In the 80s, my exposure to Batman looked something like this:

In 1988, they started rerunning “Batman” in syndication on our local CBS affiliate.  Adam West and Burt Ward were the leads as the dynamic duo, and I didn’t tell any of my friends that I made sure I watched EVERY episode.

I remember every villain was given two episodes each.  The first always left our heroes in peril.  As you can imagine, Friday on the first run was the worst, I had to wait until Monday to find out how they were going to escape.

The point?

Batman stories on film and television were effing campy.  That all changed in 1989.

Tim Burton was fresh off his early success with “Beetlejuice” and was building momentum with his adaptation of the Caped Crusader.

Michael Keaton brought us a very different Bruce Wayne/Batman.  Batman used to race to the scene, jump in the middle, and thump the villain with his fists.  He’d also announce every “bat-weapon” before he used it.  Keaton’s portrayal was elusive and in the shadows.  Burton and Keaton knew that less would be more when he wore the Bat-suit and it worked.

I enjoyed how intimidating the look of Batman was.  There had to be a realistic discussion about how a man could be the Batman and the creators of this version had to agree that the psychological power of the legend of Batman was how a man could be Batman.  The look had to be scary opposed to the “friendly neighborhood bat” that we were all used to, since he was going to be someone that had to scare, frightening street thugs and villains.

Speaking of…Jack is still my favorite Joker.  I have nothing against Heath Ledger, Cesar Romero, and I am excited to see what Jared Leto is going to bring, but Jack made me laugh out loud when he was doing terrible things.  That might speak to my personal “issues,” however, I find that thrilling.

Jack’s Joker for me is up there with Jerry Dandridge and Darth Vader…villains that you root for a little bit.  Villains, that when they die at the end of a movie, you realize that the amusement ride has just ended and now you have to unbuckle and stumble out of the cart.

The soundtrack also features music from the one and only Prince (RIP).  His track “Trust” that plays when the Joker comes out on his float throwing out trash bags of money to the masses is perfect and still one of my favorite “movie-moment” songs.

I was dropped off at the theater with my cousin to see this movie.  We went on the second weekend and arrived 15 minutes early.  After we got our tickets and entered the theater, we had to sit 4th row back from the screen.  On its second run, theaters were still packed.  Like it or not, this new version of Batman was a hit and audiences loved Burton’s vision of what Gotham’s lonely hero could become.

“Batman” would be the last movie I would see in theaters from the 1980s.  I couldn’t be sure what to expect from the 90s in film, but”Batman” has become my bridge between those decades.  You’d think I’m a 1980s homer when it comes to movie viewing, but just wait.  I’m going to love sharing some of the movies that inspired me through the 1990s, which turned out to be my favorite decade.

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There are movies that make you say, “Who’s that?”

You look them up on the back of a movie case in a rental store and attempt to find every movie that they have made prior and all of those movies that will follow.

That movie for me was “Glory.”

That person was Denzel.

I was unprepared for the pure power and emotion of the performance he put forth.  He came from out of nowhere for me and he seemed like a seasoned movie star that stole every scene he was in, leaving all of us to wish that he was in every frame.

It was the first movie I’d seen him in and I later rented “The Mighty Quinn.” He was in every frame of that great thriller and the film love affair began.

Thank God for “Glory.”

Not only was it my intro to Denzel, it had Ferris Bueller and Westley in it too.  It was unlike any other movie I’d seen about war.  The first battle doesn’t even take place until well over an hour into the movie.  It had a very “All Quiet on the Western Front” feel to it.  It was about the soldiers “boots” on the ground versus the two sided perspectives you’d see in a war.  The confederate soldiers were ominous, almost ghost-like when they appear out of the smoke and fog during the first battle.  It is one of the most eerie scenes depicted in a war movie that I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing.  The confederates don’t really have faces or perspectives for us to draw from.  Their purpose is opposition and nothing more.

Labeling “Glory” as a Civil War drama is misguided.  It is that, but it is also a story about brotherhood on a very interesting and dysfunctional level.  Part of the journey we take with this story is watching the growth of a unit of men by the films end.

When I think of the movie–outside of it being my thankful introduction to Denzel–I remember the unexpected, deep true power I felt of those last few frames of the soldiers being bundled together in the ground.

Much like there are moments of struggle and choices that we learn from in life, in the end we have the people that stick through it with us in the toughest of times.

Yes, friends fight; and if they can see it through, they become best friends or the brothers that we get to choose.  We all have mentors that teach us.  Some of them become the fathers that we have always wanted to respect and love.

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This next one is similar to “Roxanne” and “Splash.”

No, Daryl Hannah isn’t in it, but it is considered a comedy romance.

