Mystic Pizza (1988)

Film: Mystic Pizza (1988)

Stars: Annabeth Gish, Julia Roberts, Lili Taylor, Vincent D'Onofrio, Willam R. Moses, Adam Storke, Conchata Ferrell, Matt Damon

Director: Donald Petrie

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 (and now 2025) Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Julia Roberts: click here to learn more about Ms. Roberts (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Julia Roberts early career is such an uphill climb that it might honestly be a straight line north.  When she came to Hollywood she was just Eric Roberts' kid sister; by the time of her screen debut in 1987's Satisfaction, her big brother Eric (now a bit of a trivia punchline for the amount of random movie appearances he's made in literally hundreds of low-budget & independent films) had spent a decade making appearances in prestige fare like Raggedy Man, The Pope of Greenwich Village, & Runaway Train (which won him his sole Oscar nomination to date).  But by 1988, kid sister Julia was attracting attention, first in her breakout role in today's movie Mystic Pizza (a sleeper hit), then getting her own matching Oscar nomination in Steel Magnolias, and a second as the lead of Pretty Woman.  Steel Magnolias was a big hit, but Pretty Woman was a movie that Hollywood couldn't really ignore-making over $400 million, at the time of its release it was the fifth-highest grossing film of ALL TIME, having grosses that put it next to Star Wars & Jaws.  Though it would lose that top five spot later in the year to Ghost (starring Demi Moore, who would spend much of the next decade alongside Julia Roberts as one of the biggest and most-discussed actresses of the era), the signs were clear-Julia Roberts had not just arrived as America's next sweetheart, she was also a movie star who could compete with figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford in terms of box office performance...and as Hollywood would soon find out, she'd demand to get paid like she was worth that much.

(Spoilers Ahead) Mystic Pizza is about three young women who work in a pizza parlor in a small town in Connecticut named Mystic (a real town, in fact).  We have sisters Kat (Gish), the brainy one, and Daisy (Roberts), the sexy rebellious one, joined by JoJo (Taylor), their horny friend who just left her husband-to-be Bill (D'Onofrio) at the alter.  After JoJo breaks off her engagement (but not her relationship) with Bill in the film's opening scenes, we spend a summer with these three young women, all dealing with their various romantic relationships.  JoJo is trying to find a balance between her independence and giving her life over to a man, while Kat is shedding her goody-two-shoes layers before attending Yale by becoming smitten with (and eventually sleeping with) the adult man (Moses) whose daughter she is nannying for.  We also get an interlude with Daisy falling for a guy from the right-side-of-the-tracks named Charlie (Storke) who has dropped out of law school & is struggling with his uptight New England family (in his film debut, Matt Damon plays his little brother in a scene late in the picture...you gotta wonder if Roberts & Damon spent any of their time on the Ocean's pictures discussing that this was not their first film together).

The movie Mystic Pizza is more of an ensemble piece than Pretty Woman, and doesn't necessarily "star" Julia Roberts (she doesn't even get top billing), though you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise looking at it now.  Roberts is magnetic here, wonderfully stealing every scene she's in, even against formidable talent like Taylor & Gish.  There's a scene early in the picture where she's playing pool, and she's so unfathomably sexy with her mane of iconic hair and that sly, Lloyd's-of-London-worthy smile coming out that the entire movie sort of falls silent as you can hear everyone's blood pressure start to rise.  The movie gains from this, as it's not a particularly funny or groundbreaking picture, but having so many likable & impressive young actors early in their careers makes it feel fresh.

I will note, that while I was prepared for Roberts to be intoxicating here (this film is part of her legend for a reason), what I was not expecting was how unfathomably sexy Vincent D'Onofrio is in this movie.  I would not normally name-check D'Onofrio as a sex symbol (he's so known for playing characters that really mess with his physical appearance he's hard to pin down in that way), but you will be stunned how upsettingly good-looking he is in this movie.  He plays a fisherman who basically makes Lili Taylor feral (to the point where in one scene she understandably begs him to let her give him oral sex), and girl...I get it.

Next week, we're going to talk about what fame did to Julia Roberts in the early 1990's, and one of the biggest hits of her newfound movie stardom, which would team her alongside another quintessential movie star of the era.

