Porky's (1981)

Bob Clark, never one to pigeonhole himself in one genre, presents us with the quintessential teen sex comedy of the '80s. Set in 1954, it revolves around a group of teens who try to get laid and wander over to the whorehouse where they are humiliated and vow revenge against the portly titular owner. Little more than sex jokes, boobies and practical jokes, these movies always get a bad rap for being exploitative towards women, but as usual, it's the guys who come off worst of all. It confronts racist and sexist attitudes of the day, but it's never intended to be mean-spirited or bigoted. It's all in good-natured fun which almost feels rather tame in retrospect. Audiences reappraising this film nowadays will no doubt look for any excuse to be offended, but there is an innocent charm about it that really captures the rebellious teenage spirit. A defining cultural phenomenon for its time, it was the predecessor to gross-out sex comedies like American Pie, and still one of the best examples of its kind.

3 peep shows out of 5

Masquerade (1988)

An adult drama set in the world of rich folks, some of whom have little else to do besides sail boats and sleep with other people's wives. It's a lifestyle in which backstabbing and deceit go hand in hand, where sincerity and treachery are sometimes interchangeable, but not everyone is of that ilk. The naïve rich girl cliché is one such example, played by the softly spoken Meg Tilly, who fills the (designer) shoes well-enough. Rob Lowe is the suitor to her bank balance, a yachtsman whose objective is money. He's supposed to be surface charming and secretly dangerous, but he's as humdrum as he's been all the other times I've seen him act, which admittedly isn't very many. But as a whole, it feels like a post-watershed TV movie for bored housewives.

2½ cabin rats out of 5

Mannequin (1987)

A 1980s spin on the myth of Pygmalion, about a sculptor who fell in love with one of his own statues. The love-struck fool in this instance is aspiring artist (i.e. hopeful dreamer) Jonathan Switcher (Andrew McCarthy). His creation, the titular dummy, is Emmy (Kim Cattrall), without whom the movie would be a dead loss rom-com. Emmy becomes Switcher's saviour and muse.
A 'classic 80's movie' claims the box art, twice in case we somehow miss the sizeable one on the front. Opinions will differ on whether or not it deserves the tag, but it reminded me of at least one thing that I do love about movies of the era: screen wipes. I miss screen wipes. But pastel pinks I don't miss.

2 leggy dolls out of 5

The Ghost (2010)

The 'ghost' of the title is of the writer variety, semi-reluctantly penning the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister at a time that coincides with a political and personal upheaval for the very public figure.
Polanski is a master of his craft and I feel that all the actors gave great performances with varying levels of subtlety, together achieving a believable kind of 'filmic harmony', but overall I just wasn't gripped by any of it. It's now a part of the 'watch once and pass onto someone else' stack of discs.
Strangely, what I'll remember most is the view through the PM's study window; the blustery beach environment with sporadic tufts of grass atop sandy dunes was in some way a kind of unspoken commentary on the life he was living.

2½ cures for insomnia out of 5

BEING CANADIAN [2015]

TV writer Robert Cohen travels across his homeland in order to find out what it actually means to be a Canadian, which up until now seemed to be a pretty much a mish-mash of everything and nothing, in this humorous documentary, Being Canadian.

Starting his journey from the East coast and ending up on the West coast, Cohen interviews a gaggle of Canadian celebrities (and curiously, Ben Stiller) to see what their thought on the matter is.  As it turns out, all our exports are funnier than hell and don't really have a straight answer either.  Besides being the politest folks who drop f-bombs left, right & center, drink beer by the gallons and are fully aware they're an odd hybrid of Pip-pips & Americans, nothing is really answered here.  Instead it's merely a light, funny good time that is serves a crash course in Canadian history, geography and bad '80's TV I'd rather forget ever existed.

3 beachcombers out of 5

Split Second (1992)

London has succumbed to the effects of global warming. When the Thames rose the vermin migrated deeper into the city. Accompanying the rats was a serial killer, or so the police believe. One man knows the truth: the perp is over eight feet tall and has fingers that can kill in a split second.
Rutger Hauer plays a tightly-wound homicide detective who likes coffee with his sugar. He's a man on the edge with a score to settle, giving him a hard-on for the murderous creature. His partner (Alastair Duncan) is his opposite in almost every way. Once the clichéd buddy cop pairing is established the film has fun with the relationships; it's primarily what stops it from being drowned in cheapo Predator 2 (1990) levels of sci-fi darkness.

3 hearts ripped out of 5

Meet Monica Velour (2010)

Tobe Hulbert is in love with adult film star Monica Velour, but it’s a love with complications because the fantasy and the reality are separated by time. Tobe is in his late teens. Monica made her movies thirty years ago.
A masturbating, peeping Tom teen and a forty-nine-year-old ex-porn star have very little common ground on the surface, but MMV is an indie that grabs hold of the aphorism 'Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder' and runs headlong with it until the surface peels away to reveal hidden depths.

3 kinds of junk out of 5

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

While The Next Generation was kicking ass on TV, The Original Series returned to the big screen for one last hurrah. And it went out in style. From the dramatic opening to the bitter-sweet ending it rarely puts a booted-foot wrong. I don't understand why it often gets overlooked by so many people.
Thematically, the film is darker than Star Trek often dared to go. The optimism is still evident but it's bullied by heavy political issues, prejudices and ingrained racism, all of which are dissected and put under a microscope.
It's not all cold war parallels and gloom, though. Amid the many tensions are some light-hearted moments to remind us that the light of life needs all colours of the spectrum if it's to be fully enjoyed.

4 architects out of 5

Good Against Evil (1977)

After a promising and eerie beginning that steals much from To the Devil a Daughter (1976), the film attempts to take the premise in a new direction but quickly runs out of momentum.
The characters are flat and the twists and turns neither twist nor turn.
It picks up again near the end to become a poor man’s Exorcist (1973), and while it does the anxious priest routine well enough it’s all rather pointless when you can just watch the original film.
A TV series was planned but didn't appear, so there's an open ending.

1½ Satanists never laugh on film out of 5

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) has a wardrobe full of action jeans and hero vests; with jeans tightly buttoned he drives his truck into Chinatown and ends up helping a friend rescue a girl from a trio of Mortal Kombat-esque outcasts and a two-thousand-year-old evil sorcerer. Cue lightning, green flame, mythical beasts and an old man that stands seven-foot tall.
Oddly, Russell plays it mostly straight while all around him is a smorgasbord of awesome, and it works. Big Trouble in Little China is without a doubt the most successful and entertaining Chinese style action comedy made in the West that I've ever seen. (If you're interested, Carpenter was inspired by Tsui Harks Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983)).

5 problems with your face out of 5