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If English is your first language and you could translate my old Italian text, please contact me.
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Peter Hyams (USA, 1943) debuted with two TV movies,
Rolling Man (1972) and
Goodnight My Love (1972), which were followed by mediocre films such as
Busting (1974), Our Time (1974) and
Peeper (1975).
Capricorn One (1978) is a science-fiction political film in which
three astronauts are forced to simulate a Mars landing in front of cameras
while they never left. The whole world is fooled but then the man who came up
with the plan decides to terminate them. They flee in the desert, where two of them die. The survivor is saved by a journalist.
Hanover Street (1979) is a terrible romantic comedy set in wartime.
Outland (1981) e` un altro fantascientifico, ma la storia e` quella di
un tipico duello dei film western (High Noon). La differenza principale sono le costose
scenografie. La trama e` di una banalita` imbarazzante.
Humans have built a space colony on a distant moon that is important for its
mines of titanium. One day a young miner dies after a spider enters his
spacesuit and he loses his mind.
Sean Connery is a marshal who has just been assigned to maintaining order on
the moon.
He is welcomed by a man, Sheppard, who has influence over everything and
seems to warn him not to get in the way.
Connery learns of the accident and orders an investigation even if nobody
seems to show much interest.
His wife leaves him for accepting the job on the godforsaken moon.
A miner goes crazy and takes a woman hostage. Before Connery can convince
him to surrender another officer kills him.
The autopsy reveals that the miner took a powerful drug, a drug that makes
the workers work harder (which means they get higher bonuses) but also slowly
destroys their brains.
As he catches people handling the substance and finds huge quantities hidden
here and there,
Connery understands that the mining company is happy that the workers take
the drug so they produce more. So much so that Sheppard discourages him from
continuing the investigation.
Now Connery is alone, determined to clean up the space station but also
disliked by everybody (except the middle-age female doctor).
Connery overhears the conversation between Sheppard and his boss in which
Sheppard asks for a "man" to eliminate Connery.
The man arrives and the duel begins. The two men chase each other in the
labyrinth of the space station until Connery prevails. Then he hits Sheppard
in front of all the miners. Then he can go home with his wife.
The Star Chamber (1983)
2010 (1984) was a follow-up to Kubrick's 2001, another political
sci-fi movie with pacific overtones.
Il film riprende da dove è finito 2001. Sia i sovietici, sia gli americani stanno progettando una missione su Giove per scoprire cosa successe alla missione Discovery e cosa sia il grande monolite nero. I russi vogliono arrivare prima, ma hanno bisogno della collaborazione del responsabile della vecchia missione, silurato dopo il fallimento. E' in corso una crisi internazionale nel Centro America che complica tutto, ma lo scienziato americano, sorpreso dal fatto che l'astronave Discovery stia uscendo dall'orbita in cui si era arenata, convince il nuovo responsabile (quello che ha preso il suo posto) a intercedere con il presidente. Al tempo stesso, un altro scienziato vuole andare su Discovery per scoprire cosa successe ad Hal, il computer. Il presidente autorizza una missione congiunta con i sovietici. Durante il viaggio verso Giove, la crisi fra USA e URSS peggiora, compromettendo la collaborazione fra gli scienziati sovietici e quelli americani dell'astronave. Arrivati al Discovery due astronauti vanno a ispezionarla e riattivano Hal. Poi dirigono verso il misterioso monolite. Intanto il tecnico, esaminando le memorie di Hal, scopre la ragione per cui Hal impazzì: i servizi segreti della Casa Bianca avevano alterato il programma per garantire la segretezza dell'operazione. A terra sta per scoppiare la guerra fra USA e URSS. Pertanto il presidente ordina ai tre americani di rinchiudersi nella Dscovery e impedire l'accesso ai loro colleghi sovietici. Tramite Hal uno degli astronauti scomparsi riappare, vecchio e deforme, per avvertire lo scienziato di scappare, ma senza spiegare perché. Lo scienziato viola gli ordini e convince la capitana sovietica a tornare sulla terra unendo le loro forze. Mentre sulla terra scoppia la guerra atomica, gli astronauti si preparano freneticamente alla partenza facendo affidamento su Hal. Ma all'improvviso compare una nube di monoliti in rapida espansione e Hal si rifiuta di procedere al conto alla rovescia perché il fenomeno è troppo importante per ignorarlo. Il tecnico gli spiega la situazione e lo convince ad aiutarli a partire. Alla fine, mentre l'astronave è in viaggio verso la terra, il fantasma, per bocca di Hal manda un messaggio di pace ai presidenti di USA e URSS.
