Best Robert Zemeckis Movies

uh tb = tv. i dont have tb.

http://www.facua.org/persuasoresocultos/fotos/rogerrabbit.jpg

without thinking very hard, I vote Contact. i don't know why he isn't more talked about.

because he has sucked since 1992 and made the most offensively stupid film ever

roger rabbit is still killer tho

contact's first few minutes are great, the last half hour or so is horrible

because he has sucked since 1992 and made the most offensively stupid film ever

was he (vs his films) talked about much before 92?

he's doing the Corrections, apparently?

"without thinking very hard, I vote Contact. i don't know why he isn't more talked about."

HAHAHA

Guys get this...he is doing a BEOWULF movie. The script is by NEIL GAIMAN and ROGER AVARY. SEE.

Rosenbaum

Some would call Robert Zemeckis a serious populist as well, but if he ever was one, that time has surely passed. By postulating stupidity as higher wisdom and reducing American history to a history of American TV, Forrest Gump qualifies as fake populism from beginning to end. And though Contact strikes me as a more honorable (if less effective) effort--passionately extolling the virtues of scientific exploration--the specter of Gump still hangs over this movie, which likewise sees the media as the bedrock of our shared reality. Even the opening sequence implies a mystical association of the cosmos with media history: this striking whirlwind tour of interplanetary space is accompanied by radio evocations of everything from rock to Walter Winchell.

does he (JR) perhaps look a little naive in hindsight here?

But the movie's CNN strategy, whereby credibility is measured in TV exposure, proves fatal, often throwing the proceedings into a laughable tailspin: Zemeckis doesn't seem to realize that by using Clinton, Shaw, King, Leno, and others to validate his fiction, he's kowtowing to the power structure just as shamelessly as the movie's villains.

fatal, sure, if your goal is to challenge 'the power structure', but isn't his goal to, you know, reach people?

I mean surely it's impossible that Zemeckis is craftier than you?

contact's first few minutes are great, the last half hour or so is horrible

-- bnw, Monday, June 4, 2007 12:28 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

All I liked were the cameos by Bill Clinton, Gary Busey's son, and "Spaceman" by Harry Nilsson.

Tom Skerrit, on the other hand, as Earth's official representative of the human race...

i mean, surely a guy can't win the Presidency if his favorite artist is Lee Greenwood or the Everly Brothers or his favorite philosopher is Jesus, rite?

I love the part in Contact where Sheen goes "What the shit Kiki!?!?".

Wait that might be some totally other alien movie.

Back to the Future, with Roger Rabbit a very close second, and BTTF II a very close third.

contact is sorta lame (yeah i guess mostly for the end), back to the future is really really overrated, roger rabbit rules. roger rabbit it is.

second for me might be cast away? without having any time for tom hanks ever, i weirdly liked the island portions of that movie.

yeah i like cast away a fair amount too (perhaps it doesn't hurt that it and contact have my two favorite actresses), tho i feel more excluded from the middle-americanism in that one. it's been ages and ages since i've seen roger rabbit but i think the last time i saw it i wasn't nearly as impressed as when it came out.

BTTF2 is over-clever in a good way, more fun than WFRR I think, plus I really enjoy the fact that both 1 and 2 end with ludicrous cliffhangers (this is another reason bttf3 sucks)

oh what the hell, Death Becomes Her. I'm convinced they were hinting at something, seeing as no one in that movie appears to have aged since making it.

WFRR? a very, very close second though.

I might soften on this over time but I'll have a hard time forgiving him for the horrors inflicted on the human race with Forrest Gump.

It did give rise to one of my favorite drunken conversation topics, though: if Forrest Gump was born in a given decade, what would he witness and who would he meet? You figure out exactly how crass the premise is, e.g. Forrest is passing through NY on 9/11 and saves someone, then meets Giuliani and Bush.

I saw Bob Hoskins in that Paris, Je T'aime movie the other day and kept thinking that I just really want to go back and watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

I think Forrest Gump was born at a very precise time

forrest gump wasn't born because he's a fictional character! you lose!

