WORST of the Best Picture Oscar Noms (Only The '80s Edition)

This is going to take some serious thought.

Few movies offend me as much as Mississippi Burning, so that one easily. Most of the other winners are boring not terrible (Out of Africa, Gandhi, The Accidental Tourist).

My second choice would be On Golden Pond for turning Fonda and Hepburn into Muppets ("The loons! The loons!").

yeah it was not a good decade for aging classic film stars or the white man's take on racial oppression.

on golden pond

A.O. Scott wrote a decent essay last year on Meryl Streep and the unpopularity of mainstream eighties film.

My favorites in order:

Tootsie
E.T.
Dangerous Liasions
Hope and Glory
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Prizzi's Honor
The Elephant Man
Ordinary People

The reputation that Ms. Streep earned for her work in those films retains more luster than most of the movies themselves. Sandwiched between the endlessly mythologized Golden Age of ’70s New Hollywood and the now almost equally sentimentalized decade of the American Indies, the ’80s are comparatively bereft of nostalgic movie-fan affection or revisionist critical love. And yet the respectable films of that era may represent the last gasp of a noble middlebrow ideal. They were ambitious, unapologetically commercial projects intended for the entertainment and edification of grown-up audiences, neither self-consciously provocative nor timidly inoffensive. Some of us grew up on movies like “Sophie’s Choice” and “Out of Africa,” and our fondness outlasts the sense that we eventually outgrew them. Nowadays “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “A Cry in the Dark” would be scruffy little Sundance movies. “Out of Africa” would be in French. “Silkwood” would be “The Blind Side.”

Tootse really isn't all that great imo.

Tootsie

my faves would be:

The Elephant Man
Raiders of the Lost Ark
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
The Verdict
Prizzi's Honor
Hope and Glory

so basically almost the same as alfred's. also basically: the comedies, a light-hearted action adventures, a kids movie, a courtroom melodrama, and a david lynch movie.

xpost (not that it's anywhere near being the worst i just never understood the claims for it)

Out of Africa's the worst of the winners imo, might get my vote

This is too long! :(

Alfred's right in that a lot of the ones I'd be inclined to vote for aren't bad but just really boring.

favourites are

The Elephant Man
Dangerous Liaisons
ET &
The Dresser, maybe.

Reds is pretty bad iirc.

out of africa is pretty terrible/terribly boring but i am glad it exists for the way my mom sometimes says I ONCE HAD A FAHM IN AFREECAH* apropos of nothing.

*a line i am not even sure is in the movie tbh.

Driving Ms. Daisy vs. Dead Poets' Society for me... I can get along just fine with most of these films.

lol XD

voted big chill as the worst

wait, that was a x-post btw

dammit

shortlist of the worst for me:

Ordinary People (sorry alfred)
On Golden Pond
Reds
Gandhi
The Big Chill
Out of Africa
Witness
Platoon
Rain Man
Mississippi Burning
Driving Miss Daisy
Born on the Fourth of July

Yeah, it seems easier to list your favourites. Mine would be Broadcast News[i], [i]Raging Bull, Tootsie, The Verdict, Hannah and Her Sisters[i], [i]Rain Man[i], [i]Born on the Fourth of July[i], and I guess [i]Coal Miner's Daughter. I probably haven't seen whichever one I should be voting for, since I try to skip anything I'm positive I won't like. Of those I have seen (2/3 of the list?), I don't think there's anything I truly hated. I suspect Field of Dreams would get my vote if I ever were to see it.

("[i]" means it's available on Blu-Ray...god, that looks ugly.)

I feel like nobody else is going to so I'm gonna go ahead and rep for (among several others already listed) Terms of Endearment and Dead Poet's Society as favorites.

I saw Reds a few years ago again after its Criterion reissue and was shocked by how conventional and tiresome it is despite a couple of fiery performances.

i got reds and ishtar mixed up in my head for years (lol) and then when i finally realized they were two different movies and one was (at one point) well-regarded i was like oh well i should see and yeah zzzzzz.

lol ishtar

Oh I forgot how good Atlantic City is.

I've never even heard of AC.

where is the dislike for The Color Purple

'gandhi' cuz we had to watch that shit in this crappy world politics class in high school probably the only time ime high school students would rather have been given an actual lesson than watch a movie. for like three days in a row too

we never learned anything else about india in that class either, or had to write a paper or do anything with w/e knowledge gandhi the film was supposed to give us. man that teacher was lazy

haha we had to watch gandhi, too. only time i've ever seen it, and i don't remember a minute of it, but yes the interminability of those days has spoiled it for me forever.

Your teacher probably took a cue from the movie: I don't remember much of India in it either.

voted big chill as the worst

― apihopatcong weehawkul (get bent), Thursday, July 28, 2011 1:50 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah, it's either that or Chariots of Fire.

Others I don't mind:

Coal Miner's Daughter
Hannah and Her Sisters
A Room With a View
Witness
Broadcast News
My Left Foot, which is still the best play-a-cripple-win-an-Oscar bait thing made.

In the end, it's one of these three:

On Golden Pond
Out of Africa
Dead Poets Society

yknow what is a good movie tho is working girl. its a well told story imo

Every working girl needs Carly Simon and a black choir shouting over the credits of her life story.

Dead Poet's Society was the worst thing to happen to English education since standardized testing.

Comparative favorites:

Ordinary People
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Tootsie
Amadeus
The Color Purple
Broadcast News
Driving Miss Daisy

OK, voting Out of Africa. Equating tedium with quality to the most arrogant degree.

Equating quality with Robert Redford using an English accent.

Of those I have seen (2/3 of the list?), I don't think there's anything I truly hated.

^^^ this. Might be Chariots of Fire for me, but I think it's in the boring but not necessarily BAD category.

that scott essay is pretty interesting because this

the ’80s are comparatively bereft of nostalgic movie-fan affection or revisionist critical love.

is something i was thinking about a few months ago when i re-read a bunch of the kael reviews from the '80s. i know nobody who stumps for 90 percent of these movies, but i wonder if there's something just plain terrible/bland about them, or if some young filmmaker is gonna come along and eventually rework the '80s middlebrow melodrama in a sirk/fassbinder kinda way.

rework the '80s middlebrow melodrama in a sirk/fassbinder kinda way.

yes! todd haines, call your office

voting Fatal Attraction; Children of a Lesser God, Field of Dreams and The Color Purple not far behind. MS Burning too well made even for a big lie.

