I know I said in the last post of this series that I would be reviewing The Legend of Billie Jean, but I just don’t have the energy right now to accurately describe the highlight of that film: Yeardley Smith, the young actress who would later portray the voice of Lisa Simpson, getting her first period in the backseat of a station wagon.  Maybe later.  I feel that I’ve made it fairly clear on this blog that I’m lazy, so you’ll just have to wait.  Until then, imagine Lisa Simpson saying, “When can I get a diaphragm?” in an exaggerated southern accent.  That should tide you over, you disgusting perverts.

       No, for today’s review, I would like to revisit the year 1986.  This was another banner year for 80’s filmmaking, and yet another example of the kind of crap that people enjoyed in that worthless decade.  That year would actually see an Oliver Stone film, Platoon, winning Best Picture.  Granted, this was probably Stone’s best film, but still, he sucks, so it can be gleaned that 1986 was a sucky year for movies.  If that’s too much of a logical leap for you, may God have mercy on your soul.

       However, once again the Hollywood types ignored another masterfully made film that came out that year.  Apparently in 1986, if a film didn’t involve Vietnam, Woody Allen, deaf people, or the sexual tension between Tom Cruise and Paul Newman, it wasn’t good enough for Captain Oscar.  Well, screw you, Oscar!  How dare you overlook my pick for the greatest movie of 1986, a perfect blend of gymnastics and angst titled American Anthem.

       This glorious film was supposed to be the career launching pad and starmaking vehicle for 1984 men’s Olympic gold medalist and hearththrob Mitch Gaylord.  Yes, that’s his name.  I’m sure he’s heard all of the jokes before, so I won’t revisit any of them here.  The Lord of the Gays plays young Steve Tavere, a troubled ex-quarterback and former gymnast whose high school athletic career was cut short by an abusive father who broke Steve’s arm in a drunken rage.  He has since abandoned his gymnastic aspirations to work in his father’s motorcycle shop.  You can really tell that Steve is troubled because he wears a leather jacket, sunglasses, and rides a motorcycle. 

       One day, Steve breaks into his old gym to spy on the gymnastics team, where he discovers a new girl on the team, Julie (portrayed by Janet Jones).  Jones was 25 at the time this movie was made, but she already looked about ten years older, especially when compared to some of the tiny little gymnasts portrayed in the same film.  It probably doesn’t help that she’s a tall, leggy blond, something you don’t see much of in female Olympic gymnastics hopefuls.  Anyway, Steve makes Julie his girlfriend, and he is so inspired by her drive that he decides to get back in shape and try out for the national team.

       We now have the setup for some of the funniest scenes in movie history.  Steve trains for the olympic team on a homemade parallel bar that is suspended between two trees in the woods.  Oh yeah, and he likes to practice his routine at night in the middle of a huge rainstorm.  Wouldn’t it be fairly tough to keep a tight grip on a parallel bar in the middle of a monsoon?  Just asking.  At Steve’s first meet, he is so confident in his abilities that he decides to attempt the hardest dismount ever from the parallel bars.  Bad idea.  He instead smashes into his spotter’s head, leaving the spotter bloodied as Steve cringes sexily.

       The only other thing worth noting in this genius film is Julie’s floor routine.  Julie, a former dancer, argues repeatedly with her coach over the selected music, as her natural spunk and energy are stifled by the traditional and old fashioned music that her coach forces on her for her routine.  Well, not for this rebel!  Taking a page from Steve and his rebellious ways, Julie has her retarded cousin compose an awful bit of synthesized dance music and slips the tape to the judges just before her performance.  And, wouldn’t you know it, the shitty 80’s synthesizer music causes her to shine!  If you see this movie for nothing else, see it for her retarded cousin doing his goofy ass fist pumps in the audience while Julie performs.  That little monkey sure can act!  Act retarded, that is.

       Anyway, this whole movie is basically just an excuse to film Mitch Gaylord (snicker) looking hot and sweaty along with Janet Jones.  It’s pretty much like a 102 minute 80’s music video.  If that doesn’t convince you to run out and rent this film immediately, well…  okay, then you may have better taste than I thought.  But you do get to see Steve’s kid brother ride a 4-wheeler off of a cliff for no reason, so that’s always a bonus. 

         Enjoy the movie, suckers!

       In the 3rd edition of my “Little Known Movie Review” series, I would like to once again revisit my childhood to bring to light yet another masterpiece that I’m sure all of you miserable sons of bitches skipped because you have absolutely no taste and were probably jerking off to your VCR-recorded television broadcast of Nolan Ryan getting his 5000th strikeout on Rickey Henderson a few days before the release of this great film.  I’m not knocking on you for that, mind you.  I would’ve been doing the same thing myself, but I wasn’t old enough to have discovered the joys of masturbating to sports highlights yet.  Anyway, my point is that you are all douchebags.  All right, it’s movie time!