I voted for "Amazing Stories" (1 episode) because wtf is that?

He directed one episode of the Amazing Stories TV show?

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F70D1FF7385B0C748DDDAB0994D8404482

apart from Roger Rabbit and the first BTTF = what a fucking horrible blight on the film industry this guy is

i love all of Contact.

WWFR is really good, but there is something about it that depresses me.

BTTF is like the Casablanca of 80s blockbusters for me. the performances, the hot-house freudian plot, the look of it, i wouldnt change anything.

Castaway is my 2nd choice actually, and it seems to be by far the best of the "later" stuff, once he seemed to give up the slapstick.

oh and Contact = pretty good! but i havent seen it in forever so i cant remember why i used to think that.

They should've left in the scene of Gump running down the freeway and carrying a naked Raquel Welch while being followed by a monkey.

i was in a rush and meant to delete all the TV stuff, but a few hung on there. his full IMDB includes more TV.

has anyone read the novel that forrest gump is based on?

That's where the monkey scene came from!

There's even a part where Gump meets Nixon, and Nixon rolls up his shirt sleeve to entice Gump to buy one of the eight fake Rolexes on his arm.

I watched Death Becomes Her about 400 times growing up because my parents taped it off the TV once and we hardly had any movies. I really loved the shit out of it.

no votes for Romancing the Stone? I loved that one as a kid.

Death Becomes Her. Very easy choice for me.

"has anyone read the novel that forrest gump is based on?"

no, but i read the book that roger rabbit was based on! it was called Who Censored Roger Rabbit. I think. i remember being really surprised when i heard about the movie.

used cars is good. i liked a contact a bunch. he's pretty dudly though. back to the future movies hurt my eyes in so many ways. gump is at least unintentionally funny.

guys, Zemeckis couldn't be calling out a generation for sleepwalking through history in Forrest Gump because a major director would never call his audience 'retards', even metaphorically, rite?

This is a toss-up between "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "Romancing The Stone".

Has anybody here actually watched Polar Express? It is the single creepiest thing I've ever seen, and I've seen a 6 inch silverfish.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i was just getting to like it tho ;_;

Used Cars.

Read an interview with Tarantino somewhere recently where he talked about great writer-directors who, in his estimation, got lazy and started taking directing jobs instead of writing from scratch.

Zemeckis was his primary example -- saying how he wished he could've seen Cast Away with a screenplay written by the guy who did Used Cars.

c'mon, used cars has kurt russell & JACK WARDEN!!!!!

also, tarantino calling other people lazy LOLOLOL!!!!

Even his good movies (Romancing the Stone, BTTF) aren't ones I would choose to sit through.

chronologically, everything from "i want to hold your hand" thru "bttf ii" is good. i saw the last half-hour of "roger rabbit" on tv about a month ago and it held up well. and i saw "romancing the stone" again not long ago too, still a totally likable movie. (danny devito and alfonso arau almost steal it, but the leads are a good match too.) i voted "used cars" because i thought it was hilarious when i was in jr. high school and i like to imagine i'd still think so.

i actually liked "cast away" more than i expected to. i have avoided "forrest gump" for 13 years and hope to continue that streak.

(i even like eddy grant's "romancing the stone" song, which got left off the soundtrack but shouldn't have been.)

Contact is really annoying. such a great premise, so glibly executed.

Used Cars is grate, I always forget Zemeckis did that one

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

lol 4 of you are gay

these results make me sad.

yeah i watched death becomes her on videotape at age 8 & i created an expolosive pencil device. if the best you could do while watching that movie was watch that movie i truly pity you. even my future fucked-on-e girlfriend managed to 'hilariously' spit up into the water fountain whenever the film was mentioned.

