Hatari! (1962)Blu-ray Review

hatari bluray

My in-laws would love this movie. They were missionaries in West Africa for several years in the late 1970s and they tend to love movies and television series set in that continent. Especially fun ones.

Hatari! is a silly little movie from director Howard Hawks. The plot is incredibly thin – it is basically a hangout movie with some wild animals. At 2 1/2 hours it is definitely too long. But mostly it is an enjoyable little romp with some exciting animal chases, a little romance, and a lot of fun.

You can read my full review here.

The Goonies (1985)

the goonies movie poster

Editors Note: I apparently wrote a review of this movie, then immediately went back and wrote a second one. Posted both of them. My guess is that the second part was unintentional – that I wrote the first one, but didn’t like the draft yet accidentally posted it. Then the next day went to rewrite it, probably couldn’t find it in my drafts and wrote a new one from scratch. Or something like that. Yesterday I reposted the old one without realizing this one existed. I guess I make bonehead moves over and over again. I think it is fascinating to compare the two as I used some of the same language, but also changed quite a bit.

Come back with me to a time of innocence and fun. Let’s all go back to my childhood when movies were watched for entertainment. When I didn’t have to dissect hidden meanings and write about the symbolism or depth of a film. When I wasn’t a critic, but an audience member. Jump into my DeLorean and set the date for the 1980s.

It is a time when you could count on jokes about getting kicked in the nads, plot lines weren’t important, and you could always count on a good action figure to play with after the end credits. There was always a musical montage, you knew not to feed the mysterious animals after midnight, and a red Ferrari was your ride when you cut class.

Simple tasks such as fixing breakfast, or opening a gate became immensely difficult by using everyday items as complex machinery. If you were good, you could incorporate a ball (preferably bowling). It was a time when a small boy named Jonathan Ke Quan ruled the world.

I suppose I must admit that there were some very serious films made in the 1980s, but I was a child then and I didn’t see any of those films until much later. For me, it was a time of action, adventure, and plenty of buttered popcorn.

One of my favorite movies from the time is The Goonies. It’s a perfect movie of the 80s, what with the high adventure, the pirate gold, a steaming heap full of Jonathan Ke Quan, and bloody mother f’ing Sloth. Nothing beats Sloth.

Watching it again I am amused by the fact that the Goonies aren’t explained in any way. There is no background to how the club was formed or what even a Goony (or is the singular Goonie?) is exactly. And they don’t have to. As a kid I didn’t need a back story, they were the Goonies and that’s all I needed to know. I wanted to be a Goony, and I had many a pretend adventure going after the rich stuff.

The plot – O’ the glories of the plot – concerns an entire neighborhood that is about to be turned into a golf course. It seems the golf course people have managed to evict every single person in the neighborhood at the same time due to a lack of funds. For if only one family could come up with the extra funds then they could tell the golfers to buzz off.

Never mind that the neighborhood seems to be made up of middle-class suburbanites or that none of them can manage to pay this mysterious amount of money (mortgage?). How a pile of jewels manages to take care of everything isn’t exactly explained either.

But that’s getting caught up in the plot, and that’s never the point with a good 80’s flick. The Goonies – a group of misfit teens (and I mean that in the totally 80’s kind of way, and not the post-Columbine psychotic meaning of the term) – find a treasure map leading to pirate booty. They have many an adventure finding the treasure and are followed by the Fratelli crime family. Of course, the Goonies find the treasure and save the neighborhood, but like so many things in life, it’s the journey that really counts.

Along the way, we are treated to glorious action, romance, comedy, and of course, a moral involving teamwork and acceptance – even acceptance of a grotesque-looking monster man dubbed Sloth.

Sloth – the greatest of all 80’s characters – is a deformed giant and a member of the Fratelli family. The chubby Goony – kindly named in 80s cinematic glory as Chunk – is captured and thrown in with Sloth. We are all petrified as to what this hideous creature is going to do, only to find a moral in the monster with a heart of gold.

Critics will scoff at the The Goonies plot holes, cheesy effects, and overall silliness. But if you’ll step back a moment in time with me you might find a wonderful slice of nostalgia, and a little bit of fun in a movie meant to do nothing more than entertain.

The Goonies (1985)

the goonies poster This was originally written on July 15, 2006.

Ah the 80’s. When making movies was simple and easy. When all you needed was some cheesy dialogue, a few nut sack jokes, long montages set to cheesier music, and the go-to nerdy Asian kid actor Jonathan Ke Quan. If you could make simple actions like opening a gate door incredibly complicated and involve some type of ball (preferably bowling) then you were almost guaranteed a hit.

Ok, there were serious, art movies made in the 80’s, it’s just that I didn’t see any of them at the time. Hey, don’t blame me, I was just a kid. If you have to lay blame, go find my mother.