This is so much better a list than the succeeding two decades would provide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbF6YoEsfKc

i wonder if there's something just plain terrible/bland about them

There is.

haha yeah well true.

Miss Burning was "adapted" from a very good non-fiction book that had a notable absence of heroic caucasians

considering i was 11 in 1989, i only saw so many of these because we only had one vcr for most of the '90s and my mom had taped an inordinate number of these off pay cable. so many here i'd have never even thought to go back and watch in a film-nerd-building-his-knowledge way.

will pretty much take all these over non-"bland" ILX classics like King of New York

i would like to see what abel ferrara might do to ordinary people or places in the heart

Is it because of the corporatization of Hollywood that these kinds of ambitious, sweeping, big-budget epics rarely get made these days? No one wants to spend a lot on a movie unless its based on a comic book.

My favorite Kael reviews are from this period: 1600-word essays on Club Paradise and F-X; ever novel and more truculent takedowns of Meryl Streep.

yeah the '80s stuff is just wonderfully catty but also really smart about the biz stuff, i think. like you could tell she was getting bored but it wasn't coming through in the writing.

Dead Poet's Society is pretty awful.

She spent a few months in Hollywood under the aegis of Warren Beatty, so I'd say she was qualified.

"under the aegis of Warren Beatty" /= "getting fucked up and down by Beatty"

haha qualified to be bored or qualified to talk biz?

queasy xposts

both!

i think i would have enjoyed hollywood in the '80s if i'd been a nihilist with an unlimited coke budget

We should point out: these films don't represent what hit #1 at the box office, which from '82 onwards was sequelitis, Michael Ovitz superstar deal vanity projects, and Stallone and Eddie Murphy pictures.

though it's amazing that Tootsie, Terms of Endearment, The Color Purple, Out of Africa, and Rain Man hit #1 and were massive hits. Titanic broke Tootsie's record for most consecutive weeks at #1.

btw The King's Speech's success is a return to eighties middlebrow.

kinda used to hate meryl streep during this period, only came around in the last few years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRKtU9FF-8w

truthbomb re. kings speech

even if it still felt a lot...zippier than most of these movies.

because MAN are some of these flicks slow.

as in "Shoot Meryl Streep!" scene?

i would like to see what abel ferrara might do to ordinary people or places in the heart

Replace human depth with a cokey's addled improvisations.

The usual crime here is the absence of some of the best American films of the 80s: Empire of the Sun, The King of Comedy, The Fly, Zelig, etc.

btw The King's Speech's success is a return to eighties middlebrow.

Why do you think I hated it so much?

the racial politics stuff on here is just the worst, but honestly can't decide between Mississippi Burning, Driving Miss Daisy, and the Color Purple since they're all abominations of one kind or another

of the best American films of the 80s: Empire of the Sun

gtfo

ruined by the score

btw The King's Speech's success is a return to eighties middlebrow.

Seems like the British film industry still occasionally makes movies like that - more so than Hollywood does.

Roughly half that list at the top of the thread is films by Britishes.

Driving Miss Daisy is not "an abomination," get your head out of Spike Lee's ass.

of all the people on ilx to accuse of having their head up spike lee's ass...

It's possible to live in a world where Driving Miss Daisy is a very good movie (and Do the Right Thing is simultaneously an obvious masterpiece).

'gandhi' cuz we had to watch that shit in this crappy world politics class in high school probably the only time ime high school students would rather have been given an actual lesson than watch a movie. for like three days in a row too

basically went thru the same scenario if you sub out 'gandhi' for 'dead poets society' and 'world politics' for 'english'. still get mad thinking about this movie. "carpe diem" - f u, robin williams.

I would watch Dead Poet's Society 100x before watching OH NOES WILL HE RUN ON TEH SABBATH ever again.

If only to see Robert Sean Leonard in that Puck costume, which is hilarious.

lolz, I don't even remember this. it's been a while.

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ldpxe5WwAT1qcovjto1_500.jpg

Driving Miss Daisy is very good -- shoulda been in my initial list. As good as Middlebrow Oscar Crap gets.

The last one of this genre I thought was almost a great movie was Quiz Show.

Guys the Puck scene was the best moment in Neil's short life where he was truly himself and got to shine mere hours before killing himself after cracking under pressure from his oppressive and overbearing father (played iirc by the dad from that 70s show). Show some respect god dammit.

ps - I LOVE YOU ROBERT SEAN LEONARD.

oh god -- I missed The Right Stuff at first glance. That goes on the list too. Morbs is right about this list being superior to most of the nineties and all the 2000's finalists.

and they weren't nominating Dressed to Kill, but now we get Black Swan

is Dressed to Kill actually worth watching? It's been on my list to see, but DePalma is so uneven

Yes!

skip the Michael Caine scenes. And the last half.

Also, skip Morbs' advice. On anything.

oh c'mon! I figured since you already SB'd me today I'd empty the chamber.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_k9islWm5g

dressed to kill is a better movie than 90% of this list

I don't buy there are 5 movies on this list better than dressed to kill.

i don't either ; )

played iirc by the dad from that 70s show

must be tough to have boddicker for a father

Working Girl is great

chariots of fire is worth watching for Ian Charleson's amazing performance.

Driving Ms. Daisy vs. Dead Poets' Society for me... I can get along just fine with most of these films.

― the three stigmata of a (Viceroy), Thursday, July 28, 2011 1:49 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

^

went w/ dps. even tho I liked it in lolhighschool, it has aged as unforgivable emotional pornography imo. Bonus points for being the point when Robin Fucking Williams started dealing almost exclusively in whatever the dadrock equivalent of movies is.

otm.

i feel like these are the movies my parents consider to be the best examples of quality, respectable filmmaking

You'd be correct.

I haven't seen soooo many of these because of their role in the 80s as "boring things adults liked." I couldn't imagine putting "Born on the Fourth of July" in my Netflix queue.

^^This. I've only seen 9 of these in full, and even then 1/3 of those I had to watch for school. OTOH, I've got a few more in my "to watch" pile.

