The Mighty Quinn (1989)

This is a movie I had never, ever heard of: The Mighty Quinn (1989). It's apparently a murder mystery featuring Denzel Washington fairy early in his career, just before his big breaks to stardom. 

Apparently the late Roger Ebert praised this movie to the high heavens and called it one of the best films of 1989. Well, I saw it, and it isn't. It's interesting, but not in the same league as Do the Right Thing, My Left Foot, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Say Anything, et al. Ebert's main points in the brief one paragraph synopsis I read were that (1) it was fun and (2) it was underlooked. Well, OK. Sure. I'm also fun and underlooked, and I'm not a best film of 1989 either. 

Nevertheless, it is better than it should be considering that almost no one has heard of it. Denzel is Xavier, a police chief of a town in Jamaica, and has a really, really good accent throughout. Seriously good. He could teach Jamaican accents. 

There is a murder of a very important, rich man on the island, and a lot of money is apparently missing. Denzel (for some reason I prefer calling him by his real name than his character) is tasked with finding his childhood friend Maubee, who is the last person seen in the vicinity - in fact, who Denzel stopped for speeding/reckless driving just moments after the murder, without realizing he was a suspect. Maubee goes to ground, Denzel searches for him, and meanwhile high political pressure begins to bear on him from above - where is the money? Why can't you find the money? Who has the money? Where is Maubee? WHO is Maubee? 

Whenever Denzel digs deep into the crime, he is chastised and threatened and cajoled, etc. The mystery deepens as the movie progresses, but I won't give anything away in case you should someday catch this on TV. But there are several clever things going on that all come together near the end. 

The movie is dripping in atmosphere - vibrant sun, interesting characters with seemingly full lives of their own (my favorite was Esther Rolle as a witch who laughs and laughs and laughs when she tricks Denzel into opening a wicker basket full of snakes). There is also a lot of music in the movie, much of it reggae, much of it very good, including a version of the title song (written by Bob Dylan). 

I liked this movie, although I didn't love it. The pacing was too elastic - it felt like the tension would suddenly appear for no reason and then vanish again. There were one or two subplots that, although they were interesting, distracted me from something that felt more important. The camera work was also awkward - although there were a couple interesting shots where a character would seemingly look at the camera, only for a reveal that they were looking at another character just off camera. A few surprises, but nothing shattering. 

It was directed by Carl Schenkel, who is German and who made nothing I have heard of before or since. The movie grossed $4.5 mil, which feels about right, and was probably good for the budget. 

Worth catching if you find it somewhere. 

Leviathan (1989)

I owned Leviathan (1989) on VHS back when I was a kid. I didn't yet know who Peter Weller, Daniel Stern, Ernie Hudson, Richard Crenna, or any of the rest of the cast were ... but I knew I liked it. Also, I was nine years old and a fool. 

So let's be honest here - this is a pretty trashy aquatic horror film. For reference, see The Abyss; Death Ship; "The Raft" segment of Creepshow 2; Dead Calm; Jaws; and especially Deepstar Six, which was the same era and sucked even worse. Despite the ridiculous cast, who knows how they all got signed up for this, this movie really doesn't work on ANY level.

The movie begins deep underwater at a mining station, looking for "silver and other rare metals." Yeah, OK. You and everyone else. Then one of the workers, in a giant mech suit, starts hyperventilating wildly - to the point that a little red skull-and-bones light starts flashing on his control panel. That's NEVER good. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the team - mostly post-Robocop Peter Weller - try to get him back into the station while over-the-top dramatic music plays (featuring a xylophone!). So, tension from the word go. 

