Movie Review - Super 8

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!"

Top Ten Songs About The 80s

So we jived through the 50s...

We couldn't remember the 60s...

We were born in the 70s (well, I was, anyway)...

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.


10. David Bowie - 1984 / Eurythmics - Sex Crime (1984) / Tina Turner - 1984

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?

9. John Mayer - 83

Apparently we're all supposed to hate John Mayer because he's a precocious pretty-boy who's had his hands (and, no doubt, other bodily parts) all over Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston and a dozen other Hollywood bimboids. Ah, good on him. I'm not jealous. (If he ever goes near Kate Winslet though, I'm calling him out.) Anyway, this is probably the best song he's ever recorded, from early in his career, before he went all rockstar cliché.

8. Kid Rock - All Summer Long (1989)

Ah, but if it's rockstar cliché you're after, look no further than Kid Rock, bringing the obscenity of his expense account to this video with speedboats, tattoos and pretty girls. Not a bad tune though, despite the fact that he owes most of it to Warren Zevon and Lynyrd Skynyrd. At least he's not afraid to own up to the thievery...

7. Randy Travis - 1982

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.

6. Camera Obscura - Eighties Fan

The word 'wistful' was invented for this song. Elsewhere in Scotland, Stuart Murdoch is seething with jealousy at lines like these...

Run away to a bed and breakfast
Console yourself with the Reader's Digest
Ringing the Yellow Pages all alone

And for a certain kind of girl, there's no greater chat up line than this...

You say your life will be the death of you
Tell me, do you wash your hair in honey dew?

5. Manic Street Preachers - 1985

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.

4. Regina Spektor - Dance Anthem of the 80s

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.

3. Ash - True Love 1980

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!

2. Denim - I'm Against The Eighties

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

Guilty as charged, m'lud.

1. Bowling For Soup - 1985

And so we reach, unarguably (don't even try), the greatest ever song ABOUT the 80s... and a promise fulfilled to Bowling For Soup's Jaret Reddick that if I ever compile such a Top Ten, his band will be Number One.

No contest...

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.



Oh, and Richard Thompson does a pretty mean cover too.


So that was the 80s, my coming of age. What's your favourite song about this decas horribilis?

Don't worry, only one more week to go...

The Expendables

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.