci-fi future, it was able to champion all that was good and valorous of people living through a space age even as they tried to reconcile with living with one another on earth with fraternity.

As a kid, Voyage Home was always my favorite Star Trek movie, and probably still remains so now. I’m not quite sure what it was exactly, though I do have some ideas. It’s important to acknowledge it right out front. Voyage Home has a wild and wonky premise full of a certain incredulity, but it’s also a good deal of fun.

Spock is back after Star Trek III, but now there is a new problem: Not only is Kirk a wanted man, but a frequency of humpback whale calls is causing chaos to reverberate all throughout the galaxy. Yes, you heard that right.

Kirk leads his fugitive compatriots on a Klingon ship with cloaking capabilities to time travel to the past — that is, the contemporary moment the film came out — 1986. The wheels start turning.

I’m no Star Trek savant, but it didn’t evade me that this is a subtle twist on the notable “City On The Edge of Forever” episode that sent Kirk and Spock (with his ear-concealing bandana) back in time to the soup lines of the Great Depression.

Voyage Home mines most of its comedy from your typical fish out of water premise, in this case pitting the Enterprise Crew of highly intelligent and advanced space cadets against a world that feels so analog and decidedly archaic to their sensibilities. Meanwhile, to the average guy on the street they look like helpless weirdoes.

A particularly memorable vignette involves a spiky-haired punk rocker on the bus with his blaring boombox. He does look rather like an alien to anyone left unawares from a different century. A little Vulcan nerve pinch gets the whole bus clapping with appreciation for curbing the noise.

Pairing Bones and McCoy off together is a pleasure in its own right, though it need not be expounded upon in depth here. The rest of the crew is entrusted to build a tank to carry the whales across the galaxy and also locate a nuclear reactor to help power their ship home.

Spock’s coming up to speed with the modern vernacular offers its own hilarity as does his commune with the whales in their enclosure at a Sausalito aquarium. It’s in plain view of everyone and another breach of societal norms. This just isn’t done in the 20th century. Spock has greater concerns as Kirk tries to guide him through this strange world like a blind man leading a blind Vulcan.

The resident biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks) is incensed. She cares about these animals’ well-being deeply. Later, she offers a ride our two lovable nut jobs up in her pickup because she has a penchant for hard-luck cases.

The addition of Hicks in a fairly substantial role begins as a screwball comedy with her skeptical incredulousness around Kirk and Spock. It then builds into a kind of swelling romantic comedy served with a side of pizza pie. Somehow it plays as the less tragic inverse to Joan Collins turn in “City on The Edge of Forever.”

Because they push the boundaries of her belief and still, if she doesn’t quite have faith in their clear-eyed tall tales, she recognizes their shared mission to protect the whales. If it’s not quite faith, then her trust in them is rewarded in an extraordinary way as an unimaginable world of the 23rd century opens up before her eyes.

She always feels a bit out of step with the world around her, and then she finds these like-minded people, a little eccentric, and yet they suggest to her that she was made for so much more. It’s an extraordinary development.

Chekhov gets captured in a restricted area and is shipped off to a hospital in the city after he suffers an injury. Kirk and Bones lead a search and rescue mission masquerading in scrubs, then Gillian finds out the whales were shipped off early. They have to intercept them en route if they ever hope to save the whales and thereby the galaxy. No big deal.

Hanging out with the crew of the Enterprise in San Francisco sounds like a good time, and it’s a pleasure to assure everyone that it is. For such gargantuan stakes, Voyage Home feels surprisingly lightweight, lithe, and generally fun because we rarely feel burdened by them. It’s not bogged down by a lot of self-importance and this is to its credit. So it worked then, in my childhood, and it still holds up now eliciting the same kind of stirring reactions.

3.5/5 Stars

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

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If I had to take a stab at the age-old distinction, I would differentiate Star Trek and Star Wars like so.  Star Wars was a sci-fi Fairy tale and became something more. Star Trek began as a sci-fi allegory on TV and became something more. In a word: beloved.

The Wrath of Khan opens with a scenario involving the usual suspects on the USS Enterprise, except standing in for Kirk is a  Vulcan named Saavik; they must rescue the crew of the Kobayashi Maru, and it all goes terribly wrong.

