I'm late reviewing Super 8, so I have little time left to convince you to go see the best film of the summer before it departs our multiplexes... but if you're one of those people who believes "they don't make 'em like they used to when I was a kid" and you were a kid back in the 1980s, you really are missing a treat.
JJ Abrams has recaptured the spirit of movies like The Goonies, Back To The Future, ET and Gremlins in this heartwarming monster movie that, yes, may veer ever so slightly off the tracks into schmaltz (particularly with its 'Our Two Dads' subplot) but ends up no worse for that. Because, you know what? Those films we love from the 80s came with a fair slice of schmaltz too... but they also made you care. And I cared about this film more than I have any other movie of the summer.
Watching Super 8, I yearned for my youth. Abrams could easily have told this story in the present day, but it wouldn't have had half as much charm. I live a big chunk of my life on the internet, yet still I found myself longing for simpler days when the most complex bit of tech in a teenager's bedroom was a handheld Pac Man, when kids made models and played vinyl records and argued with their siblings over what to watch on the only TV in the house. Rose-tinted nostalgia? Perhaps... I do remember the first time I saw Back To The Future back in 1985 thinking how much better it would have been to grow up in the 50s with Marty McFly's parents... Hollywood only ever reminds us of the good times in movies like this... but is that really such a bad thing?
I couldn't help but sympathise with the Sheriff Pruitt when he told a youth with a clunky cassette Walkman... "kids walking round with their own stereos is the last thing we need - it's a slippery slope!"
Which brings us to the most maligned decade of the latter half of the 20th Century. Quite unfairly, if you ask me. The 80s were ace. They gave us Jet Set Willy, The A-Team, Back To The Future, The Queen Is Dead, Frank Miller's Daredevil, Rubix Cube, Born In The USA and Tunnel Of Love, Moonlighting, John Byrne's Fantastic Four, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Total Eclipse Of The Heart... and all they asked in return was our souls. Sounds like a perfectly fair trade to me.
Anyway, as usual, this isn't a list of Best Songs FROM The 80s... just Best Songs ABOUT the 80s. Don't make me have to explain that to you again.
Having said that, let's start with three songs that were actually recorded in the devilish decade, each dealing with the year George Orwell predicted fascism would run rampant. In reality, we had Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan... phew, lucky escape there, eh, George?
A more respectable face of American Mid-West musicianship, Randy Travis arrived on the scene in 1985 when Marty McFly was just beginning to travel in time. Here Randy's experimenting with a little cross-chronal communication of his own, calling on the phone company and the post office to help him contact the girl he left behind in 1982. Probably Kim Wilde.
Trust the Manics to pour scorn on the decade of their teenage riot, remembering a year in which Orwell was proved right and the Civil War failed. Still, from misery comes hope...
In 1985, my words they came alive, friends were made for life, Morrissey and Marr gave me choice. In 1985, in 1985.
What killed the 80s music scene? If you'd asked me in 1989, I'd have screamed "dance anthems". S-Express, Technotronic, Black Box and their sordid, wailing ilk. (I quite liked MARRS and Pump Up The Volume, but it was a grubby, guilty kind of like, and I knew it was wrong.)
Regina Spektor remembers a much more enticing 80s dance anthem though... if only they'd all sounded this good.
Ash narrowly missed out on last week's list due to the fact that their debut album was called 1977 and kicked off with the sound effect of Lucasfilm Tie Fighters to celebrate the year of their birth.
Those Ash boys grew up fast though... look at what they were getting up to by age 3!
Another artist who really should have made it into last week's list (check out Lawrence's heartfelt 70s tribute The Osmonds if you don't believe me), particularly when you consider that he's not actually that fussed about the decade in which he first shimmied onto the indie-pop scene...
Well I’m against the ‘80s bands that couldn’t play I’m against the ‘80s singers with nothing to say You heard it on the radio You saw it on the TV You still went and bought it
Bruce Springsteen, Madonna Way before Nirvana There was U2 and Blondie And music still on MTV Her two kids in high school They tell her that she's uncool Cuz she's still preoccupied With 19, 19, 1985
Audio & lyrics below, full video on the link above - worth watching, even though the record company don't want me embedding it. After all, there's a danger you might like the song and want to go out and buy it... and that'd never do.
I never thought I'd hear myself saying this about a film, or anything else for that matter, but what The Expendables really needed... no, what it really needed... was more Dolph Lundgren.
Now I'm hardly what you'd call a Dolph Lundgren fan. In fact, up till now, I think I've seen a grand total of two of his films - Rocky IV (which was bollocks) and the original 80s version of The Punisher (which was utter bollocks, though not quite as bollocks as last year's woeful Punisher War Zone). I don't consider Dolph a great actor. Hell, I don't even consider Dolph an actor. Yet unlike many of his aged action hero comrades in The Expendables, Dolph appeared to know exactly what he was doing. He was taking the piss. And if there'd been more of that, The Expendables would have been a much better film. Unfortunately, Slyvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke and (to a lesser extent) Jet Li appear to be taking this material far too seriously. And therein lies the tragedy.
Films like The Expendables can only really work (for me, at least) when they know they're rubbish. When they wedge their tongues firmly in their cheeks and glory in that very rubbish-ocity. Look at Willis. He's only there five minutes, but the smirk doesn't leave his face for a second. (Some believe the wind stuck when he was a particularly smug child and that's just his default expression. This Bruce-fan would never be so cruel.) Even Arnie, wooden as ever, knows he's here to take the piss. Stallone though - Stallone is serious. He's staked his career on this comeback, and he's desperately trying to make some kind of statement. Or rather, SUB KIBE OB STABEMEBNT. And Rourke? Oscar-worthy in The Wrestler, Raspberry-worthy here. That comeback didn't last very long, did it Mickey?
(The less said about Statham, as always, the better. I was disturbed to see him cosying up to Charisma Carpenter though - Cordelia's taste in men doesn't improve with age, does it?)
Don't get me wrong, The Expendables is not an unenjoyable way to spend an hour and a half if you grew up watching daft 80s action movies. There's enough OTT violence and dumb one-liners to satisfy anyone who ever claimed First Blood: Part II or Commando a classic. But we've all grown up a lot since then. Well, all but Sly Stallone. In Sly's world it's still 1985, Reagan's still in the White House, the video shop still rules home entertainment and dumb action movies may still have the PODENDIAL to CHAMGE BHE WORLB. "The Most Awesome Action Cast Ever Assembled"? Pity they couldn't have spared a few dollars for the script.
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