Death Becomes Her = almost as fantastic as Showgirls.

lol 4 of you are gay

-----

Forrest Gump (1994) 1
Romancing the Stone (1984) 1
"Amazing Stories" (1 episode, 1986) 1
Back to the Future Part II (1989) 1

Yes.

Haven't seen any of these in years, but I might well have voted for Death Becomes her as well, as I was amazed that someone who'd made shit like Back to the Future Part II could've rebounded so well.

I'm also on the lifetime Gump boycott list.

Contact is really annoying. such a great premise, so glibly executed.

how could it have been better executed? gimme examples (just curious).

i don't really get BTTF2 hate either. it's a ridiculous hoot. not seen it for 15 years or so tho.

I missed this. Never seen Used Cars. I'd have voted for Romancing the Stone; otherwise, it's a sorry lot.

how could it have been better executed? gimme examples (just curious).

1. Don't cast Matthew McNakedBongos.
2. Don't show any representation of the alien to the audience.
3. Don't be so boring.

didn't have a problem with McConnagheye and his smug character.

alien representation disappoints 99/100 so i'm glad they didn't.

it wasn't boring.

Er, they did show the alien and it looked like her father! The entire theatre groaned audibly and a bunch of people got up and left.

well you contradicted yourself then. how these people tolerate aliens looking humans in oh...52429024 other sci-fi pieces i don't know.

Some animated show did a great rip on Contact's stupidity... was it Cartman on SP?

Mr. Garrison. (Also, Mr. Garrison OTM.)

Also, how is, "They could have improved the movie by not showing any representation of the alien to audience," contradicted by, "When they showed the alien and it looked like her father, it was not received well"?

sorry i misread your second point.

no visible representation at all doesn't seem like a real improvement tho. best left to the imagination? yeah why make the film at all then. my point was i was glad they didn't make the aliens Abyss-like or whatever (even tho The Abyss is better than Contact). i thought Contact had the right level of schmaltz (if you can tolerate such a thing ever - see also nu-Battlestar Galactica), didn't overdo it and some bits were v gripping (the botched launch, Foster's own trip).

no one has mentioned the black hole of sexual chemistry btwn Foster and McBongos

Er, they did show the alien and it looked like her father!

when she communicated with 'the alien', she was shown things that made her comfortable, rather than things that might be consistent with movie aliens 1977-97. obviously 'the alien' doesn't actually look like her father.

Yes gabbneb I did actually understand the movie. I thought it was a gigantic storytelling copout that underscored the fact that I'd sat through what felt like 47 hours of Morbs' aforementioned non-chemistry for absolutely no reason.

Contact would have been vastly improved had McCoughnoughnuts shouted "GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH!" at said alien.

if you thought the reason for sitting through the movie was to see an alien, I don't think you understood it

i don't really get BTTF2 hate

I even think 3's quite good.

why is it important for there to be "chemistry"? for BELIEVABILITY?

i also think you're missing the point if you wanted more 'sexual chemistry'.

xpost

"why can't they be totally at ease with and understand each other and look like they suit each other perfectly just like everyone I know in real life"

having the alien appear as her father = not a story copout given how her whole deal was inability to come to terms with her father's death.

chemistry is not their field after all

It's a Hollywood film w/ two attractive leads under 35; there has to be chemistry.

ohhhhh kaaaaay

anyway, I'm putting I Wanna Hold Your Hand on my library queue, have never seen.

The whole point of New Age is to avoid sullying yourself with messy interpersonal "contact."

the great auteur Robert Zemeckis has no use for your Hollywood rules, Dr Morbius

in his movies, the only sexual chemistry is between man, his mom, an animated rabbit, and a volleyball

or woman and Very Large Array

or between Christopher Lloyd and a lightning rod.

I waited 29 years to see I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and hey, it's not very good! For one thing, no budget to shoot in NYC, and the events of Feb '64 can't be faked elsewhere, even with Murray the K.

What I did like:

*slapstick blatantly in the style of '40s Columbia two-reelers
*Wendie Jo Sperber channelling Nancy Walker from same era
*Nancy Allen tonguing Paul's bass

i still think Castaway is really good.

