9 - A lot of the mentions I've only seen - Lady Ice, Carny, Sword and Sorcery, Albert Brooks,

Lady Ice (1973) - Average 1970s US heist movie, made for TV but then released theatrically, with Donald Sutherland when he was doing rather bland films that really only exist in my mind as trailers.
Lady Ice does feature an out-of-place Patrick Magee in a nice suit, though.

 I feel like I should the Invasion of Body Snatchers (1978) more than I do. But Kaufman doesn't want to make a sci-fi picture, but a film about relationships. He thinks he's Woody Allen.

Carny (1980) - Gary Busey is typically hateful in a rather Altmanesque/aimless wander through an interesting carnival. A documentary would have  been better. It's tonally confused, and despite a young Jodie Foster, doesn't know what it is. New Hollywood I found spawned many of these aimless jaunts that'd have worked better as documentaries. And that's why I find New Hollywood overrated. I believe cinema is entertainment.


 Even normal swashbucklers don't really do alienate me, especially when they go ponderous, i.e.  the likes of the War Lord (1965) and Taras Bulba (1962 - where the fuck is it supposed to be set? Yes, I know but both those films feel more like a fantasy epic than a historical thing).

High fantasy's never been my strong suit I used to but-not-quite-like Krull (1983) but that's sort of SF. Dragonslayer (1981) is great, but that's very different. I kind of like Conan and Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) has an atmospheric opening, a good soundtrack and some good creature design/FX, so I kind of like that even though it is badly lit, and the cod-Shakespeareanism mixed in with Californian accents does grate, especially mixed in with the Renaissance Fayre (sic) aesthetic. Richard Lynch is a good villain, and it does go a bit overboard on the tits and ass. There is an embryo of a good film hidden in there, somewhere, but Albert Pyun's never made a good film, and this is his first and best.


I find Albert Brooks' comedy to work best in short bursts, i.e. his Tommy Cooper-esque ventriloquist's act. I found Modern Romance (1982) worse than the band of the same name, apart from the George Kennedy-as-Princess-Leia bit, but Real Life (-1979) does have some moments, i.e. Brooks trying to recreate the fire at Atlanta from Gone With The Wind in a living room, as Tara's theme plays. And Lost In America is like a half-baked romcom crossed with National Lampoon's Vacation.