Child's Play (1988)

Film: Child's Play (1988)

Stars: Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Dinah Manoff, Brad Dourif

Director: Tom Holland

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

By the late 1980's, horror films had started to lose some of the in-theater cultural cache that they had once had.  The introduction of the VHS was a huge step for movie fans (something I wish they'd remember today in an era where we abandon the freedom of physical media for the tenuousness of streaming), but it also meant that people didn't have to go to movies to see their favorites, they could just watch films at home.  This also coalesced around the horror industry running out of a lot of great, original ideas.  Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, & Leatherface were people that you could rent at the back of your gas station in increasingly low-grossing films...you didn't need to go out to the actual movie theater to enjoy them, you could do so in your living room.  One of the few creations from this time period that really entered the pantheon, though, was an unlikely horror figure: a child's doll named Chucky.  A surprise hit for MGM, the movie launched an unusual franchise that continues today (Chucky's on cable, y'all).

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of this movie is, to put it mildly, pretty stupid, so bear with me as I try to explain this one.  Charles Lee Ray (Dourif) is a murderer who performs a voodoo curse when cornered in a police fight and transfers his soul to a toy doll.  This doll is bought from a homeless man by Karen (Hicks) because it is the one wish her son Andy (Vincent) has for his birthday.  When Karen's friend Maggie (Manoff) is killed while babysitting Andy, the detective put on the case Mike Norris (Sarandon) assumes that it is Andy who pushed her out the window, but in reality it is the doll, who goes by Ray's nickname of Chucky, as he reveals his true nature to both Karen & Norris while trying to kill them.  After Chucky realizes that he can only get himself out of the doll by transferring his soul into Andy, who first awakened him, this leads to a standoff which gets all three main human characters nearly killed, but ultimately they burn Chucky's remains...with him ready to comeback in a sequel.

As I said, the plot of this movie strains credulity, and is easy to mock (it is a running joke in my family that my mom, whenever this movie shows up in commercials around Halloween, would refer to Chucky as a "naughty dolly," and my mom not being someone who is impervious to horror movies shows how easy it is to smirk at this creation).  It shouldn't work...but it does.  The film does have some moments of horror.  When Karen realizes that Chucky doesn't have batteries & Andy is telling the truth...it's a good jump scare, particularly if you didn't know it was coming, which of course given Chucky's place in pop culture today would be impossible for a modern audience member, even one going in fresh to the Child's Play franchise like me.  But for the most part the movie's horror elements can't really work.  It is never really explained how, for example, Chucky can convincingly overpower grown adults who could clearly break off the arm of a normal doll, or why Karen doesn't just throw the doll away the second her son starts projecting onto it post her friend's death (as any normal parent would do in this circumstance).  That Chucky's body count is so low at least tries to reflect this, but it also makes him less believable as a threat.

Where it does work is in the humor.  Dourif is perfectly cast as the rough-and-tumble killer with a sly sense of humor.  The effects of the talking doll are pretty good for 1988, but it's the personality that Dourif inflects that sells this, making him seem like a comedic mob hood out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon...except that he truly intends on killing everyone in his pathway.  Dourif's vocal work keeps you interested, particularly given how late in the film he shows up (for the first thirty minutes it's not entirely clear if Andy is mad or if Chucky is real), and once he's totally revealed to everyone you get to see why the franchise would skew toward comedy.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Mummy's Ghost, The Uninvited, House of Dracula, She-Wolf of London, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Revenge of the Creature, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Village of the Damned, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead, The Wicker Man, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Halloween, The Amityville Horror, When a Stranger Calls, Friday the 13th, The Evil Dead, Poltergeist, A Nightmare on Elm Street

Madame Sousatzka (1988)

Film: Madame Sousatkza (1988)

Stars: Shirley MacLaine, Navin Chowdhry, Shabana Azmi, Peggy Ashcroft, Twiggy

Director: John Schlesinger

Oscar History: No nominations, but MacLaine became the only woman to win Best Drama Actress at the Globes and not get an Oscar nod that year.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Shirley MacLaine-click here to learn more about Ms. MacLaine (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are finishing our month devoted to Shirley MacLaine with a trip into the late-1980's.  MacLaine after The Turning Point entered an unusual phase, where she was quickly box office gold again, and scored two major hits: Steel Magnolias in 1989, and Terms of Endearment in 1983, which won the Best Picture Oscar & won MacLaine the Oscar for Best Actress.  These two films are arguably the movies that MacLaine is best-known for to modern audiences, but it's worth realizing that MacLaine was only cited for an Oscar for one of them, which gets us to a weird fact for Shirley.  MacLaine has been nominated for five Oscars & won once, a respectable number in a career.  But when you look at the Golden Globes, it's hard not to think that she should have more Oscar citations.  She has been nominated ten times for a Golden Globe for film acting & not had it translate to the Oscars-that's more than ANY other actor.  More than Jack Lemmon, more than Barbra Streisand, more even than Meryl Streep.  This is weird because some of these films were very Bait-y and got cited for other acting trophies (The Children's Hour, Being There, Postcards from the Edge), but perhaps the strangest is our film today.  Madame Sousatzka gave Shirley the distinction of being the only person (to date) to ever win Best Actress in a Drama to not get a nomination at the Oscars that year for Best Actress.

