The passengers that gather aboard the cruise liner of And the Ship Sails On are an eclectic mix of European aristocrats, each individually targeted by Federico Fellini’s irreverently absurd sense of humour, and together making up a nautical class satire that revels in their splendid merriment and misfortune.
Whatever optical restrictions are imposed by the legendary Motorcycle Boy’s colour blindness In Rumble Fish are drastically offset by the dreamy expressionism elongating every angle of Francis Ford Coppola’s visuals, offering a refreshingly eccentric perspective of 1960s gang warfare, urban Oklahoma, and its restless adolescents seeking to break free of their social confines.
David Cronenberg’s blending of intellectual musings on modern mass media with grotesque body horror makes Videodrome’s dire warnings all the more visceral, robbing brainwashed individuals of their humanity by fusing them with the technology they have become reliant on, and marking a triumphant success in transgressive genre filmmaking for the young auteur.
A great achievement in screenwriting for Lawrence Kasdan, The Big Chill is his comical but touching ode to the lost idealism of the Baby Boomers living in Reagan’s America.
Even as The Outsiders stands up today as a well-done adaptation of a pivotal coming-of-age novel, the odd misstep also marks it as the beginning of Francis Ford Coppola’s descent into less-than-outstanding filmmaking.