       As hinted at with the Nolan Ryan comment, the year is 1989.  Capping off a really horrendous decade for Hollywood films, this year would see  a slight rebound in quality, producing several classics such as Field Of Dreams, My Left Foot, Dead Poets Society, and Glory.  Still, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, when celebrating the year in film at the Academy Awards ceremony early the next year, would be sure to remind us that 1989 was indeed part of the 80’s.  They did so by awarding the Best Picture Oscar to a sappy Dan Aykroyd vehicle with minor supporting performances by Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy, Driving Miss Daisy.  Seriously, Academy?  A movie about a crotchety old racist Southerner with Alzheimer’s mentally abusing her African American chauffeur deserves the Best Picture award?  I’m sure Jesse Jackson was rolling in his grave.  Randy Jackson, however, was too busy rockin’ out with Journey to notice.

       Anyway, once again, the Academy and the general public missed out on a major cinematic milestone in 1989.  I am speaking of the August 25th release of the sci-fi masterpiece Millennium.  Okay, I will admit up front that I haven’t seen this movie in probably more than fifteen years, and I was confused even then, but I’ll give this a shot.  In the future, the entire human population of Earth has been rendered sterile through years of pollution.  Because of this fact, the human race is dying out.  In order to ensure the survival of the human race, the people from the future, led by a hot, slutty blond chick in a stewardess uniform, travel back in time and kidnap people from the present who are about to die in plane crashes and bring them to the future to procreate.  In order to get the present folks off of the plane, they hijack the flights before the crash and unload them, replacing them with sterile doppelgangers from the future to die in their place in the crash.

       Kris Kristofferson, following his triumphant turn in the classic film Big Top Pee-wee, plays an FAA investigator who investigates the plane crashes, and he somehow meets the stewardess chick and has some raunchy sex with her, also discovering some stun gun that she has and accidentally stunning himself, causing a “timequake” that threatens to destroy the future.  The blond chick then makes it her mission to stop Kristofferson from finding the stun gun and inadvertently destroying the future.  Confused yet?  Me too.

       The movie has several typical 80’s idiosyncratic style choices that date the movie, from the blond’s weird rocker haircut a la The Legend of Billie Jean (look for my upcoming review of this turd) and a weird personal robot guy with some of the worst movie makeup ever.  Seriously, this thing looks like an outcast from the Hellraiser series.  Another interesting tidbit: people in the future are required to smoke cigarettes that somehow actually protect their lungs from the polluted air of the future or some shit.  For some reason, Joe Camel does not make a cameo.  I guess the tobacco companies didn’t want to make it that obvious that they had a hand in financing this film.

       Anyway, it’s tough to imagine a film like this being made today, what with the pro-smoking, pro-hijacking agenda of the flick.  Also, Kris Kristofferson has wisely steered his acting career away from ridiculous sci-fi movies like this, instead choosing to star in movies such as Blade and Planet of the Apes.  Oh, wait… nevermind.

       In summary, way to go, Academy.  If anybody deserved a Best Supporting Actor award for a 1989 film, it had to be Robert Joy for his portrayal of Sherman the Robot.  Check this film out.  Sure, It’s no Logan’s Run, but it still really sucks.  Enjoy, assholes.

       Wow, I didn’t plan on doing this twice in a row (in fact, I have another “bun in the oven” that I’ve been working on, but I may or may not “abort” it in the near future), but I just can’t skip out on this next masterpiece of overlooked American cinema.  I apologize to those of you who do not want to read about yet another obscure yet intellectually challenging bit of arthouse magic, but I could not allow the American public to ignore this staggering work of cinematic art for one more moment.

       The year is 1988.  This is largely considered to be a lowpoint for American cinema in the 1980s, as is evidenced by the year’s major Oscar contenders: Rain Man, Working Girl, and Big.  However, another film came out in this year that would both change the face of the action movie for years to come as well as create a franchise that would culminate almost 20 years later in its fourth sequel.  The film I am speaking of is, of course, Die Hard.  Nominated for four Academy Awards, this film brought a human element to the action star, discarding the then typical, emotionless, robotic Schwarzenegger/Stallone archetype and creating a new meme: the Everyman.  Bruce Willis became America’s new hero, the “regular Joe” caught in a sticky situation who must use his scrappy instincts and biting wit to defeat a group of ruthless terrorists with no regard for human life.  This film marked a turning point in action cinema, one that would change the future of the Hollywood blockbuster.