This movie wants, desperately, to be Alien. The scene where they are all eating around a table is cribbed directly from Alien. Even the character types are similar. Poor Daniel Stern is terribly wasted here. We have the sober leader, the loose cannon, the comedian, the paranoid-for-no-reason, the sexy girl, the doctor, the black guy, etc. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

The effects in this movie are ... bad. I'm sorry, Stan Winston, effects master of so many movies. They are piss poor. The spider that pops out in a cheap surprise near the beginning is approximately 1/10000th the quality of the Alien face-hugger it is obviously copied from. Even as a little kid, I knew these effects were trash garbage. I could have made better with a stop-motion camera and lint from my shag carpet. 

The basic plot, if you can call it that, is that this team of sub-marine miners encounter a terrible monster while trapped under the sea. This is somehow totally different than encountering a terrible monster while trapped deep in space, if you're continuing the analogies to Alien. Which was also about miners, by the way. Except all the characters acted like real human beings with realistic emotions, and the monster was damned horrifying. 

This movie, sadly, is like making a copy of something that has already been xeroxed about ten times. Every element that worked in Alien doesn't work here. The characters are thin and aren't given good dialog to speak. The computer effects somehow look infinitely less futuristic than Alien's decade-earlier depiction. The monster is half-assed at best. The tension is uneven. The music is too omnipresent and too serious. And, worst of all, the actors are all misused. Alien took unknowns and made them amazing. This movie takes established good actors and trashes them. 

Leviathan was directed by George P. Cosmatos, whose '80s movies include Of Unknown Origin, Rambo First Blood Part II (YESSSSSS), Cobra (YESSSSSSSSSSSSS), and this dreck. Then he made Tombstone in 1993, which is probably underrated and has great acting and great dialog, so go figure. 

His movies, until Tombstone, have a definite commonality - an emphasis on cheap action with tons of shooting and explosions, dialog that seems generally uncomfortable with the English language (like Cobra's "You're the disease... I'm the cure" or however that awkward one-liner goes), paper thin character types, and big bombastic scores that push the emotion the film is unable to provide. 

The movie was written by David Webb Peebles, who wrote very good scripts for Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys, and Unforgiven - the first and last being undisputed masterpieces. How on EARTH did he write this thing? Did someone massacre it after he was done? Did someone drop the script on the floor and pick up the pages in the wrong order? Did he go into a fugue state? Did someone impersonate him? Was he badly in debt to the Mob? What happened?!?!?!

 The film grossed $15,000,000 (how???), but I couldn't find any data on what it cost to make. Maybe it made money, maybe it broke even, maybe it lost. It's anyone's guess. Please avoid this. 

Valley Girl (1983)

Valley Girl (1983) is the first movie where Nick Cage is billed as Nick Cage and not Nick Coppola. It's also the first movie in the '80s directed by Martha Coolidge (City Girls, Joy of Sex, the fantastic Real Genius, and the underrated Plain Clothes). It also has a fantastic soundtrack, which I'll cover in a bit. 

The story is simple - our heroine Julie (Debbie Foreman, who is otherwise known to me from the horror movie Waxwork) is having what passes for an existential crisis in the San Fernando Valley - she is popular, her dick boyfriend Tommy (Michael Bowen, who's career has really picked up lately) is popular, her friends are popular, she looks great, wears the right clothes, talks, like, the right talk... but something is amiss.

Julie dumps Tommy, and ends up falling for bad boy Randy (Cage), who is most certainly not from the Valley. He's a punk, as is his friend Fred (Cameron Dye) and extremely uncool among the upper-middle class circle Julie runs with. Fred's opening line on the "date" with Julie and her friend Stacey is extremely memorable: "Hi, I'm Fred. I like tacos, '71 cabernet, and my favorite color is magenta." ZING. 

As you might imagine, there are many Romeo/Juliet like struggles with love between forbidden sects of society - Julie's friends HATE Randy and love Tommy the superjerk... Randy is romantic, in his way, and smart, and keeps trying. Eventually he gets traction... but how will that play out? 

