All Stef Djordevic (Tom Cruise) wants is to get out of town, and I don’t blame him. All the Right Moves, the 1983 film from director Michael Chapman and screenwriter Michael Kane, opens on a rather depressing moment. It’s morning at the steel mill, and Stef’s older brother and father are shown wrapping up their graveyard shift. They leave the mill in silence, their fellow workers just as spent as they are. The message for viewers is clear, if not all that accurate for some (my grandfathers used to hit the bar across the street from their mill immediately after work — end of shift was a time for jollity, not introspection). The mill takes all your hopes and dreams, and crushes them. But at least it keeps food on the table and a roof over one’s head…until the layoffs start.
The two get home in time to watch young Stef, a defensive star on the local high school’s football team, start his day. Stef’s life, like the lives of the young should be, is all possibility. He has yet to reach the age where the days threaten to spread out, mostly unchanging, all the way to life’s end. His future is bright, helped along by his talent at football. Stef has no illusions about parlaying his skills into a career in the NFL. He wants to be an engineer, but there’s no way he can afford college. It’s a football scholarship or bust for Stef. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: All the Right Moves”
What a putrid mess. Jaws 3-D has about all the care one would expect from a film that was originally pitched as Jaws 3, People 0. That’s right. This movie, the second sequel to a great film that redefined the industry’s business model, was planned as a spoof flick. Had that film been made, it would probably have been no better than Airplane II: The Sequel, but could not have been much worse than what actually came to be made.