Tag: drama

Mesmerized (1985)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome to November, Enemaniacs!

As I continue to crank through a backlog of movies that I have built over the course of about 13 or 14 years through buying multi-packs of cheap-o movies on DVD, this was a title I’ve been vaguely aware of for more than 30 years, mostly because of the two lead stars in this movie. This week, we’ll be diving deep into 1985’s Mesmerized starring Jodie Foster and John Lithgow. Mesmerized was a co-production between RKO in the United States as well as the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The UK would get the original release in November 1985, and then the US got it about 13 months later.

Obviously, the lead actors stand out the most when you’d be perusing the drama section at your video store, but it’s a period piece and it’s hard to say if it really would have stuck out to too many people in the mid-80s. After all, Jodie Foster’s star was brightest in the late 70s and the 90s. Most of her roles in the 80s went largely unnoticed until her Oscar win for The Accused. John Lithgow had lots and lot and lots of roles in the 80s, as well as a pair of Oscar nominations of his own for The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment. Still, he was largely more in line with what you’d consider a character actor for most of his career up to that point. So it’s possible this movie was not really carrying the star power at that time as you might think it could a decade later.

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Gleaming the Cube (1989)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

Oh yeah, dudes and dudettes, it’s some more radical times ahead for this week’s B-Movie Enema review!

This week, we’re going to be Gleaming the Cube and… well, hopefully… trying to learn what that term even means because it was clearly important enough to name an entire movie around it. This movie comes to us in that sweet period in the 80s that was totally trying to ride the gnarly coattails of tubular fads to the max. We’ve talked about skateboarding before on here. For more grindage, check out my review of 1986’s Thrashin’ from David Winters.

I don’t think I have much more to say, but I will bring up three important people connected to Gleaming the Cube that are of note. The first is the screenwriter for this film, Michael Tolkin. Tolkin was still relatively new to the scene at this point. He had one screenplay prior to this movie, the 1982 unfinished film Gossip. Gleaming the Cube was his first film and he also served as Associate Producer as well. Frankly, this isn’t that bad of an accomplishment. Sure, the reviews weren’t great, but a lot of people my age and slightly younger really like this movie. However, his big splash came in 1992 when he wrote The Player for Robert Altman. This would garner Tolkin an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Later in the 90s, he wrote the blockbuster Deep Impact. More recently, he developed the very highly appreciated miniseries The Offer about the making of The Godfather.

Directing Gleaming the Cube is Australian Graeme Clifford who was at the helm for the 1982 drama Frances that racked up a pair of acting Oscar nominations for Jessica Lange and Kim Stanley. While his directing credits aren’t huge, his editing credits are. He directed the wonderful 1973 thriller Don’t Look Now. He followed that up in 1975 with the all-time cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Then, in 1976, he edited David Bowie’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. He finished out his editing career with Sylvester Stallone’s F.I.S.T. in 1978 and the 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice starring Jack Nicholson and, hey… Jessica Lange. I’m guessing that might have led to her getting the role in Frances.

Let’s be serious, though… The draw of Gleaming the Cube is the hot up-and-coming Christian Slater.

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