“classic movie” “80s to 2000s”

MFW

Pity party dispensed with, I’ll take a shot in the dark and make a few recommendations.

If you want to keep rolling on the Chan train, you should check out some of his Hong Kong work. Police Story is, I think, when Jackie really started to exert primary creative control over his movies, and contains a couple of my favorite stunts (both with and without Jackie). If you are curious to see something slightly earlier, Wheels on Meals is a collab between Chan and his Peking Opera School buddies Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao. It features a real cracker jack fight between Chan and Benny ‘The Jet’ Urquidez, who was among the best martial artists in the world at the time. Chan cites that fight as one of the best in his career. Police Story 3 (aka Supercop), earns a mention as well, because it becomes a two-hander with Jackie and pre-Hollywood Michelle Yeoh kicking an incredible amount of ass.

Outside the realm of HK martial arts movies though:

Tremors (1990) - Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward have to fight prehistoric subterranean carnivorous worms in order to move on from their dead end jobs in a dead end town. It’s a perfect movie.

Tommy Boy (1995) - Chris Farley and David Spade are salesman for a car part manufacturer which is anchoring their Rust Belt town. Under threat of a hostile takeover and subsequent plant closure, they have to go on the road to sell enough parts to keep the doors open. Hijinks ensue. I assume this is a movie which everyone has seen, but I guess it’s theoretically possible this is new to you. Light recommend for the spiritual followup Black Sheep from the following year. Not as good, but if you like Farley and Spade’s dynamic, it gives you more of that.

Leon: The Professional (1994) - Crook bloke alert for Luc Besson notwithstanding, this is still a really good action-thiller. Jean Reno is a hitman who seems somewhat simple-minded. He does his work, drinks milk, and takes care of his plant. Unfortunately, when tragedy befalls the family of a pre-teen girl (Natalie Portman) in the form of a visit from the unhinged DEA Agent Stansfield (Gary Oldman), he winds up becoming responsible for her.

Pitch Black (2000): Before he was Family ™, Vin Diesel was Richard B. Riddick: a sociopathic anti-hero with surgically altered eyes and a penchant for knives. The ship he’s being transported on crashlands on a seemingly deserted planet with three suns, creating perpetual daylight. However, while searching for a way off, the survivors of the shipwreck discover a lasting darkness is coming, and there might be something worse than an escaped murderer stalking them in the dark. Radha Mitchell, Cole Houser, and Keith David co-star. Very good shit, but I’m a mark, because I even liked the Chronicles of Riddick sequel and the video games they made. So, grain of salt and all, but I think it’s a good sci fi creature feature.

Way of the Gun (2000) - this is one of those “you’ll love it or you’ll despise it” sorta movies. As I understand it, it was intentionally written as a reaction to the wave of Tarantino-imitators that crawled out of the woodwork during the 90s. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: two amoral (yet inexplicably philosophical) criminal drifters get hired to do a job which turns out to be far more complicated than they bargained on, and they have to think on their feet if they want to live to see their payday, frequently pontificating at length about what they should do next and why. Now, strip out any effort to make these pompous fuck ups likable. Remind the audience at every turn that these are bad guys who are, at best, half as smart as they think they are. Oh well, at least you’ll get some cool, John Woo-inspired gunfights, right? No! You’ll get realistic, non-cinematic gunplay, complete with meticulously tracked round counts and extended sequences of seeking cover! (Actually, given the John Wickification of action movies, this might not have impact anymore, but it was a radical departure at the time.) Stars Ryan Phillippe, Benicio Del Toro, Juliette Lewis, Taye Diggs, and James Caan. Special appearance by Sarah Silverman for a memorable scene.

Edit to Add Something Completely Different:

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) - its a really solid little romantic comedy which became a titan of the box office. I think it’s still among the most profitable movies of all time. At the time of its release, I was not much for rom coms, but when I went back to it years later, I found it to be a perfectly comfy bit of pleasant fluff.

10 Things I Hate About You (1999) - Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, but 1999 Seattle. Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles star. Easily the best of the late-90s “reimaginations” of Shakespeare, imo, including the ones that won Oscars. Absolutely carried by the stars’ charisma, but the script is packed with clever jokes and there’s a killer soundtrack.

