1980s – Page 24 – PopCult Reviews

My Favorite 1980s Summer Blockbusters

The blockbuster movie is defined as a piece of mainstream, fast-paced entertainment that resonates with the culture at a rapid pace. Director Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws is considered the first film that was a real blockbuster. This set the standard for summer and winter to be period where Hollywood studios put out big-budget high concept films with fantastic concepts that would appeal to all audiences. Today I will be looking at my top 10 favorite summertime blockbusters and explaining why they are great examples of this seasonal entertainment & why they still appeal to me so many years after I first saw them.

Movie Review – Uncle Buck

Uncle Buck (1989)
Written & Directed by John Hughes

Uncle Buck will forever be associated with John Candy. When you see the actor, you almost always think of this picture. In turn, it signals the end of an era for filmmaker John Hughes. This was the first film he did as part of a multi-picture deal with Universal. Hughes had already signed with Universal in the early 1980s after the success scripts for Mr. Mom and National Lampoon’s Vacation. After The Breakfast Club, Hughes soured on the deal, he was known for being very contentious with studios. Uncle Buck was his return to Universal after a four-year sojourn, and about a year later, he would be trying to get out of the contract already. Uncle Buck is a movie that exists as both a pleasant piece of nostalgia for millennials but is also a moment when a great mainstream director’s career began to wither.

Movie Review – Who’s Harry Crumb?

Who’s Harry Crumb? (1989)
Written by Robert Conte & Peter Martin Wortmann
Directed by Paul Flaherty

Certain films are made to challenge the audience’s expectations of an actor or allow them to stretch their acting chops in a new direction. Who’s Harry Crumb? seems like it is that sort of film, existing to give John Candy a chance to play more characters and play a confident idiot. The result is something that, in moments, plays to his strengths but so often falls flat and is ultimately a waste of talent and resources. This was a movie intended to create a new comedy franchise but did so poorly with audiences and critics that it’s become another forgettable 1980s comedic footnote.

Movie Review – The Great Outdoors

The Great Outdoors (1988)
Written by John Hughes
Directed by Howard Deutch

John Hughes was such a hot property in the 1980s and has his script being directed by many other directors. Before his untimely death at age 59, he only directed eight films. Compare that to the over thirty scripts he wrote between 1983 and 2008. When you write that many movies, you must accept that the quality would vary and near the end of his life. Even during Hughes’s peak, there were some middling but entertaining pictures like The Great Outdoors. This is a deep childhood favorite for me, and I admit as an adult, not all the jokes that hit hard in my youth still have that effect it is still a wonderfully fun family comedy with that edge 1980s movies seemed to have.

Movie Review – Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)
Written & Directed by John Hughes

After years of great turns as a supporting character and a couple stumbling blocks as a lead actor, John Candy finally found the filmmaker that understood his particular strengths in John Hughes. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is one of the best American comedies of the late 20th century, able to provide ample laughs and intelligent observations about contemporary middle-class life, the rigors of travel, and the burden of always needing to work to keep up. Candy plays to all his strengths as an actor, particularly how he can evoke great pathos from the audience.

Comic Book Review – New Teen Titans Omnibus Volume 4

New Teen Titans Omnibus Volume 4 (2019)
Reprints New Teen Titans V2 #10-31, Annuals #1,2, Omega Men #34
Written by Marv Wolfman
Art by Eduardo Barretto, Romeo Tanghal, and John Byrne

In the same way, I want to speed up my read-through of Wonder Woman, I am doing the same with Marv Wolfman’s New Teen Titans. The first half of this omnibus was already reviewed when I read New Teen Titans Volume 10, so I will be skipping over talking about those issues and getting to the new stuff. Like Wonder Woman and Mark Waid’s The Flash, I started reading this run in 2017 and don’t want to wait too long to get through the issues. The sad thing about Wolfman’s Titans compared to Perez’s Wonder Woman, or Waid’s Flash is that Wolfman’s Titans have entered a woeful period.

Movie Review – Armed and Dangerous

Armed and Dangerous (1986)
Written by Brian Grazer, James Keach, Harold Ramis, and Peter Torokvei
Directed by Mark L. Lester

John Candy was most well known by comedy fans in 1986 from his work on SCTV. The series ran from 1976 through 1984 under the names Second City TV, SCTV Network 90, and finally SCTV Channel. In total, he appeared in almost ninety episodes, and one of his consistent co-stars was fellow Canadian, Eugene Levy. Modern audiences mostly know Levy from his role as Johnny Rose on Schitt’s Creek and if Christopher Guest’s mockumentary comedies. Pairing the two in a feature film at the beginning of their popularity with American audiences sounds like a perfect idea, however Armed and Dangerous didn’t turn out that way.

Movie Review – Summer Rental

Summer Rental (1985)
Written by Jeremy Stevens & Mark Reisman
Directed by Carl Reiner

John Candy was born in Ontario in 1950 to a working-class Roman Catholic family. His dad passed away when John was only five years old, but having a large family support group, he was able to work through that time. As a young adult, he went to college for journalism and pivoted when he discovered how much enjoyed performing. This led to his joining the Toronto branch of The Second City and several guest spots on Candian television. It was his work on SCTV, Second City’s response to the popularity of Saturday Night Live that brought him to the attention of the American public. After a few small film roles, John gained his most prominent recognition in a supporting role in Ivan Reitman’s Stripes. He became a regular comedic supporting figure in pictures like National Lampoon’s Vacation and especially Splash. Summer Rental was John’s first starring role, and it would lead to many more headlining spots.

Black Lives Matter: A Selection of Films

Black Lives Matter. If you find an issue with that statement, then your presence on my website is unneeded. The comment section of this post will not be allowed to house any sentiments contrary to this. There is no free speech in my little corner of the internet when it comes to white supremacy and fascist ideals. The history of abusing, mocking, torturing, and killing black people in my home country of the United States is too long and still happening. Cinema was used as a weapon against black lives during the early silent years and into the talkies. However, films have been made that lift up black people and show them as human beings. Here are some of those movies.

Movies About Consumerism

Robocop (1987, directed by Paul Verhoeven)
As a kid, I thought movies like Robocop and Total Recall were cool for the special effects. As an adult, I’ve learned how subversive the pictures were on so many levels. There’s the over plot about OCP and its take over of the Detroit PD turning them into a private army. But there are some more nuanced points being presented in the film. Robocop represents the changes in industrialization. Once you have humans doing jobs like building cars in factories. Now robots do them more efficiently and at a faster pace. Robocop’s existence is a threat to the human police. However, he is also prophetic in his representation of the police’s militarization, and his counterpart ED-209 shows how this goes even more extreme. The world of Verhoeven’s future Detroit is chock full of commercials that represent different ideas that were present in 1980s America. There’s an advertisement for Nukem, a family board game where everyone engages in playing a nuclear war scenario and has a blast. The energy of these spots is so manic that it reflects the anxiety that comes with mass consumerism and a society moving inhumanely fast.