Let's make an aside for the soundtrack. If you like early '80s New Wave / New Pop / Pop Wave / Wave New / Synth Wave / Wave Wave / whatever you want to call it, you are doing just fine here. Let's examine this murderer's row of great synth pop: 

• Johnny, Are You Queer? by the Josie Cotton
• Girls Like Me by Bonnie Hayes
• A Million Miles Away by The Plimsouls
• Eyes of a Stranger by the Payolas
• I Melt With You by Modern English
• Who Can It Be Now? by Men at Work
• Love My Way by the Psychedelic Furs
• Jukebox by the Flirts

Awesome. I Melt With You is probably the best-known song these days, and closes out the movie... but my secret favorite is Love My Way. That's an all-nighter in my book. 

This movie was made on the serious cheapside. To the tune of $350,000, which is crazy low. ESPECIALLY when you consider it became an instant hit and made something like $17,000,000. That is highly impressive, and helped launch Nicholas Cage into more '80s movies like Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Peggy Sue Got Married, etc. etc. 

I also really like the subplot with Skip and Suzie's mom, especially when Beth (the mom) drops all kinds of reference to The Graduate ("plastics") and Skip, dumb as a stone, stares back at her vacantly and uncomprehending. 

This movie looks, sounds, and probably smells thoroughly '80s. Everything is bright - bright purple and pink jackets ... bright yellow pants ... bright red punk hair ... bright pink lipstick. And the dialog is, of course, famous. Everything plays off the success of the Frank/Moon Unit Zappa song of the year before. Like, totally, whoa, whoa, like ... yeah, totally. Maybe most famous is Randy's mocking rejoinder to Julie late in the movie: "Well fuck you, for sure, like, totally." 

This is definitely a pure '80s artifact, in that the culture is one of the characters in the film rather than just a backdrop. Recommended. 

Back to School (1986)

If you couldn't figure it out from my review of Easy Money (1983), I love Rodney Dangerfield. I have no idea why, exactly, but I know that like my love of the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, and Abbott and Costello it was formed at a very early age. And today's review is a movie - Back to School (1986) - that I think is probably his best known and most beloved, and therefore a real treat to get to. 

Everyone has strange moments of synergy in their lives where they discover, for whatever reason, that everyone in the room has the same birthday, or everyone is related to a former president, or everyone's favorite drink is pink gin. In my case, I was once at a party in my sophomore year college apartment where everyone had some life-changing story affixed to Back to School. How it came up I have no memory. 

One guy said it had brought his parents back to together after a fight (?!), another girl said it had made her quit the diving team (!!), a third guy simply said it was the greatest movie ever made and then promptly passed out on our couch, a hero and legend until the end of days. 

I have no similar story -  I just really like the movie. I first caught it on TV, probably Fox 5/45 back in the late '80s or early '90s. The opening is great - a black and white vignette featuring Wayne from The Wonder Years bringing his Old World father a failing report card. The father yells at him, You've Got To Go To College!!! and Wayne sneers and generally declines. We cut to the present day...

The credits then run, with a great montage of vintage photos, including baby pictures, of Rodney Dangerfield. He runs a men's clothing store called Big and Fat, and has a son he misses a lot and wishes he saw more of. But hey, when you're a big time corporate exec, it's tough to find time for your kids...

...unless you're our hero Thornton Melon (Dangerfield, of course) and you make your own rules. I could easily go through this movie scene by scene, but that might/would get boring (for you) really quickly. So I'll hit a few major plot points and then some topics. After getting a divorce from his horrendous young wife ("Adam and Evil" says Rodney after catching her with another man), Dangerfield orders his amazing chauffeur (played masterfully by the incomparable Burt Young) to go to the university where his son studies. One part of the family crumbles, better reinforce the rest. 

His son, sadly, is a wimp. And a dweeb. His best friend and roommate, amazingly, is Robert Downey Jr. with wild dyed hair. And this son (played by Keith Gordon) can't hack it and is about to drop out - a major blow to proud parent Dangerfield who never attended school himself. Solution? GO TO COLLEGE WITH YOUR SON!!! Brilliant. 