It's kinda funny though, at least in comparison to, say the 70s, how few now recognized as canonical films got nominated. No Hughes, no Kubrick, the other two Star Wars flicks, only the first Indy Jones, only one Woody Allen, no Blue Velvet, Repo Man etc.

I would say missing Full Metal Jacket was a huge oversight on the Oscars part, but you're tripping if you think they really fucked up by not including Weird Science...

Also lol if you think Weird Science is a better movie than Amadeus...

OTOH, Pretty in Pink is a masterpiece, but Platoon is still better.

does anyone remember that upright citizens brigade sketch about the guy who claims he had the 'titular line' in out of africa?

Aww boy, Im just so tired of all this traffic, I can't wait until I get out of Africa.

I'm not tripping re:Hughes, i'm just saying that his key films (which AS isn't) are held in higher esteem today than many of those in this poll.

"AS"="WS" stupid phone autocorrect.

i always mix up real genius with weird science, just nominally

real genius deserves an oscar nod over most of these

well at least The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's are as bad as several of the nominees.

re:Hughes, i'm just saying that his key films are held in higher esteem today than many of those in this poll.

yes, bcz white '80s teenagers rule the country, so who the fuck cares?

went w/ dps. even tho I liked it in lolhighschool, it has aged as unforgivable emotional pornography imo. Bonus points for being the point when Robin Fucking Williams started dealing almost exclusively in whatever the dadrock equivalent of movies is.

― notes on camping (Pillbox), Thursday, July 28, 2011 9:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well yeah of course it has but I think maybe it was different for girls who were my age at the time because those dudes were like our dreamy sensitive future teenage boyfriend ideals and for that (and because I was a corny little kid) I could never hate it.

i feel like these are the movies my parents consider to be the best examples of quality, respectable filmmaking

― Peepee Soaked Heckhole (zachlyon), Thursday, July 28, 2011 11:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah. Also, it's sorta funny that nobody has even mentioned Moonstruck which I've seen more times than any one person every should because it's prob my mom's all time fav movie. :I

Moonstruck's a good movie.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it (Cher! Cage!) just that I've seen it way too many times. It does, however, seem like the kind of movie people would be apt to dismiss or complain about.

There's some ridiculous crap on here (and plenty I haven't seen because it looks like ridiculous crap), but I achieved rem sleep while watching Chariots Of Fire in class so I think that gets the nod.

Man I had no idea Fatal Attraction was a Best Picture nom before this poll. That's insane.

I still haven't seen Tess, by one of my favorite directors and one of my favorite novels. I just put it in my Netflix queue despite thumbing through Kael's dismissal. Nastassia Kinski was everywhere in the early eighties, wasn't she?

Field of Dreams is the worst one on here that I've seen. However, I didn't get to see all of it (a friend and I were thrown out for throwing wet gummy bears at the screen), so in theory it could have redeemed itself in the end.

Movies on this list I haven't seen a minute of:
Coal Miner's Daughter
Tess
On Golden Pond
Reds
Missing
The Dresser
Tender Mercies
The Killing Fields
A Passage To India
Places In The Heart
A Soldier's Story
Out Of Africa
Kiss Of The Spider Woman
The Mission
A Room With A View
The Last Emperor
The Accidental Tourist

I missed Fatal Attraction too when I first looked through the list. Which is good, because it saved me from putting it on the list of favourites I posted above! It goes with stuff like Disclosure or Pacific Heights for me--films I know are high-gloss junk, but which I always get hooked on whenever I come across them on TV. I also remember how Fatal Attraction really zeroed in (possibly by accident) on the AIDs panic that was prevalent at the time, which made it good for arguments.

haha oh I still would have voted for Chariots Of Fire, was just surprised it made the bar

Any movie that I can actually remember individual scenes from gets a pass on this list

really, the first five on this list from 1980 -- can any group from the last 20 years compare?

1980's the best group of nominees by far, 1984 the dullest, 1988 the most horrifying.

the accidental tourist is ok. its like the up in the air of its day

I'd almost think of the '80 list as the last '70s list, just after Heaven's Gate.

Geena Davis continued the tradition of receiving Supporting Actress trophies for playing kooks that make no sense on paper.

Then there's the well-intentioned/muddled/awful group of liberal films:

Missing
Reds
A Soldier's Story
Places in the Heart
Born on the Fourth of July

Woops fourth of july should be on my "never seen" list, aside from quick shots of Tom Cruise suffering

I'd almost think of the '80 list as the last '70s list, just after Heaven's Gate.

Michael Gebert pinned 1981's slate as the last '70s group.

Atlantic City and Reds definitely, COF and On Golden Pond coulda shown up any year, and Raiders is the future.

i've always wondered how it is that Beatty seemingly took zero shit at the time of release for making a movie that portrays the Soviet Union sympathetically.

Raiders is the future

The future is the past.

Retromania, et al

but he doesn't! Ronnie and Nancy loved the movie: old-fashioned enough for the Warners backlot. Remember: Zinoviev comes off as the worst of droning apparatchik.

xpost

*worst kind

/re:Hughes, i'm just saying that his key films are held in higher esteem today than many of those in this poll./

yes, bcz white '80s teenagers rule the country, so who the fuck cares?
--you call it trollin' i call it steamrollin' (Dr Morbius)

Booming post

all those 'liberal films' I think of as at least good, Alfred, tho I haven't seen Missing in eons.

yes, Beatty portrays the revolution heroically, the state that follows it evilly. See: Every revolution ever.

Missing is pretty bad but I'd understand if someone rented it to understand the novelty of watching Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek in the same movie.

moonstruck rules

Of the last couple decades, one/both of Broomfield's docs on Aileen Wuornos are worth mentioning

and that, of course, is for the other thread

? I thought those Broomfield docs were incredible. I am kinda a stan for him tho

oh lol I see what happened her

here

holy shit kiss of the spider woman was oscar nominated? i had no idea that movie had any real stature

Wm Hurt won, beginning playing gay as a career move.

he can't have been the first to do that...?

well at least The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's are as bad as several of the nominees. ―The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, July 29, 2011

god bless you.

serious lolz that hughes-style films of any generation would be best pic noms. i cant think of one comedy aimed at teenagers that even landed an acting nod.

also otm about this being stuff our parents liked, if yr in that 30 to 40 age range. my mom has great taste in movies right up to about 1980 but gets waaaaaaay middlebrow melodrama after that. her library is stocked with stuff like this and i'm pretty sure it's only because her 30s happened to be from 1984 to 1994. she'll throw on taxi driver now but i cant imagine her watching whatever the 80s or 90s or 00s version of taxi driver would be in terms of violence and etc.

