80s Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I never claimed to have the most refined taste when it comes to movies (and if you need proof, take a look). Sometimes my taste is downright mind-boggling, and no amount of public scorn can stop me from sitting down for multiple viewings of flicks that most of you out there wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. So, on that note, today I'm going to tell you about a movie I love that usually earns me my fair share of some blank stares: About Last Night.

This '80s 'classic' was directed by Edward Zwick (a far cry from his war epics, I know) and was based on the David Mamet play, Sexual Perversion in Chicago. The film starred 80's wunderkinds Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Jim Belushi and Elizabeth Perkins (providing most of the comic relief) in a tale of romantic misadventures among young professionals in Chicago. The film was my first exposure to 'serious' romantic drama, and when I first watched it as an 11-year-old girl, I felt like I was quite the grown-up -- mainly because for once, I understood most of the dirty jokes.

The film may have blunted some of the edge of Mamet's play and provided a happy ending that didn't exist in the original, but as a time piece of pre-AIDS sexual politics, this movie can't be beat. About Last Night was the perfect antidote to the easy and simple romance I had seen up on the big screen, and no matter the time or the place, if I catch this movie on TV, I'm hanging in until the very end.

After the jump: in defense of bad taste, and one of the many reasons I love this movie: obscure 80's love songs....

As 'secular' holidays go, Halloween is easily my favorite. You can keep your Valentine's Day hearts and your St. Patrick Day benders, and give me a jack o' lantern any day of the week. It's a holiday that I never fail to celebrate with too much candy and as many horror movies as I can get my hands on, and even though I may not trick or treat anymore, I am highly observant when it comes to All Hallows' Eve. Maybe my love for the season is that it really is the perfect holiday for the movie lover, and I always remember gearing up for the big day as a kid by watching scary movies. I still keep that tradition alive as an adult, but like they say; it's all about the kids -- unfortunately for parents, most horror movies aren't.

There is plenty of horror for the grown-ups of the world, and we've got our choice from everything to high concept ghost stories to so-called torture porn, but it's a lot trickier when you start to look for something for something that is a little more family-friendly. So there has to be some middle-ground between G-rated fare like The Great Pumpkin and a Dario Argento splatter fest, right? Well, of course there is, so I thought I'd share five movies that you could show kids without worrying about dooming them to a lifetime on a therapist's couch:

After the jump; my recommendations for kid-friendly scares...

Now that it's October, my mind has turned to all things Halloween-y, and I've been digging back through the vaults to find all the spooky movies that I've loved over the years, which brings me to The Monster Club. Despite having pretty permissive parental units when it came to my movie viewing habits (boobs and swearing, A-OK) horror movies were a different matter altogether. Whether that was to protect my sensitive little developing mind or just so they didn't have to be awakened by claims of monsters under the bed, I'll never know. But as a little one, The Monster Club was the perfect Halloween viewing: a little funny, a little scary, but overall pretty kid friendly -- at least to this kid anyway.

The film was a tribute to the work of British horror author R. Chetwynd-Hayes and starred Vincent Price (as a chatty vampire) and John Carradine (as Hayes). The film was comprised of three tales of a vampire family, a movie director who stumbles across a ghoul while scouting locations, and something called a 'shadmock' -- trust me, it's complicated. Sure, the stories were great and all, but my favorite thing about this whole film were the musical numbers that acted as framing devices for each story, and today for Scenes We Love, I have to go with The Stripper, performed by Night -- like I said, my parents were pretty easygoing when it came to 'sexy time'. What I love about this scene is that what could have just been an excuse to throw some nudity into the film goes for something that every horror fan could enjoy -- and I know I'm not the only one (although if you have a weak stomach, you might not want to click on that link) who thought this scene was a great visual gag.

After the jump; a stripper who truly takes it all off, and New Wave bloodsuckers...

In the midst of the Toronto Film Festival this past week, I couldn't help but notice that Whip It! fever was in full swing in my home town. Everywhere I went, I would catch glimpses of young girls in that signature plaid with Whip It! buttons on their bags, or I would see posters for the comedy lining the walls of university notice boards, and I have to tell you, it does my little feminist heart proud. If movies are a big part of your life, then you know how much they can change who you are, and I can't help but notice a lack of truly cool role models for girls. Seriously, there is only so much Megan Fox we can take, and that's why it makes me happy to see girls getting into the image of a young woman defying expectations and trading in her pageant sash for the rough and tumble sisterhood of Roller Derby.

As any movie geek of the female persuasion can tell you, it isn't easy finding films they can relate to that don't reside in the 'rom-com ghetto'. Just because you are a girl doesn't mean that you don't want the same kind of escapism that boys do -- I mean, who doesn't want to save the world? But sometimes I crave a movie that's not straight out of the fan boy factory of hot chicks with guns, but can still make me fly my girl flag high. Because when I watch that kind of movie, it's a rare chance to watch a woman on screen do something other than run from a monster or into the hero's arms. So in honor of us girls, I've put together a list of five flicks that I like to watch when my girl-power reservoirs run a little low.

After the jump; they are women, hear them roar...

There are a few advantages to being a Canadian: we've got great beer, not to mention we've got that whole free healthcare thing going on. But if I had to choose one reason why I love my country, it would be that CBC made sure that I got to see Nelvana's Rock & Rule the way it was meant to be.

Rock & Rule was the story of a fading rock god by the name of Mok (who's a little bit Bowie and a little bit Iggy) with an apocalyptic plan for immortality. His diabolical scheme consists of unleashing a demon by finding the perfect voice, and where might that voice be? Well, that's where a down-on-their-luck band headed by two young lovers by the names of Angel and Omar come in.

The film nearly bankrupted Nelvana and in order to get the film into US theaters, MGM/UA demanded script changes and different voice actors. But that's what you get for messing with perfection, because the film never found an audience stateside after being released under the unfortunate name, Ring of Power. Luckily the movie has found a cult following over the years and you can now find the original version on DVD.

After the jump: my favorite song from Rock & Rule and another Nelvana classic, The Devil and Daniel Mouse...

There are plenty of John Hughes fans that consider Some Kind of Wonderful to be little more than a recycled Pretty in Pink. But today I'm going to nominate the story of Keith and Watts for Scenes We Love for a very important reason: it's about righting some wrongs. If you're a regular around here, you might remember a little theory I have about the ending of Hughes' teen masterpiece Pretty in Pink, and as it turns out I wasn't the only one who had a problem with it; as the story goes, Hughes wrote Wonderful as a way to finally get the ending that he preferred.

Wonderful was the story of Keith, a sensitive painter, and his best friend, a tom-boy drummer named Watts. When Keith makes good on the life ambition of every teen movie protagonist and goes for the popular girl (played by Lea Thompson), Watts realizes that her feelings for Keith go beyond friendship -- and, of course, what would any Hughes movie be without the abusive beautiful people (headed by Craig Sheffer) and the hoodlum with the heart of gold played by Elias Koteas -- who I've had a bit of a crush on ever since thanks to this movie.

After the jump: why I love this movie and Sheffer gets his well-deserved comeuppance..

So, does anyone out there remember Remo Williams? Granted, he wasn't a household name like John McClane or Snake Plissken (I mean, he didn't even make Scott's list of '80s action heroes worth resurrecting), but for fans of that decade, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins is a camp classic. But don't worry, because even if you don't remember the original, you're about to get another chance to meet the wisecracking secret agent thanks to Columbia Pictures. The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Business Blog has confirmed that producer Charles Roven (The Dark Knight) and Steve Chasman (Transporter) are setting up a reboot of the Remo Williams/Destroyer franchise with Sony and Atlas Entertainment.

The 1985 action-comedy originally starred Fred Ward as Sam Making, a street cop who is recruited into a secret government agency to take down an arms dealer and was based on the Destroyer series created by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. But before Sam could get to work saving the world, there was the small matter of faking his own death, a quick name change, some reconstructive surgery, and training on a mystical Korean marital art by Master Chiun (as played by Joel Grey in some pretty ridiculous makeup). Charley and Vlas Parlapanides (War of Gods) have already been hired to write the new script, and even though Colombia partly controls the rights to the entire series of novels, the film is expected to be an origin story and center on the first book in the series.

Having seen the original, I have to ask: Is Remo WIlliams even worth a reboot? Well, I'll leave that to you, so sound off in the comments below or tell me what 80's action flick you'd like to see get an update instead...

I've had my share of all-nighters, and sure, some of them were for a perfectly legitimate reason like studying, but I'll be honest with you: most of them were for reasons that for the sake of propriety, I shouldn't go into here -- and I know I'm not the only one. Who doesn't have a story about that one great night? Or that one party that couldn't be missed? Exactly, we all do, and maybe that's why we all love a good story about some wild and crazy all-nighter.

This Friday, audiences will be treated to another tale full of all-night shenanigans with I Love You, Beth Cooper, which follows a high school nobody who changes everything when he utters those five words during his graduation speech. So just like every 'all-nighter' film to go before it, Cooper is about breaking out of your comfort zone and watching the best laid plans go to waste -- and usually our hero or heroine gets to fall in love along the way. So with that in mind, let's take a look back at seven other films that are about our search for a good time.

1. The Allnighter
Well, you can't have a list about all-nighters without including this 80's turkey starring The Bangles' lead singer, Susanna Hoffs. Even Joan Cusack (the patron saint of 80's comedy) couldn't save this story about a group of girls looking for a good time on their last night before graduation. The Allnighter was written and directed by Hoff's mom, and was meant to be the singer's big break into acting. Unfortunately for her, the film was so bad that not only did it fail at the box office, it managed to turn the gal off from ever pursuing a film career at all.

After the jump: find out which other all-nighter flicks made the list...

No doubt some will say this ranks up there with Lost Boys 2 in the bad-idea-based-on an-80s-film-department, but I'm keeping an open mind. Word from Moviehole is that there are plans afoot to remake Weird Science, that ode to adolescent hormones and computer geekery directed by John Hughes. The remake will be penned by Johnny Rosenthal (who is also attached to a proposed feature version of the criminally underrated Arrested Development series) for Universal. The original film, of course, starred Kelly LeBrock as the perfect woman created on the computer of two socially challenged teenage boys played by Ian Mitchell-Smith and 80s uber-geek Anthony Michael Hall.

Maybe it's because I didn't see the movie until years after its release, but I never thought this was Hughes' best work, and I think the concept could stand a 're-imagining.' I've long thought that rather than classic films, movies that didn't work perfectly the first time around should be the subject of remakes, and I think Weird Science qualifies. Even if the original was not a masterpiece, it has certainly left its mark. The theme song by Oingo Boingo has gone on to be pretty well known in its own right, and the film was adapted into a TV series which debuted in 1994 on the USA Network and ran for 88 episodes, with Vanessa Angel in the Kelly LeBrock role. Casting the new object of computer-generated perfection will obviously be the big challenge.