Tag Archives: 1980s

Rok spokojnego slonca / Year of the Quiet Sun (1984) Krzysztof Zanussi, Maja Komorowska, Scott Wilson, Hanna Skarzanka, Drama, Romance, War

rok-spokojnego-slonca-aka-year-of-the-quiet-sun-1984
Shortly after WWII an American soldier (Norman) and a Polish refugee (Emilia) fall in deep love. Eventually he will return to USA and both expect that she will soon follow him. Emilia’s mother is sick but would recover by available medicine. Somehow the mother but not Emilia knows that there will only be one ticket. Realising that Emilia would never abandon her, the mother secretly throws away the daily doses given her by Emilia – and dies. Somehow Emilia discovers her mother’s sacrifice and refuses to benefit from it. She gives the ticket to a female friend and retreats to a cloister, living like the nuns except not wearing their dress and not having given a promise to stay forever. For decades she will apparently live in peace. Then a nun tells her that Norman has died and has bequeathed his fortune to Emilia. The nun suggests that Emilia gives the money to the cloister. But from that moment Emilia’s religious devotion flies away. She only thinks of going as speedily as possible to …
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Body Double (1984) Brian De Palma, Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry, Mystery, Thriller

body-double-1984
Jake Scully comes home to find his girlfriend with another man and has to find a new place. In between his acting workshops and his job in a vampire B-movie, he scans the paper looking for anything. He happens to meet Sam Bouchard, a fellow actor who needs a house sitter. Both are pleased with the arrangement that will have Jake staying in the house and for a sweetener, Sam shows him his favorite neighbor, a well-built woman who strips with her window open each night. Jake becomes obsessed with meeting her and is able to help recover her purse from a thief, but shows his own phobia, he is incapacitated by claustrophobia when the thief runs through a tunnel. When Jake witnesses a murder, he finds out that the police love to pin crimes on peeping Toms. Jake discovers that here are just too many coincidences but must hunt them down himself without the police.
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Kono ko wo nokoshite / Children of Nagasaki (1983) Keisuke Kinoshita, Gô Katô, Yukiyo Toake, Chikage Awashima, Drama, War

kono-ko-wo-nokoshite-aka-children-of-nagasaki-1983
In Nagasaki, Japan, on 09 August 1945, at 11:02 AM, 80.000 dead and thousand of persons wounded or contaminated by radiation were victims of one of the most hideous crimes of the mankind history. This low-budget movie is a dramatization of this deplorable event, based on the report of one of the survivors of the ‘day after’ of Nagasaki.
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Echo Park (1985) Robert Dornhelm, Susan Dey, Tom Hulce, Michael Bowen, Comedy, Drama

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In the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, everyone is more than they initially seem. May waits tables, raises a son, Henry, and is an aspiring actress. She needs a roommate and takes in a pizza deliverer named Jonathan, an aspiring songwriter. In the adjoining flat is August, an Austrian body sculptor who appears in a deodorant commercial and dreams big dreams. May takes a job delivering singing telegrams as a stripper, Jonathan invites Henry to tag along with him on deliveries, August gets into trouble with the police who call his father in Austria, and the friendships, frustrations, and love affairs of everyday life come to a head.
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Yu Ta-fu chuan ji / Cherry Blossoms (1988) Eddie Ling-Ching Fong, Yat Sun Chan, Yun-Fat Chow, Tat Wah Fok, Drama, Romance

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In 1913, Yu Dafu goes from China to Japan to study. At that time, Japan is the nascent superpower of East Asia, while China, the “sick man of Asia”, is in turmoil. Dafu is forced to confront the formidable combination of challenging schoolwork, foreign culture, and a racist populace during his time in Japan, and, along the way, struggles with becoming a man, emotionally and sexually. Towards the beginning of the film, he meets, while bathing nude in a hot spring, Lung-erh, and falls in love instantly. Although Yu Dafu is unable to locate her after their brief encounter, he eventually runs into her again after having taken up his studies in Nagoya.
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They Still Call Me Bruce (1987) James Orr, Johnny Yune, David Mendenhall, Pat Paulsen, Comedy

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Bruce Won arrives in America in search of an American G.I. who saved his life in the Korean War. He meets an orphan boy and together they land themselves in a string of outrageous situations. This high-strung farce culminates when a case of mistaken identity leads a gang of thugs to think Bruce is a karate master. They arrange a nationally-televised match which pits our hero against a monstrous brute, and Bruce is beaten to a bloody pulp…
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Hellhole (1985) Pierre De Moro, Ray Sharkey, Judy Landers, Marjoe Gortner, Action, Drama, Horror

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An unlucky woman’s mother is murdered by a scarf-wielding killer named Silk, leaving the woman injured, traumatised and suffering from amnesia. She’s committed to a mental institution, where Silk follows her, looking for the papers he was trying to get from her mother. And Silk’s only the beginning of her problems, since the asylum is run by a mad doctor, performing experiments in chemical lobotomies!
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Erik the Viking (1989) Terry Jones, Tim Robbins, John Cleese, Mickey Rooney, Comedy, Adventure, Fantasy

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A Viking with a conscience, Erik (Tim Robbins) tires of pillaging and decides to set out on a quest. When the wise Freya (Eartha Kitt) informs Erik that a great mythic wolf has eaten the sun, the warrior resolves to venture to Asgard, home of the Norse gods, to set things right. Before Erik can reach Asgard, he and his allies must first find a magical horn that resides in the land of King Arnulf (Terry Jones), who, luckily for the hero, has a lovely daughter, Princess Aud (Imogen Stubbs).
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Caddyshack (1980) Harold Ramis, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray, Comedy, Romance

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Comical goings on at an exclusive golf club. All the members are wealthy and eccentric, and all the staff are poor and slightly less eccentric. The main character is ‘Danny’; he’s a caddy who will do almost anything to raise money to go to college. There are many subplots, including the assistant green keeper’s pursuit of a cute (obviously stuffed) gopher.
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Krótki film o milosci / A Short Film About Love (1988) Krzysztof Kieslowski, Grazyna Szapolowska, Olaf Lubaszenko, Stefania Iwinska, Drama, Romance

Krotki film o milosci (1988)
An obscured thief breaks into a school gymnasium at night to steal a portable telescope from the science lab. On the following morning, the thief, Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) sets up the telescope on his desk, facing the window of his room, and across the courtyard into an adjacent apartment. Later in the day, an attractive, hurried woman named Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska) stops by the post office in order to claim a money order after receiving a notification in her mailbox, only to be informed by the attentive young postal clerk, Tomek, that there is nothing being held at the station on her behalf. Back home, Tomek sets his alarm clock to 8:00 pm, the approximate time of Magda’s return home.
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