(Spoilers Ahead) Madame Sousatzka is the story of the titular madame (MacLaine), a Russian immigrant who is a brilliant piano teacher, but whose personal demons kept her from being a great success on the stage.  She is tutoring Manek (Chowdhry), a promising musician who lives in a poor household with his single mother, and who is determined to become a great concert pianist.  The two have divergent viewpoints on how he should approach life, with Madame oftentimes intruding not just on his sensibilities about music (preferring the likes of Bach & Beethoven over more modern music), but also on what he reads & how he dresses.  This is all done with a number of outside forces trying to recruit Manek to start his career earlier than Madame Sousatzka expects, and worries from the childless Madame that she is trying to force young Manek to choose between she and his own mother in terms of where his allegiances lie.

The film doesn't break up much new ground, and honestly it aged poorly.  In 1988, the story of an aging white woman trying to instill the lessons & culture of a bunch of dead white men to an impoverished young Indian man wouldn't reek of "problematic" in the same way it does today (even if, let's be real, it probably should have).  This aging problem aside, it's still a routine story, and the story doesn't give us enough understanding, particularly of Manek's mother, to give us some sort of dimensionality beyond the typical "teacher/student" tale we all know by heart.

In terms of MacLaine's Oscar chances, it's definitely the type of film that Oscar would go for-they're all about aging stars in inspirational stories, and particularly in the 1980's, there was a welcomeness to nominating aging actors as often as they could find them.  I think for this year, MacLaine was a victim of a strong field.  Glenn Close & Melanie Griffith were both in Best Picture nominees, Jodie Foster was having a huge "she's a star as an adult" part in The Accused, Meryl Streep was, well, Meryl Streep, & Sigourney Weaver was packing a double punch with dual nominations.  It's hard to even say if MacLaine was in sixth place-both Christine Lahti (Running on Empty) and Susan Sarandon (Bull Durham) were very in the running & might have been next up to bat.

And that's where we're going to leave Shirley this month.  Her career has thankfully continued in the coming decades, getting more Globe nominations (Postcards from the Edge, Used People, In Her Shoes), but Terms of Endearment has (to date) been her final dance with Oscar, mirroring in many ways actresses like Susan Hayward & Susan Sarandon whom Oscar loved, and then gave Best Actress & forgot.  Next month, we're going to get to a different Oscar winner, one who worked with Hitchcock relatively early in her career but whose career otherwise would make her the least-likely Hitchcock blonde imaginable.

OVP: Die Hard (1988)

Film: Die Hard (1988)

Stars: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Alexander Godunov, Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald VelJohnson, James Shigeta

Director: John McTiernan

Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Film Editing, Sound, Sound Editing, Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

In recent years, the controversy over what constitutes a "Christmas movie" has become a weird social media obsession.  People get into arguments over whether or not a film having even the remotest connection to Christmas qualifies it as a "holiday film," in one of those internet arguments that doesn't actually mean anything, but is a welcome distraction from the dystopia of 2020.  Few films have highlighted this problem better than Die Hard, the 1980's action-adventure staple, and possibly the "most important" American film that I had never seen before I, deciding to wade into the Christmas film debate (spoiler alert-it's a Christmas movie) decided to indulge my inner-action hero & catch it in time for the holiday season.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers on John McClane (Willis), a New York City cop who is visiting his estranged wife Holly (Bedelia) in Los Angeles, where she is a high-powered executive at the Nakatomi Corporation.  During the holiday Christmas party, which McClane is invited to, a group of terrorists, led by Hans Gruber (Rickman), invade the building, killing the security guards & imprisoning the party guests, with only McClane not held captive.  He begins to use his New York City street-smarts to outfox Gruber, taking out his men one-by-one, with the help of LA Police Sergeant Al Powell (VelJohnson) on the ground.  The film ends with Gruber falling from the building, his attempts to steal $600 million in bearer bonds ruined (and almost all of his men dead, though one is left alive for Powell to shoot), and with John & Holly reuniting before the credits roll.

