Body Double (1984)

A down-on-his-luck horror film actor scores free accommodation in a plush pad with a revolving bed and views of a sexy neighbour's nightly stripshow, in Brian de Palma's sleazy thriller, an unabashed exercise in emulating Hitchcock replete with voyeuristic hero (Rear Window) with a debilitating psychological condition that gets in the way of his uncovering the truth of a mystery involving body doubles (Vertigo), double-crosses, and murder.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Pacific Heights (1990)

Financially stretched San Franciscan couple (Melanie Griffith and Matthew Modine) buys a Pacific Heights property with a plan/need to rent out the rooms but when their tenant (Michael Keaton) turns out to be a creep who hammers at night, toys with razorblades and stares creepily at people through his car windshield, a long, dry Tenant's Rights case study ensues, one that becomes only slightly more interesting towards the end of the movie when the landlords and tenant engage in a cat and mouse game (with the movie making the mistake of assuming you'll side with the inept, unsympathetic landlords).

★★☆☆☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Working Girl (1988)

In her career best performance, Melanie Griffiths plays Tess McGill, a big-haired receptionist from Staten Island who decides she deserves better than her demeaning job and cheating boyfriend and so sets about making it big in the corporate world, in this comedy drama that anyone who has ever had a job or a boss they didn't like will find impossible not to love: a kind of 80s corporate office version of The Devil Wears Prada with Sigourney Weaver in the role of boss from hell.

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW