Guilty Pleasure No. 80: Point Break (dir by Kathryn Bigelow)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some films are so ludicrous and self-aware of their absurdity that you can’t help but love them and that’s certainly the case with 1991’s Point Break.

Consider what Point Break offers us:

First, you’ve got Keanu Reeves playing a former college football star who, after blowing out his knee, ended up joining the FBI. Keanu, who looks like he’s barely out of high school in this film, plays a character with the wonderful name of Johnny Utah. Keanu gives a relaxed performance. You can tell that he’s having fun in this movie and Johnny Utah’s enthusiasm is infectious. Personally, I prefer Johnny Utah to John Wick.

Secondly, you’ve got Patrick Swayze as Bodhi, the ruthless bank robber who is also a surfer. Much like Reeves, Swayze could occasionally be a stiff actor but in this film, you can tell he’s having fun and again, it’s hard not have fun watching him as he spouts his surfer philosophy, jumps out of planes, and dreams of dying while mastering a 50-foot wave. Swayze is so charismatic as Bodhi that you totally buy that Johnny Utah would like him despite all the times that Bodhi tries to kill him.

You’ve got Bodhi’s bank-robbing gang, who call themselves the Ex-Presidents. Bodhi wears a Ronald Reagan mask. Other members of the gang wear LBJ, Nixon, and Carter masks. “I am not a crook!” Nixon says. The wonderful thing about the Ex-Presidents is that they seem to truly enjoy robbing banks. Of course, they also enjoy surfing.

Gary Busey plays a character who is not Gary Busy. Instead, he’s Johnny’s partner. Everyone in the FBI laughs at him when he says the bank robbers are surfers but guess who knows what he’s talking about! Seriously, though, it’s always interesting to see Gary Busey in the years when he was still a somewhat serious actor.

John C. McGinley does the uptight boss thing. Lori Petty is the waitress who teaches Johnny Utah how to surf. The surf footage is beautifully shot. A soaked Johnny give the camera a thumbs-up. Director Kathryn Bigelow keeps the action moving quickly and, just as she did with Near Dark, uses the film’s genre trappings to explore the bond that holds together a group of outsiders.

It’s an over-the-top and cheerfully absurd film and it’s impossible not to love it. I haven’t felt the need to watch the remake. Why would I? The original has everything I need.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Music Video of the Day: Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top (1983, directed by Tim Newman)

Posted on June 4, 2019 by Jedadiah Leland

“Sharp-dressed depends on who you are. If you’re on a motorcycle, really sharp leather is great. If you’re a punk rocker, you can get sharp that way. You can be sharp or not sharp in any mode. It’s all in your head. If you feel sharp, you be sharp.”

— Dusty Hill, bassist, ZZ Top

The video for Sharp Dressed Man picks where the video for Gimme All Your Lovin’ left off. The three girls are still driving the Eliminator, the ghosts of ZZ Top are still giving away the keys to the car, and Peter Tramm is still stuck in a job where he gets no respect. In Gimme All Your Lovin’, Tramm was a gas station attendant. In this video, he’s working as a valet at an exclusive club and not even Truman Capote is willing to give him any respect. Luckily, the ghosts of ZZ Top have not forgotten about Tramm and, after one ride in the Eliminator, Tramm is ready to hit the dance floor and win the love of the young woman (played by Galyn Gorg) who earlier looked back at him while being dragged into the club by her boorish boyfriend. By the end of the video, even Truman Capote is getting down!

Sharp Dressed Man remains one of ZZ Top’s signature songs and this video is still among their best-remembered. It’s not surprising that the video was an MTV hit because, for many members of the then-young network’s audience, it was the ultimate in wish-fulfillment. No matter who you were or who was treating you with disrespect, there was always a chance that ZZ Top might appear and toss you the keys to Billy Gibbons’s car.

Like Gimme All Your Lovin’, this video was directed by Randy Newman’s brother, Tim. Tim Newman would return to direct the next installment in the adventures of the Eliminator and the ZZ Top Girls, Legs. Anyone want to guess what tomorrow’s music video of the day is going to be?

Enjoy!

Sundance Film Review: Stranger Than Paradise (dir by Jim Jarmusch)

Posted on January 25, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Sundance Film Festival is currently taking place in Utah so, for this week, I’m reviewing films that either premiered, won awards at, or otherwise made a splash at Sundance! Today, I take a look at 1984’s Stranger Than Paradise, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival.

