This thread was inspired by a bout of insomnia this morning. I turned on Footloose, a movie that, as far as I can remember, was popular when it came out. I saw it 20+ years ago, and I remember not being overwhelmed by it, but holy cow! This movie inhales in a way that should bar it from ever being aired again. The acting is bad, the script is horrid, the scene early in the movie when Kevin Bacon dances by himself is comical, but it is outdone by a scene where Bacon tries to teach Chris Penn “rhythm”.
Nominate as many as you’d like. The one rule is that the movie had to be somewhat popular and successful during its original release… I’m sure I’ll be back when I can get Footloose erased from my brain. I have to get to work, or I’d be erasing it right now with some beer. Maybe I’ll have a paper jam this morning that will help.
Have fun… and if you are one to have fond memories of this movie, I dare you to watch it again. I double dog dare you!
I’m gonna say Pulp Fiction. It’s reeeaaaaly slow. There’s a reason why most characters in movies don’t talk pointless shit that has nothing to do with the plot.
I enjoyed it at the time, and for a while afterwards, but it’s lost its lustre for me.
I don’t know that there’s too many that could surpass Footloose but Red Dawn has got to be up there somewhere. Charlie Sheen, Powers Boothe and Patrick Swazey all turn in particularly forgettable performances. A silly premise and overly tear jerking scenes playing upon the emotions of teens and you’ve got something that’s rather difficult to look back upon.
Birth of a Nation. When I first took the streetcar downtown and paid a nickel to see this movie in 1915, it seemed like an exciting historical epic. But when I watched it again recently, I got the uncomfortable feeling that, well, maybe D.W. Griffith was just a little prejudiced. You know, about the Negroes. Maybe it’s just me.
TAPS: how could anybody take such a stupid movie seriously? Two wannabe military nutballs holed up in a military school-only they have real guns?
I guess i better be careful of the cadets from the local military school!:smack:
I can’t cite the whole movie, but I would say Vangelis’ music from Chariots of Fire. The music/film combo seems horribly off now, since the early-20th-century time period of the film is jarringly different from the now-dated-80’s-synthy music, which at the time was merely contemporary.
At least with Blade Runner, V’s music is linked to a film with an imaginary, futuristic world - you have a little wiggle room…
For me, it would be Bonnie and Clyde. Saw it for the first time just a few years ago, and I could not for the life of me think of it as a period piece. I’d have to see it again to try to put my finger on it exactly, but it was just a little slice of 1967 to me.
Oh, but how can you discount the utterly dopey lines that just make you giggle like you’re high.
“Things are different now.” That one is my favorite. Or how about …
“What you said was wrong.”
Gads, I love that movie.
As for movies that haven’t stood the test … I nominate Logan’s Run. It’s constantly held up by fan-boys as a sci-fi classic, but truthfully it looks like a rejected episode of The Land of the Lost.
Kelly’s Heroes is still an enjoyable movie, per se. But the hippy culture just really yanks me out of the film. It takes a great combination of warfare and a bank heist and then screams, “Hey! This was made in the 60’s!”
Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Watch it back-to-back with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It’s like a cheaply-made documentary that the produced just to see if people were interested in reviving the franchise, and to earn enough money to get the franchise started again.
When I was in seventh grade, this movie was awesome. Now, not so much. Ditto the **Conan The Barbarian **movies. Or really any early Ahnold flicks outside maybe Terminator.
Well, it was essentially the Last Gasp of thr Dimensional Animation movie, at least where the animation meshed with live actors. After that things went to CGI pretty quickly. But it was the crowninhg work of Ray Harryhausen, who I grew up on, and whose stuff was marvelous. For the first time – and for his last film – Ray had a Big Budget, and could afford Real Stars – a slumming Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Ursula Andress, Burgess Meredith. And he still had a lot of his stable of backup people to help out. My only real complaint is that I want to strangle whoever’s responsible for Bubo the Owl (even if it’s Ray himself) aside from that, I have no complaints about the movie – I don’t think it’s aged badly at all.
Movies tha age badly are those where the attitides have changed. Can you take The Children’s Hour seriously anymore? Or the original Imitation of Life? Or those movies where the tragedy is that someone has --horrors – blacks in his family tree, so they can pass for white, but aren’t “really” white. Watching such films makes you aklternate between squirming and dismissing the vharacters’ concerns, which they want you to identify with.
While Jaws is scary as shit IMO, I wouldn’t lump it in with “most old horror movies” by any means. Have you watched it lately, or did you just throw it out there as a random example? It’s a great movie whose reputation was sullied by its cash-grabbing sequels. Without those, I believe Jaws would get a lot more respect today.
For me, Kevin Smith’s movies from the '90s are starting to age, and not in a good way. Especially Dogma, which I liked enough to see 3 times in the theatre and buy the DVD, seems pretty weak now. Smith’s strongpoint is dialogue, and that movie has some pretty awful dialogue. Even so, I think I’ll always be nostalgic for these movies.