But let's pause to discuss the cast here. It's a murderer's row - Ned Beatty is the dean, Sally Kellerman is the teacher/love interest, character actor Paxton Whitehead is Dr. Barbay, M. Emmet Walsh is Coach Turnbull, Adrienne Barbeau, Kurt Vonnegut as himself, and - by far my favorite - Sam Kinison is in this, at Dangerfield's real-life insistence, as Professor Terguson. Kinison is fantastic and very memorable as a teacher of contemporary American history.

In fact, my strongest memory of this film after the famous Triple Lindy dive is Kinison's reaction to a student's depiction of the end of Vietnam - it's vintage Kinison, screaming over-the-top comedy as he steadily melts down until he's yowling at full bore in his way. And then is marvelously defused by Dangerfield. 

Speaking of the Triple Lindy, another great point: Dangerfield's character was a trick diver as a young man and he gets back into it at school. Turns out Rodney Dangerfield himself was a trick diver in real life! Who knew? However, I am almost certainly the diving in the film is done by a body double. 

The movie was filmed both at University of Wisconsin, Madison and UCLA, and both look amazing. These are the kind of idealized college campuses that made me actually want to go to college as kid. Everything is green and landscaped and people are mulling around everywhere looking cool.

Remember how in the last Dangerfield movie I reviewed, Easy Money, he sang Funiculi Funicula? In this one he does a spirited version of Twist and Shout, which further reinforces my belief that he really wants to be a musician at heart. Or at least comes out of that vaudeville tradition where comedians were expected to have more than one talent to get by. 

Singing aside, his best performance is probably when he recites Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" for his oral exam. Surprisingly good. 

Also, Oingo Boingo does a great job playing "Dead Man's Party" at a wild party. 

I don't know how much it cost to make, but in combined theater and rental profits it grossed (according to IMDB) $150 million (!!). That is major in terms of 1986. This was a big success and probably led to Dangerfield making things like Lady Bugs and his unforgettably disturbing role in Natural Born Killers. 

I am a big fan of this movie. Excellent Friend Rob says this is both overrated and underrated, and that is spot on. It doesn't quite deserve the Pinnacle of All Dangerfield Comedies, nor does it deserve the Greatest Comedy of the '80s Award either ... but it's no humble fare, and is very funny in all the right ways. Dangerfield and whoever else wrote the story did a great job tailoring the role to his natural persona, so he is funny but vulnerable and realistic. He actually has soulful scenes, which is not what people think of when this movie gets thrown around. Everyone remembers the Triple Lindy, but nobody remembers the tender dinner scene where Dangerfield ruefully acknowledges his failed marriages. 

Heartily endorsed.

Stripes (1981), Johnny Be Good (1988)

Stripes (1981) might be the funniest modern military movie ever made. The list isn't that long - M*A*S*H, Biloxi Blues, Catch-22, Sgt. Bilko, Private Benjamin, and 1941. No, I don't count Pauly Shore's In the Army Now. 

Stripes is about two malcontents - one depressed newly single man with nothing to lose, John (Bill Murray) and his wise-ass friend who is sort of drifting and bored, Russell (Harold Ramis). It's weird seeing these Ghostbusters before they were Ghostbusters, but the chemistry is still there. 

At boot camp they meet a few more live wires, including the ever-hilarious John Candy as "Ox," who's only there to use basic training as a sort of personal fat camp, and the great Judge Reinhold as "Elmo." 

The movie is fun, Fun, FUN!! I can't tell you how many times I laughed out loud, which is pretty rare for this jaded movie watcher. The scenes in the beginning where Bill Murray quits taxi driving... forever. The scenes in basic during the obstacle courses. Bill Murray doing endless, endless pushups as punishment for his incessant, hilarious mouthing off. Bill and Harold transforming their march into motown glory:

Or how about the scene where Ox turns out to be a (self-described!) "aggressive gambler." Or the (in)famous mud wrestling scene! This movie is wonderful, front to back. But as easy as it could have been to simply turn into a long series of skits (it was riding the SNL high, after all), it actually some loose semblance of a plot. 