(when i say "coincided with her 30s" i really mean "had two kids and only had time to search out stuff that was 'well-regarded.'")

Yeah, Jess is OTM there, thinking of my parents and their taste in movies at the time. I really don't think they have much like this around on DVD now, though they probably had more on VHS. (Like Out of Africa, which I guess was made compulsory to own or something.)

everyone wanted a fahm in afreecah

I def remember my parents treating Out of Africa as if it was An Event: Africa! Robert Redford!

I can't even understand the machinations by which OOA even won Best Picture and Director -- it was a hit, and RoboStreep gave another of her "flawless" performances, but it didn't get excite anyone other than Academy members who thought, "Good ol' Sydney. Sorry you didn't get that Oscar for Tootsie."

(Like Out of Africa, which I guess was made compulsory to own or something.)

but never watched! Seriously -- has anyone ever said, "It's a lazy Saturday afternoon. Whip out Out of Africa"?

can a movie be mummified? that's what out of africa felt like

Then again it's probably The Philadelphia Story compared to this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41V7MEXACRL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Meantime, turns out we do have a thread! Sort of:

out of africa

A poignant and strange masterpiece.

― Meryl, Friday, January 25, 2002 8:

...Streep said in her first Movieline essay.

white people always reminiscing about africa with the gauzy cinematography

hilarious

― Surmounter, Tuesday, June 3, 2008 7:05 PM (3 years ago)

meryl's opening monologue in this movie is surefire entertainment

― Surmounter, Tuesday, June 3, 2008 9:27 PM (3 years ago)

I would test this theory but YouTube is not helping.

posts quite in character

Exactement.

But of course we have a transcription of that monologue because the web has everything, so:

He even took
the Gramophone on safari.

Three rifles...

supplies for a month and Mozart.

He began our friendship
with a gift.

And later...

not long before Tsavo...

he gave me another.

An incredible gift.

A glimpse of the world
through God's eye.

And I thought...

"Yes, I see.

This is the way
it was intended."

I've written about
all the others...

not because I loved them less...

but because
they were clearer, easier.

He was waiting for me there.

But I've gone ahead of my story.
He'd have hated that.

Denys loved to hear
a story told well.

You see...

I had a farm in Africa...

at the foot of the Ngong Hills.

But it began before that.

It really began in Denmark.

And there I knew two brothers.

One was my lover,
and one was my friend.

Kill me.

never seen this movie, remember my parents loving it, have no idea what it's about

it's about Isak Dinesen, and Redford refusing to do a Brit accent

she had a fahm in afreecah.

She missed the rains.

Meryl Streep reciting Frank O'Hara poems in a Danish accent.

Wait, I'm wrong, YouTube DOES have the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVbn6JBzEpg

Meryl Streep with the tri-cornered hap in the hall with the wrench.

Guys the Puck scene was the best moment in Neil's short life where he was truly himself and got to shine mere hours before killing himself after cracking under pressure from his oppressive and overbearing father (played iirc by the dad from that 70s show). Show some respect god dammit.

dude will always be clarence boddicker to me.

First 7 minutes of the most beautiful movie ever made.

Of OOA I remember Streep running a plantation with indigenous workers, but the film never addresses the colonialism of her business, instead just showing how she was friends with black people (but not romantically, oh no). I laughed at that terrible opening narration Ned posted -- obviously meant to be heard along with images, but still entirely structureless.

xp Big fan of Missing. More passionately left-wing than typical Hollywood liberal, no? The coup scenes are truly unsettling. Saw it after reading about Chile 1973 so I guess I was primed for it.

I like Missing too. Saw it a few months ago, right before seeing Incendies, which is comparable. Only major problem is how it tries to hook the mainstream audience with having the one white(/)American in danger being the subject at first, although it widens its focus later on.

I thought the thing was written with crayons.

and the premise -- conservative dad realizing what his son and daughter in law are up to -- is a wheeze.

Reds isn't good? I'm so bummed

it's very good

how many other BP nominees did Henry Miller appear in?

The movie wakes up whenever Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton) shows up to remind the distracted leads what's at stake.

ever since reading Dos Passos, I've become a big John Reed stan. I probably need to see that movie soon.

between The English Patient and The Piano and whatnot, I'm actually thinking maybe the 90s BP noms are a lot like the 80s as far as featuring "Boring Movies for Adults"

both those movies are livelier and sexier than lots of the eighties pics!

ugh miramax is the only thing worse than stodgy 80s oscar-bait

>:(

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OoofzdWdU8s/S_b_oZNCgVI/AAAAAAAAVyk/Q7wMM5-eQQ4/s1600/Harvey+Weinstein+at+Eden+roc.jpg

After this wraps, someone should do one of these for the 90s.

^^^^ Throw Danny De Vito Off the Raft

hahaha

kind of want to vote gandhi just because tootsie was so obviously the best picture of the year. but haven't seen it so how can i? worst i've seen is dead poets society but surely some of the unseens are worse than that.

haha i was totally planning on doing a 90s one after this wraps

alfred's right though, a lot of the 90s middlebrow noms are a lot zippier than their 80s counterparts

kind of want to vote gandhi just because tootsie E.T. was so obviously the best picture of the year.

voted Dead Poets

Idk, maybe it was the Seinfeld episode, or maybe it was the fact that I was 13 when The English Patient came out, and it looked like some sort of god-awful hybrid of Gone with the Wind and Lawrence of Arabia...

I can see The Piano being kind of sexy, but the premise seemed really...esoteric, back when I hadn't even encountered that word yet. Actually, I'd probably love it.

of course as a kid I fell asleep during every attempt at watching E.T., so maybe I just need Abel Ferrara in order to stay awake

voted Rain Man for outright offensiveness rather than just being snoozy. don't really know what a Room with a View is for, either.

an adaptation of a Forster novel iirc...there's one of those on the 90s list (Howards End) as well

it hugely improves on the book, imo. i like the film a lot.

really? I don't fuxxor with the Merchant-Ivory contingent

i know what it is but i don't think it improves on the book or that it has much point

Rain Man = offensive bcz it implies you can exploit the autistic for profit?

