I think I’ve got one that hasn’t been mentioned yet: Love Story from 1970. To be fair, I’ve never even seen it, but it certainly was in the zeitgeist for a while when I was a little kid back in the 70s.
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” :dubious: <really need a pukie smilie here>
Even though the AFI seems to have a boner for this film , according to Amazon, it’s ranked #13,758 in sales. Pretty weak.
My first thought was The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake and The Towering Inferno.
A Fish Called Wanda - “Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not “Every man for himself.” And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.” A funny film, although the humour might not travel so well.
The Austin Powers films were huge amongst my friends, and we would see them en masse, several car loads of us. Never with any other film have we been so obsessed. I’ve seen all of the films mentioned in this thread at least twice, possibly ‘Ghost’ has little cultural relevance today or that might just be me.
My father was a movie theater manager when “The Poseidon Adventure” came out and it was so mobbed, they put in a few benches in the back of the theater. (don’t know how or why, fire codes and all.) “Tommy” was HUGE when it came out and now it’s a curiosity shown on TV once in a blue moon.
I’m under 30 and I fondly remember Beetlejuice. Though, as a child, I was more fond of the syndicated animated series that went into reruns for years (well into the mid-nineties, IIRC), and found the film flummoxing – why was there so little of Betelgeuse and why was he such a malicious perv!? In the cartoon he was a lovable rogue and a guardian angel of sorts for Lydia. Who were the Maitlands and why should I care!?
My appreciation of the film has grown, and I kinda cringe at the cartoon now. Funny how that works. (I still want to ride Doomy the Dragster of Doom, though)
So how 'bout that Cloverfield movie? The hype and viral marketing of it were so unavoidable that I’m kind of glad “America’s Godzilla” is kind sinking back to the depths from whence it came.
The irony of course is that the actual American Godzilla was so godawful that it retains relevance, in addition to association with the timeless property it bastardized, by having retractable kitsch quality.
That’s an interesting call. “Cloverfield” is a great example of being a victim of its own marketing. They tried to keep the monster design under wraps, and wound up creating a situation where people were unavoidably disappointed. They tried to merge Blair Witch Project’s intimacy with a Hollywood budget, and they wound up overpromising and underdelivering.
And Cloverfield reminds of The Blair Witch Project! Which I had to struggle to remember the name of but was all-that then.
I think that one might qualify. I remember it being a huge deal…well, briefly, anyway. Or at least the marketing way, as typoink points out. Can’t remember how people felt about actual film. I remember thinking it was decent–not embarrassingly horrible, but not mindblowingly good. Good solid B.
If you’ve seen Crying Game I’d be interested in your thoughts on the character.
While The Crying Game was a successful, Oscar-winning movie, it’s my recollection that the “sensation” at the time was really about the Dil plot twist. There was also a big spoiler controversy because Gene Siskel revealed the twist on Siskel & Ebert. Over the years I’ve heard the plot twist in The Crying Game referenced a number of times (sometimes as an example of a plot twist that everyone knows), but rarely anything else about the film. I suspect that far more people know that there’s a transgender character in The Crying Game than know that most of the other major characters are members of the IRA, even though the latter is essential to the plot and is established within the first few minutes of the movie.
I’d guess that The Crying Game has probably been a victim of its twist being so well known, as there are likely plenty of people who never bothered to watch it because they figure they already know everything important about it. But there are actually plenty of other twists in the plot, and the fact that Dil is transgender doesn’t even have much to do with the IRA storyline.
I’ve actually never seen it, but I think “solid B” is the general reception. And I think, had it been just another Hollywood movie, it would be thought of as a decent modern creature feature.
But the pre-hype, as I remember it, was full of “JJ Abrahms & co are going to reinvent the monster movie and make an instant iconic classic.” When they didn’t, the movie was remembered as a failure to deliver, rather than the perfectly servicable movie he delivered.
A minor one,but I remember Deadly Pursuit getting a lot of hype as it was the big return of Sidney Poitier to the movies after over a decade away from them. It got a lot of attention and hype and turned out to be just another 80’s actioneer with a mix-matched pair of buddies.