So many movies on my list of shame I need to see - Streets of Fire (always was intrigued by the box as a kid), Once Upon a Time in America, Buckaroo Banzai. And I second the idea that Rick Moranis wasn't used fully - while not a great movie, My Blue Heaven showed he had real potential as a romantic lead.
Being a massive THE WARRIORS fan, remember finding STREETS OF FIRE at Four Star in Madison, WI. Was floored, unsure of what I was seeing. ‘Was this the same Walter Hill’?
Felt like it slipped through from another dimension where it was a smash hit.
Last year, I sat through Revenge of the Nerds for some reason, and yes, it is trash. But what struck me most about it was how utterly *cheap-looking* the whole production was, in a way that you rarely see in a major studio production.
My parents told me that when they saw Revenge of The Nerds in their small college town that the entire audience stood up and cheered at the end. Saw the edited version a million times on TV growing up and didn't realize until I saw the theatrical version how much was cut, and also how fucked up the whole movie is. Absolute trash, though I do still kinda love the carnival Devo-ripoff musical performance the Nerds give.
I recently watched Once Upon a Time... and certainly dug the melancholy tone mentioned (which was really hammered home by that excellent Morricone score), camera work, as well as the attention to detail in set design, costume, and make-up (old age Robert De Niro actually looks remarkably close to older Robert De Niro today). But man, even the 229 minute cut still felt like a bit of a mess (maybe with 6 credited writers (7 if you count the novelist of the book the movie's based on), there were just too many cooks?). Not to get too far into spoilers, but a lot of the key motivations for James Woods' character felt really under-cooked and / or left largely off-screen, which basically under-cut the entire conflict in the 3rd Act. And yeah, in a modern day context, it's really hard to ignore the ugliness in the film's sexual politics - for me, it just gave the film an exceptionally bad aftertaste.
Sophomore year of high school, I wound up being the third wheel on what should have been a double date to Goonies before my date bailed on me, and I will never, ever, ever give that movie a fair shake.
However, my younger brother had it on at the vacation house last summer, I watched a little of it again. And maybe I'd been fair to it the whole time: That movie is objectively awful.
For some reason I find Once Upon A Time In America immensely rewatchable, perhaps because the episodic structure and the scale of the narrative. I loved seeing it top this list, and it soothed the pain from the wound inflicted on my soul by Josh and Adam over at Filmspotting who turned their blindspotting review into a trashing of Leone's epic (I know that they weren't that harsh, but if felt like it).
That frisbee scene though. That's a head scratcher.
The ones I've seen on your list of shame (Dreamscape, Tightrope, Conan) fit solidly on the list of movies I really enjoyed and sometimes think about watching again but decide to leave as a nice memory and not ruin it. The exception is Best Defense. What a piece of crap. Huyck and Katz wrote Temple of Doom so they have a lot to answer for in the summer of '84.
No arguments with your ranking. I remember Bachelor Party being better than it needed to be. And was just talking to someone earlier this week about how I couldn't believe Buckaroo Banzai got made at all. That Gremlins clipping got my nostalgia sadness going. I miss the strip of theaters next to a newspaper movie ad.
Cloak & Dagger is my go-to answer when I think about older movies that would be ripe for a remake. It isn't that the original is bad - it's ok, it has a really nice dual performance from Dabney Coleman, and making the baddies nice-seeming grandparent types really worked well with 80s stranger-danger - but it's far too dated to connect with most audiences these day, even though the underlying structure is really solid.
Update the McGuffin to a cell phone with an unreleased game & cast Jon Hamm as the distant father/imagined super-spy, this would be a good, modestly budgeted family-friendly adventure that would look good on any streaming service's slate.
Recently rewatched ToD, and the thing that stuck out for me this time - having already grappled with how racist it is in previous viewings - was how much the film undercut itself with it's sexist treatment of Willie Scott. The whole film would have been elevated with a Michelle Pfeiffer type (or, hell, Michelle Pfeiffer) in the role, with Willie played not as a shrieking damsel out of her element, but instead as an ambitious, smart woman who'd gotten used to adapting to unexpected environments in her quest for fame. I don't even know that much of the script would have had to change; most of it would still work but would land in a very different way with different directing/performance choices.
Was hoping for a few more lines about The Last Starfighter. This movie hit home for me as a video gaming kid in the 80s. To think that all those quarters I was feeding those arcade games was really training me to be a hero in a galactic fight.
Plus the line "Back to sleep, Louis, or I'm telling Mom about all your Playboys!" also hit close to home, as someone that had a few issues hidden under my mattress.
One afternoon last summer, I agreed with my girlfriend that I would watch Flight of the Navigator if she would then watch The Last Starfighter. Of course she conks out for an afternoon nap halfway through The Last Starfighter. I got the raw end of that trade.
ok, I truly don't know how you haven't seen Muppets Take Manhattan
I tried to watch Goonies last year, having fond memories of it, but my reaction was like your to Temple of Doom. I couldn't sit through it.