Moments later we learn that the entire escapade was a simulation.  Kirk (William Shatner), now an admiral, was watching from the wings. It turns out the Kobayashi Maru is a “No-win scenario” elucidating the character of the ship’s commander. You can probably imagine how Kirk handled it in his day, very unconventionally.

Bones (DeForest Kelley) chides his friend to get back out there. He’s not made for a desk job; he’s meant out there on the edges of the galaxy with his crew and wits about him tackling the universe’s most pressing problems. The pull of the movie means he has no choice in the matter.

Captain Clark Terrell (Paul Winfield) and Chekhov (Walter Koenig) lead the crew of the USS Reliant to an uninhabited world; it’s part of an interdisciplinary project to use the newly devised Genesis technology’s immense power to revitalize desolate planets.

There’s something ominous about it after they beam down, and it’s true they are not alone getting ambushed by the vengeful Khan (Ricardo Montalban) who still holds a vendetta for Captain Kirk leaving him to die (see “Space Seed”).

Among his entourage of scavengers he keeps some burrowing creatures as pets and they make his two hostages highly compliant. Khan’s quick to commandeer the ship, and we know what his aims are before he’s put them into action.

A trap gets set to lure Kirk. The USS Enterprise is alerted and comes face to face with The USS Reliant. Their purported friends have treacherous intentions looking to blow them out of space from close range.

There’s a robust theatricality to Montalban’s villain that feels large and provocatively cunning as he holds onto a grudge going back to Star Trek‘s TV days. It’s an inspired piece of work not only in building out the story, but in having the actor back for another installment because he already has a built-in history.

It turns it in a fine chess match and a space opera with Kirk and Khan crossing wits and playing out their old grievances in outer space. It takes this scope and the unfamiliar if appreciated world of space ships, phasers, and light speed, distilling them down into something so intimate and human.

If you’re a cynic, you could say the action mostly involves the two foes talking to each other over video screens. If memory holds, they never actually share the same frame. Still, regardless of what you think of the special effects or the sheer eightiesness of the film’s sets and wardrobe, the story is grounded in a conflict that feels so primal and compelling.

And if that is what gives us a movie, then we must also consider the other relationships. Kirk once had a romantic relationship with one of the head technicians of the Genesis project Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch); her grown son has followed in her footsteps and has a major chip on his shoulder when it comes to Kirk. His notoriety certainly precedes him.

The film is at its best when its heroes are put under duress. Echoing the film’s opening, Kirk and Spock look to rescue them from an untenable situation as they fight back against Khan’s unreasonable demands and Scottie tries to salvage what’s left of the Enterprise in the obliterated engine room. Radioactivity is contained, but with a busted engine, prospects are grim.

Like the second installment in the Star Wars franchise, Empire Strikes Back, Khan is a film about the ultimate sacrifice for the ones you love. If Han Solo did just that in the prior film, Spock does it here. It’s hard to think of two more beloved characters to watch suffer and giving them up hurts.

It’s fitting that the movie references A Tale of Two Cities with Kirk quoting Sidney Carton in the closing moments, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” This injection of classic Dickens reinforces how Star Trek is always grounded in traditional human history even if it’s pushed onward into future centuries.

Our hero is laid to rest with Scottie’s bagpipes. It always feels a bit anachronistic and then we hear the refrains of “Amazing Grace” in deep space suggesting it can touch even the far reaches of the galaxy.

Kirk eulogizes his buddy saying, “Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most… human.” That is the profound paradox of this friendship.

Spock’s a fundamentally rational character, and yet all these human impulses are pleased to dwell inside of him. It’s part of what makes him compelling because if we required a manual to read and comprehend him, it would be seem straightforward.

Kirk is the live wire, the unconventional one, who hates to lose — most of all he hates to lose his crew and the people he cares about. Yet in their camaraderie, we see something so formative, and Spock to the end is a noble, loyal friend.

It’s true he does bear the most human of traits and that’s why we hold him so dear because he knows what it is to love and care about other people. He has a heart to go along with his head, continually surprising us with the depth of his humanity despite his stoic countenance.

Like all the great adventure films, Khan has drama grounded in deep relationships, including the primary villain. In such a pressure cooker, every minute of action feels pregnant with real meaning and consequence. It also helps when characters we love and respect are at stake caught up in the middle of it all.

