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New York Stories (1989)
New York Stories (1989)
1989 | Comedy, Drama
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"It’s part of New York Stories, with Nick Nolte and Rosanna Arquette. Nolte plays Lional Dobie, this Jackson Pollack-like artist. I love the subject matter of Life Lessons, it’s just great. Scorsese completely captures the obsession with women, visually and in the storyline. And Nick Nolte is never better — his performance is just f**king unbelievable. He’s on top of his game stylistically, Scorsese, melding heavy style with story without it ever feeling like you’re just watching a director, you know, show off. I never felt that. I’d be curious to see what he thinks of that movie, or how much time he spent doing it, but to me it just felt like kind of an effortless exercise in his talent."

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Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
1985 | Comedy, Drama, Romance
8
6.7 (6 Ratings)
Movie Rating
80's Classic
It's back to the 80's again with Desperately Seeking Susan, a fun film fit for its time. The movie isn't perfect. In fact it breaks one of my Cardinal Sins of Film: Inserting parts for the sake of advancing the plot. In all thing's 80's, however, you have to remember the one rule of thumb: Fun is the word. It can be cheesy, it can be unbelievable, but the audience must have fun. It's hard to hate a film that makes fun its primary goal. Probably a good reason why the 80's and I have gotten along really well so far in my Movie-a-Day quest for 2018.

Roberta Glass (Rosanna Arquette), bored with her life, starts to get obsessive over the personal ads (remember those?) and begins to follow Susan (Madonna) around to live through her. After a bump on the head, Roberta thinks she is Susan and reinvigorates herself with a new life. Roberta is the source of a number of my favorite films throughout the film. She's trying to find her way without being too crazy in the process. One of my favorite scenes involves her hilarious magic act she gets throw into as a stand-in. This, for me, turned the tides from the film being "just ok" to "memorable 80's classic".

I say that because the film gets off to a very slow start. I spent the first fifteen minutes trying to understand what the connection was going to be between Roberta and Susan. I imagine a trailer would have told me everything I needed to know, but I'm judging the film purely off of what happened from start to finish.

Desperately Seeking Susan is a pretty fun comedy-mystery film despite there being a lack of real stakes. You never really worry about the characters' safety and that's fine. If you can give in to the ridiculousness of the movie as a whole, it's really quite fun. I'm giving it an 82.