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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 20, 2022 19:53:10 GMT -5
Last year, one of my friends texted me that he was watching Three Amigos, and I mentioned that I had never seen it. He started badgering me about missing one of the vital films of the 1980s. (I still find it baffling that he rates Three Amigos so highly.) I mentioned that there are a lot of films from the 1980s that might be considered essential that I just never got around to seeing, and a lot of them were films that I just wasn’t interested in. I mentioned a few, I think it was The Karate Kid, Dirty Dancing, Footloose, Flashdance, Predator, Commando ... He asked me if I had lived in a cave for a while! 😆 (To be fair, he does that for a lot of movies that are fairly obscure. A few weeks ago, it somehow came up that I have never seen The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, and you’d think from his reaction that I had never seen Casablanca or The Big Lebowski.) So I made a list of about 30 or 40 “key” 1980s movies that I had never seen. Some of them weren’t really essential 1980s films. I got a lot of recommendations from people I know and I wrote down a few that I had wanted to see but never got to them (like Twins and Buckaroo Banzai) and I found a couple of “Greatest Movies of the 1980s” lists online and picked off a few films that sounded interesting (like Possession and White Dog). So that’s what I did for several months in 2021. I watched 1980s films. I didn’t finish the list. Yet. Some of them are hard to find and I also took a break and never really got back to it. I saw all the films that I mentioned in the second paragraph. I also saw Stop Making Sense, The Grifters, Thief, Mystic Pizza, After Hours, Something Wild, Risky Business, The Decline of Western Civilization, Blow Out, Smithereens, Missing, Sleepaway Camp, Trading Places, Coming to America, The Times of Harvey Milk, Police Story, Hellraiser, Hollywood Shuffle, They Live, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Dead Calm, Sweetie, Boiling Point, Kindergarten Cop, Blind Fury. And I still haven’t seen White Dog. It looks very entertaining!
I've been doing a lot of catching up with 1980s stuff the last few years, not only movies, but tv series, books, comics, even some music that I missed at the time. 1980s movies I watched for the first time:
The Hunger - Tony Scott
Withnail & I - Bruce Robinson
La Chute de l'Empire Americain - Denys Arcand
The Thing - John Carpenter Poltergeist - Tobe Hooper Raising Arizona - Coen brothers
Possession - Andrzej Zulawski
hmm, not as many as I'd thought, considering this is over a 2 or 3 year span. Looks like a spent more time on 1980s tv, books, and comics than movies.
I have watched a lot of 1950s movies the last couple years, maybe because there's less tv from that decade to compete for my viewing attention. I'l list those later.
All the films you listed I saw a long time ago EXCEPT Possession. I would love to see it! But the library doesn’t have it and it’s not on any streaming service I can watch for free. I might break down and pay for it, if it’s available.
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Post by berkley on Jan 20, 2022 23:16:12 GMT -5
I've been doing a lot of catching up with 1980s stuff the last few years, not only movies, but tv series, books, comics, even some music that I missed at the time. 1980s movies I watched for the first time:
The Hunger - Tony Scott
Withnail & I - Bruce Robinson
La Chute de l'Empire Americain - Denys Arcand
The Thing - John Carpenter Poltergeist - Tobe Hooper Raising Arizona - Coen brothers
Possession - Andrzej Zulawski
hmm, not as many as I'd thought, considering this is over a 2 or 3 year span. Looks like a spent more time on 1980s tv, books, and comics than movies.
I have watched a lot of 1950s movies the last couple years, maybe because there's less tv from that decade to compete for my viewing attention. I'l list those later.
All the films you listed I saw a long time ago EXCEPT Possession. I would love to see it! But the library doesn’t have it and it’s not on any streaming service I can watch for free. I might break down and pay for it, if it’s available.
