Flesh + Blood is him? I saw that movie once by accident strolling down the cable channel very late at night quite a few years ago. That movie stuck with me like nobody’s business. I thought it was a fever dream and had to ask here on the Dope many, many moons ago if I actually saw this or did I imagine it.
Still like Robocop better.
That’s what I was coming here to post. Black Book is a great film by anyone’s standard, but for some reason people forget that Paul Verhoeven directed it.
Of the four choices offered, I voted for Robocop, as I thought “Some other movie” was a cheat.
Starship Troopers is such a guilty pleasure for me that I have to vote for it. I think possibly it’s because the news reels at the start and the end keep me thinking of the whole movie as a propaganda piece for the fictional government. Thus, every time there’s a weakness someone points to, I just see it as part of the overall propaganda piece and continue enjoying it.
Robocop is similar, in a way, with a dystopian future and lots of cynical, propaganda-like overtones. However, as someone remarked, it becomes more and more a straight up movie as it progresses and that definitely lets you engage with the movie and the characters in a different way. It’s very close in enjoyment value as Starship Troopers, but doesn’t quite work as well for me.
Showgirls is the best movie. But you have to know how to appreciate it.
I thought it was garbage too until Lissner (of the SDMB) explained it.
Are you allowed to reference those two things in the same post? 
Paul Verhoeven is worse than Tim Burton, and if you know me you know that’s saying something.
Now I want to see Batman vs RoboCop.
I think Verhoeven has two main problems. First of all, he’s a first-rate action movie director who insists on squandering his talents on mediocre satire - but that’s a matter of opinion, and I don’t want to start a flame war.
The second is that he’s not very good at working with actors; not as bad as someone like George Lucas, but still not that great. Old pros like Peter Weller, Michael Ironsides or Rutgar Haur can work around this, as can natural charismatics like Arnie or Neil Patrick Harris, but whenever he builds his movies around bland presences like Casper van Diem or Elizabeth Berkeley, they end up with a sucking void in the center.
(And don’t say that he hired bad actors on purpose, because satire. If you want bad acting, hire good actors and have them act badly. That way at least your film won’t reek of incompetence).
I have never seen Basic Instinct. Of the other three, Robocop is the best, and Total Recall is second best.
Starship Troopers is shit. It portrays Verhoeven as being an illiterate troglodyte who can’t see past his own biases, who looks at a reasoned conversation about the limitations of nuclear deterrance and sees only an excuse for violence. Let me say that again: Starship Troopers has a scene about the foolishness of limiting yourself to gross overreaction or doing nothing, and Verhoeven thought it was about stabbing a guy for asking a question.
The only positive thing I have to say about the movie is that it had women serve in the Mobile Infantry. Not what Verhoeven did with that fact, just that he changed something that I would have appreciated in the hands of a less shitty creator.
Some Other Movie: Flesh+Blood for me. I’ve yet to see a more real-feeling portrayal of medieval warfare (even with the fantastic elements).
If restricted to the list, I’d have voted for Basic Instinct. I like Robocop and Starship Troopers, but BI is a better film overall.
I agree. I think people are always reading stuff in Verhoeven’s movies that he didn’t put in them and giving him credit he doesn’t deserve.
I put Verhoeven in with people like Michael Bay or Barry Sonnenfeld; people who are capable of making an entertaining movie but never go beyond that.
I voted for Total Recall. My belief is that Verhoeven typically tries to make moves that can be enjoyed on multiple levels. The top level is (usually) a glitzy, Michael-Bay-esque action/adventure movie, but underlying that is something else, often a satire. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but I appreciate the ambition. *Total Recall *was the one where, I think, the largest percentage of the audience enjoyed the surface movie without being aware of the underlying levels. *Showgirls *failed because the surface movie, which was supposed to be sexy, wasn’t. In *Robocop *the satire was so obvious everyone saw it. *Starship Troopers *was successful, but mostly only with people who were unaware of the source material.
I am a fan of Verhoeven, I suppose. Like I said, I appreciate an action movie made with some ambition and artistic vision.
The commercialization/monetization of everything, right down to law enforcement, for one. I remember seeing it in the theaters and being too young to get the joke, but my dad laughing out loud at the passing mention of “Lee Iacocca Elementary School.”
I voted for Robocop because it came as a welcome surprise – the second SF movie in the space of a few years that vastly exceeded by expectations (the first being The Terminator). Even after seeing the ads, I expected an incredibly stupid and sily (if violent) movie. But it turned out to be an informed, darkly satiric film with high production values*, broadly played but not common “types”, and a grim little twist
The script paid homage to Cyril Kornbluth’s classic story “The Marching Morons” (and updating it via inflation./ The catchphrase “Would you buy that for a quarter?” became “I’d buy that for a dollar”) The same sort of Corporations In Power and Driving Things by Advertising that was in Kornbluth and Pohl’s The Space Merchants is clearly in command here, and making the same wretched mess of things in the name of corporate profits. Even the sympathetic head of OmniCorp is a corporate hack, caring more about the bottom line than about people.
The best part was what I call “The REAL Banality of Evil” – not what Hannah Arendt had in mind, but the trope of Criminals Having No Taste. You could see the same thing in films like Little Caesar or in Goodfellas, where the mobsters have a taste for cheap kitsch, but it’s overblown in Robocop, where the criminals spout trite sayings inspired by the cheap shows they watch and aspire to flashy consumer goods just because they’re flashy.
And the fake commercials are a hoot. The hacks who made the sequels never latched on to any of this – the plots are nonsensical and the commercials lack that dark, biting edge.
ED Neumaier wrote the screenplay for Starship Troopers, too, and his Internet blackouts are as amusing as the commercials (especially the one where the criminal about to be executed is … him), and he and Verhoeven tried to do ST as the same sort of dark comedy.(And the effects, again, are top-notch). But for SF fans it simply doesn’t work, despite all the critics (some on this Board) who keep telling us how it’s great because of what it’s trying to be. But it’s like taking Gone With the Wind and turning it into a four hour, over-the-top racist and anachronistic dark comedy* – it won’t fly.
But ST has the biggest disconnect between a movie and its supposed source material that I’ve ever seen – it goes way beyond divergence from the text into a fundamental difference in outlook and philosophy. And scientific and technical accuracy. Heinlein’s book is well thought-out, with a few SF assumption (FTL spaceships, for instance), but trying to keep the rest plausible, but the film is full of downright stupidity and monkey-logic (Why didn’t the Rodger Young contact earth about the Bug Meteor? Because their communications equipment was broken off by the meteor. Because it passed so close by the ship. Because they didn’t see it until it was too close. Heinlein must be spinning at hypersonic speed in his grave.)
I liked Total Recall, even though everything was too “clean”. It’s not a great interpretation of Philip K. Dick’s original story “WE can remember it for you Wholesale”, and I’ve said often enough before that I feel the bulk of the film is ripped off from Robert Sheckley’s The Status Civilization, without attribution (with a Martian Atmosphere Plant ripped off from Edgar Rice Burroughs, fer cryin’ out loud!) The effects were good (although quickly became obsolete as CGI became available). As Veerhoeven said, “every dollar is on the screen,” and you can’t fault the film for not moving along. You can explain the improbabilities and inanities from the likelihood that this is a dream. The remake has the advantage of looking gritty and realistiuc, but is much dumber in many ways.
*Yeah, I know – don’t say “but it is already!” It’s too cheap a shot. Mitchell knew her history and did her homework. GWTW is definitely racist, but you have to view it as the Civil War seen through the eyes of a Southern Belle.
*especially excellent animation work, by more than one provider
See, this is an example of how I make Starship Troopers work for me. Of course it’s full of stupidity and monkey-logic, because the movie is a propaganda piece. It’s like complaining that Goebbels had a poor understanding of Jewish contributions to Europe. The fact that it departs so much from the source materials fits that as well. What we’re really watching is future-Goebbels production of a recruiting film to encourage high school kids to join the army and fight the bugs.
Flesh + Blood was on cable a little while ago. I caught the end. I have to tell you, it didn’t age well. The writing and direction are awful. Still love Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh. And certain scenes make me remember my teenage infatuation of JJL. But Robocop is the superior movie. I haven’t seen some of the earlier movies mentioned. All of his other movies named in the poll are complete shit.
Why would anyone want to see something like that?
Why do we read or watch 1984?
I agree with the general sentiment here and voted for Robocop. Besides the other reasons that people have mentioned, notably it’s satire, I think the social commentary and symbolism is interesting as well. It wasn’t until relatively recently that I realized that Robocop has some pretty heavy messianic symbolism, notable obviously in his “resurrection”, but also in the manner in which he was killed, “walking on water”. Also, unlike the other movies listed, I feel like it does the best job capturing the zeitgeist of the 80s and, as a result, it ages in a way the others don’t. To that end, if I were to make a list of must-see 80s films, I’d definitely include this on that list, probably in the top 10.
1984 isn’t a satirical depiction of a dystopian future that we’re supposed to mock because it’s stupid.
Furthermore, 1984 builds a coherent case against fascism. What case does the movie build? That fascists are bad actors who make bad movies? Oooo, how scary.