'80s Dreamin'

Mark Harmon realises he needs to play baseball after Jodie Foster kills herself in 1988's Stealing Home. Among the many '50s nostalgia movies of the 1980s, this is certainly not one of the best. It's kind of relaxing, though.

Although Mark Harmon gets top billing, he has relatively little screentime as most of the film is told in flashback to when he was a kid in the '50s and '60s. He had a crush on his rebellious babysitter, Katie, played by Jodie Foster.

The music, awash in light jazz saxophone, never lets you forget this movie was made in the '80s, despite repeated uses of '50s rock songs. It sounds like Moonlighting.

The kids who play Harmon's character are pretty bland but it's nice watching Jodie Foster have fun, flirting with the kid and taking him swimming or lounging beside him in a swimsuit.

The best part of the movie is when Harold Ramis shows up in the last act, when Harmon finally takes over as the lead. The best line in the movie is at a bar when Harold Ramis looks at a reproduction of William-Adolphe Bouguereau's "Nymphs and Satyr" and says, "Would you look at the butt on that nymph!" I suspect the line was improvised.

In case you're wondering, the film never addresses the motivation or circumstances of Katie's suicide.

Pretty Little Caninae

Four teenage girls hit the streets of L.A. to grow up fast in 1980's Foxes. Two of the girls are Jodie Foster and Cherie Currie, the latter being lead singer of The Runaways, and the movie feels a lot like a Runaways album--skinny, ultra-pretty girls who are simultaneously fetishised and independent. It's sort of like a kitten in a leather jacket. Sweet, cute, and we'd all like it to be as tough as it thinks it is.

Currie's character, Annie, is at the heart of most of the film's drama. She's the wild one, rebelling against her abusive cop father. She looks for trouble repeatedly and repeatedly gets more than she bargains for.

Meanwhile, Madge (Marilyn Kagan) is in love with an older man, played by an unusually restrained Randy Quaid, who genuinely seems to like her. But maybe he's not so ready to have a girl in his life who's not really old enough for the responsibility of a relationship. That's the impression you get after her friends trash his home.

Foster is the most normal of the group. She has some half-baked drama with her mother, played by Sally Kellerman, who is jealous of how much prettier young girls are than she is. It's too bad the best the movie can do is have her say that out loud.

Scott Baio has a small role to do the hero stuff and Laura Dern has an even smaller role (her first credited role) as a girl who shows up to a party.

The movie only currently seems to be on YouTube. It would be nice to some of the more exploitative shots in high def. The score is by Giorgio Morodor and it's as sexy as his scores for Cat People and Flashdance.

The Days of Dastardly Deeds

Five Corners is a movie made in 1987 and set in the 1960s but feels like it was written for a 1930s melodrama. The Bronx set story stars Jodie Foster, Tim Robbins, and John Turturro in a world of misfit hoods and damsels in distress. It's entertaining.

I'm so used to seeing John Turturro playing pathetic losers and weirdos in Coen brothers movies, it was surprising to see him here as the bad boy whom pretty young Jodie Foster can't resist. That is until the film's most interesting scene when Turturro kidnaps some penguins from the zoo for her and kills one of them when she tells him he shouldn't have done it.

The characters in other scenes talk about an incident where Turturro's character saved her from a rape. There are several instances of girls almost being raped, even two girls who wake up naked in a strange apartment, but this isn't the kind of movie where such a crime actually occurs. This is a movie where a guy instead carries an unconscious girl to the top of a building in apparent reference to King Kong.

Needless to say with a cast like this, the performances are pretty good. Five Cornersis available on The Criterion Channel as part of a playlist of Handmade Films.

X Sonnet #1809

The Devil's wax is dripping down again.
Perverted jailers tempt the bird to flee.
But once provoked, the fight must needs begin.
From Doom would Jones ensure the captives freed.
As vengeful mirrors line the school with brains,
We hearken back to lizards sleeping late.
For ev'ry dream, the nightly music gains,
We fill a wretched zombie's grieving pate.
A dingy star explains the hand of dirt.
For clothing points, record a second tape.
If meaning floats, the paper's getting hurt.
The crowd is ever asking 'bout the ape.
A stylish set removed to diff'rent decks.
Assorted plaids were doomed to pair with checks.

The Streaming Movie Who Lives Everywhere

13 year old Jodie Foster must defend her home from the world of adults in 1976's The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. It's a decent suspense movie with a surprisingly touching romantic subplot.

The first person to question why Rynn (Foster) seems to be living alone in a big house is an unmistakable child molester played very broadly by Martin Sheen.

After she finally gets him to leave, she has to deal with his mother, the woman who leased the house to her father. Rynn always tells people her father's working in the study and can't be disturbed or is away on a business trip to New York. When finally things lead to someone getting killed and Rynn having to dispose of evidence, she suddenly finds she has an ally in a geeky young magician named Mario (Scott Jacoby).

These two were really sweet together and I liked the blend of altruism and awkward lust that makes Mario immediately want to join forces with her against the adults, even before he understands what's really going on. It was good.

I'd been wanting to watch this movie since it was referred to on Twin Peaks in 2017. The mystery of Jodie Foster alone in the house is kind of tonally reminiscent of the mystery of Audrey Horne in the house with the writer. Rynn's father is also a writer, a poet.

A friend lent me his DVD but my lousy blu-ray drive doesn't like to play most DVDs. I tried watching it on Amazon Prime which has two versions--a totally free version and a "freevee" version with ads. The first one just didn't work at all, the spinning loading graphic just disappeared and left me looking at a blown up thumbnail. The freevee version had so many ads it made the movie unwatchable. Always the same ads, too. Every four minutes or so it seemed like I had to stop and watch the ad for the Ted series again or something for cancer medication. It broke up the tone too much and wasted a lot of time.

I did some googling and found the movie is totally free on both Tubi and Roku. I didn't even need a login for Tubi and there were no ads. I'm seriously starting to question my need to keep Amazon Prime.