Die Hard was met with mixed reviews when it initially came out, and it's not difficult to see why.  The plot is repetitive, and it's not subtle.  Gruber is pure evil, as if plucked out of a James Bond film, and several aspects of the film require suspension of belief, specifically the complete incompetence of the FBI, LAPD, and of several of the party guests, particularly a man named Ellis who foolishly thinks he can outfox Gruber.  Other than John, Holly, Al, & Gruber, no one in this movie has so much as two cents worth of brain cells, and it makes it a bit thin.

But...I didn't care.  Die Hard may be on its surface quite stupid, but it's also incredibly well-constructed.  The action sequences are universally impressive & well-choreographed.  The film's editing and sound effects are sharp & fast-paced (certain scenes involving Willis hanging down an elevator shaft or off the side of the skyscraper are the stuff of legend now, but even if you know they're coming it's thrilling & well-cut).  And the performances are great.  Willis wasn't an action star at the time (many thought Fox was nuts for spending so much money to secure a TV actor for this role), but he was afterwards for a reason.  He has an everyman appeal that's impossible to deny (sheer star power), and he's sexy as hell in his dirty white tank.  Alan Rickman is his equal as the nasty Gruber, both parts camp & swagger; he was also an unknown, and would suddenly come to Oscar's attention after this.

And the visual effects are dynamite (sometimes literally).  This is in an era more focused on practical effects, but they totally work as we see McClane & Gruber tear apart the gigantic skyscraper, in some ways a throwback to the disaster films of the 1970's.  While the hardest to pull off was likely the gigantic explosion at the base of the building, my favorites were the later scenes involving Willis cascading off of the roof & through a glass building in almost seamless precision.  Die Hard is not Citizen Kane, but it earns its place as a modern classic of action-adventure even 30+ years after its initial release.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

Film: Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)
Stars: Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Charles Fleischer, Kathleen Turner, Amy Irving
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Oscar History: 6 nomination/4 wins (Best Film Editing*, Sound, Sound Effects Editing*, Visual Effects*, Art Direction, Cinematography...and a fourth Honorary Oscar for "animation direction")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

When I write these articles, you might have noticed I put "Snap" or "(Not So) Snap" Judgment Ranking for my star rating.  This indicates whether or not this is the first time I've seen a movie or whether this is something that I'm revisiting for a second (or hundredth) time.  On rare occasions, though, I don't actually know the answer as to whether or not I've seen a movie.  I am really OCD about movie lists and spreadsheets, but when it comes to specific movies, I don't know if it's just a case where I've seen parts of the film or whether I saw the whole thing.  That's the case with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a landmark 1988 film that was nominated in both Sound categories amongst six Oscar citations (this week our review theme is Sound nominees at the Oscars).  So full disclosure-some parts of Roger Rabbit had an air of familiarity (I knew the twist, and not because I'd read about it before), but by-and-large after watching, I feel confident enough that I haven't seen this movie full-through to warrant a "Not So."

(Spoilers Ahead) But enough of my minutia-let's get to the film at hand.  Roger Rabbit is a live-action/animated film that takes a lot of its cues from film noir.  The movie takes place in the late 1940's, and it's a world where "toons" and humans live side by side with each other, though there is some animosity between the two worlds.  One of the humans who struggles with toons is Eddie Valiant (Hoskins), a washed-up detective whose brother was killed by a toon during a bank robbery, and he holds prejudices against them.  He is forced into a situation of defending a toon, though, when after being hired to track film star Roger Rabbit (Fleischer) and his voluptuous wife Jessica (Turner for speaking, Irving for singing), Roger is framed for murder by Judge Doom (Lloyd), and they form an unlikely alliance as they try to clear Roger's name.

Roger Rabbit was a landmark production that took almost a decade to come to light as Disney was handling its own nightmares in its animation department, and the film ended up finally happening due to Steven Spielberg & Amblin Entertainment getting involved.  While the film's visual effects were groundbreaking at the time, it's actually the cartoons that are featured in the film that are truly jaw-dropping considering the copyrights at stake.  While it's not shocking to see Mickey Mouse & Donald Duck in a Disney animated film, them being alongside the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker, Betty Boop, & Porky Pig is insane, particularly since Spielberg amassed most of the voice actors that these characters are most associated with-the film is helped by adding in two instantly iconic cartoon characters (Roger & Jessica Rabbit), but even as a curiosity it's worth investigating.

