Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

 

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a darker, far scarier sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark. Much of the humor of the original Indiana Jones film has been somewhat abandoned for the sake of some very intense stuff, including several onscreen deaths. This time around, Jones (played reliably by Harrison Ford again) has to retrieve a sacred stone and all of the children that were taken from an Indian village by members of a strange cult that has overtaken the palace of a very young and way too impressionable Maharaja. Among the potential joys of being captured by this cult are perhaps having your heart removed from your body while still alive and maybe also being sacrificed to an intense pool of lava, both of which are shown directly on screen. The intensity of some of these images eventually led to the creation of a new motion picture rating, PG-13, because the Motion Picture Association of America deemed them inappropriate (but after the movie’s release, naturally, and only after the uproar from some parents) for younger audience members. Ford, the main draw here, is his usual sardonic, smart, tough, swaggering self, but he’s never safe for long, which is good for a role like this. He’s ably supported this time by Ke Huy Quan as Short Round. Quan gives such a great performance that it's difficult to believe that he was only about 12 years old at the time of filming and that this was his first acting role. I’d call it one of the best child performances in movie history, but really it’s great regardless of the actor’s age. On the other hand, though, is the performance of Kate Capshaw as Willie, a nightclub singer that Jones rescues in the film’s Shanghai opening. Frankly, her character is so annoying throughout the movie that it’s tough to see why Indy is attracted to her at all. She does a lot of yelling and screaming, and the volume is just too high most of the time. The danger quotient in this sequel was certainly ramped up, but the adventures seem to be less… adventuresome? There are two scenes that do stand out, however, one involving a rope bridge – those things are never safe in movies, are they? The other involves a race through underground mines in tiny carts; it’s like a roller coaster ride you’d never want to try yourself. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom doesn’t quite rise to the heights achieved by Raiders of the Lost Ark, but then again, how could it top a classic?

Oscar Win: Best Visual Effects

Other Oscar Nomination: Best Original Score

2010 (1984)

 

2010, sometimes referred to as 2010: The Year We Make Contact, is a sequel to that enigmatic masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. The second film features a team of American and Soviet (what we now call Russian) astronauts heading back to Jupiter and its moon Europa to discover what happened and to restart the HAL 9000 computer that caused all of the chaos nine years earlier. (That certainly seems like a bad idea given how the original film ended.) 2010, being a product of the 1980s, is filled with almost stereotypical Cold War fears and concerns. The Soviet Union and the United States are on the brink of war while the mission is underway, and there’s a palpable sense of tension and distrust between the U.S. and Soviet astronauts. The dialog in Russian is neither translated into subtitles or dubbed, which only adds to the sense of distance between the representatives of the two countries. The film features good performances from a cast that includes such talented actors as Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, and Helen Mirren (as a leader of the Soviet astronauts). Bob Balaban, always a reliable and welcome presence in the movies, plays the scientist who revives HAL and learns that the computer was being forced to keep a secret about the ubiquitous monoliths that our government had tried to cover up. He gets along well with HAL, and their conversations are intriguing when compared to what happened in the first film, but I feel like 2010 spends just a bit too much time inside that red glow-bathed control room. HAL’s red “eye” isn’t as mind-blowing this time around either. The sequel is rather stylish if slow-moving at times. It owes a clear debt to the first Alien film with the sharp contrast between the dark Soviet spaceship and the brightly lit American ship. The filmmakers also recreated some of the props and costumes from the 1968 film, which begs the question of just how original this Oscar-nominated costume design really is, particularly since the costumes of the original were not nominated. The film asks a lot of questions for viewers to ponder: Will the U.S. and the Soviet Union astronauts work together to get everyone back to Earth? Will HAL interfere again once it/he realizes the purpose of this mission? Will we ever learn what the monoliths are and why they appear when and where they do? What is Keir Dullea, so memorable as David Bowman in 2001, doing in this film? Is he a ghost or an apparition, and what is he trying to accomplish? I’m not certain that we care enough, truly, about the answers to these questions, but fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey might want to know more than I felt I wanted to know. To me, 2010 is almost as bewildering at times as that earlier film; it’s just not as powerful or awe-inspiring.

Oscar Nominations: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, and Best Makeup

Romancing the Stone (1984)

 

Romancing the Stone is a great hybrid of romantic comedy and action-adventure film. It’s a sexy film with lots of gunfire, some physical comedy, and even a few crocodiles. It also marked the first movie pairing of Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas (with Danny DeVito along for the ride, as usual). They would later appear together in The Jewel of the Nile and The War of the Roses, but Romancing the Stone set a template for their future film interactions. They don’t like or even trust each other at first, but they begin to fall in love, and the film is as much about their relationship as it is the outline of the major plot. Turner plays Joan Wilder, a romance novelist living a pretty dull life with her cat. She’s not having any actual adventures; she just writes about them. Douglas is an actual adventurer, the perfectly named Jack Dalton, who smuggles exotic birds; he’s making his way through the jungle, one small town or village at a time. When Joan’s sister is kidnapped and taken to Colombia by the hapless brothers Ira (Zack Norman) and Ralph (DeVito), she crosses paths with Jack and attempts to enlist his help in rescuing her sister. She has to promise to pay him what she has left in traveler’s cheques once they’re both stranded in the jungle. Throughout the film, there’s a clear example of a McGuffin (one of Hitchcock’s favorite devices) in this treasure map to the location of a large emerald called El Corazon (“The Heart”), but really what matters here is the interaction between Turner and Douglas. It’s somewhat incidental that the map came from her murdered brother-in-law, and now everyone, including another drug lord named Col. Zolo, keeps looking for Turner because she’s in possession of it. Turner is very sexy here, and she becomes looser as the movie progresses and her inhibitions around Douglas’s Jack lower. She’s so delightful when she finds one of her fans in a small village, a local drug lord named Juan who helps them escape capture. Douglas, by comparison, was always a bit of a lech in his movies during this period. A look at his facial expressions seems to tell you his intentions with Joan. And that raises one of the central concerns of the film’s narrative: Does he love her, or is he just an opportunist? Has he started to have feelings for her, or does he just want to find the treasure of El Corazon himself? Romancing the Stone likes to tease viewers with the nature of their relationship, and it’s a delight to watch them bicker ruthlessly and then enjoy each other’s company.

Oscar Nomination: Best Film Editing

Ghostbusters (1984)

 

Ghostbusters follows the rather silly but entertaining adventures of three former scientists who set up a private business to investigate and destroy paranormal creatures. Interestingly, they lost their university positions by botching an encounter with a ghost in the New York Public Library, so it is odd that they would then go into business doing the very thing that cost them their jobs. Peter Venkman is played by Bill Murry with his usual acerbic skepticism and propensity for what seem like ad libs. Dan Aykroyd’s Raymond Stantz demonstrates a high level of enthusiasm and almost naivete. Harold Ramos plays Egon Spengler with a measure of seriousness and deadpan reactions. It’s fun to watch the three of them play off each other and their characters’ different personalities even though it does seem at times that Murray is performing in another movie. The Ghostbusters set up shop in an abandoned firehouse, complete with the poles for getting from one floor down to another, and they purchase a so-called “combination car” (which can apparently be used either as a hearse or an ambulance) to be their primary mode of transportation. They begin creating some new weapons, hire a secretary (Annie Potts, hilarious in her few, small moments on screen), and then gain a fourth Ghostbuster (Ernie Hudson) when business picks up. A significant portion of the second half of the film is tied up with a convoluted plot about Sigourney Weaver’s Dana, a cellist with whom Murray is infatuated, being possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper and her accountant neighbor (Rick Moranis, notching up the dweeb factor just a bit too far) is possessed by Vinz Glortho the Keymaster. They have to open a gateway for Gozer the Gozerian, a Sumerian god of destruction, and their apartment building was conveniently built by the leader of an end-times cult in the 1920s to facilitate Gozer’s arrival. Following all of the details about the demigods and gods and how Gozer’s “form” gets selected is really rather meaningless because it’s the visuals that are most impressive. Gozer changes from the form of a woman who looks ready for a mid-80s fashion shoot (or a Nagel painting) into the Stay Puft marshmallow man, whose walk through the city is one of the more impressive visual effects in the film. Watching the street in front of the apartment building buckle and break up is certainly realistic and shocking. I also enjoyed the Ghostbusters’ first job after they leave the university, trying to kill a slimy green ghost in a hotel, only to destroy most of a floor of the hotel and the better part of a ballroom; it’s the sequence that includes Murray’s famous line, “He slimed me.” Overall, it’s an enjoyable and funny film with some pretty cool visual effects that were state-of-the-art in 1984. One final thought, though,  about the film: Did William Atherton, who plays Environmental Protection Agency representative Walter Peck, always have to be a prick in almost every movie he made? He’s the bureaucratic impediment to the “good work” that the Ghostbusters are doing because of potentially dangerous environmental effects of containing the ghosts under their headquarters. I do wonder sometimes how actors tend to wind up repeatedly with the same kinds of parts.

Oscar Nominations: Best Visual Effects and Best Original Song (“Ghostbusters”)