Review films of the 1980s here! - Page 7

Bill - thanks for the review, watched it once long ago but never forgot it. Seems to be a classic of sorts, references to this film pop up occasionally on different movie websites.

Will revisit it soon since it's streaming on Netflix, as is Enchanted April.

The 2007 TV remake was not as good as the original.

-G

Talk Radio (1988), directed by Oliver Stone.

A Dallas shock jock has a late night call-in show where he viciously abuses every caller. His theme is "Bad to the Bone". His listeners are sad, damaged people, but occasionally it gets too real to be even cruelly entertaining. Now and then he hears from dangerously crazy people.

We'd like to think there is a caring person behind all that, but he is too troubled to sort out. He is always angry, perhaps self-loathing and unable to love. He wants his ex-wife back but savages her when she calls into the program.

This is one of Oliver Stone's more straight-forward films, probably because it was already a play written and performed by Eric Bogosian, who also stars in the movie. It's not really about Alan Berg but there are parallels to his life and death.

Towards the end the psycho-drama descends into playwright-speak, but our hero is such a professional motor-mouth that it might be realistic in this case.

The "message" is diffuse: reflections on talk without communication and the dangerous night thoughts of the American underclass.

Young Alec Baldwin is the station manager, with Michael Wincott doing a great turn has a brain-dead talk radio groupie, simultaneously contemptible and scary.



-Bill