I was aware, of course, of what The Godfather was, but in January 1991, I had not seen either part 1 or part 2 yet. I was only eighteen or nineteen at the time, and I only saw it because all my friends were going. I haven't seen it all the way through since, but I think The Godfather Part 3 is better if you don't know how good parts 1 and 2 were.
Eve VIII (Dutch actress Renée Soutendijk) is a sexy rogue fembot with a nuclear bomb onboard. Colonel Jim McQuade (Gregory Hines) teams up with the robot's creator (also Soutendijk) to disarm her aloof sexiness before Eve VIII (Evil, get it?) destroys the world.
I was just starting to get into Woody Allen, and I made the mistake of seeing this movie. The only worse thing than watching Woody act is watching him do someone else's lines...
John Moss: You're not gonna learn what it means to be a cop by eating hot dogs and picking your teeth and asking stupid questions. We live this job. It's something we are, not something we do! Every time a cop walks up to a car and has to give a speeding ticket, he know he may have to kill someone or be killed himself. That's not something you step into by strapping on a rubber gun and riding around all day. You get to go back to your million dollar beach house, and your bimbos, and your blow jobs, and you get seventeen takes to get it right. We get one take. It lasts our whole lives. We mess it up (snaps) and we're dead.
Nick Lang: [picking up a tape recorder] Fuck was that great! Can you just say that one more time for me, please?
Harmless Mob comedy, directed by John Landis, based on a stage play.
Bruce Willis is Hudson Hawk, a self-styled smooth Rat Pack-esque cat burglar just released from ten years in prison. He's forced out of retirement by wacky megalomaniacs The Mayflowers (Sandra Bernhard and Richard E. Grant) to steal Da Vinci artifacts so they can assemble an actual working alchemy machine. Danny Aiello is Hudson's buddy from the old days, and Andie MacDowell is an Vatican nun- or is she a secret Catholic agent?
Hollywood superstar hubris at its shallowest, Hudson Hawk has Bruce Willis's fingerprints all over it: fresh off two Die Hard movies, and two Look Who's Talking movies (all four smash hits), Willis co-wrote the story and the "theme song" for this showcase of the goofy-cool, wisecracking "Bruce Willis" character: Tougher than David Addison, funnier than John McClane. And of course, he gets to sing! I saw this twice in two days because I was nineteen and bored.
Celest Talbert: I realize I'm not a young woman; however, could you PLEASE point out to our new costume designer that I don't feel quite right in a turban. What I feel like is GLORIA FUCKING SWANSON! What am I, seventy, David, am I seventy? Why don't you just put me in a walker? Buy a goddamn walker and put me in it!
Even the scene-chewing hilarity of Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham cannot redeem Kevin Costner as Robin Hood.
Sheriff of Nottingham: [to a wench] You! My room. 10:30 tonight. [to another wench] You. 10:45...[looks her over] ...and bring a friend.
Washout: I just got kicked out of the unit. My flight status has been withdrawn. I'm through, Dead Meat!
Dead Meat: What happened?
Washout: It's my eyes. I've got walleye-vision.
Dead Meat: Isn't there something that can be done?
Washout: Well, there's a delicate corneal inversion procedure... a multi-opti-pupil-optomy. But, in order to keep from damaging the eye sockets, they've got to go in through the rectum. Ain't no man going to take that route with me!
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Still as thrilling as it was in 1991, although the pacing drags in the middle third of the movie. A wonderful example of taking cutting edge CGI technology and creating a character around it. This could have been a dramatically clunky conceit used to show off some neat special effects, but the whole "polymimetic liquid metal" idea works very well. Robert Patrick is great as the Corvette to Arnold's Mack Truck. Kristanna Loken's TX "Terminatrix" in the third movie is pretty un-inventive by comparison
Denzel Washington is Nick Styles, a LAPD cop-turned assistant district attorney. Back in his uniformed LAPD days, he captured master criminal Earl Talbot Blake (John Lithgow) in a dramatic televised arrest. Seven years later, Blake escapes from prison, hot for revenge. Blake's plan involves, if memory serves, abducting Styles, drugging him, and videotaping a sexual encounter between Styles and a hooker, then releasing it to the media.
This was the first in John Lithgow's Evil Antagonist Trilogy (Ricochet, Raising Cain, and Cliffhanger). Directed by Australian hack Russell Mulcahy (Highlander 1 and 2), who also directed videos for Elton John, Billy Joel, Duran Duran, The Tubes, The Human League, The Buggles, Queen, AC/DC, Bonnie Tyler, and Culture Club.
A pretty clever Cold War allegory, from Nicholas Meyer, the director of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. George Takei was at the theater. Huge crowd.
I'm pretty sure I saw this the day after Xmas in Attleboro, MA. Probably the most appropriate application of Spielberg's obession with absent fathers, broken homes, and the magic of childhood.