A pretty good comedy romance.  Some people’d say great and I wouldn’t disagree with them.

Personally, it’s not a “go to” genre for me.  Most guys that I know don’t have that as their favorite genre either, but I do like a well written, witty, comedy romance, and this one delivers.

At that stage in my life, a lot of the comedy romance movies that I’d seen and enjoyed had one of two things–slapstick/screwball (“Roxanne,” “Bringing up Baby“) or goofy fantasy (“Splash“).

This one was different.  It was mostly dialogue between two people at a time (sometimes 3 or 4 people at most).  I found that I really had to pay attention to what people were saying to each other in order to gain an interest and an understanding of the story that the writers were trying to tell.  There was little movement or action unless people were walking and talking.

It was unlike any type of movie that I was used to or had viewed, yet I found myself surprisingly captivated.

I remember watching it with my mom and sister for the first time and I began understanding what “adult” humor was:  wit, sarcasm, timing, and circumstance.  It was the first time I started laughing at the same time they laughed instead of just laughing because they laughed, like I had learned to do when I was seven or eight.  I actually understood the jokes and found it funny like they did.

In those other comedies I was learning when to laugh.  By the time I had seen this one, I was ready to laugh.

And laugh I did when I watched “When Harry Met Sally” for the first time.

I found that as I watched it, my mom and sister enjoyed Sally’s point of view and I was of course fond of Harry’s cynicism (take in mind I didn’t know what cynicism was at that time but I was learning quickly that I enjoyed his “mood.”)

Sally was cute and annoying (it takes her 5 minutes to order lunch and she is an unapologetic optimist).  Harry was short, goofy looking, and didn’t like anyone or anything.  Perfect matches right?

Looking back, I should’ve known better (SPOILER-of course they will end up together-IT’S A COMEDY ROMANCE!!!).  Again, this was one of the first CRs that I’d actually sat through and I wasn’t jaded at this point with all of the formulaic CRs to follow.  I think that is why I enjoyed it so much.  I view it as my first true Rom-Com and I was young enough for it to be a surprise for me as the story and conflict developed.

I’m stretching a grin across my face as I write this, remembering how naive I was when Harry trudges over to Sally on New Year’s Eve and berates her at the party like he wants to start another war and then it turns into one of the greatest “I love you speeches” ever written.  I seriously remember thinking, “Oh yeah, so they are going to get together.  Huh…look at that.”

This might be the Comedy Romance that ruined the genre for me, actually, because it is the one that I compare the rest to and you can never have a surprise after you have seen your first formula Rom-Com.

Apologies to anyone that has read this before seeing it.  I know that I haven’t been my usual cryptic self while writing about a movie I enjoyed, but it was exciting for me to finally give something away.

Almost as exciting as watching a well written Comedy Romance for the first–as a naive youth–time.

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Prior to conducting the business that is this blog, I would like to take a moment and thank all of my followers.  I have engaged with many people over the last year on both WordPress and the Twits and I have to tell all of you, I have genuinely enjoyed corresponding with ALL of you.  I hope that you have enjoyed your holiday season and I wish you all a happy new year.  2016 will be ours!

Back to it…

This next one is the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.  I have seen it way more than any human being should ever have.  I don’t know why…but I still like this damn cheesy horror/adventure movie.

It starts out simple enough with a family moving into a new apartment downtown.  They meet the grumpy neighbor downstairs, the little person down the hall, the grumpy old lady upstairs, and the nice single lady, all very quickly and briefly at first…but we get to know them all better as the story goes on.

In the family we have the wacky-fun dad, the ditsy mom, the cute little “goldie locks” younger sister, and Atreyu.

Innocently enough, yeah?

Of course the little girl has to lose that damn hypnotic ball down the dark laundry room stairway…

…which leads to her abduction by an apocalypse wielding troll.

“Troll,” as ridiculous as it sounds–is much better than the description I just gave it.  It’s campy, humorous, suspenseful, and…did I mention campy?

My favorite story about this movie comes from a conversation that my mother and her best friend were having over coffee.  My mother’s best friend’s daughter was my best friend…wait what?

Anyways…my best friend and I were playing under feet as my mom and her friend (I called her my adoptive aunt–the best kind) were talking about a strange movie my dad made my mom watch the other day.

Mom: It had Sonny Bono in it.

MBF: Sonny Bono?

Mom: Yes, he’s not in it very long, and he’s terrible…

MBF: Oh! … Is that the one where they turn Sonny Bono into a pickle?

I had to watch this movie after a question like that.

My mother was reluctant…

She let me watch the movie, only after the scene I really wanted to see…she felt it would be too traumatic for me.  Mind you, she didn’t know at this point that I had already watched “Poltergeist.”  I kept that a secret for decades.

