Blue Thunder (1983)

Roy Scheider as the sleepiest cop-on-the-edge I’ve ever seen. He’s maybe a crazed, shell-shocked Vietnam vet but so much of his dialogue is ADR’d (probably because of helicopter noise but I wouldn’t be surprised if Scheider was so bored by the movie that he couldn’t bring himself to enunciate his lines) that he comes across as more a somnambulist than anything. I suppose if you’re an actor who’s looking for a quick and easy paycheck, being offered a role that is 80% sitting down is a pretty sweet deal.

Remarkably, the film redeems itself with a spectacular final 30 minutes.I’ve come to expect so little actual excitement from 80’s action movies (as so often what passed for thrills are second unit shots of machine gun fire and fiery explosions) that when John Badham climaxes with a fantastic helicopter duel (it’s to his credit that I couldn’t figure out exactly how much of it was actually shot in the air above Los Angeles and what was achieved via special effects, models, etc.) I was ready to forgive him. Previous to that the only person I could get on board with was Warren Oates, who adds another great performance in both the pantheon of compelling Warren Oates performances and the pantheon of hilarious police captains. B-

Stardust Memories (1980)

I used to agree with the dismissive critical consensus that this was an overly hostile film without enough depth to back up it’s cynicism. But viewing this immediately after watching the Dave Chappelle episode of Inside The Actors studio, in which he detailed the many ways fame ruined his life, the constant parade of autograph seekers, all dying to reveal personal information to their hero (“I was a Casearian” is one of my all-time favorite Woody Allen lines) came across as more honest and funny than cynical. The story is pretty boilerplate Allen, a hodge-podge of romantic longing and infidelity, but the plot is secondary to the well-observed details (NO ONE captures the beautiful tiny moments that make love so sweet like Allen does) a stream of consciousness structure that’s illuminating, even if it’s essentially a more depression-focused retread of Annie Hall.

Coming off of Manhattan, it’s understandable that Allen and DP Gordon Willis’ work here is often unheralded, but it’s still a shame. It’s not just the stunning black and white photography that dazzles, but elaborate shots that track through crowds of some of the strangest faces you’ll ever see in an American film and pull off the magic trick of changing from subjective first person to objective third person without you ever noticing. Maybe too parodic and referential of Fellini to ever reach the profundity of films like Manhattan and Annie Hall, but somewhere along the line Stardust Memories gained the reputation of a third-rate Woody Allen movie, and that’s a crime. B+