The Season's Most Wanted Tapes
The Season's Most Wanted Tapes
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco [Video Troll]
Published in: The Manila Times, January 04, 1988
IN the local video trade, the term "most wanted" is seldom without its criminal overtones. The cat-and-mouse game that many video outlets like to play with copyright enforcement agents is often classic keystone-cop chase, and at any rate, copyright laws have fared little better in this country than the ongoing firecracker ban. Solely as a point of interest, here's a short run-down of some of the "most wanted" titles of the last quarter of 1987, a number of which have already been previously screened in Metro Manila theaters:
THE UNTOUCHABLES - Director Brian De Palma has obviously wanted to do a vintage mobster movie for some time now, and probably one on the Capone mob in particular. But his hair-raising film "Scarface" was set in modern-day Miami and not in the Chicago underworld of the 1930s, and featured immigrant cocaine-runners from Cuba instead of trench-coated bootleggers in spats and fedoras. De Palma rectifies this no-less-fortunate detour with a recent re-make of the legendary television series starring Robert Stack, drawing on the short-lived exploits of a decidedly more benign Elliot Ness and his quartet of unlikely crime-busters. Although based on factual accounts, the characters are unmistakably De Palma, as is the carefully-crafted screenplay. Landmark performances by Sean Connery and the great De Niro recall at least one apt passage: if you haven't caught this one yet, you must be looking in all the wrong places!
INNERSPACE - Executive Producer Steven Spielberg makes this breakneck comedy-cum-thriller as good as money in the bank. Blending a memorable science-fiction plot from the '50s with a wholesome, upbeat tempo in the patented Spielberg manner, the film boasts of credible special effects, high-speed chases, gadgetry galore, and enough vicarious adrenalin to keep you on the edge of your seat from the opening bell. Dennis Quaid plays a renegade test pilot who could be Harrison Ford's twin brother, reduced into microbe-size for a medical experiment and inadvertently injected into a neurotic supermarket-teller's plump behind. An international spy-ring determined to snatch the miniaturized Quaid for the arms market sends the flick into high gear. Also stars Martin Short, Meg Ryan and Kevin McCarthy.
MY DEMON LOVER - This multi-faceted situational comedy of recent produce is largely overrated and tends to disappoint precisely because of this. Featuring a huggable pair of star-crossed lovers named Kaz and Denny (Scott Valentine and Michelle Little respectively), the finely-tuned exchanges make for deliciously-barbed dialogue at the onset, only to falter at the home-stretch and fizzle out into a sort-of slapstick steeplechase with Hammer Film overtones and a Big Apple twang. Kaz transforms into Linda Blair whenever his borderline libido is aroused, which is more than enough for a full-length creature-feature considering Denny's peaches-and-cream pucker. Visual yum-yums and a lot of running about.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “The Season's Most Wanted Tapes” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, January 04, 1988
