Amos and Andrew - Like Die Hard with a Vengeance, only not.

So it's been a while, again, but we arrive at the next thrilling installment!

This time it's 1993's Amos and Andrew, a sort of Much Ado About Nothing meets the Keystone Kops meets Die Hard With a Vengeance comedy.

Basically, Samuel L. Jackson plays Andrew Sterling, a well-to-do and reasonably famous black guy whose job it is to be an angry black guy. He's on the cover of Forbes magazine, he teaches at a university and generally gets around on the speaking circuit. He's quite rich.

Sterling has recently moved to an unnamed, upper-class island community in the Northeastern United States. As he's moving his stuff in - in the dark and at night - some nosy neighbours, who are planning on paying a visit to whatever definitively white family used to live in the house, see him moving some stuff around and "naturally" assume that he's burgling the place, so they call the cops.

Incopetent cops, led by a politically ambitious chief, arrive on scene, one thing leads to another, shooting starts happening, and then stuff becomes really big. By that time, the chief has realized that the black guy inside the house and the "hostages" that he's taken are one and the same, and that they're all the famous Andrew Sterling, so he enlists the help of thieving vagabond Amos Odell (played by our hero) to pretend he's taken Sterling hostage, go through the negotiations motions and then be released once everyone's saved face.

It doesn't work out that way, and Amos takes Andrew hostage for real.

Anyway, it's a thoroughly enjoyable movie. The story moves along, one facepalmingly stupid mistake after another, and in the end Amos and Andrew can call each other brother.

That's right. A racially vitriolic Samuel L Jackson learns by the end of the film that the white guy he's been forced to work together with might not be all bad, and may just be an alright guy after all. Remind you of any other movie? That's what I thought.

Honeymoon in Vegas - A normal Nicolas Cage and an attractive Sarah Jessica Parker... Yeah.

This is getting weird. Honeymoon in Vegas marks two movies in a row that I've actually enjoyed. Not that I haven't already seen some good (and precious few great) movies over the course of this project, but these last two were just simply sit-back-and-watch enjoyable. Zandalee was, obviously, more intense than this, but still...

Anyway, Nicolas Cage plays Jack Singer, a private detective whose mother made him promise, on her deathbed, never to marry. He's a normal guy, with no real accent, regular hair and clothes... It's unnerving almost.

He works at a desk, but not once does he scream his way through the alphabet at a therapist...

Anyway, some years later, his girlfriend is slowly getting tired of his apparently oft-repeated official position on marriage, and they start to drift apart, at which point Singer realizes that if he's going to keep his beautiful, intelligent, sensitive woman in his life, he's going to have to break the promise that he only really made to his mother after she was already dead. Would it even still count at that point? Who knows? So the pair fly to Vegas to get hitched. Oh yeah, and that aforementioned beautiful woman? Played by Sarah Jessica Parker.

This is, believe it or not, the same woman who led Jeremy Clarkson to deploy what is perhaps his greatest simile ever.

Anyway, in Vegas they meet a pro/sleazy/dangerous gambler who takes a fancy to Bessie, and proceeds to arrange things so that he gets to spend the weekend with her.

It's actually a genuinely good movie. It also has Pat Morita in it, playing a Hawaiian taxi driver named Mahi Mahi.

He must've waxed off his facial hair...

The point is, you should go see it. Cage does a good job with his role (he still gets to go a little nuts and have just a bit of screaming, which provides a nice sense of continuity with the rest of his roles) and the whole thing moves along with the kind of predictability and Hollywood rationality that makes for a decent 90 minutes of relaxed movie-watching, as long as you don't take yourself too seriously.

Never on Tuesday - a quick public service announcement

Okay, so this won't be a typical post for this blog, partly because Our Hero gets approximately one minute of screen time (he's uncredited - one of several inexplicable cameos in this film, to be revealed soon), but partly because on this day, I have a higher calling.

So let's pretend that your "friend" has invited you over to watch a movie, and this appears on the screen:

Here's what you should immediately do to your "friend":

Moonstruck - the Italianest movie ever made, saved by the limitlessly talented John Mahoney

I'm trying to think of a way for a movie to be more Italian than Moonstruck.

Let's try a thought experiment. I'm going to show you a few pictures, and you're going to imagine that all of the people in these pictures make up both the cast and the production crew of a movie. We'll see if imagined scenario can produce a movie that is more Italian.

Here we go.

Nope. Still not Italian enough.

If I'm honest, by 35 minutes into this movie, it'd already firmly established itself as the first true test of mettle in this project since Best of Times. Quite apart from the fact that the whole thing plays out like a Mel Brooks-level parody of Italian-American culture, the writing is genuinely terrible.

'Terrible?' you say? Yes. Terrible. So terrible that even if the acting was spectacular to the max, it still would have fallen flat.

And the lead actor in this movie is Cher.

Just as a for-instance, to give you an idea of what the dialogue in this film is like, here's what Cher's character (Loretta Castorini) says to Nic Cage's character (Ronny Cammareri) by way of pillow talk, on the day they met.

Oh, did I mention that Ronny is the brother of the guy (Johnny) who Loretta got engaged to the day before? And Ronny and Johnny haven't spoken in five years since Ronny lost his hand in a bread-slicing accident at work after being 'distracted' by Johnny, following which Ronny's fiance left him? Yeah, all that happened. Nic Cage has a wooden hand in this movie.

See?