And what a design it is. Obviously it’s guys or gals in suits and stilts, but it’s a cut above what you might expect for an early 2000s indie creature feature.

I’m surprised it didn’t make your rewatch list. It is, to me, the Platonic form of this type of creature feature, in the same way that Tremors is the Platonic form of the “creatures come to a small town” version. Nobody’s winning awards for innovation necessarily, but there’s merit to simply executing familiar tropes at a high level. Not an annual rewatch, but I dust it off every few years.

You know what the chain of command is? It’s the chain I beat you with until you follow my ruttin’ commands!

Casting issues notwithstanding, what do you do with a Helldivers movie that Starship Troopers didn’t do 30 years ago? Feels like a tough egg to crack.

This has been a good movie week for me!

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Premise: A woman (Kathleen Turner) in the midst of divorcing her high school sweetheart (Nicolas Cage), reluctantly attends her 25-year reunion. During this event, she loses consciousness, and wakes up back in 1960, her adult consciousness inhabiting her teenaged self.

It’s nice! Super sentimental, but it possesses more self-awareness than most nostalgia bait, which helps keep things from getting too saccharine. Turner’s performance as Peggy is a big reason the film is as successful as it is at managing the tone. She quickly comes to term with her apparent time-travel (rationalizing it as a dream, or maybe a hallucination she is experiencing in the moment before death) and largely seems game to enjoy herself. Unlike Back to the Future, which this is obviously of a piece with, there is no apparent ticking clock or “disappearing from the timeline”-type stakes. Given this, Peggy amiably dons her cheerleading gear and reintegrates into her senior year barely missing a beat. However, Turner never lets the audience forget that, despite everything, she is playing an adult Peggy, who is playing her teenage self. Occasionally, this is expressed in a big way, such as when she crumples in on herself upon hearing her long-dead grandmother’s voice on the phone. However, I was most impressed in the little ways that the mask slips, such as when the corners of her lips quirk up in wry bemusement (or exasperation) at the earnestly expressed grandiose plans of her peers. It was like watching footage of someone re-reading their diary, fond nostalgia jockeying for position with acerbic hindsight and embarrassment. A phenomenal, deeply affecting performance, and I’m not surprised she got an Oscar nod for it.

The cinematography by Jordan Cronenweth, also nominated, further enhances the elegiac tone. The reunion is shot through a thick haze, blanketing everything in frame with a gauzy softness that belies the coming magical turn, while also evoking the kind of liminal social space which events like school reunions occupy. Admittedly, I could have just been primed to look for parallels by recognizing his name in the credits, but I thought there were striking similarities between how Cronenweth shot Peggy’s reunion with how he photographed the “retirement” of Zhora in Blade Runner. A little less slow-motion and squibs, to be sure, but the same dreamy quality, the same periodic washes of technicolor peppered with glittering motes of refracted light. Of course, in Peggy’s case, this kaleidoscope comes from rather more mundane sources than Blade Runner’s cyberpunk cityscape, generated by the same rental smoke machines, gel lights, and silver streamers which get trotted out for school events to this day.

Specious though this connection may be (even to me), I find there’s a little bit of thematic resonance between the two scenes. Zhora is a woman pursued by a man with ill intent, whose “crime” was wanting more life. She is shot in the back as she runs down a long hallway, boxed in on all sides, ultimately collapsing with her dreams unrealized. Peggy entering the reunion, then, is Zhora entering that hallway. Despite her best efforts she can’t shake the man chasing her, at first metaphorically (in conversation and gossip), and then literally when Charlie unexpectedly turns up. Finally, she is overwhelmed by the onslaught of emotional and physical stimuli during her coronation as Reunion Queen. She collapses to the floor with a psychedelic kaleidoscope of color playing across her face, mirroring Zhora’s death. Thankfully for Peggy, this ain’t that kind of movie, and she’s afforded the opportunity to address her desire for “more” life. Not “more” in the Blade Runner sense (a quantifiable period), rather, “more” as a qualitative measure: getting more from the life she’s already lived.