It's a very minor novel.

offensive cos i hope in the near future the prospect of an actor playing a caricature of a disabled person will be as o_O as the prospect of an actor blacking up

we're talking about Tom Cruise, right?

that joke is always great :)

lol

lol nv

ugh howard's end = greatest book, couldn't get fifteen minutes into the film

I guess they weren't the fifteen minutes with Vanessa Redgrave.

the appeal of Forster is beyond me

dinesen's 'out of africa' is a terrific book.

the appeal of Forster is beyond me

it sure is

zing?

i'm not into the whole merchant/ivory ~oeuvre~ but a room with a view is pretty watchable and even howard's end has some nice acting in it

just find them a bit slide-showy, sterile animations of books that lose what makes the books matter. i don't hate Merchant-Ivory altogether and they are not bad films, Howard's End is fairly strong I think, but then it's a stronger novel. Room just feels like a pretty recreation of a minor piece. And having written that i think maybe i could watch it again but really these kind of adaptations tend to end up feeling like time-savers for people who can't be bothered to read the novel for me. no insight brought or something.

and you could well make the same argument about say Tess except that the cinematography is more ravishing and Polanski knows how to work the gothic and the melodramatic in a much more engaged fashion.

i don't actively hate many of these at all tbh. and wd rather watch the Merchant-Ivory than something like The Big Chill so scratch my quibbles with them.

yeah I kind of hate ET but I really feel like I should vote for The Big Chill

this is not as bad as list as everyone says!

The Elephant Man
Raging Bull
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Gandhi
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Missing
Tootsie
The Right Stuff
Amadeus
The Killing Fields
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Prizzi's Honor
Witness
Hannah and Her Sisters
The Mission
The Last Emperor
Broadcast News
Fatal Attraction
Dangerous Liaisons

^^ these are all watchable to great movies, of the ones ive seen

also, lot of good soundtracks on this list

i feel like vangelis composed the music for 1/3 of these

The Mission is watchable? Our pastor was obsessed with the soundtrack -- he always requested it as the theme music for the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

yeah the soundtrack RULES

i was just posting about in the game of thrones thread

the main theme is on pure moods

Agreed on the soundtrack, Morricone in big epic mode.

i'm not raring to watch it again or anything but i feel like 'gandhi' gets a bit of a bum deal. i thought it was terrific when we watched it in high school.

'right stuff,' 'amadeus,' 'last emperor,' and 'the elephant man' (my favorite lynch) are all great, too.

Fun list for me, saw all but seven, and I'd see those too and the ones I forgot just to read the Pauline Kael reviews. My breakdown:

Forgot every moment of:
Chariots of Fire (except theme song, of course)
Gandhi (except assassination, but maybe I just think I saw this 'cause it was on cable all the time)
Hope and Glory (except "Thank you, Adolph"--but maybe I didn't see this either)
Tender Mercies (how can Robert Duvall be boring?)
The Mission (or De Niro?)

Special category for really enjoyable and memorable trash:
Amadeus
Dead Poets Society (youth oppression is real! it's real!)
Fatal Attraction (awesome date movie for a teenager)
Field of Dreams (truly loved, sap that I am)
On Golden Pond (if I did drugs, I'd consider a Dabney Coleman marathon)
Platoon (for first half hour)
Rain Man (sucker for road movies)
Witness

Loved these then, and would defend them now:
A Room with a View
A Soldier's Story
Atlantic City
Born on the Fourth of July
Broadcast News
Coal Miner's Daughter
Dangerous Liaisons
Driving Miss Daisy
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (not the retouched version!)
Missing
Moonstruck
My Left Foot
Ordinary People
Raging Bull
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Reds
The Elephant Man
The Killing Fields
The Last Emperor
The Right Stuff
The Verdict (this movie is really about writer's block, so classic)
Tootsie (this holds up even better because Jessica Lange is so not a plastic cutout femme)

Hated:
The Color Purple (heart and cast in right place, just feels wrong)
Hannah and Her Sisters (die yuppie scum)
Mississippi Burning (great, now this is the definitive Civil Rights-era film)
Out of Africa (ugh)
Terms of Endearment (acting chops don't redeem its view of children)

Hated at the time but recently found surprisingly tolerable, though still a ripoff of Return of the Secaucus Seven:
The Big Chill

Loved at the time, but fear rewatching:
Children of a Lesser God
Prizzi's Honor

Never saw:
the rest

Terms of Endearment (acting chops don't redeem its view of children)

Can you explain?

man i hate dabney coleman. it's completely irrational and i have no idea why but i do.

the sad thing being that he's in so many of my favorite garbagey '90s movies

so many garbage eighties movies too. He made 9 to 5 and On Golden Pond before Tootsie.

man i hate dabney coleman. it's completely irrational and i have no idea why but i do.

― king of torts (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Monday, August 1, 2011 2:03 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

what the fuck

i am not cool at all with hating dabney coleman

I'd say Ordinary People because FFS IT BEAT OUT RAGING BULL, which is easily one of the BEST films of that decade. i mean that is a route if i've ever heard of one, i used to have a film prof that would start foaming at the mouth when people mentioned Ordinary People.

i said it was irrational!

I'd say Ordinary People because FFS IT BEAT OUT RAGING BULL, which is easily one of the BEST films of that decade. i mean that is a route if i've ever heard of one, i used to have a film prof that would start foaming at the mouth when people mentioned Ordinary People.

^^^ more evidence of the stupidity of film courses

Raging Bull is a cretinous movie, while OP is an okay one with a great performance at its center.

I'm pretty sure Mary Tyler Moore can give De Niro a run in the Dumb Cartoon sweepstakes.

xpost Srsly.

iirc the "raging bull as most slighted film in oscars history" thing was a standard line when i was at film school too

I have more sympathy for the Goodfellsa as most slighted film in Oscars history" line.

i am not cool at all with hating dabney coleman

^^^^

I think more ppl get Raging Bull after a life crisis. A biiiiiiiiiiig one (like w/ Scorsese, almost killing himself with coke).

oh, i get raging bull. i just don't think it's his best movie at all.

