Wow. Hooray. My hero. What a big tough movie you are, imagine that Empire Strikes back could take on a whole year and come out on top... You'll probably win the decade as well, see you in the All Time round Empire! Well, let's see who came in second...
What? I feel the need to question myself here...
Q: Excuse me me, but how the Frakes in Riker's name does Flash Gordon end up with the second spot for 1980? It's no Raiders fiasco, but you may be out of your own mind, to the extent that you could end up talking to yourself, and typing while doing it!
A: Superman II was a childhood favorite, but if you watch Superman II once a year, just once a year from, say ages 7 to 17; you can feel yourself getting older. You start questioning just how nicely done some parts of it are, and how... (lengthy bull crap later) and where did the cellophane S come from?
Flash Gordon has gotten a boost, in just the past year or so, probably worth 7-8 places. Actually, ironically, right this second as I'm typing this, the wife and daughter are watching Flash Gordon in the other room! It has multigenerational appeal, even today! Why could that be? There's a clue on the poster... "filmed in Todd-AO" (My father used to rave about Todd-AO movies, and it was probably the second thing he thought off when thinking about Elizabeth Taylor). The Flash Gordon movie of my youth was a dull pan and scan on tv movie, but having seen it in HD. It's, well, beautiful.
More importantly, Flash is a movie that hits it's target. It is everything it wants to be. And movies that accomplish that are almost always well regarded, if not loved directly proportionally to the appeal of their goal. For instance, if you like crime movies, than Godfather, Scarface and Goodfella's are your classics. Hard Sci-Fi fan? 2001 and Blade Runner... Disney fare.. Lion King and Cinderella for the Classic Disney fare crowd. Sometimes movies mix appeal base, they're still perfect, but it's where you land on both appeal orientations. Flash Gordon is a movie that feels like it came out of an old MGM vault, like a victory lap made after Wizard of Oz. It's everything George Lucas claimed he wanted Star Wars to be, except "believable" looking. Flash trades realistic for retro deco.
- The Empire Strikes Back
- Flash Gordon
- Superman II
- Battle Beyond the Stars
- The Final Countdown
- Airplane!
- Raise the Titanic
- Kagemusha
- Hangar 18
- The Blues Brothers
- Midnight Madness
- Caddyshack
- Oh, God! Book II
- Altered States
- The Shining
- The Day Time Ended
- The Return of the King
- Private Benjamin
- Stir Crazy
- Somewhere in Time
- Xanadu
- Herbie Goes Bananas
- Popeye
- The Elephant Man
- Galaxina
- The Gods Must Be Crazy
- Coal Miner's Daughter
- The Watcher in the Woods
- American Gigolo
- Any Which Way You Can
- Urban Cowboy
- Ordinary People
1 comment:
Dude, I'm FN TICKLED to see Midnight Madness on here! :)
What the hell is Kagemusha?
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