After barely graduating basic training, John and his platoon of misfits is given an assignment out on the hem of the iron curtain. When many of the platoon are captured on the wrong side of the line, John, Russell, and Sgt. Hulka (the drill sergeant, masterfully played by Warren Oates) have to go get them back ... without starting World War III. 

I should also include the women here - P.J. Soles and Sean Young, both great as MPOs. I've been running across Sean Young a lot on this blog lately - first No Way Out, then The Boost, and now this. Maybe I'll do Blade Runner soon and round her out career...

I heartily endorse Stripes from about every angle. It's not just a funny movie, it's entirely from the early '80s - the tension with the Soviet bloc was at an all-time high, but coexisting with the sudden cynicism that allowed for broad satire of the military at the same time. Maybe it's because I saw this at a fairly early age (9?) but it feels '80s to me through and through.

Fun Fact #1: John Larroquette was drunk for almost all his scenes. 
Fun Fact #2: This was originally intended as a vehicle for Cheech and Chong (!!).

Stripes was a huge, huge hit. Costing $10 million to make, it brought home $85 million, which allowed director Ivan Reitman the clout to make later classics like Ghostbusters, Legal Eagles, Twins, Kindergarten Cop, Ghostbusters II (which I don't much like), and Dave, among many others. Quite a run, there.  

On the OTHER side of the comedy coin we have Johnny Be Good (1988), which is dreck. Famously so. 

The basic plot is that high school football star Johnny Walker (SERIOUSLY??) is being recruited by major programs all across America, and he has to decide what is right (and wrong) for him and his friends and his family. Go to State and be close to his girlfriend, but forsaking football? Go to a major (and majorly corrupt) program far away, where they promise him great things? 

Already we hit a huge, huge problem: Johnny is played by Anthony Michael Hall. Yes, Anthony Michael Hall. Playing the top football recruit in the country. I know, I know - he is scrawny, muscles do not appear anywhere on his body, he is short, he seems to lack basic coordination, he, in fact, is the exact opposite of an athlete. 

And frankly, it's hard to ever get past that. This is the kid from Weird Science, people. His role in The Breakfast Club is "The Geek." This is Brian from Sixteen Candles. He is not a top football recruit, no matter how desperate the studio execs and his agent wants him to be. 

Now, ladies and gentlemen readers, I went to a football high school of great fame and greater glory. I know what high school football players look like. And this ain't it. So maybe this is a personal bias... but it's hard for me to look past.

But let's say you do. You say "Sure, this guy is a big shot high school quarterback!" Then, maybe, just maybe, you will not hate this movie. But it's unlikely, since it sucks in any traditional sense as well.

His best friend is the only really redeeming aspect here - Robert Downey Jr., who seems completely coked out and unhinged the entire time, and always seems to be in on his own private jokes. The girlfriend is played by a young Uma Thurman, who is OK for the crap dialog they give her. His evil coach is Steve James, who tries to sell him out... but is investigated by the NCAA, and the investigator is played by ... Robert Downey Sr. (!!!). 

My favorite scene, if you can call it that, is the one where Johnny comes home wearing the weirdest outfit that Prince ever rejected:

What IS that?

Fun Fact: Judas Priest covered "Johnny B Goode" for the soundtrack (!). 

Anyway, Johnny Be Good is one of the rare movies that maintains a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It made $17 million, but I can't find out how much it cost, so no way to know how well or poorly it did. Unsurprisingly, it was the only movie made by its director, Bud Smith. Probably not entirely his fault, this one screams dud from the premise. You just know some studio heads flipped through a stack of headshots, landed on poor Mr. Hall and said "This one. Let's make him the new Depp," or something to that effect. 

It didn't work. 