(i even like eddy grant's "romancing the stone" song, which got left off the soundtrack but shouldn't have been.)

It's on his Greatest Hits collection, which I just picked up. It's got the dated production that a movie theme must contractually have, but putting it on the best-of is no idle choice. It's a fine song.

Also, a really fun movie... no, really! It's funny and Danny Devito is like a comedy Peter Lorre, all white-suited and unctuous, and Kathleen Turner spends a good amount of the movie soaking wet. :)

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/133/1155513567.jpg

The whole conversation about CONTACT here is totally ace.

I was telling my husband, last night as he was trying to sleep, that Death Becomes Her's plastic surgeon/mortician was played by Richard Dreyfuss. Oh shit, now I find it's Bruce Willis. Did my shoddy memories do a better casting job? (Tho this is clearly the best movie ever featuring Bruce.)

http://i34.tinypic.com/157hgdv.jpg

roger rabbit is pretty much chinatown with toons, so it's objectively the best of the lot

contact...arrrgh. so much wasted potential. reducing the cosmic to daddy issues=NAGL

didnt read the thread but fuck all yall who didnt vote used cars

THE ARRIVAL came out the same year as contact and is way better imo

also, fuckit, i'll rep for forrest gump - i understand why ppl find it odious, but i was watchin that shit in a hotel room last year and i was like "dang this aint bad" - i love it cuz it's so offensive, and it has a pretty great comic performance by hanks (hanks is almost underrated in a way, ppl are too hard on him for his cornball green mile type shit) - also the jenny character reminded me a lot of this girl i was involved w/at the time so it really resonated w/me i guess~~~

These results were really true.

Apparently he wants to do a sequel to Roger Rabbit. Probably be all performance-captured and shit though.

next up for zemeckis: motion-capture film about garden gnomes

an experiment in unsettling your audience

jesus, bob

just let the mocap go

Wave of the future, doncha know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgHAgSvk4Uc

wtf is "The Lift"

that chick is way too casual about there being a CGI General and penguin using the next treadmill--the things this broad must see everyday!

just wanted to say "broad"

THERE IS ALREADY A MOVIE ABOUT GARDEN GNOMES WTF WTF WTF

I mean shit I know Hollywood can't stop itself from putting out two Christopher Columbus movies the same year and that collective unconsciousness kinda shit, but that Gnomeo thing was in the works for a decade and finally plopped out, who would say "but there's so much more about garden gnomes to explore"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RtCMIe9oj8

new 'meckis, live-action

'back to the future' is a legit masterpiece, right up there with any mainstream hollywood classic. can't stand the later stuff.

I'd put "Cast Away" up there too, but agree about almost everything else.

'back to the future' is a legit masterpiece, right up there with any mainstream hollywood classic. can't stand the later stuff.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, June 7, 2012 4:36 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i'd put back to the future near the top of a list of greatest american movies ever, honestly. it's a beautiful piece of work.

i think he lost a lot when he stopped collaborating w/ bob gale. zemeckis is kind of a good argument against "auteurism" as a general principle, dave kehr's unbridled praise for everything zemeckis touches notwithstanding.

gotta admit that trailer is pretty fucking compelling. of course this will just increase my anxiety about flying but you know.

Hah, Kehr's praise has cost me too much of my life. The only reason I've given late Zemeckis a second glance.

I used to look forward to Denzel in anything. Now I dread him like Hopkins.

Hah, Kehr's praise has cost me too much of my life. The only reason I've given late Zemeckis a second glance.

― Jedmond, Thursday, June 7, 2012 9:43 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i do think that some of the latter-day zemeckis movies are a little more interesting than general critical disinterest would suggest, but they are not nearly the masterpieces of mise-en-scene than kehr describes.

kind of surprised romancing the stone didn't get more love. it's not a masterpiece--the script is too formulaic for that--but it's pretty damn entertaining.