For me, the 1980s was full of the Goonies, Gremlins, The Lost Boys, ET, Indiana Jones, and freaking Return of the Jedi. T’was a glorious time filled with mayhem, action, silly comedy, and all the stereotypes you could shake a stick at.

Reliving my nostalgic memories is sometimes surprisingly good, and often quite frightening. The Lost Boys is embarrassing, while a film like The Goonies holds up amazingly well. Sure, it won’t go on any of my top 5 lists, but it is still an enjoyable, entertaining romp.

To gather up some plot points, the Goonies are a group of adolescent boys all living in a neighborhood that’s about to be turned into a golf course. If only they could come up with the money to keep their parents mortgage then all would be saved. Through some shenanigans, it turns out that two of the boy’s dad is a curator for a museum that just happens to have an attic full of pirate lore.

They find a treasure map and set out to find the pirate gold and save their neighborhood. Along the way, they run into some nefarious gangsters who become quite interested in the pirate booty.

Bountiful misadventures occur as both the Goonies and the gangsters run amok underground the city escaping all sorts of mad booby traps. The gold of course is found, and lost, and found again, well enough to save the day. The gangsters are caught and everything is hunky dory.

Did I mention Sloth? No! How could I forget Sloth? He is this giant disfigured character the gangster bad guys keep locked up because he’s family and a menace, or weird. Or something. Of course, he is really a Goonie at heart and once again a movie of the 80s shows us the way to acceptance and world harmony.

Calendar Movies: North by Northwest (1959)

This was originally written and posted on April 27, 2006.

Recently, I had lunch with the human resources director at my place of employment. Both she and the chief operations officer were down to my office for the day and I invited them out to Cracker Barrel (it was a cheap maneuver as my boss was out of town, and I knew they’d pay for the food.) I needed the COO as a buffer between me and HR because last time I had lunch with Human Resources I got drilled on my opinion on everything from our company values to how the janitorial staff is doing.

It worked perfectly, I got a good meal paid for, and the COO kept us distracted by trying to win that little triangle peg game all Cracker Barrels leave on the table. It’s quite a thing to see your boss’s boss’s boss cursing at a children’s game because it says he’s an “ignoramous.”

The toughest question I had to field from HR was about my favorite movie. I chose Casablanca much to the surprise of my questioner. Now, at 30, I’m not anywhere near a young whippersnapper, but I guess I’m still pretty far removed from an ancient classic like that.

The thing is, I really dig the old movies. I’m the kind of guy who goes to Blockbuster and heads for the center rows, not the outside aisles with new releases. I suppose this is a strange thing, where kids today haven’t even seen Star Wars much less The Third Man.

Seriously, the first time I found out someone at work had never seen Star Wars I nearly fell out of my comfy office chair. It is as bewildering to realize that a film that means so much to me and my generation could be a relic to a new generation.

But maybe this is just me. I prefer Turner Classic Movies to HBO. I’d rather watch Humphrey Bogart than Tom Cruise. Black and white is much sexier then high definition super color.

Watching a movie like this month’s Calendar Movie, North by Northwest I’m struck by the notion that it’s not so different from your summer Hollywood blockbuster these days.

You’ve got one of the biggest stars working at the time, Cary Grant, working with an A-list director, Alfred Hitchcock; that’s like Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg working together. The story is full of big action, lots of laughs and brimming with sexuality. It would play perfectly in today’s multiplexes

It’s the sex that struck me in this viewing. No, there isn’t any nudity, or hard core action. There isn’t even any soft core action, or anything more than some kissing. But the dialogue is boiling over with innuendo and double entendres. And if you’re going to have double entendres, who better than Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint to do it?

Beyond the sex there is more action and twists than a porno staring Gumby and Pokey. The famous crop duster scene still excites beyond what most CGI adventures can muster in an entire film.

So I ask myself again, why do brilliant, solid pieces of filmmaking like this get left on dusty shelves to be replaced by boring, repetitive, unimaginative showcases of mediocrity? Is the movie going public so stuck on adrenaline pumping, computer generated eye candy, that the classics are above their threshold of understanding?

Partially I think that it is part of our cultural existence to get the newest, freshest product. We buy the new models of cars even though our old one rides just fine. We purchase the top of the line, brand new computer products because our 6 month old lap top is “outdated.”

No one stands around the water cooler talking about Hitchcock or Billy Wilder. We talk about box office receipts, and the new weekend releases. Hollywood asks us to. They can’t afford for an audience to sit around watching worn out VHS copies of Ninotchka when they just spend 100 million dollars on the new Vin Diesel picture.

Kids don’t get hip credibility by wearing t-shirts with Peter Lorre on them. That’s not the kids fault, for if they had the chance to watch Lorre in M his picture would be right out there like Al Pacino in Scarface.

I can’t help but think if more people were exposed to classics like North by Northwest there would be no surprise when a young man stated his favorite movie was Casablanca.