That said, the movie's great-sure, it's cliche, but it's mining that cliche for some fun camp, and I loved it.  Bob Hoskins is perfectly cast as Eddie, using his tough guy persona to great affect and keeping the ridiculousness grounded, and Turner/Irving give a performance for the ages as Jessica, who gets away with jokes you couldn't dream are coming out of a Disney character's mouth.  It's a fun, joyous, predictable ride from start to finish.

The film won six Oscar nominations, as well as a special trophy for its landmark animation.  The visual effects are the best of these.  While the strings are clear still to modern audiences, this is a marked improvement on even a few years earlier where you had live-action figures alongside humans in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Pete's Dragon.  The sound work is also strong-this requires a lot of seamless voiceover work to make it compelling (mad props again to Hoskins for interacting with essentially a green screen so well, and creating such chemistry with Roger/Jessica), and the toon town effects are delightful & witty; this is also a credit to the editors, who took a plot that could have been a slog (parodies of noir oftentimes are) and kept it bright, but still moody.  The Art Direction is fine, if a bit played for parody (there's no set that feels like it wasn't plucked out of a Dashiell Hammett novel, and not always in the best way as there could have been more fun in recreating aspects of Toontown), and the cinematography also could have had more ambience or leaned in a little heavier into the noir aspects of the picture.  All-in-all, though, whether it was for the first time or the second, Roger Rabbit holds up.

OVP: A Cry in the Dark (1988)

Film: A Cry in the Dark (1988)
Stars: Meryl Streep, Sam Neill
Director: Fred Schepisi
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Meryl Streep)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

With our week devoted to Best Actress on Day 3, we're going to have a bit of a twofer here with another Meryl Streep performance.  With Monday's One True Thing and today's A Cry in the Dark, I have officially seen every single performance that Meryl Streep has ever been nominated for an Oscar for, which is pretty cool (for the record, I cannot state the same for other oft-nominated performers like Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, & Jack Nicholson, though I'm working on it!).  A Cry in the Dark (also known as Evil Angels outside of the United States), was a departure for Streep, sporting dark black hair & receiving the last nomination she'd win for a drama for seven years (she'd do mostly comedies or unsuccessful serious films for the new few years), and it was a flop when it initially came out.  It's most noted in today's culture for a single line of dialogue: "the dingo took my baby."

(Spoilers Ahead) Michael (Neill) and Lindy (Streep) Chamberlain are devout Seventh-Day Adventists with Michael serving as pastor at their local parish.  They have two young boys and an infant daughter, and are out on a vacation to Australian tourist destination Ayers Rock.  While camping, they see something coming out of their tent, but Lindy is the only person who can clearly see that it's a dingo, and that it has taken their infant daughter.  Panicked, the two obviously search for their daughter, to no avail.  The public becomes unusually interested in the couple after they do several interviews, first in search of the baby, and then more so because the public keeps demanding more information, with many attributing falsities or using religious bigotry (Seventh-Day Adventist is not a common religion in Australia) to attack the Chamberlains.  Eventually, they stand trial twice (the second time with Lindy being indicted) before they are finally exonerated, after their daughter's jacket is found near where the dingos had been spotted.

The film is fascinating from a practical standpoint for a variety of reasons.  For starters, this was really only the middle of the conversation about the Chamberlains-in 1988, public opinion was still not with the Chamberlains, and there were still a lot of open questions over their guilt.  This would continue into 1995, when an inquest into the cause of death of their daughter, Azaria, was found to be still be unknown and then finally in 2012 it was decided conclusively that a dingo had been responsible for the death of the infant, and the Chamberlains won over $1 million for wrongful arrest.  In subsequent years there have been far more documented cases of dingos attacking children and infants.

The movie is also interesting because it sort of predicted that the idea of the "celebrity trial" would dominate the coming decades.  The Chamberlains went from being ordinary people to being household names in Australia, really the first time something like this had happened in the country.  The fact that this true crime tale wouldn't do well in American box office is odd, because over the coming decades the Menendez Brothers, Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias, and John & Patsy Ramsey would become front-page news for months, turning ordinary people into infamous names.  This was still a relatively new concept in 1988, before a 24-hour news cycle would be able to turn such cases into national affairs, and the movie does a good job of tracking exactly how that happens.