Just watched Romancing the Stone. Pleasant enough as a light filler movie destined for TBS play, etc. Some dubious gender stuff and I dunno about the wacky Colombians (though at least there's a range of characters, and it is cute that they try to send up the "scary locals surround white lady" - lol they're all fans of her books lol!). I think it scored points for me just by giving Kathleen Turner a lot more to do than Kate Capshaw in Temple of Doom. The scenery-chewing business with stock comic relief bad guy DeVito just about worked since he threw himself into it - the other bad guys kinda sucked but whatever. Cute ending.

The thing that struck me though was how very "80s" it felt, not in the sense of the hair or the plot or the film stock but really the direction and staging. I'm not sure how much this is a period thing and how much it's Zemeckis's style as a director, but I feel like a lot of adventure-type movies from this period have this thing where the camera always seems to keep a certain distance from the actors during the action - we see the full figures, generously framed, moving around like video game or comic strip characters, against the background. Dunno if I'm describing that well but basically - lots of moments where you'd imagine the director putting his camera somewhere else to intensify the emotion of a scene, or the scares and thrills, instead stay in long shot. It sorta shortchanges what should be the big arc of the movie, as Turner's character faces situations she previously only dreamed about, and discovers she can handle them just fine... so when they escape from a hotel room and slide down a flagpole to the street, we see that happen but we don't feel it. No POV shot in shakey cam giving a sense of the distance to drop, not even a shot that emphasizes the vertical motion of the slide itself: we step back like an omniscient narrator and watch it happen.

I wonder how much of this was in anticipation of the film being slashed to pieces for television and VHS release. Obviously there are tons of movies of this type that don't do this, where the director is doing stylized things for their own sake (Carpenter, Raimi) or is just really pouring on the craft in terms of how to intensify thrills (Spielberg, Donner maybe). We watched 1941 recently too; it's a dud and a mess but every so often you sit up and take notice as the second unit people pack it in, Spielberg shows up on the set, and the camera starts doing fun things. So thinking of Zemeckis, I dunno - BTTF has tons of great images but I'd kinda like to watch it again and just pay attention to the cinematography.

The Walk -- Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Philippe Petit -- will open the NY Film Festival.

http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2015/blog/robert-zemeckis-the-walk-joseph-gordon-levitt-new-york-film-festival

I kind of hate Petit and the doc made about him, so I'm open to this.

btw the hyperbolic hosannas for Back to the Future above are fucking insane

Yeah, almost as insane as claiming Spielberg is the best American filmmaker of the last twenty-five years

sorry to fly against the Tarantella unanimity

that's a funny fight to pick in a Zemeckis thread, though

really curious about "the walk"

if it's like the best post-WFRR zemeckis films it'll be a mix of banality and genuine awe where it's uncomfortably difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends

consensus on The Walk seems to be it's insufferably twee/trite up until... the walk! then v exciting and awe-inspiring if you want to feel like you are doing the walk in 3D yerself -- JESUS WHY WOULD I?

AO Scott in NYT called JoGo as Petit "the world's most annoying man." obv AO is straight.

also Z has his own MoMA retro

http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1604

JGL plays Petit as I'm pretty sure Petit is -- a French Roberto Benigni with better balance.

http://www.iitaly.org/files/14image/benigni%20oscar.jpeg

I know the dude who wrote this movie =\

I'll wait for a re-edit of the doc that splices in Zemeckis' expensive re-enactment.

Get a load of them snappers, eh?

is JGL naked in this

This guy has done some real garbage, and some stuff that I'm fond of even if it doesn't completely work. I'm most interested in Used Cars and IWHYH, hrm.

Oh maybe Death Becomes Her? Never saw that, seems to be fondly remembered tho?

Fondly remembered by me mostly thanks to my memory of going to see it with my mother and a group of her friends, and then me being the only one who laughed hysterically throughout the whole thing while all of the adults mostly sneered.

Fondly remembered by me because it is life.