       I can already hear you questioning my judgment for selecting this film to review.  “How is this a little known film?” you ask.  “Everyone’s seen Die Hard.”

       Well, I’m not reviewing Die Hard, you dicks.  While Die Hard established the “Everyman Hero” archetype, there was one film that was released six years later that both embraced and perfected that genre.  That film is 1994’s No Contest, starring Shannon Tweed and Andrew “Dice” Clay, with an understated and moving supporting turn from “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.

       By now, the setup is well-known:  a group of terrorists, led by the The Dice Man, takes over a hotel where a beauty contest is taking place.  Dice, assisted by his right hand man Roddy Piper, demands a ransom of diamonds, or else he and his henchmen will start killing beauty pageant contestants, one of whom is the daughter of a United States senator.  Little do they know that this pageant is being hosted by Sharon Bell (masterfully portrayed by Tweed’s giant breasts), a kick-boxing actress with a heart of gold and a roundhouse of steel.  Tweed’s character must contend with explosive wristbands and new-fangled cellular telephones, all with the help of a wheelchair-bound bodyguard portrayed by Robert Davi (the acne-scarred villain from the Timothy Dalton-era James Bond flick License to Kill).

       Honestly, do I have to go any further with this review?  If you haven’t already left your computer to go out and hunt through every bargain bin in America to find this underappreciated masterwork of modern film, then you are both a communist and a terrorist who hates freedom..  and good movies!

       As a recurring feature on this blog,  I will occasionally select an oft-overlooked classic movie to review so that I can enlighten you sad fucks to some of the higher cinematic art that you have been missing.  Hopefully this will inspire some of you to get off of your fat, lazy asses and go out to your local arthouse cinema occasionally, where you can plop your fat, lazy asses in the seat with a jumbo Coke, epic-sized popcorn, and a mondo box of Jujyfruits that could probably feed the continent of Africa for a year, but will instead be crammed down your festering piehole to sate your unending need for sugary sweets.  You people disgust me!  Okay, on to the movie!

        The year is 1993.  Hollywood produced many well-known classic films in this year, among them The Fugitive, The Piano, and Steven Spielberg’s epic, multi-Academy Award-winning Schindler’s List.  One film, however, was tragically overlooked by both the Academy and the public at large:  Airborne.

       In this fine coming-of-age story, we are introduced to the character of young Mitchell Goosen, a smooth, good-looking California surfer/rollerblade fanatic.  Mitchell’s parents are zoologists who are given a grant to study wildlife in Australia for six months, but they must leave their teenage son behind.  Unfortunately, the only family that Mitchell can crash with are his square Uncle Louis and Aunt Irene (delightfully portrayed by Edie McClurg in her finest performance since Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) and their dorky son, Wiley (Seth Green in a pre-Austin Powers, pre-”Robot Chicken,” post-Can’t Buy Me Love display of his soon-to-be-recognized talents).  And the icing on the cake? They live in Cincinatti!  When Mitchell gets off of the airplane clutching his surfboard in the cold Ohio winter, the audience is treated to a masterfully crafted setup for this delightful fish-out-of-water romp.

       Then for the rest of the movie, in an unexpected post-modern twist, absolutely nothing of consequence happens.  Mitchell falls in love with the younger sister of the leader of the poor kids gang, the poor kids gang (featuring Jack Black in a pre-fame role that artfully showcases his one true talent: farting!) kicks Mitchell’s ass, Cousin Wiley does some dorky ass shit, and Mitchell redeems himself to the poor kids by defeating the rich ”Preps” with his bitchin’ rollerblade skillz (the “z” is for zoutrageous!).  If you want to see some of the most awesome rollerblading sequences ever captured on film, trust me, rent this movie!  You will be disappointed, but you’ll at least have gotten the chance to check out this great flick.

       Along with the fun and humor, this movie also carries an important message.  Mitchell’s character is a believer in non-violence, and he even quotes Gandhi in the film.  No matter how much abuse Mitchell is subjected to by both the poor kids and the rich kids, Mitchell never fights back.  But he does get the ultimate revenge on the leader of the Preps by pulling his sweatpants down in front of a crowd of onlookers, causing much embarrassment.  So what’s the message?  If you are from California, you are not only a giant pussy, but you also get your jollies by pulling down other dudes’ pants.  A message as valid today as it was in 1993.

       Rent this film.  If you can make it through the whole thing, you could probably accomplish some other stuff with your life as well.  Don’t quote me on that, though.  You are pretty fuckin’ worthless.  Loser.  God, I hate you!