4/5 Stars

 

Tokyo Pop (1988)

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Since my time living in Tokyo, I’ve continued to be fascinated with how Japanese culture will create these hyper-specific niches of popular fandom. Japanese people take their hobbies very seriously and they go all in. You often meet teenagers or straight-laced salarymen who can barely string together sentences in English, only to discover they have some unique knowledge about American culture, especially in the realm of music.

There was a businessman who loved Olivia Newton-John; his go-to English-language Karaoke song was “Physical.” There was a student who jammed out to Korn, or one of my fellow teachers who shared a love of Sam Cooke and taught me about jazz musicians like John Coltrane and Charlie Parker.

Japanese popular culture was arguably at its height during the 1980s. You had the economic miracle or the “bubble,” which led to unprecedented prosperity in the country and with it greater disposable income and thriving youth subcultures.

Tokyo Pop feels like a perfect time capsule for this precise moment. There are evocations of pop culture that blend Japanese tradition with Western influence. Front and center are a Mickey Mouse ryokan in Iidabashi, then iconic brands like KFC, McDonalds, and Dunkin Donuts.

There were even a couple of times I sat up in my seat because I felt like I knew where a storefront or restaurant might be below the neon lights of the city. However, some of the most famous landmarks are unmistakable. We get views of Shibuya near the Hachiko statue or greasers and punks hanging out in Harajuku near Yoyogi Park.

I don’t need much plot to enjoy the movie, but here it is. Wendy Reed (Carrie Hamilton) isn’t having much luck on the music circuit in America. When she receives a postcard from a friend, plastered with Mount Fuji on the front, she makes the impetuous decision to make the trip. However, she arrives only to realize her girlfriend has already moved on.

So she’s left high and dry bumming around Tokyo like a helpless baby who doesn’t know the culture, can’t speak the language, and is quickly running out of money. Hiro Yamaguchi (Diamond Yukai) spies her at a street vendor where he’s eating late at night with his buddies, and they bet him that he can’t get lucky with her. He takes them on. It’s a trifle, a cliché-filled scenario, but it’s easy to excuse the film based on what it excels at.

Carrie Hamilton and Yutaka “Diamond” Yukai try and go through the paces of antagonism, however, it’s their genuine camaraderie and shared appreciation of music that really shines through. In one sequence he serenades his American flame with an acoustic rendition of “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman.”

Meanwhile, his band spends their time trying to get to a prominent Tokyo tastemaker named Doda who can make or break their careers. When all their ploys fail, Wendy finally takes the very direct approach waltzing into his office and commanding the room.

Eventually they make it big playing poppy covers of “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Do You Believe in Magic.” We see their rapid ascension as media personalities and global sensations, but at what cost? The couple’s able to get their own apartment and they should be happy, but their art suffers. They’ve pigeonholed themselves doing something that isn’t life-giving. They want to rock out.

Tokyo Pop‘s alive with so much youthful energy and, I would argue it has an even more perceptive viewpoint than later works like Lost in Translation. Although it has an entry point for American audiences, so much of it feels attuned to aspects of Japanese culture; they’re the type of moments I see and totally recognize, not as foreign and other, but authentic.

Japanese lavishing effusive praise on their fellow countrymen for any nominal use of English. Shoes taken off at the entryway. Every taxi driver’s fear of foreigners. Karaoke and alcohol as one of the most beloved forms of socialization, and the kindness of elderly men and women who will walk you where you need to go in spite of any language barrier.

In its day, Fran Rubel Kuzui’s movie was quite a success at Cannes only to fall away thanks to a distributor that went defunct. For a film that’s so perfectly in my wheelhouse, it’s a joy to see it resurrected from obscurity in a fancy new print that does wonders in making the images of the 1980s explode off the screen. There’s a tactile sense that we are there in the moment.

During an interview, the director acknowledged, only years later when friends told her, that she and her Japanese husband Kaz Kuzui were basically Wendy and Hiro. If not in actuality, then certainly it mirrors how their relationship crossed cultural bounds.

It’s also easy to draw parallels between Tokyo Pop and Lost in Translation for how they capture a moment in time (and coincidentally they both feature Diamond Yukai). Although the former film is more upbeat, and lacks much of the alienation of Coppola’s work, you do still see the darker, lonelier edges of Tokyo on the fringes.

From passionless love hotels to getting lost in the masses of humanity, and the crippling societal expectations of Japan, it’s still present. Because while Lost in Translation is always about the western perspective incubated in Tokyo’s fast-paced modernity, it seems like Kuzui’s international marriage gives her a more perceptive and localized understanding of Japan.

I’ve long been a fan of John Carney and there’s some of that energy here where music is so integral in constructing the story. No matter how humble the means, the production of the music functions as a platform and a showcase for the performers in such an authentic way. By the end, we appreciate the music and by extension the characters as well. But they both work in tandem to supersede the plot.

Some of the songs feel like absolute knockouts like “Hiro’s Song,” which can stand on its own two feet. They leave the film on a feel-good high that extends beyond the credits. With the latest reissue of the film for its 25th anniversary in 2023, it seems ripe for rediscovery by a new audience.

3.5/5 Stars

His Motorbike, Her Island (1986) and The Rocking Horsemen (1992)

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His Motorbike, Her Island (1986)

There’s an immediate aesthetic artifice to His Motorbike, Her Island. Our hero is cool and simultaneously cruel representing a husky-voiced, brusque masculinity that feels no doubt appealing and equally toxic. He recounts his life’s observations through voiceover — the monochrome dreams making up his memories — and as such the movie slaloms easily between black & white and color.

It feels perfectly at home in its moment as part ’80s biker movie full of style. Some of this no doubt comes from director Nobuhiko Obayashi who always seems to have a propensity for commercial pop culture imagery. I would hesitate to call him a technician, and yet since he both edited and directed many of his films, maybe I don’t want to use the label because it sounds too austere.

His films are suffused with a vibrant energy and although the comparison misses the mark, the only reference I could think of was Richard Lester. I’d be interested in hearing who others bring up.

The movie’s premise is quite simple. Koh Hashimoto (Riki Takeuchi) runs errands on his motorcycle part time. His idle hours are taken up with a docile beauty name Fuyumi. He even gets in a duel with the girl’s older brother, who’s worried for her honor. Whether the outcome impacts his view of her or not, Koh, breaks it off. By his estimation, she’s boring (all she knows is crying and cooking).

Koh is looking for the Japanese version of the aloof dream girl, and he finds it in Miiyo. She captivates him with her confident vivacity, taking pictures of him, chatting in the onsen, and ultimately taking up his first love of motorcycles.

Their relationship blossoms when he visits her hometown out in the country during Obon, and we witness how the summer holiday is rooted in both a veneration and a celebration of dead loved ones. Koh’s captivated watching Miiyo dance during the festival proceedings. It’s something about her spirit he finds so attractive.

It also signals the film’s dangerous edges. Because if I wanted to distill His Motorbike, Her Island, down to its essence, we would need to talk about the intoxicating and reckless abandon of youth. It’s mesmerizing when it’s projected up on the screen in all its glory existing without worldly consequence of any kind.

Miiyo follows Koh and becomes infatuated by his singular passion: a 750cc Kawasaki. But it’s not just a supercharged motorcycle, and it’s not so much about an object made of chrome and an engine. It’s the adrenaline hit and emotional high of riding a motorcycle and riding it fast. It’s almost a dare for life to come at you head-on. For them, living life on on the edge like this is an obvious antidote to the malaise.

It’s both what attracts them to one another and threatens their ultimate undoing. Live fast, die young, has a poetic inevitably to it. I feel like I will need to watch the movie again down the road sometime, but there’s a pervasive sense that this motorbike, this island, this young man and this young woman take on a kind of mythic proportion.

Just like I never caught onto a perceptible rhythm of the monochrome and color, what we witness is not always an objective, tangible world. It exists in the hinterlands of memory, love, passion, and emotions just out of reach. The irony is obvious.

Sometimes, to feel alive, people need to get as close to death as possible. I’m not sure if this star-crossed, high-octane hedonism is still en vogue, but it’s easy to understand how it could seem attractive albeit misguided. There’s a hubris to it.

3.5/5 Stars

The Rocking Horseman (1992)

When I lived in Japan, I was flabbergasted to learn that there was a group that was bigger in Japan during the ’60s than the Beatles. It was The Ventures! This instrumental act kicked off the “Eleki Boom” as their iconic onomatopoeic glissandos (deke-deke-deke) captivated a generation of youth. These teenagers subsequently rushed out to buy their electric guitars and start their own bands during the “Group Sounds” explosion.

