1987 in film

i'm too tired and dumb to offer deep thoughts... and i'm not a film buff. so here's some personal garbage posting

dragnet - loved as a kid, haven't seen in many years, hanks and ackroyd had exceptional chemistry, iirc

eddie murphy raw - cried so many tears of laughter years ago but i think this might have gay jokes + misogyny.

evil dead 2 - fun but exhausting in its unrelenting slapstick. think i prefer army of darkness

full metal jacket - watched this again recently. i enjoyed it, much less terrifying than first viewing 15+ years ago.. maybe because said first viewing was right before 9/11 and thus right before endless war on terror / generation kill / hurt locker / blah blah blah

planes trains automobiles - a classic growing up, again, i wonder about off-color stuff since i haven't seen it in awhile.

predator - classic, i think. caught in between SFX revolutions.. weird paranoia and a kind of unfunny silliness. very entertaining.

the princess bride - again, haven't seen it in years but i have a good feeling that this still holds up. wallace shawn is my man.

raising arizona - deemed this a classic as a younger man, once again haven't seen in it 5+ years. assume it's still wonderful.

robocop - some nice memetic moments + boddicker is fantastic. kind of a dud, otherwise, imo, idk

roxanne - watched this a ton as a young kid (along with splash), don't know why, afraid to revisit.

the running man - i need to see this.

sign o the times - it's completely magical and everything you would hope for. i think the music might be overdubbed, though?

spaceballs - mostly evokes epic groans but god help me i love rick moranis in this.. and john candy..

wall street - weird, cold movie. watched it three times and idk i want more out of it. probably asking too much.

Of these, probably Robocop or City on Fire. Or perhaps The Untouchables, which I saw recently, and which is the first DePalma I care for. But the action scenes are great, especially the music, it's as if the cops almost succumb to heroics in a way, which is pretty much the doom of all of them.

A bit of a cheat, as it's French premiere was in 86, but for the rest of the world, the best two minutes of cinematic magic in 87 are these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMHXugVlzSw

Also, one of the major populist arthouse classics of the 80's is from 87: Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire.

write-in vote for nightmare on elm street 3 dream warriors

the princess bride strikes its tone at once and holds it perfectly from start to finish. if you like this movie at all, you probably love it. such is its power that even my knowing that a human-formed parasite like ted cruz loves this movie is not enough to deter me from embracing it, too.

I will watch pretty much anything with Mickey Rourke in it, but Angel Heart is a really, really bad film

https://www.rapmusicguide.com/amass/images/inventory/2828/Fat%20Boys%20-%20Disorderlies.jpg

robocop without a seconds hesitation but there's some good to great stuff here. (runner up would probably be near dark or predator.)

Ha -- I was going to post my own 1987 list tomorrow:

Housekeeping (Bill Forsythe)
The Dead (John Huston)
Tampopo (Juzo Izrui)
Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson)
Evil Dead II (Sam Raimi)
The Stepfather (Joseph Ruben)
Law of Desire (Pedro Almodovar)
Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow)
Radio Days (Woody Allen)
Sign 'o' the Times (Prince, Albert Magnoli)

it is almost unbelievable how many good to great genre films came out that year. i probably went to the theater more this year than any year in my middle school years. the only thing it's missing is a james cameron film.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles ahead of Raising Arizona and Full Metal Jacket, but Adventures in Babysitting, Innerspace, Lethal Weapon, The Lost Boys, RoboCop, Roxanne, and The Running Man were among my regular cable staples as a kid. Never shared the rest of my generation's love of The Princess Bride beyond wishing Peter Falk was MY grandfather.

Empire of the Sun, Sign'o' the Times and Near Dark are shameful blind spots, plus Best Seller, Extreme Prejudice, Ishtar and Prince of Darkness all look interesting to me.

Wall Street--don't like the last third of Full Metal Jacket all that much.

Housekeeping, fer chrissakes

The Hidden and The Stepfather are two of my all-time faves

This thread prompted me to look at this wiki page -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_in_film

striking to read that list of the top ten most popular movies and see how only Witches of Eastwick had any kind of fantasy, sfx-type content.