Anyway, so as Cammareri (Ronny, not Johnny - who is in Sicily watching over his dying mother) takes Castorini to bed (immediately after he's flipped over the table around which they were pounding whisky in the middle of the day), here's how Loretta responds to Ronny's question "what about Johnny?":

"You're mad at him, take it out on me. Take your revenge out on me. Leave nothing left for him to marry. Leave nothing but the skin on my bones."




It goes on like this.

And yet, at about the one-hour mark, something positively amazing happens.

John Mahoney comes back. You may not know him at all. Or you may know him as possibly the best part of the '90s sitcom, Frasier.

But if you decided to subject yourself to Moonstruck, you will forever know him as the guy who pulled off the only thoroughly uplifting, genuine, captivating and talented bit of acting in the entire film.

Up to that point in the movie, he seems like a one-off character - a guy who gets a drink thrown in his face by a much younger woman in the background of the proposal scene that kicks off this monstrosity. But then he's back, and he and Mrs. Castorini (played by the also-surprisingly-awesome-for-the-movie-she's-in Olympia Dukakis - mother of Loretta who's dining aloneIdon'tevencareenoughtogointotheactualplotofthisstupidmoviethatledtothescene...) are sitting together after he gets another drink from another pretty young lady, and he talks about why he chases women.

And it's the only time in the movie that you forget you're watching actors. It's amazing. It's so inexplicably amazing that it's almost worth watching this garbage just to enjoy Mahoney in it. There's no fake Italian accent, there's no accordion music in the background, nobody mentions Italian food, and he just is this character. I could go on. It's just amazing. I think, just for what he's managed to accomplish in this film, that Mahoney has become one of my favourite actors. Instantly.

Anyway, as you may have guessed, I don't like this movie. Up till now, this project hasn't felt like work - it hasn't actually felt like an accomplishment to get through it. This took work. But it's done now. What a crappy movie.

And we're almost out of the '80s, too.

Alright, so here's the danger of writing the review on the fly: it turns out there was an almost-halfway-decent resolution to this otherwise steaming pile of crap, and it did involve a single line that made me genuinely laugh out loud. For the first time in this "comedy", mind you, but I felt that it deserved a mention, in all fairness.

Okay I'm done now.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Following on the heels of his screen debut in The Best of Times, Nicolas Cage's (still billing as Nicolas Coppola) next credited role was in the 1982 comedy classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Now, to be completely accurate and open about this, this is a mixed bag. True, he's made the leap from the small to the big screen, but he's also ended up with about 7 seconds of combined screen time, and exactly one line that gets more or less buried in background noise.

For the sake of thoroughness, his one line comes as his friend Brad (played by Judge Reinhold - Cage's character is, according to the credits, "Brad's bud") pulls up to school in his "beautiful, blue, four-door, luxury sedan" (a nice classic Buick), and reads as follows:

"Oh! Big cruising missile!"

And that's it. Well, not it, but that's it for spoken lines. He does pull off a sweet behind-the-back high-five with Judge Reinhold (how many people can add that to their resume?)...

...and he looks on haplessly from behind a grill as Brad gets himself fired from All American Burger:

And that is it.

Anyway, the movie itself is actually pretty solid. I've never seen it before, which is a shame based on its standing as a comedy classic, but unlike a lot of other classics, this one actually stands up fairly well to the hype. Yeah, it's dated in a lot of ways, and maybe it's simply my age that lets me appreciate it, and it's not what you'd call laugh-out-loud hilarious, but as coming-of-age teenage comedies goes, it's not half bad.

Next up, 1983's Valley Girl.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High - barcoded!

The Best of Times - not exactly the worst, but close

Way back in the halcyon days of 1981, a 17-year-old Nicolas Cage (credited as Nicolas Coppola) appeared in an ABC pilot (which is now in hindsight apparently known as a made-for-TV-movie) called The Best of Times.

Starring Crispin Glover and featuring just about every single teenage stereotype that the writers could think of (as well as a gruff-on-the-exterior Jewish shop owner), it's almost hard to imagine what they would do if it hadn't been cancelled, apparently instantly. The show was basically a series of short sketches and song-and-dance routines showing 'the real life' of American teenagers at the beginning of the 80s.

For a cast full of actual teenagers, the acting's actually not what you'd call appalling, but that's mostly just because it's good to be charitable.

Our hero comes in pretty quick, playing the role of Nicolas, a muscle-bound beach jock who spends most of the show looking at his own muscles and working out.

First up, he's shadow boxing and raving about how awesome Rocky is. His next scene is him coaching his Nerdlinger friend on the way to woo women. Spoiler alert: his 'secret' is to take advantage of women's telepathic powers to think the right thoughts at them and trick them into digging you. I'll let him explain it:


"I think, quote, I am the most beautiful man you have ever seen. My magnificent biceps drive you wild with desire. Unquote."

So this is what we see from young Mr. Coppola.

And then, out of nowhere, BAM! - a soliloquy on the beach, reflecting on the nature of war, the political situation in El Salvador and the fact that talk of "patriotic duty" wastes away pretty damn quick when the realities of combat are conjured.

At the risk of starting this project off sounding like Cage will be able to do no wrong (but let's face it, that's mostly what's going to be proven here), this random beach scene serves as basically the only really interesting bit of the whole experience.

Otherwise, I'd have to give the whole thing a rating of utterly forgettable. A firm 4/10 - not actually painful to watch, but nothing you'd ever been tempted to look at again.

The Best of Times - barcoded!