Raging Bull is a movie about a cretinous man, y'see. Whereas lots of good movies aren't about anything much.

Meh, Taxi Driver has better crisis, better acting, better filmmaking, better mythology.

+ Rocky is 1 million times worse than Ordinary People

And pretty sure Citizen Kane still considered "the most slighted movie in Oscar history" ffs

I forgot the scene of Burgess Meredith training Stallone by timing how fast he stuffs French toast in the trash compactor.

La Motta is portrayed as, well i don't know what word i'd want to use exactly, but a terrible man certainly. But Raging Bull is at least partly about how art can transform base materials into icons.

My dad hates the fight scenes, cos of the hyper stylization.

i find it hard to see raging bull now as anything but taxi driver with the catholic guilt turned up to such a degree that all the "fun" gets leached out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_4lXncUTk4

and i'm pretty down with catholic guilt as a driving force in life so that's saying something

The Verdict (this movie is really about writer's block, so classic)

I love The Verdict (Newman's overly lofty summation excepted), so this really intrigues me.

I know that Raging Bull is not for everyone, but I don't see how it could be deemed cretinous. About a cretin, maybe, but I'd echo that studio exec in Final Cut who walked up to Scorsese after a test screening and said, "Mr. Scorsese, you are an artist." (After which he said, "And one day, you will make a heart-warming family film called Hugo"). Passages like the home-movie montage are unsurpassingly beautiful.

if you need fun then pesci slamming that guy's head in the taxi door is there and i'm not interested in whether Ordinary People deserves to be disparaged or not but hating Raging Bull seems like iconic challoping to me.

people hated it at the time! (i don't hate it.)

kael review is like watching someone's mom spit in her kid's face after being presented with a homemade christmas present.

Directors and writers can create films about anyone. My problem with RB is how unilluminating the thing is about boxing, the cretin at its center, and stardom. Pesci walks away with the movie.

plus it's really boring

(xpost) Kael hated it, yes, but she was way, way in the minority. And De Niro won best actor. I'm not sure what you mean...I don't know how much money it made, but I'm sure it would have least been in the black. (And by now, I'm sure it's made back its cost ten thousand times over.)

no i know it was also well-respected at the time, i just don't want it to seem like hating on rb is some kind of 21st-century revisionist challops thing or something.

and again, i don't hate it.

My problem with RB is how unilluminating the thing is about boxing, the cretin at its center, and stardom.

You're approaching it like it's a Ron Howard problem-solution film. It's not that kind of movie.

im not a big raging bull guy, but it seems a little unfair imo to say its not as good as taxi driver - not many movies are!

Not trying to be glib here, but I don't think Scorsese explains La Motta any less than Welles explains Kane. Explanations are a drag.

Raging Bull and Mishima are Schrader's films about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, maybe. Also RB's fight scenes obviously inform Mishima's recreation of the writer's posing for iconic photographs.

would agree with the schrader thing tbh.

though more rb than mishima.

RB is not ABOUT boxing.

they are both movies about beautiful losers on one level, tho Mishima's "success" is obv far greater than La Motta's in reality.

though i totally understand why a dude killing himself to save face would appeal to a guy like schrader.

xposts

Yukio Mishima tries to empty himself out, become nothing but a surface at the end of his life, whereas in RB la Motta ends up reciting verse and playing the raconteur.

both playing something tho

I don't mean "explaining" La Motta (the draggier sections of CK depend on didactic explanations about Who Charlie Is that Welles has already shown by performance and behavior). In RB the performance and the conception are flawed. When your movie depends on a two-dimensional cartoon as its subject, you have to show how the cartoonishness reveals itself. With La Motta, I thought Scorsese ran out of ways to develop him.

By the way, Charlie Kane is a two-dimensional cartoon too! But he never comes off that way.

http://www.toqonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/mishima1.jpg

Too much sitting has ruined my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on there will be 50 pushups each morning, 50 pullups. There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight.

When your movie depends on a two-dimensional cartoon as its subject, you have to show how the cartoonishness reveals itself.

I'm honestly not sure what that means. In any event, seeing Raging Bull in 1980 my first year in university, in Toronto's huge and long-gone University Theatre, was just one of those things I'll never forget.

You know what film was uneven as hell but took some interesting chances and went unnominated? The Stunt Man. Richard Rush was nominated for Best Director though. I thought O'Toole deserved his Oscar that year (he may have won the Nat'l Society's award).

i mean personally, i find Ordinary People so fucking self-important and smarmy and boring, i can't even fathom someone liking it more than RB.

also, the film prof who used to foam at the mouth was seriously one of awesomest, most crotchety motherfuckers i've ever met, so whatever, i'll always remember him fondly. (RIP charlie).

LaMotta has dimension: he can't get over his small hands, and that he'll never fight Joe Louis.

prefer Rupert Pupkin, obv

i totally missed it looking at the list the first time but 'fatal attraction' is the worst thing i've seen here -- misogynistic trash.

Jake also spends inordinate amounts of time carefully trying to analyze whether various people in his life may have had consensual extra-marital relations with his wife.

yeah fuck fatal attraction

OK fine: I'll rewatch RB.

LOL, didn't even realize it was you stunting for RB, table. But, yeah, I can't imagine someone of your sensibilities watching Ordinary People without your head spinning around like Regan MacNeil.

best moment is very LaMotta-like: MTM shoving the French toast down the garbage disposal.

I made the same joke upthread!

Bears repeating; she PUNCHES that toast down the drain!

Tabes, I beg you to watch Ordinary People again as a comedy. I think you might dig it then.

except it's, y'know, not a comedy.

i'll try. but i'll have a bucket at my side.

and yes, i still believe that RB is one of the finest commercial films of the 1980's. i'm no film critic, but that's my opinion and i'm sticking to it.

xxpost it's also not, y'know, bad either

I would probably like it as much as you do if not for goddamn Judd Hirsch.

One thing I find interesting is how much better Raging Bull does with directors than critics in the Sight & Sound polls. It finished 2nd in the '92 directors' poll, and it tied for 6th in the '02 poll. I did a quick scan of critics in the '02 poll, and it only drew three votes.

Directors are dumb.

Except Catherine Breillat. Her list was pretty good iirc.

