1980s

  • Constantine Giannaris  – Jean Genet Is Dead (1989)

    Queer Cinema(s)1981-1990Constantine GiannarisDramaGreeceShort Film
    Jean Genet Is Dead (1989)
    Jean Genet Is Dead (1989)

    SYNOPSIS
    A collage of images, a metaphor for love in the time of AIDS, a personal reading of Jean Genet’s influence on gay culture and queer aesthetics. Put together like a palimpsest of images and sounds, the film brings Genet’s words to the foreground…Read More »

  • Jean-Michel Tchissoukou – La chapelle (1980)

    1971-1980African CinemaComedyCongo (Brazzaville)DramaJean-Michel Tchissoukou
    Affiche du film la Chapelle de Jean MichelTchissoukou 1980
    Affiche du film la Chapelle de Jean MichelTchissoukou 1980

    Quote:
    It’s the 1930s. In a village located several kilometers from the administrative post, men attached to ancestral traditions have no other ambition than to live in peace. The evangelical mission has set up a school and asked the population to build a chapel. Work drags on, exasperating the parish priest, who enlists the help of the sacristan and the village chief to speed up the construction of the chapel. The arrival of a young teacher, full of modernist ideas, and the hostile attitude of the schoolmaster, enabled the parish priest to reinforce his authority.Read More »

  • Shinobu Hashimoto – Maboroshi no mizuumi aka Lake of Illusions (1982) (HD)

    1981-1990JapanSci-FiShinobu Hashimoto
    Maboroshi no mizuumi (1982)
    Maboroshi no mizuumi (1982)

    A 1982 sci-fi cult drama about a grudge of a woman whose dog was murdered.

    Clive Davies wrote:
    I was lucky enough to see this wrongheaded 164 mins epic (a cult favourite in Japan) on a big-screen during an all-night movie show in Tokyo. Hashimoto was a celebrated screenwriter of both commercial and critical hits (including several for Akira Kurosawa), when he was given an awful lot of money to helm this seriously pretentious non-categorisable oddity.Read More »

  • Mitsuo Yanagimachi – Saraba itoshiki daichi AKA Farewell to the Land (1982)

    Mitsuo Yanagimachi1981-1990DramaJapan
    Saraba itoshiki daichi (1982)
    Saraba itoshiki daichi (1982)

    Saraba Itoshiki Daichi (Farewell to the Land) takes up the question of what happens when the balance of an extended family in rural Japan is upset. The main character blames himself for the deaths of his two sons in a boating accident and leaves his wife and parents behind. He takes on a mistress, to the shame of his family, and he pops stimulants to keep up with his work schedule as a truck driver. Growing increasingly irritable and irrational, he goes through various conflicts with his brother, his colleagues, his boss, and his wife. The film ends in an act of violence for which no explanation is given.Read More »

  • Patrick Tam – Xue zai shao AKA Burning Snow (1988)

    Patrick Tam1981-1990DramaHong Kong

    Synopsis:
    A young woman is forced to marry an older man who runs a roadhouse saloon. She is constantly being raped by her husband, a drunken loutish brute. She harbors a young man wanted by the police in a murder case, and soon the fugitive and the young wife have a torrid affair as she continues to hide him from the authorities.Read More »

  • Geoff Lowe – The Terminal Game (1982)

    1981-1990Geoff LoweSci-FiThrillerUnited Kingdom
    The Terminal Game (1982)
    The Terminal Game (1982)

    THE TERMINAL GAME is a British short thriller in which a man attempts to shut down a futuristic computer programme.Read More »

  • James Foley – At Close Range (1986)

    James Foley1981-1990CrimeDramaUSA

    Synopsis
    One of the overlooked films of the 1980s, perhaps because it is such a downbeat tale of an amoral family. Sean Penn plays a kid whose small-time criminal impulses are stoked to a new level when he falls in with his father (Christopher Walken), a vicious career criminal for whom no problem is so large that it can’t be solved by a murder. At first exhilarated by the attention from his father (and the jobs he gives him to do), he gradually catches on to just what a bad guy Dad really is. But when he tries to extricate himself, he discovers that Dad now has him squarely in his sights. Penn is terrific in a role of emotional complexity, while Walken, king of the creeps, is positively frightening as this soft-spoken but highly lethal patriarch. Read More »

  • Pál Erdöss – Adj király katonát AKA The Princess (1982)

    1981-1990DramaHungaryPál Erdöss
    Adj király katonát (1982)
    Adj király katonát (1982)

    Pal Erdoss’s ”Princess” is an ironically titled film if ever there was one; its heroine is addressed as ”princess” only once during the course of the story, and then by a weak-kneed, apologetic boyfriend who has failed to protect her from rape. Jutka (Erika Ozsda) is anything but the privileged creature of the title. A tough, lonely teen-age girl who has come to Budapest to work in a textile mill, Jutka becomes the focus of Mr. Erdoss’s examination of courtship rituals, teen-age mores and motherhood.Read More »

  • George P. Cosmatos – Leviathan (1989)

    George P. Cosmatos1981-1990HorrorSci-FiUSA
    Leviathan (1989)
    Leviathan (1989)

    One of those movies that reminds you of “Alien” and “The Thing” (not the original). The story is simple yet convincing and the special effects were good for its time. There is a little humor though not much. Most of the time it ranges from serious to dead serious. A group of underwater explorers uncover an old Russian submarine called appropriately enough “Leviathan” which translates from an ancient term meaning “sea monster” in the bible. They search the sub and find nothing of interest except a flask of vodka. However, one crew members becomes ill from drinking it and others join him. It appears that something has overtaken the unlucky Leviathan crew and they are next. It was all in all a clever film if not anti-climactic. Worth seeing surely.Read More »

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