Where do I stop, where do I begin.

Harold Becker’s Sea of Love.

I adore this movie. Really. I love it way more than I ever loved people in my own family. It kept me company for years, fed my then-budding heterosexual tendencies and pretty much worked as a how-to handbook for future interactions with the male end of the spectrum.

That would explain everything, wouldn’t it.

Pacino at the time had been missing from the big screen for four years following the Revolution débacle, and his presence was not grounds for hype-building in itself - hence, the emphasis on the plot, rather than the NYC setting, or the fact that this is a solid procedural cop thriller, but also presents a fairly bleak view in terms of both genre and gender roles. But I digress…

Trailer does a bang-up job at setting up Ellen Barkin as the potential killer; remember, this happened a couple years after Fatal Attraction became a box office mega hit, not to mention a huge source of anti-female backlash, as Susan Faludi memorably argued. From that point of view, insisting on the is-she-or-isn’t-she angle proved both “right” (it’s the key element of the plot) and inspired (it’s also the key “personal” arc for the Pacino character).

Oh, and I love the almost-subliminal use of “Sea Of Love”, which turns out to be the biggest clue the killer leaves in his/her wake, not to mention the leitmotif of the whole damn score (down to the Tom Waits cover on the end credits). But how sneaky, haunting and straight-up gorgeous is Barkin’s voice repeating “what are you looking for…”, over and over? This is the stuff conceptual artists were made of back then.

Looking back, it was the beginning of my lifelong romance with the writing of Richard Price. And that was good.

Yes, it’s as cheap as it looks.

Possibly intended as a shout-out to his West Side Story heyday, Robert Wise’s final film Rooftops died a quick and painless death at the box office.

British trailer can’t hide the picture’s faults (leads’ charisma failing to materialize; production values hitting all time low), and looks like a fast cut-up job. Dialogue is kept to a minimum, while plot points are a no-show.

U.S. video release trailer provides even less context, placing all its eggs in the “from the makers of smash hit La Bamba!” basket.

As anybody who’s seen the whole thing can testify, the action (dancing, fighting, or both) never amounts to much more than what’s actually shown here. So, well, points for milking a dead cow.

Released in Italy as Combat Dance - A colpi di musica, when it aired on TV it became Ragazzi sui tetti di New York, aka “Kids On New York City Roofs”, which might be the most literal title ever and/or a name for an indie band.

As Chris Rock put it, “yeah, man, New Jack City was a loooooong time ago”.

One wonders - exactly which type of audience were they after?

The trailer manages to swing both ways: it looks like a straight-to-video genre effort and a Serious Issues message picture.

Bizarre choice of music - the street corner beat followed by one of the faster cuts that dominate the soundtrack followed again by the corner beat - frames the action as if it were a videoclip, which might enforce the “let’s appeal to the MTV crowd” option. Also, Ice-T’s presence is prominently showcased - and rightly so, given that a) he does play a main character and b) he was shaping up to be a star rapper.

On the other hand, Wesley Snipes is the first face/name popping up (and will go on to swallow the whole film, giving it the coveted cool-by-association Tony Montana vibe), but the rest of the trailer presents him as just one element in an ensemble, gunning for the “what’s happening in our society at large” slant.

(And while we’re on the subject - it’s a bit hard to believe that Tracy Camilla Johns was a box office draw, five years after Nola Darling - but then again, neither was Judd Nelson.)

Still, the Van Peebles aesthetic is quite alive throughout the thing: camera angles askew and all that haven’t aged well, but they anchor the film to what would eventually become the main “urban” shooting trend. At least for a few years.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “am I my brother’s keeper lol”.