That’s more than enough galaxy-brain-film-nerd talk though. Even without the Turner performance and solid craft on display, the movie’s cast is enough to recommend it as a curio if nothing else, with early turns from Sofia Coppola (in a nothing part, admittedly), Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, and Kevin J O’Connor.

REWATCHES

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), dir. Peter Weir. Premise: Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany have adventures in the British Navy, chasing down one of Napoleon’s privateers along the coast of South America.

Fantastic. I can’t imagine there being a better adaptation of Napolonic-era naval life. Stuffed to the gills with nautical details, but it never becomes pedantic (the way I imagine reading the novels might, happy landlubber that I am). Its perhaps a touch episodic, but I think that’s of a piece with the movie’s emphasis on authentically depicting naval life. There’s not a single character or filmmaking choice which feels at odds with that goal. Crowe is magnificent, Bettany as well. If you haven’t seen it, you absolutely should, even if historical epics aren’t typically your thing. Ideally on a Sunday afternoon with your dad.

Universal Soldier (1992), dir. Roland Emmerich. Premise: JCVD and Dolph Lundgren are reanimated soldiers programmed to be perfect killing machines. Unfortunately, when a journalist (Ally Walker) uncovers their existence, some wires get crossed and JCVD decides he must protect her for long enough to earn the right to return home, while Lundgren leads the team of Franken-soldiers to put them both down.

JCVD’s alleged status as a crook bloke notwithstanding, this is a solid little early-90s action programmer. Feels very of its time, and I mean that in a good way. Has just enough 80s in its DNA to feel dangerous and exciting, while allowing for the fact that the 90s had arrived, and things were different now. For instance, there is gratuitous nudity in the movie, but it’s hero who strips down for the camera, not the damsel (and, whatever your personal persuasion, JCVD’s butt in 1992 is worth seeing).

It’s not high art (the movie, that is; I could and might argue dat ass is in fact art), but things move along at a decent clip, Lundgren seems to be having a ball chewing up the scenery, and JCVD surprised me with how good his comedic instincts were, even this early in his career. Like, I don’t think people acknowledged how self-aware he clearly was until the JCVD movie came out in 2008 and he spelled it out for everybody. Even just no-selling “What accent?” when Walker is trying to find out who he is and where he’s from got a chuckle out of me, and I couldn’t help but laugh at his facial expressions while he’s housing plate after plate of diner food, ignorant of the mounting bill.

For some reason I had it in my head that Rebel Ridge was a product of The Daily Wire’s attempt to “combat woke media” or whatever it is those hacks think they’re doing. Something akin to 2020’s Run Hide Fight, which dared to ask “What if we mashed up Die Hard with Gus Van Sant’s Elephant?” (Spoiler alert: you get a reprehensible turd of a movie.)

Therefore, I had totally written this thing off and not thought about it since. However, now I’m realizing how off-target my assumptions were, and it’s advancing to the top of the watchlist. Saulnier is an excellent thriller director, but “non-lethal” isn’t typically his protagonists’ MO, so that’s an interesting wrinkle. Thank you for the recommendation.

The sequel is good too, though it’s not nearly as satisfying a mystery as the first, which I felt was to film’s detriment (even if that’s sort of the point).

Which movie do you wish were better, Nacho Libre or Be Kind Rewind? Or both? I have very vague recollections of Be Kind Rewind, but, if that’s the one you’re referring to, I’d tend to agree. I seem to recall a lot of the marketing was centered around the main duo’s attempts to “Swede” movies with no production budget. As I recall, that’s certainly present in the movie, but it’s not really the focus to the extent I wish it were.

Nacho Libre I haven’t seen at all, so I’ll take y’all’s word on that front.

Only if he’s from Britain, anywhere else and he’s just “sparkling self-satisfied”

Fighting fire with fire, they’ll never see it coming

What’s funny is that Linklater kind of already beat you to the punch with that concept when he made Boyhood, seeing as that chronicles 2002-2014. Not entirely the same, of course. They’re very different movies, and because (SAY THE LINE, BART!) it took 12 years to make, Boyhood lacks the retrospective quality Dazed and Confused has.

Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is working on something that is in line with your concept right now. I feel like pop culture has been cannibalizing the 90s for awhile now, and we’re primed for the early aughts revival.

