Actually, the central conceit of TLS:TM was pretty interesting. The trailer park Alex came from is now a tourist trap, and the denizens are putting on a show for you, the tourists.
I got news for you: t looked like a cartoon even back then. Individual images, when reprinted in magazines, looked photo-perfect, but for some reason the effects used in the movie itself looked cartoony. It’s likely that they simply couldnt afford the computing time andcomplexity then to make every frame look good, and they only lavished that care on the stills. The Hunt for Red October, made afew years later, has the same problem.
The guys who did the effects for TLS offered them to Lucas for The Return of the Jedi, but he turned them down. Computer effects clearly weren’t mature enough yet (I’ve seen an x-wing they did for him, though. In a still shot, it looks great)/
Nevertheless, the story stands up. It’s a light, upbeat, well-crafted film, and I like watching it still.
Well, to answer your first question, I thought “Back to the Future” should have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was a better movie, IMHO, than any of the five nominated films for 1985. (In case you care, “Out of Africa” won that year.) And yes, I am one hundred percent serious.
“Back to the Future” was a classic, and wasn’t high art. It was a genuinely great movie.
I was a kid in the 80’s as addicted to video games as any other, and nah, “The Last Starfighter” wasn’t an important movie to me. It was okay. YMMV.
I don’t disagree, RickJay, but the idea of the Academy granting the Best Picture honors to what was frivolous teen flick is hard to imagine. I can’t recall which films were nominated for that year, but I did see Out of Africa - and shrug
It’s not the first time, nor will it be the last time, that the Academy chose pomp and circumstance over excellence. I remember the muttering, a few years later, when Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was nominated for Best Picture, without winning. And, of course, there are still people who are bitter (for a number of reasons) with the idea of the Academy offering an Oscar for full-length animated films.
Out of Africa
The Color Purple
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Prizzi’s Honor
Witness
All very fine films, you understand; I’m not slagging them by any means. My point was simply that I am not one to dismiss lighter fare as being inferior cinema. “Back to the Future” was the best film of 1985, in my opinion. I’m no pretentious artsy snob who dismissed “The Last Starfighter” just because it’s a sci-fi film.