Although I didn’t think about it at the time, I’m a sucker for a good musical coming-of-age movie, and this landscape was ripe for such a story. Recently, when I came upon The Rocking Horsemen, I realized a void in the cinematic landscape had been filled thanks to Nobuhiko Obayashi

Fujiwara (Yasufumi Hayashi) feels like the most innocent and congenial of Obayashi’s boy heroes, a Ferris Bueller-type who instantly takes us into his confidence by not only providing voiceover but speaking directly to us.

OB’s films are easily placed in this provincial milieu outside the hustle and bustle of the big city. This gives them a kind of comfortable intimacy, and it’s only a small jump to place them in the past. In this case, Japan during the 1960s. I already mentioned that the movie covers a subgenre I have a private preoccupation with: form-a-band origin stories. That includes That Thing You Do! and Sing Street to The Commitments, Nowhere Boy, and School of Rock. What sets this one apart is the unique context and cultural moment.

Now I’ve been inculcated from an early age that the Beatles had the greatest music, but Fujiwara is coming of age with an ear raised to the admonitions of his elders. Pop music is puerile entertainment, cultural dregs compared to the sophistication of classical music. The Beatles included.

Then, his radio played “Pipeline” and he is changed forever. Any kind of snobbery quickly dissipates. The new sound assaults him as he reclines in his bedroom. There’s no escaping its force, and he converted for good, caught up in the same boom I read about. It was electric liberation.

Since a rock musician can’t look like a Buddhist acolyte, the first course of action was to grow out his hair. It occurs to me that one of the reasons I find these movies compelling is it involves some kind of youthful industry. When you’re young you don’t need to be told the odds. If you want to start a band, and that’s you’re impetus, you can go ahead and do it. No permission is necessary (parents notwithstanding).

In this way, Fujiwara meets his future bandmates. The first shares his interest in rock and turns his back on the more traditional setlist the school club follows. The rest of the members include a priest’s son, who’s the band’s source of worldly wisdom, and then a gawky dork who gets coerced into playing the drums for them.

If initially they fall together organically enough, they also premeditate how to best go about their business. In the end, they resolve to get summer jobs at a local manufacturing plant to save up to buy their instruments. These scenes are mostly transitory — only an end to the means — but as “Woolly Bully” plays over their assembly line, there’s a sense of optimism. They’re getting closer to their goal.

Ittoku Kishibe shows up again after Lonely Heart as a good-natured teacher who supplies American lyrics and ultimately offers to become their club advisor. It’s a small addition, but his tacit affirmation of their endeavors speaks volumes.

I’m fascinated by how pop culture can infiltrate and suffuse through the cracks of a society, especially in an international context. I met Japanese folks with very specified knowledge about Korn or Olivia Newton-John, Sam Cooke, Jazz or Punk music. Or think of the two teens in Mystery Train who go on a pilgrimage to Memphis in search of The King. Where does this come from?

While I wouldn’t call the general Japanese populous particularly aware of world culture, you do find these hyperspecialized niches of expertise. These boys glean their inspirations thanks to radio and import records, even older siblings who pass down a love of Nat King Cole.

A perfect example is Jan and Dean’s “Little Old Lady from Pasadena” played as our hero rides his bike through his neighborhood. It’s a totally different context from the California surf culture I was born and bred in. But it still reaches them on the other side of the world. The same might be said of The Animals, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”

It doesn’t feel like a mistake that the first time the new band convenes and brandishes their new name — The Rocking Horsemen — they start playing, and it’s a flawless rendition of “Pipeline” (exactly like the Ventures recording). They make their debut at a show during Christmas with mixed results, but they disregard the critics and play their hearts out. What’s more, they gel and become galvanized as a group. How can you not under the circumstances?

But as school comes to a close, their journey together winds down too. Their first and last big show comes at the annual school cultural festival and with a set list including “I Feel Fine” and “Johnny B. Goode,” they can’t miss. We’ve seen this moment before in many a movie so it’s a kind of expected wish-fulfillment watching them go out.