Foxes (1980), Maximum Overdrive (1986)

I didn't review Foxes for a while because Comcast (my '80s movie supplier) labeled it as 1979. But, it turns out, it's actually 1980 - February, 1980 according to IMDB. So it's fair game.

Foxes is a movie I had always heard about but never seen (until now). Supposedly Jodie Foster's best performance as a young adult (it is), it's the tale of four girls growing up the hard way in the San Fernando Valley in the late 1970s disco era. 

The script is really good, because all four of the friends (and everyone else in the movie) is written very realistically. These are girls I could have known growing up - and in fact, I did know girls like them in high school. 

Jodie Foster is the highlight, as desperate-to-be-done-with-this-adolescence-thing Jeanie. Jeanie is the mother figure to her friends... and to her own mom, who had Jeanie when she was about 16 herself. The other members of the quartet are Madge, who is overweight (I guess, for the '70s?) and a virgin and tired of both things; Deirdre, who is boy crazy and doesn't know what to do with her budding sexuality; and Annie. Ohhhhhh boy, Annie. Annie is a real mess. Annie does everything to extreme excess.  Drugs, drink, boys, more drugs, risky behavior of every single type. Annie is memorably played by former Runaways rock star Cherie Currie, who bears a cherry tattoo on her right shoulder in commemoration of the Runaways hit "Cherry Bomb." 

Jeanie (and the audience) spends more time worrying about Annie than about most movie characters I can remember. Annie's dad is an abusive cop constantly chasing her down. Annie's ability to make good decisions doesn't appear to exist. Annie is just racing for the bottom. 

The movie is somewhat slow, but when it gets going, it REALLY gets going. There are a few really moving scenes - the opening, when the four girls wake up and get ready for school, or later when Jeanie tries to have a nice, adult dinner party that collapses when Annie arrives and can't take it seriously, or when we learn Annie's final fate (no spoilers here, folks). And especially the heart-breaking final voiceover from Jeanie. 

Also, it's crazy to see Madge marrying Randy Quaid (!) of all people. I can't imagine how that marriage is going to work out. And to round out the cast list, Jeanie's boyfriend Brad is played by Scott Baio (!!) who really comes through in a pinch later in the movie. 

But obviously the real star here is Foster. She's a revelation as a young actress, the kind we hardly ever see anymore - capable in turns of being a small adult or a large child, of being both cynical and vulnerable, jaded and devastated in the same breath. She's a real marvel.

Foxes is, in truth, a product of the late '70s decadent SoCal disco excess.  It prefigures the '80s in some ways, especially the obsession with southern California and the obsession with teenage girls and their culture. 

It was, interestingly, the feature film debut of director Adrian Lyne, who is well known for Flashdance, Fatal Attraction, Jacob's Ladder, 9.5 Weeks, and Indecent Proposal. IMDB doesn't seem to have money data for it, but Wikipedia says it earned $7.5 million - not bad, but without knowing how much it cost it's impossible to say if it did well or not. With a movie like this, though, it really doesn't matter. I was really impressed. Recommended. 

Now we completely switch gears: Maximum Overdrive (1986), based on a Stephen King short story called "Trucks," and featuring Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle, and Yeardley Smith (yes, THAT Yeardley Smith!). 

This movie is as unrealistic as Foxes is realistic. The premise, as a cheesy graphic informs us at the beginning, is that the earth is passing through the tail of a comet for the next seven or eight days. While we're in the comet, machines gain a life of their own... especially the semis at a remote truck stop, who begin to terrorize the truck stop inhabitants with murderous intent. 

There is almost nothing else to say. The "plot" consists of ex-con Estevez trying to rescue everyone. There are a few amusing parts - when you think "machines going crazy" you probably don't think of cigarette machines and dollar changers spitting out quarters and cigs for a delighted pinball wizard who is then mysteriously electrocuted by a primitive video game. 