Fascinating. My godfather is a mathematician at a local university, I’ll ask him whether this is something he runs into. I’ve heard him grumble about formatting his work in the past, but usually in the context of using Latex, which I gather is something else entirely.

I hate to hit you with such a tangentially related query to your main point, but what is “formalizing a proof”, and why is there such a discrepancy between the time it might take an expert (weeks if not months) vs an LLM?

(It probably goes without saying, but my college career was spent in the Humanities, where there was not much emphasis on proofs, formal or informal, so I’m curious how the other half lives.)

This may not be any consolation to you, but I’ve understood the movie to be an exercise in Tarantino’s personal wish fulfillment. If you aren’t on his wavelength, that’s always going to read like aimless artistic masturbation. Tarantino is a pop-culture nerd in general, but he has a specific penchant for movies of the 60s and 70s. The Tate-LaBianca murders represented a seismic shift in American pop culture, officially ending the “Summer of Love” and ushering in the paranoid and grimy “New Hollywood” of the 70s. Because Tarantino has such affection for the pictures which largely went out of fashion in the wake of that upheaval, he allows himself (and the audience, of course) to idly day-dream about a scenario where the Manson murders didn’t happen, and there were a few more years of this comparatively idyllic period in LA’s history. I don’t mean for this to be interpreted as a 1:1 equivalency, but, I think the climax of the movie is meant to be the same kind of wish-fulfillment that the audience gets out of seeing Hitler machine gunned into mincemeat in Inglorious Basterds.

I don’t remember enough about the craft of the movie to comment upon whether or not Tarantino was completely aping the style of Westerns for the film, but I’m willing to bet there’s a large amount of truth in that statement. Tarantino is certainly no stranger to lifting shots and concepts out of his influences whole-cloth. Certainly you could read the title to be a reference to Leone’s “Once Upon A Time in the West”, but I think more illuminating reading is that “Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood” indicates that Tarantino is telling us a fairy tale. All of the Tate stuff is there to remind people that this was a young woman who was ascendant, all set to become a star, were it not for the actions of Manson and his followers. It’s very bittersweet, in that way.

Full disclosure, I listened to the entirety of Helter Skelter, the book the chief prosecutor wrote about his experience with the investigation and trials which followed (despite a general distaste for true crime as a genre), in the weeks before the film’s release to prepare. That dramatically recontextualized a lot of the movie for me, because I was keenly aware of how brutal, and how senseless, the real events were. So, I was very willing to join Tarantino in his daydream reverie, and it helped me feel like the frequent diversions to seemingly unrelated plots and characters were all of a piece with one another in a way I don’t think I would have without that context.

I’m not one to reach for branded clothing often, but I’d wear this.

LAST YEAR AT 2:17 AM

ANNA FARIS

TRIPPED

WHILE TEXTING

AND

ACCIDENTALLY AGREED TO DO ANOTHER

I’ve no expectation that this will be good, but that got an amused snort out of me.

I mean, I know the takeaway Ehrlich wants me to have is “don’t see this movie, it’s not worth it”, but I have to admit some perverse curiosity.

An incomplete list of ocean horror.

Underwater (2020): Kristen Stewart and a small cast of rapidly dwindling fish food discover that their deep see mining operation may have delved too deeply and greedily into the earth, and some things buried should be left to sleep. Relatively big budget creature feature which suffers from sitting on the shelf and being tinkered with for a couple of years before releasing in COVID. Some odd editing decisions and not a lot of character work, but it looks good, it SOUNDS great (more important than you might think for ocean horror), at least two memorable deaths which push the PG-13 rating to the limit, and a whopper of a last act reveal. Also, 94 minutes long, which is a strong endorsement, imo.

Leviathan (1989): Peter Weller, of Robocop, stars in this soggy mish mash of Alien and The Thing. A team of deep sea miners stumble upon the wreck of a Soviet ship and wind up salvaging more than they bargained for out of the Captain’s safe. Creature effects by Stan Winston, but lower your expectations for the finale, as it’s definitely not his best work. Still, fun in a goopy, cheesy way, buoyed by a winning cast.

