1987: the Year in Film

Rip It Up, Issue 126, 1 January 1988, Page 6

1987: the Year in Film

PICKSOF’B7 FULL METAL JACKET Director: Stanley Kubrick Not as emotionally involving as either Oliver Stone’s Platoon or Coppola’s Gardens of Stone, but Kubrick’s first film in seven years is all the more effective for its cool expose of the horror that was Vietnam. There are , occasional slips into the portentous, but the dichotomy between the madness of the military training in the first half of the move and the nightmare of the war itself in the second half has the conviction and logic of a well-reasoned.argument. BLUE VELVET Director: David Lynch Roy Orbison croons ’ln Dreams,’ and David Lynch ever so elegantly ruminates over the corruption and psychosis of small town America. One is drawn into the Sirkian cinemascope screen and seduced by the film’s luscious images and perhaps unexpectedly moved by Isabella Rossellini’s victim-heroine. THE COLOUR OF MONEY Director: Martin Scorsese The Hustler 25 years on ... Scorsese might not make as much of the poetry of the billiard table as Rossen did in the earlier film, but Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio provide some of the best ensemble playing on screen this year. In the meantime, Robbie Robertson has atoned for his intrusive soundtrack with one of the best solo albums of the year. NGATI Director: Barry Barclay Barclay’s first feature is a film of immense spiritual richness, with its portrait of a small East Coast community having its very existence threatened. Ngatis achingly beautiful images will speak to the heart of anyone who grew up in the country, while the film makes one impatient to see Barclay’s second feature.

A DEATH IN THE FAMILY Directors: Peter Wells & Stewart Main

A Death in the Family is a film about Aids that makes many others in the genre seem like crude journalism. With roving camera, groupings out of Caravaggio and characters stepping from the film to speak to the audience, Wells and Main use a sophisticated literary/cinematic language to make a stronger political point than any other Aids film I’ve seen. The fact that it also relates on a broader human base, and is intensely moving, makes A Death in the Family one of the best

films ever made in this country. TIN MEN Director: Barry Levinson A rambling tale of petty revenge, set against the spiels and patter of aluminium sidings salesmen. Neatly scripted, with some fiesty sparring from Danny De Vito and Richard Dreyfuss, Tin Men manages to balance realism and the ridiculous with ineffable charm. TRUE STORIES

Director: David Byrne Yet another glimpse of the Lone Star state ... Byrne’s film is a delightful mixture of cinema verite and stylised fairytale, rock videos and postmodernism and quite possibly one of the most innovative films to come out of mainstream American cinema in the decade. RAISING ARIZONA Director: Joel Coen

Coen’s second film, after his startling debut with Blood Simple,. could be described as seven characters in search of a baby. Raising Arizona is nothing if not frenetic — characters shout for a good deal of the film, the camerawork is giddy-making, the editing even more so — but Coen has a nice eye for details, and points the need for a new Dick Lester in the 80s. SID AND NANCY Director: Alex Cox

A film with such power to disturb as Sid and Nancy has, is a rare event these days. It starts from an extraordinary premise, with two of the most unlikeable characters of 70s punk set up as a latter-day Romeo and Juliet, and, apart from the final touch of fantasy, draws even the most sceptical viewer into their lives and world. William Dart