When you’re an adolescent these are the kind of memories that stay with you. And in a final act of solidarity, Fujiwara now listless and despondent over the future, has his newfound brotherhood to come around him. They christen him their “Bandleader for Life.” So even as their journey as a band might have met its logical conclusion more than an impasse (not many make it like The Beatles), The Rocking Horsemen do have some amount of closure. The music and those relationships will never leave them.

4/5 Stars

Lonely Heart (1985)

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Lonely Heart is a film bathed in the golden hues of nostalgia (“natsukashii” in Japanese). It also boasts a rural landscape with a topography that’s the utter antithesis of Tokyo’s urban skyline. This in itself already evokes a certain quaintness, regardless of the story being told almost 40 years ago.

Hiroki (Toshinori Omi) envisions his world through the shutter of his camera — though he rarely has actual film to use — and so he imagines what he might capture. After school, he can be found scampering through the village streets in his school uniform with his two best friends doing backflips and cracking all manner of jokes. They have a youthful ingenuity that’s clever when it’s not getting them in trouble.

For instance, their use of Bunsen burners, forceps, and various pieces of lab equipment to cook up a delectable meal is inspired. Then, Hiroki’s friends razz him about following his father’s footsteps to be a Buddhist monk — he must give up meat lest he goes to hell for cutting corners on the road to enlightenment — and they’ll gladly eat his portion.

The next moment, they’re ushered off to the principal’s office to clean as a minor punishment. Instead, they teach vulgarities to the principal’s prized parrot and their mothers have the ignominy of coming into school to atone for their indiscretions. Hiroki’s mother is your typical portrait of a Japanese parent, at the very least because she’s always on her son to study more and pick up his grades. Their underlining failure to communicate is a universal adolescent struggle.

But his life stage is also about love, something that still feels naïve and untarnished by regrets and ample experience. He often looks through his camera viewfinder at the mystery girl, “Lonely Heart,” as she plays the piano, rides her bike, and takes the ferry home. If this was all it was, Lonely Heart might be a fairly rudimentary exploration of youth — another boyish awakening where the girl is cast as an object rather than a human being with a unique inner life.

Some of this happens in the movie with the ethereal Yasuko Tomita, but there’s also a parallel tale leaning into these themes in a more profound way. In fact, it takes them a step further. Hiroki receives a visitation from an impish ghost of a girl who materializes on numerous occasions even going so far as berating his mother and toying with her.

This seems like a curious development, but then Japanese culture has a greater tolerance for ghosts. If you’ve seen some of Miyazaki’s movies (arguably Japan’s most beloved cinematic export), you already know there’s a kind of acceptance of these things. They aren’t so much supernatural and if she’s labeled as “weird,” she’s also more or less accepted as fact.  Just as magical realism and surrealism can often permeate Japanese cinema.

This is easier to accept as I often have trouble with Japanese humor because it feels broad (whatever that means). The film is full of juvenile shenanigans and adult caricatures who overwhelm the screen from time to time blindsiding us with absurdity.

However, in juxtaposition, there are these instances of sensitivity playing out in Lonely Heart’s more pensive parts, personifying what Hiroki grapples with all throughout the film. It’s this long-lost love — the deep longing within all of us — resigning us to be these lonely creatures.

In Japanese culture, there’s also something innately beautiful about this sacrificial melancholy for the sake of some greater good or greater call. If I didn’t get my cultural signals crossed, it ties into the essence of “mono no aware” — an impermanence or transience of things. I’m not sure if Japanese culture would speak about love with these same terms, but please allow me to, even if only momentarily.

I’ve gotten to a juncture in my film-viewing life where, if I haven’t quite matured, I’m willing to take things on their own terms. Lonely Heart does not function within our western logic. If you asked me to explain everything away I’d be hard-pressed to say all the whys and wherefores. And yet something about this movie, mixed in with all its various forms and flights of fancies, left me with an indelible sense or feeling that will remain with me.

Somehow it reminded me of the more recent gem Petite Mamman. It has to do with honing in on a magical and poignant connection between parents and children. It developed differently than what I was expecting — the fantasy has a unique kind of functionality — and so by the time the movie’s over it has done work on us.

It’s offered up a quiet epiphany that we might tuck away for later enjoyment. Hopefully, if you get the chance to watch the film you’ll understand exactly what I mean. However, I wouldn’t dream of divulging that here.

3.5/5 Stars