The Abyss (1989): Pretty much the same set up as Leviathan, but executed by James Cameron instead of George P. Cosmatos. I love Cobra as much as the next guy, but Cameron is obviously the superior director. Takes a turn towards navel gazing sentimentality towards the end, which could be a pro or a con depending on what youre looking to get out of the experience.

Deep Star Six (1989): I’ve not actually seen this one, but it completes the trifecta of 1989 ocean-based science-fiction horror movies, so it needed to be included.

Deep Rising (1998): Treat Williams is hired to ferry a team of mercenaries to a rendezvous point with a luxury ocean liner, where they intend on looting and scuttling the ship. Unfortunately for everyone, bobbit worms’ bigger, grosser cousins show up start gorging themselves. Directed by Stephen Sommers, right before launching into the Mummy the following year. Impressive (for 98) CGI, solid R-rating, and another winning cast (Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Anthony Heald, Kevin J. O’Connor, Djimon Hounsou, and Jason Flemyng).

The Poseidon Adventure (1972): Breaking from my monster movie convention to recommend this, which is a disaster film with nothing supernatural about it. However, I think there are sections which are tense enough to qualify as horror-adjacent, and again, what a cast, man. If you can’t tell, I’ll put up with a lot of crap if I find the actors compelling in some way. Unlike Treat Williams though, I shouldn’t have to justify to you the enjoyment of watching Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Red Buttons, Roddy Macdowell, Leslie Nielsen, AND MORE navigate an ocean liner which has been capsized by a rogue wave. With the exception of Jaws and The Abyss (arguably), this is the best movie on this list. Light recommend for the 2006 remake, which is nowhere near as good imo, but does take advantage of the technology of the time to emphasize the disaster segments. And I’m a sucker for Kurt Russell.

Below (2002): WW2-set submarine ghost story starring a slew of character actors, and a very early role for Zach Galifianakis. I’ve seen this before, multiple times, but probably not in the past 20 years. It was a staple on the IFC channel right around the time my dad sprung for the expensive cable package. I remember it being an effective, if somewhat slight, spook-em-up story, bolstered by the unique setting. Written by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Whale, Black Swan, etc.) and directed by David Twohy (the Riddick movies, which is an endorsement from me, but may not be for others).

Jaws (1975): it’s THE shark movie. Nothing more to say, if you haven’t seen Jaws and you’re curious about ocean-based horror, this is where you have to start.

Beast of War (2025): in WW2 Australia, a troop of ANZACs are stranded when their carrier is sunk, and they’re left adrift among the wreckage. Then, the shark arrives. Gnarly effects, more competent writing and acting than this genre usually pulls off, and moody cinematography all elevate this out of the depths of “shark movie trash” and into “enjoyable B-movie” shallows.

The Meg 1 and 2: Jason Statham and a diverse cast of stars from major non-US film markets have to take down giant sharks and other prehistoric escapees from a primordial undersea trench. It’s not good, but they throw enough money at the effects to make the attack scenes fun. Check your brain at the door, it will be a detriment to your enjoyment.

Deep Blue Sea (1999): An Alzheimer’s researcher accidentally creates super smart sharks by enlarging their brains. The sharks use their newfound intelligence to pick off the crew of this animal testing facility one by one. Early Stellan Skarsgard role. Also features LL Cool J as the religious and borderline insane facility cook, and Thomas Jane as the shark wrangler protagonist. Aggressively stupid, but all the more fun because of it. Mister Cool J raps over the closing credits with an original song written for and referencing the movie, which is a bold and hilarious decision.

Blood Vessel (2019): Super light recommendation for this one, as it isn’t really in line with your request. The maritime setting is mostly incidental here, but it’s an underseen indie horror movie that is technically set in the middle of the ocean, so I’m throwing it in. A cast of inexplicably diverse WW2 allies are adrift when a seemingly abandoned German hospital ship approaches them. They board the ship and discover that something nefarious went down on board, related to a couple of strange crates in the hold which are of special interest to Nazi high command. Stars Alyssa Sutherland, who would go on to appear in Evil Dead Rise as the possessed mother character.

I’ll add to this if I think of others.

If there’s one thing Ben Affleck knows how to do, it’s negotiate with suits.