And yes, The Walk has JGL naked in it.

His French accent is so terrible it makes Peter Sellers sound believable, no nakedness will convince me to pay actual money to see this

Despite lifting the same "classical piano solo during the walk" trick Man on Wire did (and Satie was a better choice), this whole movie has a sort of whistling past the graveyard feel.

I rewatched Used Cars at MoMA last night, which certainly has its dead spots and occasions of crassness without laughter, but beats out The Blues Brothers as automotive comedies of 1980 go. The "$50 never killed anyone" scene is also one of the funniest in the history of talkies.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/images/4461b.jpg

i skipped it on crassness grounds.

the walk was marginally better than the martian, both honorable mentions among the sort of hollywood output i need to stop spending any money on. jlg charming, perhaps moreso than damon (against expectation), but it mostly dumbed down the language/culture (both parisian and new york) the way the martian, going after a bigger secondary (primary) market, mostly dumbed down the math and science.

still contact because science

still back to the future because science

...OF COMEDY

lol

bttf because architecture

cast away because volleyball

actualol

the bttf sequels are impressive for how much everyone is just top-of-lungs yelling

there were a number of RZ fanboys at MoMA last night, clapping as they laughed at Used Cars gags they'd seen 200 times.

JoGo is ALMOST as annoying as the real Petit in this! (He falls short by not saying "dweam.") Much cuter tho.

I did p much like the second half. Think of it in spectacle terms, like Titanic with a happy ending. Would be much better as a silent movie, boiling all the crap romantic dialogue down to a couple title cards.

really, i am kinda bewildered that the climax of The Walk made anybody nauseated, bcz it looks like CG, not "reality."

watched Roger Rabbit w my daughter last night - she loved it but got freaked out by Lloyd's cartoon bugeyes at the end :(

that one really holds up btw, dunno if I would rate it above BTFF but it's close

The Walk is watchable (but no better) despite JGL and Kingsley's awful attempts at French. Watching this back to back with Bridge of Spies was instructive, though; Spielberg still a master storyteller, while Zemeckis still a techie show-off who got lucky with a couple of good scripts way back when.

oh Jesus

http://www.playbill.com/article/death-becomes-her-musical-starring-kristin-chenoweth-in-meryl-streep-role-in-the-works

I remember my folks really liking Romancing the Stone but thinking Jewel was dumb as hell; were they otm?

I also remember the very PG sex scene giving my pre-pubescent self some v strong feelings

can't wait for act 1 showstopper "My Ass (I Can See It)"

I remember my folks really liking Romancing the Stone but thinking Jewel was dumb as hell; were they otm?

yes

yes

Polar express is pretty incredible in 3d truth be told

Jewel is as undistinguished a product of mid '80s Hollywood as you'll ever see, and the racism is a bonus feature.

i saw it again recently and yeah holy shit it is super-racist

death becomes her holds up pretty well imo, lotta classic scenes, good fx, good music

A massive understatement on all fronts.

I want you
to know something.
I have never blamed you
for leaving me.
I always knew it was her.
She's a woman.
A woman, Ernest.
From Newark, for God's sakes.

watched Roger Rabbit w my daughter last night - she loved it but got freaked out by Lloyd's cartoon bugeyes at the end :(

there's a part where he is delivering a monologue while slipping into his toon self and he says "He sounded just... like... THIIIIIS" and has this shrieky high pitched voice that still never fails to freak me out

just watched death becomes her last week! it kinda didn't land for me tbh. all the maneuvering to establish the situation maybe took time away from getting more jokes out of it, and bruce willis seemed ill at ease trying to do a "all three of the leads are loathsome" type of comedy. streep and hawn are solid of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imv03rS6Vb0

I made it about 15 seconds. Sure, it's really just the latest in live action Disney remakes of animated films from its catalog, but still ... Zemeckis, man. What a weird, erratic career. Is he too powerful for anyone to ever tell him no, or are his instincts just completely off-kilter?

uggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh