The terminal illness metaphor is not wasted in the subtext of this intelligent screenplay, nor does David Cronenberg ever falter in intelligently picking apart the mad scientist’s disturbed psyche, yet in binding The Fly’s narrative so closely to the gripping, visceral decay of Seth Brundle’s body, it becomes a film that sticks in the mind for the sort of brazen, kitschy ugliness one can’t tear their eyes away from.
The strength of Wes Craven’s fresh approach to horror filmmaking in A Nightmare on Elm Street still stands almost forty years later, playing into the genre’s conventional corruption of innocence by directly attacking deeper, more vulnerable areas of the human subconscious than so many other films before or after its time.
The blend of dry English humour and the brazen smarminess of American comedy in A Fish Called Wanda makes for a delicious mix of character dynamics, setting up the patriotic egos of both countries and then knocking them down a few pegs purely through their hilarious, bitter, and petty distaste for each other.
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.
John Huston breathes cinematic life into James Joyce’s short story, The Dead, in an ode to those deceased loved ones who patiently wait for the living to join them, marking a poignant but fitting end to an illustrious directorial career.
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.
Terry Gilliam’s construction of a futuristic Britain is visually daunting, but Brazil never shies away from the dark comedy of a government desperately out of touch with reality, brilliantly constructed through surreal, absurdist set pieces.