Running Scared (1986) e` un comico poliziesco, un
modesto film d'avventura imperniato sulle avventure comiche di
due poliziotti non molto ortodossi.
Gregory Hines e Billy Cristal sono due cops di Chicago che usano mezzi poco leciti, ma riescono a portare a termine le loro inchieste senza troppa violenza. Riescono soprattutto a catturare un pericoloso druglord. Purtroppo nel farlo mettono i bastoni fra le ruote della potente DEA, che aveva infiltrato due agenti nella sua gang, e vengono costretti dal capo a prendersi una vacanza in Florida. Tornati, apprendono dal capo che il druglord e`di nuovo in liberta'. Si fanno beffa degli agenti della DEA, a cui il capo deve attribuire ogni sorta di imprese per ragioni politiche. Rintracciano il druglord di nuovo e riescono quasi a prenderlo mentre riceve una valigia piena di cocaina da un prete e una suora, ma dopo un accanito inseguimento sulle rotaie della ferrovia sopraelevata del Loop lui riesce a dileguarsi. Gli rubano persino l'auto, ma lui cattura l'ex moglie di Cristal, che lo ha divoraziato ma che lui ama ancora, e intima a Cristal di restituirgli la cocaina. Cristal va a consegnargli la borsa nel grattacielo, mentre il suo partner lo scala dall'esterno tramite un lungo cavo. Quando il druglord tenta di uccidere sia Cristal sia la donna, si scatena l'inferno: Cristal fa fuoco dall'ascensore, il partner irrompe nell'edificio alla Tarzan, gli agenti in borghese della DEC attaccano dal basso. I quattro uccidono i gangster uno per uno e alla fine hanno la meglio anche dell'irriducibile druglord. La donna si rappacifica con Cristal.
Presidio (1988) is a forgettable catastrophic action detective movie.
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Narrow Margin (1990), a loose remake of Richard Fleischer's classic,
is one of his best high-suspense police action thrillers.
The plot is wildly different from the original.
A classy woman has a date with a businessman and, while she's in the bathroom,
she witnesses, unseen, his murder by a gangster he owes money to and his
hitman.
Detective Archer finds out the truth and realizes that this is a unique
chance of frame the gangster who has always eluded justice.
The chief of police is a political animal who is reluctant to take the risk
of taking the gangster to court without the certainty that the witness will
cooperate. But Archer ignores his desire to follow the proper procedure and
flies an helicopter to the isolated place where the woman is hiding.
The woman does not want to cooperate. Archer and his partner are just explaining
to her that sooner or later the gangsters will find her and kill her when
another helicopter flies around the
house and starts shooting at them, literally demolishing the house.
Archer and the woman barely escape, while Archer's partner is killed.
They run away on the woman's car through the woods, still chased and shot
by the helicopter. They reach the train station and jump on a train.
They are in the middle of nowhere and the nearest airport is one day away,
but they have no choice.
Two gangsters have seen him and board the same train.
The gangsters find out quickly the compartment where he hides, but
Archer reassures the woman that they may have not seen her.
During the cat and mouse chase on the train, Archer meets an attractive
divorced woman and a nice fat man.
At the first station, Archer calls his police station and asks for help,
but somebody must be tipping the gangsters, because Archer is met by two
fake police officers who try to kill him. He barely manages to jump on the
train again.
The gangsters offer him money, but he makes fun of them.
The gangsters see him with the divorced woman and think she is the one.
The fat man identifies himself as a security guard and offers to take care of
the divorced woman, but the gangsters find them.
Archer takes his woman to the roof of the train and manages to throw both
killers down the train. But, surprise, the divorced woman shows up and she is
with the criminals. Luckily for him, she doesn't bend when the train enters a
tunnel and is beheaded by the rock. Archer's mission is complete and the
witness testifies at the trial.
The remake is marred by a sentimental perspective. The original was all action
and suspense.
Stay Tuned (1992), his best film, is a
hilarious and delirious Faust-inspired satire of the middle class.
The devil is playing a game with God about the souls,
and the game played by the devil consists in playing a game with his souls
to see if they survive.
The ordeal of the souls consists in something like an amusement park
whose rides are twisted horror versions of famous sitcoms and quiz shows plus
ridiculous imaginary commercials; it becomes a whirlwind of imitations and parodies of famous moments in the history of TV viewing.
It's all meant to debase and shame the TV junkies showing them how ridiculous their lives are.