I went from Raging Bull hater to fan in 20 years, and was glad to see this when it appeared: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/03/raging-bull-201003

Missing was another big lapse for Kael: I knew a guy who'd been in the stadium and said the movie captured it perfectly, and U.S. policy in Chile turned out to be so much worse than fiction.

Re: reading The Verdict as writer's block: I watched it under a heavy deadline and found his emotional absolutism and battle for manhood/confidence suddenly very comprehensible--his doubts about himself and the law (i.e. human goodness) inseparable because he's battling exhaustion/despair in order to go to work and be creative. His witnesses are like a journalist's interview subjects too--he needs to get his story. "There is no other case, this is the case." I loved the summation too, the law as a prayer, not even mentioning the specifics of his evidence at all. He's like the worst lawyer ever, but one of the great selfish procrastinators in movies.

Re: Terms of Endearment: The kids are props flattened to keep the tide of audience sympathy toward Mom unbroken.

i've always wondered how it is that Beatty seemingly took zero shit at the time of release for making a movie that portrays the Soviet Union sympathetically.

Probably because he doesn't? Think it's pretty clear where things are heading by movie's end.

I like the atmosphere in The Verdict: the smell of the rotgut judge's clam chowder, the peanuts and raw eggs in Newman's favorite watering hole, James Mason lecturing his junior partners. I especially liked the mean scene in which Mason, with what can only be called lese majeste, tears into the black doctor who testifies in every case. But I could never accept Charlotte Rampling and her post-Antonioni zombie presence, or his (spoiler) winning the case.

I got Tess via Netflix. It's still the least discussed of his "major" work, isn't it? I love the novel, and Polanski's the right director for it (I just read Kael's review -- she says Kinski and P's conception of Tess are too soft).

I watched Tess in 10th grade (likely somewhat censored?), I remember, and can't remember much of it except willing myself to have loved it in retrospect once I learned who Roman Polanski was.

I kind of love Nastassja Kinski

tess doesnt have shit on cat people

I could definitely buy that.

kinski c. 1980 was probably the most beautiful actress ever.

I finished Tess. Beautifully paced, with a real sense for rural England in Hardy's Wessex: for thrashers, dairymaids, stagecoach drivers. But if you haven't read the novel the movie is inscrutable. Kinski is too passive a camera object to project why Tess wrongs and is wronged against; she's rather bovine. Without the narrator's voice the movie unfolds like a tale of ruined womanhood; Polanski, of all people, omits Tess' coquettish side.

man The Verdict is great isn't it? the one scene that Mason and Newman share alone, where Mason opens his mouth to chastise/lecture Newman but then.. decides to say nothing and walk out of the room is just perfect.

Dead Poets has a lot of bits that do suck but it's got stuff like this neat little scene, so i have to cut it some slack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3xDI_NXHKQ

i was expecting a v serious and weighty sunday afternoon with amadeus, voting for that because i don't have that many sunday afternoons to be wasting on shite wrapped in oscar

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Amadeus is not serious and weighty.

I'm moving Broadcast News to the enjoyable trash category--must have been hugely impressed with the subtle relationship and ethical plot turns of the movie to not notice its idea of journalistic corruption stops at embedding with the Contras, or that it has no ending.

it sure isn't!

Amadeus is the lithest of all these 80s BP winners.

The non-director's cut version is, anyway.

as lithe as the fat Italian courtier.

Too brutal

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

twenty years on, still running away with awards

There's an episode of an early 90s sitcom (The John Larroquette Show maybe?) where one character says they didn't enjoy DPS and all the other characters are like WHO ARE YOU

(equivalent of elaine not liking the english patient)

I just watched Raging Bull for the first time since the early nineties -- what a boring wonder.

I'd forgotten that almost three quarters of the thing devotes itself to La Motta's jealousy -- a tedious exercise. As written by Schrader the man is so uninteresting that it's like they had to turn the thing into Ulysses or Othello.

crazee!

also, I suspect if Dead Poets Society had been set at a school for teen girls in the '50s it would be a board favorite.

yeah it would be as popular on here as Mona Lisa Smile.

haha i was totally planning on doing a 90s one after this wraps

get to it, jess!

In the introduction to this, an argument:

UPDATE: By the way, some of you have suggested OUT OF AFRICA, a movie I like but don’t love (though I really should reserve comment, as I haven’t seen it since its release). I would include it on this list, except that 1985 was not all that great a year for British and American cinema. Unless you were willing to go foreign — RAN, VAGABOND, MY LIFE AS A DOG — the choices are fairly limited. Would A ROOM WITH A VIEW be any better? I’d stick with OUT OF AFRICA.

I thought ARWAV was, like Hannah, early '86.

some classics on this list, probably would vote for 'the right stuff' in a "best" poll. the FX really hold up well, considering everything. that epic "so close but so far" yeager flight scene at the end is amazing.

One of my favorite recent threads.

lol these results

I loved Dead Poet's Society when I saw it, but it had been overdubbed into German and I know that a good 60% of my enjoyment was from being able to understand most of the movie.

DPS would have been more compelling if kurtwood smith had just shot off robert sean leonard's kneecaps and tosses a grenade between his legs.

In German.

Man I got roped into watching On Golden Pond recently and BOOOOYYYYY does it stink

Leftover footage of Fonda and Hepburn driving through the New Hampshire countryside, as seen in the opening credits, was later used for the opening of the CBS television sitcom Newhart.

well I guess some good came out of it then

Who is this Pauline Kael woman and how are you all familiar with everything she's ever written?

The loons! The loons!!

But Newhart took place in Vermont. My world has been shattered.

Oooh boy... I'm just tired of all this traffic. I just can't wait 'till I get OUT OF AFRICA!

My main association with Out of Africa, which I've never actually seen, has always been an episode of Golden Girls where Blanche is on a date with frequent hookup Mel Bushman (played by Alan King, perhaps the ideal actor to play a character named Mel Bushman) when they discuss renting Out of Africa and heading over to his place. Blanche notes that they've rented it like five times and never finished it, to which Mel smiles and says "I know." So, as far as I could always tell, Out of Africa was the kind of movie that people watch only to have on in the background while they have sex and then fall asleep.

thx a lot now I get to think about Alan King having sex, you punk.

Out of Africa made it!

http://www.avclub.com/article/whats-your-least-favorite-best-picture-winner-201614?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview%3A1%3ADefault

I'm not sure I get why Dead Poet's Society is so widely hated - up there with Crash, Forrest Gump and American Beauty as an object of scorn, practically a punchline. I enjoyed it when I saw it as a teenager and I'm a big Peter Weir fan so I'd need to see it again.

http://i.imgur.com/A2uFTrP.gif

I'm curious enough about Can't Stop The Music to give it a shot if I ever come across it, and nothing with Christopher Atkins in a loincloth could ever be unwatchable.

Classic Takedown: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-blue-lagoon-1980

The Film Experience, as part of its RoboStreep series, gives Out of Africa another look:

o much of Streep’s assignment in Out of Africa seems set up for the actress to simply coast, as you’ve suggested, or else flat-out stumble. By my estimation, Streep does neither. There isn’t a single, decisive moment in the performance at which character and actress suddenly, magically click, setting aside all reservations and paving the way for a bravura interpretation. Instead, Streep just relaxes — into the character, into the accent, and ultimately into the film. Karen Blixen isn’t, by any means, one of Streep’s fuller creations, although there is nary a scene in Out of Africa that does not highlight the character nor explicitly pitch itself from her perspective within the entire nearly three hour runtime. Hold up Karen Blixen next to Karen Silkwood, Sophie Zawistowska, Joanna Kramer, or even The Deer Hunter’s indelibly tremulous Linda and the character and performance shrink to near-microscopic proportions. But Streep, yet again, succeeds in providing a vivid sense of what it feels like to be this particular person, here and now, putting forth an opinionated, uncompromising woman of will where I had anticipated a gauzily distressed damsel or a dewy romantic heroine. Streep does this not by barreling through the role with all the virtuosic technique that, by 1985, was evident to anyone who had gone to the movies at all within the past decade, but through far subtler means that are utterly specific to the character that exists on the page, even though Streep’s Karen often looks to be entertaining far more options than screenwriter Kurt Luedtke has readily envisioned.

This thread inspired me this series!

damn it to Hades

Amadeus is the lithest of all these 80s BP winners.

― third-generation stripper (Eric H.)

It really is. Nowhere near the best of 1984, but consistently entertaining, and compared to the rest of the winners it's a...Mozart opera.

And the rest come on so lofty you’d think they shit marble

Grazie, signore.

I think Amadeus is definitely the best Best Picture winner of the 80s. Along with Stranger Than Paradise, Stop Making Sense, The Times of Harvey Milk, and Paris, Texas it is also among the best films of 1984.

Once Upon a Time in America was pretty good too, but I wasn't persuaded it was better than Once Upon a Time In the West or The Good, The Bad and The Ugly among Leone's films

The Verdict didn't deserve any votes, it's really good. Working Girl is pretty good too - it wouldn't rank among my favorites, but it doesn't deserve any votes here either.

My vote goes to that abomination of historical revisionism, Mississippi Burning.

Julian Bond explains it all here, but his appearance on Nightline is cringe entertainment gold. I don't have a video, but here's an excerpt from an article reporting on it:

In the latest verbal go-round, actor Gene Hackman, who is the star of Mississippi Burning and a likely candidate for an Academy Award nomination next month as Best Actor, took heat from Julian Bond, former Georgia politician, on ABC’s Nightline on Monday. Parker was asked to appear, but he refused.

Bond’s point was that the film fictionalizes what happened in the South 25 years ago during the struggle for civil rights. “People are going to have a mistaken idea about that time,” he said, saying that a better name for the film would be “Rambo Meets the Klan.”

The film’s lack of a black protagonist is another criticism made by some critics. Most events are shown from the FBI’s point of view. These federal agents are portrayed as heroes, whereas the blacks are innocent victims.

Bond wanted the plot to reveal why three young civil rights workers were killed. He also disliked the portrayal of the FBI and the South: “It’s just wrong. These guys were tapping our telephones, not looking into the murders of (Andy) Goodman, (James) Chaney and (Mickey) Schwerner.”

As these brickbats were hurled, Hackman looked increasingly uncomfortable in a satellite hookup from a Chicago TV studio. “I would apologize for making people feel uncomfortable. But I still think it’s a good film.”

Asked by substitute Nightline host Forrest Sawyer about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s likely opinion of Mississippi Burning, Bond said, “I think he would have hated it. He knew the FBI — spreading gossip and innuendo about him — was his enemy.”

In response, Hackman said, “I feel a little depressed on this Martin Luther King Day that Mr. Bond felt that Dr. King wouldn’t like it. I was a fan of Dr. King’s. I don’t feel the film needs defending. But I performed it to the best of my ability.”

Hilariously, decades later, that segment's producer revealed what happened after they went to commercial:

I asked British director Alan Parker to appear on ABC’s Nightline to explain his portrayal of one of the horrific moments in this country’s civil rights era. He declined, but surprisingly we were offered the film’s star, Gene Hackman.

During the broadcast, civil rights pioneer Julian Bond confronted Hackman, who was appearing remotely from a Chicago TV studio. “People are going to have a mistaken idea about that time,” Bond said. The FBI was “tapping our telephones, not looking into the murders of Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner.” He suggested Rambo Meets the Klan would have been a better title. All Hackman could say was, “I would apologize for making people feel uncomfortable. But I still think it’s a good film.”

Within seconds of us getting off the air, the phone rang in the green room. It was Hackman, who laced into me for making him a punching bag. I responded as politely as I could: “Mr. Hackman, the person you should be upset with is not me or anyone on Nightline, but your public relations person, who knew this was a debate about whether a filmmaker should remake history.”

Also re: 1984, my personal favorites in descending order:

Love Streams [John Cassavetes]
Stranger Than Paradise [Jim Jarmusch]
Swing Shift [Jonathan Demme, “Director’s Cut”]
Davandeh [Amir Naderi]
Stop Making Sense [Jonathan Demme]
Once Upon a Time in America [Sergio Leone, "Long Version"]
Broadway Danny Rose [Woody Allen]
Choose Me [Alan Rudolph]
Next Of Kin [Atom Egoyan]
Paris, Texas [Wim Wenders]
Nineteen Eighty-Four [Michael Radford]
Un dimanche à la campagne [Bertrand Tavernier]

One person hated The Verdict that much?