I'd say One From the Heart and Rumble Fish are definitely worth a watch at least. Beyond that, it's a mixed bag.
Watched both today and I watched
The Outsiders, too.
I watched these three 80s Coppola films in a row. I meant to watch four, but I couldn't bring myself to watch the last one. Coppola combines populist cinema with artistic pretensions much better than Spielberg. His eye for visuals is better, too, especially in how he frames a shot, but also in his use of color. It's almost shocking how nobody talks about post-Apocalypse Now Coppola. I knew he kept making films but I had no idea he made so many. I decided to watch at least a few of them, and
One from the Heart is the next one after
Apocalypse Now, so I thought why not?
One From the Heart (1982)
SICK visuals. All those cross-fades, seamless transitions, and double exposures are impressive, as are the colors. The opening shot could have continued and followed the girl into the shop, though. A wasted opportunity for a master shot if you ask me! The transitions showing the two lovers talking to their best friends are seamless and really neat! Good soundtrack from Tom Waits, too. The story is easily my least favorite aspect of the movie, but who cares about the story when you have this kind of freakin' visuals! I treat it like a Jacques Demy film and while it doesn't have the same emotional beats as Demy's best, it doubles the visual overload. I loved that moment when all four met in the middle of the street, and how one of the men walked under the other's spread legs. I found Hank coming through the roof really hilarious, too. This movie really feels like Coppola finally getting the upper hand and doing exactly what he wanted to do therefore making the whole studio go bankrupt. He ditches the story and just attacks with the visuals, and I love that. This is easily TOP 3 Coppola for me, maybe even his best but I can't tell for sure without rewatching
The Conversation and
Apocalypse Now.
The Outsiders (1983)
This was very good. Coppola is again slick with visuals and he clearly remakes the feel and look of a juvenile gang movie of the late 50s or early 60s like
Rebel Without a Cause or
West Side Story. (The protagonist goes to see a double bill of
The Hustler and
Gidget Goes to Rome at the cinema; the first is a masterpiece and I haven't seen the second.) The emotional beats were surprisingly good here, and the ending almost gave me
Angels with Dirty Faces feels, though the two movies are obviously disparate. All in all, not Coppola's best but a movie very much worth seeing.
Rumble Fish (1983)
I liked this one the least of the three. I already had amazing visuals in
One From the Heart and the gang story in
The Outsiders so this film brought nothing new for me today. The black'n'white cinematography felt a bit overcooked at times, too, and the splashes of color felt gimmicky, not unlike Spielberg's use of red in
Schindler's List. I think only Kurosawa pulled it off the right way in
High and Low. Still, this was a good movie.