‘You know it’s funny. You come to someplace new, and everything looks just the same.’

— Eddie in Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

Stranger Than Paradise tells the story of three friends.

Willie (John Lurie) lives in a small apartment in New York City’s Lower East Side. He likes to go to the movies. He likes to watch TV. He likes to gamble, putting bets on horses and cheating at poker. He was apparently born in Hungary, though he doesn’t speak with an accent and, whenever he has to deal with a relative, he always tells them, “Speak English.” When his best friend asks him about why he never mentioned that he was Hungarian, Willie replies that he’s just as American as anyone.

Eva (Eszter Balint) is Willie’s cousin. She’s travels to America from Budapest. The plan is for her to live with her Aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark) in Cleveland but, because Lotte is in the hospital, she begins her life in America by spending ten days in Willie’s cramped apartment. Eva enjoys the music of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. When she’s walking to Willie’s apartment, I Put A Spell On You blares from the large tape player that she always carries with her.

And then there’s Eddie (Richard Edson). Eddie may not be too smart but he’s always smiling and easy-going. Unlike the somewhat churlish Willie, Eddie always seems to be enjoying himself. When Eddie first meets Eva, most viewers will probably expect them to eventually become a couple. That doesn’t happen, of course. That’s not the type of film that this is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpdHxSt8f7w

The first thing you notice about Stranger Than Paradise is the look of the film. As one might expect from a film that reportedly had a budget of $10,000, the film looks cheap but there’s a beauty in that cheapness. The harsh black-and-white magnifies every detail of the film’s locations. When we watch Eva walking through New York City, the street may look desolate but it’s an exquisite desolation.

Directing his second film, Jim Jarmusch shoots nearly the entire film in single long takes and refuses to indulge in any of the usual tricks that movies often use to force an audience to identify with its main characters. The camera rarely moves and every scene ends with a blackout. It’s a technique that casts the audience as observers. Willie, Eva, and Eddie may all be outsiders but, while watching the film, so is the audience. Willie, Eva, and Eddie win us over because of the charm of the actors playing them and the deadpan humor of their dialogue but, at the same time, the film never lets us forget that we’re merely watching their lives unfold.

The humor in Stranger Than Paradise comes less from what these characters do and more from what they don’t do. When Eva arrives in New York, Willie never offers to show her around. There’s no trip to Broadway or the Statue of Liberty or anything else that we, as an audience, have been conditioned to expect whenever a stranger comes to New York for the first time. Instead, Willie and Eva sit in Willie’s apartment and watch TV. When Eddie asks Eva if she wants to join him and Willie at the movies, Willie tells Eva to stay in the apartment and not go outside. Eva eventually wins Willie over by shoplifting dinner.

During the film’s second act, Willie and Eddie decided to visit Eva in Cleveland, despite not being sure where Cleveland is. They ask one random guy standing on a street corner how to get there. “I’m waiting for a bus,” the guy snarls back. Later, as they drive drown a highway, Eddie asks Willie if they’re in Ohio yet. “I think we’re in Pennsylvania,” Willie replies. When they finally do get to Ohio, it turns out to be a frozen wasteland. After meeting up with Eva, Willie and Eddie spend most of their vacation watching TV with Lotte. Eventually, they visit Lake Erie. It’s frozen but Eva, Willie, and Eddie still dutifully stand at the railing and stare down at it while a freezing wind howls around them.

Eventually, all three of them end up in Florida. Instead of visiting Walt Disney World or Miami, they end up sitting in a cheap motel room. Eva goes to the beach, which — when shot in black-and-white — looks just as desolate as Ohio in winter. Eventually, all three of them stumble into money but that’s just a set up for the film’s final joke…

It’s a deliberately slow-moving film but it’s never less than watchable. Lurie, Edson, and Balint all give such wonderfully deadpan performances that they’re a joy to watch even when they aren’t actually doing anything. Stranger Than Paradise was Jim Jarmusch’s second film and also one of the first independent American films to receive widespread attention and acclaim. (The National Society of Film Critics named it the best film of the year.) 34 years after it was first released, the film is an idiosyncratic joy to behold and definitely one that needs to watched by anyone who loves cinema.