Reviews

I remember Cop Rock fondly. It was an attempt to deliver the Broadway musical style to the popular police story genre. Now, I'm not one of those "Aren't we so cosmopolitan" self-congratulatory Broadway mavens, but I can appreciate a storyline interrupted by a soliloquy, even if it's musical - even if it's rock music! I distinctly remember an excellent opening scene of one episode, where the police are busting a crowd purchasing pot, loading the customers on a bus, as one detainee sings heartily about his civil rights being trampled. The cast was truly exceptional for a TV show, but the producers did not have proper respect for the amount of time and polishing necessary to deliver Broadway style entertainment. There was a lot of good stuff, but such material cannot be extruded at the rate needed for the voracious TV box. The general public could not forgive the uneven quality. I can't blame them, but there were payoffs for the patient. Live audiences collude with the performers, but TV viewers want to be entertained NOW, or they will click to the other 120 channels.

There was a clever end tacked on the final episode. It opens up with Ronny Cox and Curtis Vonde-Hall talking, and you quickly realize that they are not playing their characters. They are playing themselves discussing the impending cancellation. It's over when the fat lady sings, so the final pullaway has the entire cast onstage, with a Wagnerian Valkyrie, singing goodbye. Cool.

The movie calls itself a "Rock'n Roll Fable," which should attract the right crowd. Some B-movie lovers got together to make a 50's B-movie with 80's music, and it works!

A B-movie hero? Is Michael Pare perfect or what? About as good as Willem Dafoe as the villain. Heroine Diane Lane needs the big guy. The hero is a mercenary between wars. He drops back in town when his old flame the rock singer get kidnapped by bikers. He extorts a reward offer from her nerdy manager, mostly out of jealousy, and takes on the bad guys.

The art direction is a big part of this film. It all takes place in some unnamed city, under the shadow of omnipresent elevated train tracks. The cops drive a 40's Studebaker, the people dress like it's the fifties, and the music is 80's stuff. A doo-wop group gets caught up in the crossfire, delivering the most recognizable song, Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You." Ry Cooder populates most of the film with good roots rock'n roll, and the opening and closing songs showcase Jim Steinman's best stuff done without Meatloaf.

The screenplay was not in danger of an Oscar nod, but there's plenty of action and music. How about a duel to the death with chrome railroad hammers? It's a hoot. Check it out.

In 1977, Star Wars and CE3K reminded everyone how much fun SF could be, freeing up the budgets of the major studios. Two years later, Ridley Scott showed us how good an SF story could be told without resorting to "space opera." It is impossible to speak of this movie with mentioning Scott, since the director's hand is so evident in every detail of this seminal masterpiece.

In his first major film, Scott used his artistic background to create a very believable, lived-in world. No brightly-lit ST:TNG corridors of shiny plastic here..dark, noisy, wet corridors from which the monster could jump out with a BOO! And what a creature!

The back-story of the creature went to and fro during the production, but Scott had to cut most of the exposition to keep the tension line going..nice call. H.R. Giger's exquisitely hideous design was an instant classic, inspiring as much terror as the creature's modus operandi.

The cast is exceptional - the only non-veteran actor was Sigourney Weaver, in her first major film. The rest were all accomplished actors long before this movie. Was this some bargain-hunting coup of the casting director, or a commitment to excellence? Don't tell me!

This film spawned a franchise of debatable importance, but more importantly, it paved the way for more serious SF work. Its success led Ridley Scott onto Blade Runner - another classic SF movie with the grunge feel of a nihilistic future.

Predator 2 is an excellent sequel to the original, but only if you saw the original and understood what it was about. Plot points in the original suggest that the Predator is from a more advanced culture than ours..not only technologically, but also their games. He's on holiday, hunting for trophies, using a Bushido-like code of honor.

A lot of this backstory was covered well in some very successful graphic novels. They served to amuse the faithful, but failed to bring the rest of us up to speed. This leaves too much detail hidden from the audience as Danny Glover tries to piece together what he's up against (and makes his conclusions harder to reach).

It appears that the director has seen those helpful expositions, or he was able to infer them from the original movie. Either way, the action is too diffcult to follow the first time around unless you know the Predator already. Once you see the ending, you have enough info to go back and enjoy the film the next time.

The movie is true to the source material, but not true to the audience. Same syndrome as John Carpenter's "The Thing."