TheRetroCritic

Following the runaway success of both Jaws and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind , Steven Spielberg directed war-themed comedy 1941 back in 1979 and, although it wasn't technically a box-office bomb, it wasn't exactly a hit and it's only years later that it gained a cult following. The film is very loosely based on a mix of real yet mostly disconnected events as it explores the growing paranoia post-Pearl Harbor with US citizens fearing that Japan would attempt another attack and dealing with it in various ways. As an enemy submarine slowly tries to make its way to Los Angeles with the unlikely goal of destroying Hollywood, chaos builds in the city and we follow a variety of characters, each of them doing their own thing, with everything culminating in a cartoonish battle around Santa Monica pier. This is very much an ensemble piece in the vein of Dr Strangelove or American Graffiti with some characters having a very clear goal and others just kind of wandering i

Here's a weird one. After the resounding success of The Blues Brothers , Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi reunited in Neighbors , an odd dark comedy sold as "a comic-nightmare" (and released at Christmas, of all times) which saw the actors kinda switch roles, in a way, with Aykroyd being the loud, ebullient one and Belushi being the restrained, quiet one. The film sees Earl (Belushi) and his wife move into a new house in an abandoned, kinda depressing corner of suburbia while these goofy new neighbours show up to drive Earl completely nuts. The neighbours in question, Vic (Aykroyd) and Ramona (a brilliant Cathy Moriarty) just show up uninvited, the latter coming onto Earl over and over with a Jessica Rabbit-style charm and the former constantly playing tricks on him and pushing his buttons. This is really more of a Tex Avery cartoon than it is a movie and, had they not made it as dark as it is, I'm sure more people would have had fun with it. The rather sombre mood