The film itself is good, though I wasn't super beholden to it.  Streep's accent work is flawless (this was one of the many such accents that earned her reputation in the 1980's), but I do feel like this is the rare Streep dramatic performance where she is too reliant on the real-life figure.  Lindy Chamberlain was a notoriously standoffish person, someone whose public persona indicted her far more than the evidence (people thought she wasn't "grieving" outwardly enough for a mother who had lost her child), and Streep shows this, but she doesn't give an insight as to why Lindy is like this, or how this is affecting us until far too late in the film.  There's still technical prowess here, and she's better than a lot of the missed opportunities in 1988 for Best Actress (particularly Oscar's victor), but I left this simply with my expectations met, rather than exceeded like we saw with One True Thing earlier this week.

OVP: Bagdad Cafe (1988)

Film: Bagdad Cafe (1988)
Stars: Marianne Sagebrecht, CCH Pounder, Jack Palance
Director: Percy Adlon
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Calling You")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The 1988 Academy Awards are an odd duck when it comes to the Best Original Song category, because the Oscars chose to inexplicably stick to only three nominees.  Looking through a few of my handier Oscar resources, I cannot find an actual reason as to why the Oscars went with three, as it certainly wasn't a lack of options.  You have not only Disney's "Why Should I Worry" from the Oliver & Company soundtrack (it would be another year before the music branch would have a ten-year crush on the Mouse House), as well as a major radio-friendly behemoth like "Kokomo" (Cocktail), which was from the Beach Boys & was literally a #1 hit with a major presence in the film (both of these tunes would be nominated for the Golden Globes).  Instead, the Oscars decided to skip both of these movies and instead honor a lilting ballad by a gospel singer from a movie that is almost completely forgotten today, Bagdad Cafe.

(Spoilers Ahead) Bagdad Cafe is an odd movie, I'm just going to start there before we get into the plot as the movie reads as conventional if you just go for a description.  Jasmin (Sagebrecht) is a German woman who has seemingly been abandoned by her husband on the side of the road in the middle of the California desert.  She comes across a rundown gas station/cafe/motel called the Bagdad Cafe, run by Brenda (Pounder), an irritable woman with two kids and a husband who has also just left her.  Brenda is suspicious of Jasmin, first about where she came from and then why she's so kind to her and her family, but eventually comes around on her, realizing that they have more in common than they don't.  The movie is populated with a series of odd characters who come to the Bagdad Cafe from their own humdrum world, including Rudi (Palance, whose career had a major rebound after this film which eventually resulted in him winning an Oscar four years later for City Slickers), a former Hollywood set decorator who becomes obsessed with painting (and wooing) Jasmin.  The film ends with everyone being friends, and Jasmin working for Brenda & potentially marrying Rudi.

Like I said, that sounds pretty normal, right?  The oddities start to come in when you look at the way Adlon approaches the film.  The set and characters are desolate, as if there's always more story behind them onscreen than what meets the eye.  There's Brenda's son, who is obsessed with Bach and read to me as "we're supposed to understand this guy is gay" until randomly the baby that Brenda is always throwing to anyone who will take it turns out to be her son's child, indicating a romantic life with a female that otherwise has not been hinted at before.  We also rarely get any indication as to why Jasmin and her husband seemingly broke up in the middle of the desert (there's a fight over something in the opening scenes, but it's in German and not subtitled, so we have no idea if he'll come back or not, or why he left a coffee canister on the side of the road).  The film is constantly about observation and feeling, but rarely does it make sense to someone who is involved with the plot.

These sorts of dangling participles in the movie should frustrate me more than they did, but the film is interesting and pleasant enough, and the sandy "Calling You" makes you feel a bit finer about the movie.  I've read reviews of the film, and I think it was considered more revolutionary at the time than it is now, a movie essentially where nothing actually happens, but we just check in on a few people who are living on the outskirts of life for a while.  I didn't take much to Pounder (an actress I generally adore) as a screaming woman who seems to only understand two modulations (for the first 70 minutes of the movie, she treats pretty much everyone around her like garbage, which is excusable to an extent considering her hard life but feels rough after a while).  But Bagdad Cafe never stops being interesting, even if you leave it unfulfilled.  The song is probably the movie's best attribute, though it doesn't have the same film-defining chorus of its Oscar vanquisher "Let the River Run" that year, but while I get why critics found it charming, I left pretty uninspired, having witnessed something that clearly had a vision in mind, but can't decide between total abstraction & narratively compelling.