ToD, however troublesome, however much of a come down from Raiders, is still solid enough not to turn off, imo
So many movies on my list of shame I need to see - Streets of Fire (always was intrigued by the box as a kid), Once Upon a Time in America, Buckaroo Banzai. And I second the idea that Rick Moranis wasn't used fully - while not a great movie, My Blue Heaven showed he had real potential as a romantic lead.
Being a massive THE WARRIORS fan, remember finding STREETS OF FIRE at Four Star in Madison, WI. Was floored, unsure of what I was seeing. ‘Was this the same Walter Hill’?
Felt like it slipped through from another dimension where it was a smash hit.
Last year, I sat through Revenge of the Nerds for some reason, and yes, it is trash. But what struck me most about it was how utterly *cheap-looking* the whole production was, in a way that you rarely see in a major studio production.
My parents told me that when they saw Revenge of The Nerds in their small college town that the entire audience stood up and cheered at the end. Saw the edited version a million times on TV growing up and didn't realize until I saw the theatrical version how much was cut, and also how fucked up the whole movie is. Absolute trash, though I do still kinda love the carnival Devo-ripoff musical performance the Nerds give.
Really smart, concise summation of all that's wrong/right with The Natural.
I recently watched Once Upon a Time... and certainly dug the melancholy tone mentioned (which was really hammered home by that excellent Morricone score), camera work, as well as the attention to detail in set design, costume, and make-up (old age Robert De Niro actually looks remarkably close to older Robert De Niro today). But man, even the 229 minute cut still felt like a bit of a mess (maybe with 6 credited writers (7 if you count the novelist of the book the movie's based on), there were just too many cooks?). Not to get too far into spoilers, but a lot of the key motivations for James Woods' character felt really under-cooked and / or left largely off-screen, which basically under-cut the entire conflict in the 3rd Act. And yeah, in a modern day context, it's really hard to ignore the ugliness in the film's sexual politics - for me, it just gave the film an exceptionally bad aftertaste.
Sophomore year of high school, I wound up being the third wheel on what should have been a double date to Goonies before my date bailed on me, and I will never, ever, ever give that movie a fair shake.
However, my younger brother had it on at the vacation house last summer, I watched a little of it again. And maybe I'd been fair to it the whole time: That movie is objectively awful.
"At least it's an ethos, Dude."
OUCH!
For some reason I find Once Upon A Time In America immensely rewatchable, perhaps because the episodic structure and the scale of the narrative. I loved seeing it top this list, and it soothed the pain from the wound inflicted on my soul by Josh and Adam over at Filmspotting who turned their blindspotting review into a trashing of Leone's epic (I know that they weren't that harsh, but if felt like it).
That frisbee scene though. That's a head scratcher.
The ones I've seen on your list of shame (Dreamscape, Tightrope, Conan) fit solidly on the list of movies I really enjoyed and sometimes think about watching again but decide to leave as a nice memory and not ruin it. The exception is Best Defense. What a piece of crap. Huyck and Katz wrote Temple of Doom so they have a lot to answer for in the summer of '84.
No arguments with your ranking. I remember Bachelor Party being better than it needed to be. And was just talking to someone earlier this week about how I couldn't believe Buckaroo Banzai got made at all. That Gremlins clipping got my nostalgia sadness going. I miss the strip of theaters next to a newspaper movie ad.
Gremlins not #1?! *glares at Keith* You know what you did, sir.
Cloak & Dagger is my go-to answer when I think about older movies that would be ripe for a remake. It isn't that the original is bad - it's ok, it has a really nice dual performance from Dabney Coleman, and making the baddies nice-seeming grandparent types really worked well with 80s stranger-danger - but it's far too dated to connect with most audiences these day, even though the underlying structure is really solid.
Update the McGuffin to a cell phone with an unreleased game & cast Jon Hamm as the distant father/imagined super-spy, this would be a good, modestly budgeted family-friendly adventure that would look good on any streaming service's slate.
Recently rewatched ToD, and the thing that stuck out for me this time - having already grappled with how racist it is in previous viewings - was how much the film undercut itself with it's sexist treatment of Willie Scott. The whole film would have been elevated with a Michelle Pfeiffer type (or, hell, Michelle Pfeiffer) in the role, with Willie played not as a shrieking damsel out of her element, but instead as an ambitious, smart woman who'd gotten used to adapting to unexpected environments in her quest for fame. I don't even know that much of the script would have had to change; most of it would still work but would land in a very different way with different directing/performance choices.
Was hoping for a few more lines about The Last Starfighter. This movie hit home for me as a video gaming kid in the 80s. To think that all those quarters I was feeding those arcade games was really training me to be a hero in a galactic fight.
Plus the line "Back to sleep, Louis, or I'm telling Mom about all your Playboys!" also hit close to home, as someone that had a few issues hidden under my mattress.
One afternoon last summer, I agreed with my girlfriend that I would watch Flight of the Navigator if she would then watch The Last Starfighter. Of course she conks out for an afternoon nap halfway through The Last Starfighter. I got the raw end of that trade.