Here's a ten from that list:

King Lear (Godard)
Matewan (Sayles)
Opera (Argento)
White of the Eye (Cammell)
Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick)
Yeelen (Cissé)
The Stepfather (Ruben)
House of Games (Mamet)
Hellraiser (Barker)
Throw Mama From the Train (DeVito)

I don't know if Prick Up Your Ears has got lost in the mix or if it just isn't quite as brilliant as I remember it.

Kiarostami's Where is My Friend's Home?
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On

Extreme Prejudice and Robocop would make my twenty best.

The Forgotbusters piece on Dragnet:

There’s a potentially scathing satire to be made about the incongruity of a television show that gets American audiences to root for glowering, compassionless law enforcers, but that’s not the film Aykroyd and his collaborators were interested in making when brought Dragnet to the big screen. Many years back, I interviewed Alex Cox, who talked about how Lorne Michaels approached him about directing The Three Amigos. Cox replied that he would be interested, but only if the screenplay were to directly attack and confront American imperialism as it relates to our relationship with Mexico. That, unsurprisingly, marked the end of Cox’s involvement in The Three Amigos. Michaels had a commercial property to protect, and didn’t want Cox’s blustery Marxist politics to interfere with his payday. On a similar level, Aykroyd was understandably more concerned with scoring another commercial hit than in confronting the disturbing undertones of our obsession with television cops. Instead of making a satire of Dragnet, Aykroyd made an amiable, amusing, relatively toothless spoof that let everyone off easy: the source material, the audience, and the characters alike.

https://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/263-before-tv-remakes-became-common-dan-aykroyd-revive/

Robocop, no doubt. Watched it a couple of years ago in an altered state and was convinced it was maybe the greatest film of all time.

Just saw Evil Dead 2 for the first time last year but I think that would be a pretty close second. Fucking astoundingly fun movie.

It's Alive 3: Island of the Alive would be my write-in of choice.

I'm mighty sore about withnail having been left off the poll options. And interestingly stalemated about what I'd pick in its absence.

the Albert Collins blues scene in Adventures in Babysitting was my first experience with feeling embarrassed for my family and humanity.

I feel like voting for Chinese Ghost Story, which Evil Dead 2 fans should see. Another great stylish horror-comedy.

Tampopo (Juzo Izrui)

Tanpopo came out in 1985, Juzo Itami directed A Taxing Woman (which is fantastic), released in 1987 in Japan, 1988 in US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE8n9ybN5Yk

Tampopo (1985)

Release Dates

Japan 23 November 1985
USA 22 May 1987 (New York City, New York)
Italy July 1987 (Bergamo Film Meeting)
USA September 1987

people never gonna agree on universal dating

Yeah, I've got memories of one of the local art houses playing Tampopo in late '87. It was a small-ish hit.

pretty big arthouse hit in mpls/stpl iirc

i regret leaving off some choices and i wanted to add "yes i know i left some great films off morbs" to the end of my first post ;-)

My fave movies of 1987

Withnail & I
Full Metal Jacket
Planes Trains and Automobiles
Wings of Desire
Robocop

I just watched The Dead for the first time last weekend actually. A excellent adaptation, fantastic cast and wonderful ending too.

hmm Lethal Weapon or PT&A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl-iB4WAB0o

ffs

Robocop every time

xp yea the hidden is great; hard to pick against spaceballs obv

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

so the fat boys lost

Can’t believe I forgot Hellraiser

Watched the blu-ray of The Hidden last night. Really holds up, and it’s made with such a good eye for L.A. locations and its swift pace still allows time to give a real sense of the police unit Nouri’s character works in, there are at least half a dozen other cops who get casual character beats, and there are legitimately stellar small performances given by William Boyett and Claudia Christian as a two of the possessed killers (Chris Mulkey is great too but he has less to do, basically just rock out to Shok Paris and drive a Ferrari through cop cars and over hapless citizens).

Kyle MacLachlan playing an oddball FBI agent from Seattle is to put it mildly exceptionally good casting.

Jack Sholder didn’t do much else that received anywhere near the acclaim this one did but he’s good enough on this film to make me think he just didn’t get the right chances after this. The framing and editing throughout the entire movie are not attention-grabbing but they keep it moving, and the performances he got out of everyone are far beyond what a film like this would normally elicit.

It has one of those blindsiding moving endings too, which is pretty much completely earned.

There’s a bonus “blink and you miss it” Danny Trejo cameo.

i see i already completely agreed with this upthread