I was lucky to see it play at a local cinema here just a few months ago. I hadn't known a thing about it previously. Very strange and intense film.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jan 21, 2022 0:27:08 GMT -5
I've never seen The Big Lebowski or Blade Runner. And probably a few other films that people assume I've seen.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 21, 2022 7:00:09 GMT -5
Bone Tomahawk....brutal, absolutely brutal, watching it tonight.... Still the most unsettling horror film I ever saw. I feel uneasy just remembering it. It's also pretty good with little details that are not essential parts of the plot but help flesh out the characters.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jan 21, 2022 9:48:35 GMT -5
I've never seen The Big Lebowski or Blade Runner. And probably a few other films that people assume I've seen. Do you live in a cave!?!?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jan 21, 2022 10:45:06 GMT -5
I've never seen The Big Lebowski or Blade Runner. And probably a few other films that people assume I've seen. Do you live in a cave!?!? If he does it's a cave with a electricity. As he frequently turns in to a lamp.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jan 21, 2022 11:11:15 GMT -5
I'll get around to them sometime. Movies aren't a big priority for me.
And yes, my cave is almost as nice as a hobbit-hole.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Jan 21, 2022 11:33:35 GMT -5
I've never seen The Big Lebowski or Blade Runner. And probably a few other films that people assume I've seen. Do you live in a cave!?!? I watched the former just some years back because a friend kept pestering me that it was one of the best comedies ever. To say the least I was always doubt his opinion on this because of the egregious error.
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Post by Randle-El on Jan 23, 2022 2:03:12 GMT -5
OK, my review of The Terminator as a first-time viewer is here!
Unlike some of the movies on my list, this is one of those movies that I feel like I'm very familiar with even though I had never seen it from start to finish. Prior to this, I had seen T2, T3, and Terminator Salvation (T2 on video, T3 and Salvation in theaters), and as a result knew the overarching mythology of the franchise. I had even seen scenes here and there on cable TV, but never actually sat through the whole thing.
Based on the other movies I've seen in the franchise, I would classify the Terminator films as action movies (with a dose of sci-fi). But upon watching T1, I was surprised at how much closer it felt to a slasher film. All the tropes are there -- the unstoppable killer, the female friend who gets killed post-coitus, the final girl, the "killer-surviving-a-seeming-death-to-come-back-one-last-time" scene, etc. Except for the fact that there are a lot of guns and things blowing up, there was a lot here that reminded me of slashers. I suppose given their popularity at the time, this may have simply been an inevitable influence.
(Speaking of guns -- guns were all over the place in 80s films and TV, and I saw plenty of it growing up. But living in the times that we do with reports of mass shootings commonplace, I have to admit that Arnold's shooting spree in the dance club and police station made me cringe a bit. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like contemporary screenwriters would be much more hesitant to put a scene like that in a movie these days.)
In comparison to other special effects heavy films of the era, I don't think the effects have aged well. The stop-motion animation and battle scenes from the future look dated, with the latter looking more like something from a TV series. On the other hand, the make-up effects still look pretty convincing, especially the scene where the T-800 performs surgery on himself. They must have had a low budget, given that Star Wars has already happened by this time and shown everyone what's possible with special effects.
The music was perfect. The synth-heavy score reflected the 80s aesthetic in the best way possible. It's futuristic sounding but retro all at the same time. I can definitely see this score as one of the musical inspirations for Stranger Things.
The leads gave good performances. I was used to seeing Linda Hamilton as the badass survivalist in T2, so seeing this version of her character showed that she had a great range. Michael Biehn was a little one note, but I suppose that's all his character really called for. At least he was convincing. As far as Arnold... let's be honest, this role is not about his acting and all about smart casting. He doesn't need to do or say much, but for what he needs to do, he's perfect for it.
Overall I'd give this a 7/10. It's an almost 40 year old movie that, aside from some dated special effects, still holds up pretty well. I think it's also worth noting its contributions to the "time travel" and "robot apocalypse" film genres. Shortcomings aside, I think it's definitely one of those movies that should be seen for its historical value.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 23, 2022 21:24:22 GMT -5
Do you live in a cave!?!? I watched the former just some years back because a friend kept pestering me that it was one of the best comedies ever. To say the least I was always doubt his opinion on this because of the egregious error. I watched it once and didn't "get it." I found some of it funny; but, the storyw asn't making sense to me. I tried it again, on dvd and saw a featurette, with the Coens, where they talked about The Big Sleep and how Lebowski is basically a stoner Phillip Marlowe and then it all clicked for me. I got the interactions more and it made much more sense. I still prefer Raising Arizona and Fargo to it, though. Also, O Brother, Where Ar Thou? Barton Fink is one that I just don't get, other than as a character piece.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 24, 2022 7:53:36 GMT -5
Having grown up in the 80s, I've not seen much of anything you guys talk about in the 'movies in xxxx' thread... I've seen King Kong, Maltese Falcon, and Gone with the Wind, but not much else from the black and white era... maybe a couple spaghetti westerns. Oh, and the original Seven Samurai (that's great!). There wasn't alot of access to that stuff in the 80s on TV, and I've never been interested enough to seek it out.
In the vein of 'how did you miss it'... the big one for me was Terminator. Not sure if I've told this story before, but I got in trouble in my college creative writing class because I basically wrote the plot of Terminator as a short story, and my teacher didn't believe me that I didn't see it (I was just not an Arnold fan)
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Jan 24, 2022 8:49:47 GMT -5
I watched the former just some years back because a friend kept pestering me that it was one of the best comedies ever. To say the least I was always doubt his opinion on this because of the egregious error. I watched it once and didn't "get it." I found some of it funny; but, the storyw asn't making sense to me. I tried it again, on dvd and saw a featurette, with the Coens, where they talked about The Big Sleep and how Lebowski is basically a stoner Phillip Marlowe and then it all clicked for me. I got the interactions more and it made much more sense. I still prefer Raising Arizona and Fargo to it, though. Also, O Brother, Where Ar Thou? Barton Fink is one that I just don't get, other than as a character piece. That's pretty much the way I cam away from it initially. But comedy is a finicky genre for me. It's one I take suggestions from very little unless I know the person making the suggestion knows me well. So when I spent the movie scratching my head rather than laughing I don't really get the love for it. Or mostly for any their movies, personally. I do like O Brother, Where Ar Thou? But I think that's more due to the strong acting of all characters involved, than the actual movie.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jan 24, 2022 12:12:35 GMT -5
Never seen Fargo or O Brother, Where Art Thou? either. I did see Raising Arizona, or most of it anyway - it didn't hold my interest.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 24, 2022 15:27:10 GMT -5
Never seen Fargo or O Brother, Where Art Thou? either. I did see Raising Arizona, or most of it anyway - it didn't hold my interest. Same feeling re Arizona, and I've only seen Fargo once, but O, Brother is a gem. As adamwarlock2099 says, the characters and acting are great, and the script is one of the best ever.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 25, 2022 2:35:42 GMT -5
While we are on the Coens, how about Hudsucker Proxy and The Man Who Wasn't There? Miller's Crossing? Blood Simple? Intolerable Cruelty? Ladykillers?
I love Hudsucker and mostly Man Who Wasn't There. Both are nice nods to old genre favorites; the Howard Hawks-style comedies and James M Cain noir. Miller's Crossing is one I like in parts; but, kind of feel it's a bit uneven. Blood Simple was one where I appreciated what they were trying to do; but, wasn't overly enamored with the final result. I think part of it was that I didn't really have a character to identify with, which made it harder for me to get into the story. Intolerable cruelty I didn't care for, at all. Ladykillers was okay, with some good quirky characters; but, don't really feel it was any kind of improvement on the original.
All of these I saw after the fact, on home video/dvd as Fargo was the first Coen Brothers film I saw in a theater, after catching up with their other work.
I haven't seen anything from them, since O Brother; so, no No Country or True Grit.
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