A boy, Darryl, tells us that his father Roy (played by John Ritter, the star of the TV sitcom "Three's Company") is the quintessential "coach potato" who watches television nonstop. He is also a former fencing champion.
The child is an electronic genius: he built a device that allows him to project himself on the family's TV set.
His mom Helen is a successful advertising executive while his father Roy is a
humble salesman in the middle of a midlife crisis.
One evening Roy is watching TV as usual, flipping through channels. The
children (the boy and his older sister) find excuses to leave the house so that their parents can be alone.
Helen switches off the TV set and tries to talk to Roy about their communication problem, but he only cares about the program on TV.
To get his attention, she smashes the TV set.
Roy simply replaces it with the child's smaller TV set.
A mysterious man walks to the house, promising that he is going to change Roy's boring life. Spike offers Roy the "ultimate television adventure", a satellite dish system with 666 channels of entertainment and a large-screen TV set.
He jokingly tells Roy that some people would give their souls for such a system,
and it's free for Roy.
A giant dish is installed in a few minutes in his backyard and Spike leaves
laughing out loud while lightnings light the road.
Helen packs her things and prepares to leave the house. Roy is too focused on
watching TV to notice. On the way out, Helen damages the dish with a hammer
and finally Roy realizes that she's leaving him. A Strong wind emanates from
the dish and sucks them in.
Roy and Helen find themselves on the stage of a TV quiz show.
Each question of the host forces Roy to tell the truth about lies he told Helen.
Then the film moves on to the control room of a large operation where Spike is watching on monitors the adventures of his victims (the souls he lured).
Spike's staff is dropping real people into TV shows.
New intern Pierce sees a scoreboard that summarizes the status of each soul
and witnesses Spike causing the real death of a real woman inside a horror movie.
Spike tells the intern that these real people constitute the
entertainment extravaganza for just one customer of theirs.
TV junkies are lured by Spike into a deadly game and then killed within
24 hours: if they survive, they must be released.
Spike gets annoyed by his witty assistant, who keeps cracking jokes, and uses
a remote control to send him to do
"field work": the poor fellow is sucked into a vortex and disappears.
Meanwhile, Roy and Helen are still playing the game on TV and they win a trip.
The trip consists in being catapulted on a boxing ring, all dressed in white
where they have to wrestle with a Satanic couple.
Spike watches live on his monitor as Roy is being beaten to death.
Helen outsmarts the Satanic wrestlers and Helen and Roy get to live to another show.
Meanwhile their children have found the giant dish in the backyard and the giant TV set in the living room.
The boy turns on the TV and doesn't realize that the characters in the film are his parents:
they are inside some kind of Arctic film, chased by wolves in the company of their real-life neighbor, and cannot save the neighbor from the wolves.
The children are happy because they think that their parents went away on a romantic vacation instead of having the usual arguments.
The boy, however, makes the mistake of activating the giant dish and his bicycle
gets sucked into it.
The boy turns on the TV and sees all sorts of funny adverts... and someone riding his bicycle.
Next, they are turned into the mice of a cartoon. Their boy is watching just that cartoon and realizes that those mice in the cartoon are his parents.
The mice are chased by an android cat armed with a machine gun and hide in
Grant Wood's famous painting "American Gothic", but Roy outsmarts the cat
by guessing how a cartoon character would survive. The boy who is watching the
cartoon on the home TV-set flips through the channel to find them again and finds Roy in a zombie show titled "Duane's Underworld" (a parody of Wayne's World). Roy escapes again and finds himself in a black-and-white film in the role of a private detective who has to solve the case of the missing
Helen, who has been kidnapped by a mobster.
The boy sees more weird adverts, including a woman who is capable of rotating her head 360 degrees. He switches channels and finds the channel where his father is the private eye.
Seeing that his sister is practicing her cheerleader act with her friends in front of the giant dish, the boy walks outside to warn her to stay away from the dish: since they don't listen, he takes a hose and waters them so they run away.
He finally convinces his sister that their parents are inside the TV set.
Meanwhile inside the TV set, Roy finds Helen in a restaurant just when a massive shoutout erupts between rival gangs. They manage to escape and enter another
channel, where they are plunged into the French Revolution and meet again their
neighbor, who actually managed to escape from the wolves although
he lost and arm and a leg to them.
The neighbor encourages Roy and Helen to lie low: only two hours to go and they will have survived
24 hours. Their daughter Diane, however, is watching the TV show and knows that
it heads with the beheading of Roy's character.
Darryl, the electronic wiz, builds a device that projects his voice into the
program. His father is about to get guillotuined but the crowd thinks that
Darryl's voice is the voice of God. Darryl orders the crowd to release his
parents and so they survive the 24 hours.
Spike has been watching from his monitor and is furious that he failed to
kill Roy... but then realizes that Helen is not covered by the same agreement.
Roy is released (he disappears in front of the astonished crowd) but Helen remains in the middle of the French Revolution: Spike knows that Roy will not
abandon Helen.
Roy reappears in his living room, hugged by his children, and immediately
sees Spike on TV introducing a western film in which Helen gets dismembered by a train. Roy, still holding his remote control, jumps into the dish and enters the TV program as a Clint Eastwood-style gunman, mimicking a famous scene from Sergio Leone's spaghetti western.
During the ritual duel with the evil Spike, Roy accidentally touches the remote
control and is istantaneously ejected into "Star Trek" and then to a car race and then to a hockey game and then to a scene of "Driving Over Miss Daisy" and then (in delightful touch of self-referentiality) to a scene of "Three's Company" (the sitcom that made Roy's actor, John Ritter, famous),
while Helen is abandoned to her destiny, impotent to escape a train that is about to hit her.
Just when Spike is about to finish him in a "Three Musketeers" kind of scene,
his children, who are watching the scene on TV, throw Roy's sword into the giant dish which then gets swallowed and projected into the scene so that Roy can
fight Spike back. Another click on the remote control throws him into a hip-hop video
(Salt-N-Pepa), always holding on to his remote control, always pursued by Spike from channel to channel. In the middle of the video the dancers and singers play with the remote control. Finally Roy points it at
Spike and cancels him out. Then he sends himself back into Helen's western movie just before the train hits her. Helen tells him to switch the TV off and Roy presses the button on the remote control to switch it off: they are ejected back into their own backyard and the giant dish self-destroys.
Spike finds himself in a medieval dungeon, derided by Spike's witty assistant,
and it's all controlled by the laboratory's new director, intern Pierce, who is
therefore Satan's new soul-crushing operative.
Darryl ends the story telling us that Roy stopped watching television and is no longer a salesman but a fencing instructor.
Timecop (1994) and
Sudden Death (1995) were
vehicles for action movie star Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Timecop ...
The Relic (1997) is a monster movie.
End of Days (1999), his biggest commercial success,
is a horror film set at the turn of the century when Satan decides to
come to Earth looking for a bride.
The film opens at the Vatican where a visionary priest informs the Pope that a girl is being born that is a terrible danger for humanity. The Pope dispatches
the priest to protect the girl from Satan, while some cardinals object that the girl should simply be killed because her existence is just too dangerous.
We then see the baby Christine being born in a New York hospital. She is immediately taken by a nurse, Mabel, to a doctor, Abel, who checks a tattoo on her arm and performs a satanic ritual, unbeknownst to her mother.
Twenty years later, in 1999, as the world eagerly awaits the end of the millennium, New York is rocked by mysterious explosions. A evil force
kills a priest in the bathroom of a restaurant and then blows up the restaurant.
Meanwhile, Jericho (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is an alcoholic and is thinking of killing himself when
his partner Bobby arrives to pick him up for a new mission. They are security
guards and have been hired to protect an investment banker.
Jericho and Bobby escort the banker, who turns out to be the priest, or, better, Satan in the body of the priest. A tramp smiles when their car passes by. A sniper shoots at Satan from the roof of a building but Jericho takes the bullets. Jericho is wearing a protective vest and survives. He then leads the acrobatic chase on the roof which eventually ends in the subway with the sniper trying to kill Jericho and Jericho wounding him. The sniper tells Jericho something about the end of the world before being taken to the hospital. Police chief Margie does not believe Jericho's version because the sniper doesn't have a tongue. Jericho and Bobby are so puzzled that they decide to investigate. They track down the basement where the sniper lived and realize that he is a religious man:
Vatican priest Thomas Aquinas that we've met in the first scene.
The walls are covered with symbols, in particular "20:7", and references to the end of the millennium. They also find the picture of a 20-year-old girl.
Meanwhile, that girl is harassed on the train by the tramp that we saw for a few seconds: he tells her that Satan is coming to rape her. Christine hits him and he breaks down into pieces and disappears: noone else in the car has noticed him.
Christine, who lives alone with Mabel, the old nurse, calls her doctor, the very same Abel we saw when she was born, telling him of her recurring nightmares.