So mom wouldn’t let me watch that one crucial scene.  What was I to do?  Who could I turn to?

Yeah, no surprise.  I watched it with Dad one night.  He let me watch the whole thing.  The epic Bono “pickle” scene?   #Unforgettable

After you watch it once and mom finds out about it, she can be mad, but you get to watch it again…you’ve already seen it.

This movie had a ton of the fantasy elements that I was already exposed to in other movies.  Monsters, magic, forests, elves, prophecies, villains, heroes, damsels, and self sacrifice.

Basically, Torok the Troll kidnaps the daughter of the family to use her as his future bride.  He uses magic to take her shape and disguise himself  so that he can terrorize everybody in the apartment by turning them and their environments into his magical minions.

Torok is not the only magical being at the complex.  Eunice St. Clair, Torok’s ex lover is there to stop him and grabs Atreyu as an ally.

Shenanigans ensue, jungles grow, there’s a climactic battle, I think you get the picture.

At the end of the day, it’s a silly little B-Movie with lame special effects, cool costumes, and a very decent score by Richard Band.

I’m really glad my dad let me watch that scene…the movie didn’t make any sense until I saw what sprang from that Bono pickle…wink wink.

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My father passed away over a year ago this last August.  There have been a few of these posts that have been difficult for me.  “The Cowboys” and “Blues Brothers” come to mind.

This one will be another challenge.

Every time I think of this next movie, I think of my dad.  We were only able to watch it together one time, unfortunately. I think that the reason being was that it was hard for him to watch it with other people.

He was a man that had a hard time letting go of his past self.  I might be reading into this (I’m sure I’m going to hear it from my sister if she happens upon this), but it is how I feel.

Make no mistake, even though we only saw it one time together, my father L-O-V-E-D this movie.

My mom and my uncles used to tell me stories about my dad’s 67 cherry red GTO that he used to “rod” and race when he was in high school.  It had a 400 in it and he had a pair of brass knuckles for the handle of the manual gear shift.

I was told he loved it.

My father was a man of few words and if someone else was willing to talk about it while he was in the room, he’d let them.  I used to look over at him when other people were telling his stories.  He always had a mischievous grin under his big beard as he listened sitting in his chair with his arms crossed.

He used to talk about what a mistake it was to ever let that GTO go.

“Man, I could kick myself,” he’d say.

As it pertains to “American Graffiti” I always felt that my dad was reliving his own life when that VHS was spooling through the machine that projected those images of the cars driving around that town in that movie.

It wasn’t just the racing that brought him back (there’s really only one quick scene).  It was the culture that was relived in that movie. I can’t think of a movie off hand that knew it’s own tone better than this one, and it never surrenders that message throughout.

The dialogue alone gave my dad flashbacks:

“Oh, rats.”

“Don’t you think the Beach Boys are boss?”

“Hey, man, who cut the cheese?”

“…it only took me one night to realize if brains were dynamite you couldn’t blow your nose.”

People don’t talk like that any more.  The “assumed innocence” that oozed from the 1960s bled out all over the screen after George Lucas created “American Graffiti.”

For my father, this was as nostalgic for him as “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “War Games,”Back to the Future,” etc. (you all know where to find the list) 😉 were for me.

I think that as much as he enjoyed it, he wanted to watch it alone where he could reminisce in his own mind.

I remember randomly taking some looks back at my father as he would watch on and he had some tears in his eyes, in moments through the film that seemed out of place.  I think that the movie just moved him very closely and “took him back”…and he knew he really couldn’t “go back.”

Later I remembered asking my dad why he got rid of his red GTO.

“Well son, I wanted to get married and have a family.  That wasn’t a family car and as much as I miss it, I’d never keep that damn thing if it meant I couldn’t have you guys.”

As I sit writing this and choking back some tears, I remember thinking how corny that sounded to me when I was in junior high.  All it does is make me want to cry now. Looking back, it was a rare moment where my father was trying to have an honest conversation with me about how he felt.  Now that I have a son of my own, I understand it.

At the end of the day, “American Graffiti” is a great movie that I will watch hopefully many more times before I pass.

I love the atmosphere, the dialogue, and the “young” actors (Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams, Charles Martin Smith, and Harrison Ford) that had the energy and zeal that this 1960s portrayal needed.

Trying to explain scenes and plot points in this movie would not only do it injustice, it would confuse the hell out of everyone.

I remember when my parents first rented it.  I asked them what it was about and they couldn’t really explain it.  They just kept saying, “It’s about the 60s,” and “You’ll just have to watch it.”

We did watch it…

…and they were right.

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