And the over-the-top acting results in a few unintentionally funny sequences, like when the gas nozzle turns on the truck driver. How much could that POSSIBLY hurt?? Or the soda machine at the ballpark, combined with the insane steamroller. Do the deaths have to be that gory!??! They are really over the top for a movie like this. Almost cartoonish.

The movie is chock full of moments like this. My favorite subplot involves Yeardley Smith and her new husband battling various machines while she throws out great dialog: "Is he dead?" ::car races at husband, crashes into building:: "Are YOU dead??" ... it's fantastic.

Estevez, meanwhile, is basically reliving his character from Repo Man - the same nihilistic delinquent who reluctantly does the does right thing, sometimes. 

Maximum Overdrive was actually directed by Stephen King, who must have had a blast, and remains the ONLY movie he has directed. Maybe because the movie didn't make any money - according to IMDB, it cost ten million to make and only came back with $7,500,000 or so. 

But another reason, at least according to IMDB trivia, is that King was apparently coked out of his mind during the entire filming (it shows). In fact, the very next trivia entry is rather hilarious - asked why he hasn't directed a movie since Maximum Overdrive, he replied "Just watch Maximum Overdrive." ZING. 

Come on, Stephen, it's not that bad. You had great taste with the AC/DC soundtrack, anyway. 

Silkwood (1983)

Silkwood (1983) is another one in a long line of Meryl Streep movies I'm going to have to review but without much joy. However, unlike the recently reviewed Still of the Night, this movie is actually quite good.

The biggest problem is that it has long patches of being too slow and too quiet. The biggest plus is that there are moments of real emotional power - surprisingly forceful.

The movie, despite being made in 1983, "feels" like so many biopic movies of everyday people that came to prominence in the late '70s and early '80s - movies like Norma Rae and Coal Miner's Daughter. It has much less of the 1980's culture in it than most of the films on this blog, and much more of the 1970's. 

It's about Karen Silkwood, a nuclear fuel plant worker in Oklahoma who slowly, surely becomes convinced the company she works for is not just breaking rules, it's killing people more or less deliberately to maximize profit. And she sets out to stop them in the only way a poor woman in 1970's Oklahoma can - by making it public via stolen documents. In many ways this movie is the dark side of Norma Rae with Sally Field. You leave the film absolutely convinced that Karen was murdered (not a spoiler, it's declared right on the movie's poster). 

Streep is less egregiously "ACTING" as Karen than in most of her roles. In many scenes she even seems like a completely natural woman. And at other times I feel I can watch her putting on her persona right in front of me. But the best scenes are the ones with Cher and Kurt Russell, her housemate and lover, respectively. They are very natural actors, especially Russell, and you can tell Streep has to really tone it down to not seem overly formal in front of them. Craig T. Nelson is also noteworthy has a rather dim plant worker who is not on her side. 

The plot is chilling, and it's underpinned by the many scenes where people are contaminated "externally" and forced to undergo horrific forced scrubbing sessions in the shower to remove any lingering plutonium. Awful to watch. 

The villainous people working for the plant are appropriately heinous, but like most movies of this kind, they are completely unidimensional. Obviously in real life (I would hope) the decision to alter negatives of defects is not made lightly ... here it's never given a second thought that these monsters would do something like that. 

The director was Mike Nichols, who you  might know from his films Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, Catch-22, Working Girl, Postcards from the Edge, and most recently Charlie Wilson's War. Long career, well regarded. He considers this his first film in a more naturalist style of directing, which I think it's safe to interpret as "just going with the flow." 

The screenwriter is the late Nora Ephron, who is most famously responsible for the terrific script to When Harry Met Sally... along with a few other notable rom-coms in the same vein like Sleepless in Seattle. 

I don't know how much it cost to make, but it was a big hit and grossed $36 million when the dust settled. That is very very good in 1983 dollars. It's rather long - two hours and ten minutes, much of it very slow - but worth catching if you happen across it.