The doctor explains her nightmares with the trauma of losing her parents.
Jericho visits a priest in the church where Thomas Aquinas used to hang out.
The priest knows something about the girl but doesn't want to tell a non-believer like Jericho. Jericho follows him in the crypt and sees a woman who seems possessed. Jericho tells the priest that he stopped believing in God after he lost his wife and daughter, and the priest cuts the conversation short because in his opinion a non-believer would not understand what is going on.
Meanwhile, the radio is broadcasting the news of satanic acts taking place in the city.
Satan enters the hospital room where Thomas Aquinas is hospitalized and brutally murder him, crucifying him to the ceiling. When they examine the corpse, Jericho and the cops find that the body is covered with sentences. Suddenly the corpse
comes alive and Jericho has to shoot him dead. From something carved on the chest, Jericho guesses that the girl is named Christine and even guesses her last name, and it turns out there's only one in the entire big city (implausible, of course). Just then Christine is being attacked by a trio of killers, and this time it is not a nightmare (the would-be assassins are sent by the Vatican cardinals who
think it's too dangerous to leave her live).
Jericho and Bobby arrive just in time to save her.
Satan kills Mabel for failing to bring him the girl and personally walks to
Christine's apartment. While Jericho is still talking to the girl, Satan kills
Bobby who is waiting in the car. Then the nurse attacks Jericho with supernatural force and Christine finally realizes that the nurse have been an enemy all her life. Satan enters the house and asks Christine to follow her, but Jericho helps
her escape. Outside they are met by Marge the police chief, but Marge works for
Satan and demands that Jericho surrenders the girl. Jericho has to kill her.
Christine admits to Jericho that she has seen Satan in her nightmares.
Jericho takes Christine to the church, where the priest explains the story
that Satan is supposed to return at the end of the year 1999 and, if he has sex with her just before midnight, the world will end.
The Vatican has been looking for her since she was born.
The priest tells Christine that she's safe in the church and that God will protect her. Jericho tells her that only his guns can protect her. She chooses the church. It is now New Year's Eve and the city is preparing to celebrate the new year.
Back in the Vatican, the Pope is informed that the girl has been found.
Jericho returns alone to his apartment is tempted by Satan: if Jericho accepts to deliver the girl, Satan will revive his wife and daughter. Jericho refuses, they fight, and Jericho manages to throw Satan out of the window.
Minutes later someone knocks at the door: it's Bobby, alive and well.
(A child could guess that there must be a deal with the devil but Jericho falls for it).
Jericho decides to go and take Christine, and Bobby volunteers to help him.
They arrive at the church just in time to stop another crew of Vatican emissaries who want to kill her (against the will of the church's priest who is opposed to fight evil with evil). Satan attacks the church and massacres many of the religious people. Jericho hands the girl to Bobby but Bobby locks the car and leaves
Jericho behind, alone fighting dozens of Satan servants. Jericho is captured and crucified up against a wall to witness the end of the world.
Back at the Vatican, a cardinal reports the failure of the mission to the Pope.
It is almost midnight. Jericho is saved by passers-by and taken to the church, where the good priest is still alive. Jericho resumes his mission. He tracks down
Satan and breaks into the satanic gathering in a basement where Satan is preparing to rape Christine. Jericho is stopped by Bobby, who has made a deal with Satan to be resurrected. But Bobby refuses to kill his best friend Jericho. Satan
incinerates Bobby but Jericho escapes with Christine. They board a subway train, chased by Satan. (Apparently Satan can kill anybody except Jericho). Chased by hundreds of satanic fanatics, Jericho and Christine hide inside another church (Note that the whole time Christine has been running barefoot through all sorts of ruins). There are only a few minutes before midnight. Jericho finally understands what the good priest told him: Satan cannot be killed with guns, he can only be killed with faith in God. And so Jericho prays God to save them. Satan attacks the church and his last desperate act is to possess Jericho's own body to rape Christine. Only two minutes to midnight. Christine begs Jericho not to. Jericho returns himself and, rather than fall to the power of Satan, kills himself. The clock strikes midnight and in the streets crowds celebrate the new millennium.
Satan, defeated, disappears in a ball of fire while Jericho joins his wife
and his daughter in heaven.
The Musketeer (2001) is an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' novel.
A Sound of Thunder (2005) was another science-fiction movie.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009) was a terrible remake of the 1956 classic.
He directed again Jean-Claude van Damme in Enemies Closer (2013).
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