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Good movies that haven't held up.

Parliament

By Parliament
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Dark Horse
Dark Horse

Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix, and Seven? Jesus, you are a fucktard. 

Mole
Mole

Avatar holds up just fine. It was terrible when it came out and it remains terrible today.

C-Man
C-Man
Farkimedes

Farkimedes 23

Posted
Posted
20 hours ago, Parliament said:
21 hours ago, Farkimedes said:
The sex scene is so bad I can't believe they filmed it. Brilliant borderline on violent blue lighting, "Take my Breath Away" pounding in through the speakers, Tom Cruise being lowered via some sort of crane device ( seriously, he's like completely parallel with the ground ) on top of Kelly McGillis to assume the Missionary Position, the two of the standing at attention before moving their arms over each other like they are robots being told how to simulate sex. The real topper though is the fight scene just before they bang, which is like a perfect maelstrom of horrendous acting and terrible dialogue about the fact that Maverick "has a real brilliance in his flying, but you're also a complete fucking lunatic".  It's like watching my 5 YO play acting a fight between 2 adults or something. For sure though my favorite scene is directly after Goose dies and Cruise is standing there in tighty-whities trying to be sad and Viper's all like, "Fuck 'em, he's dead. Cut that asshole out of your life. You've got to let him go ( he's been dead for like 4 hours ) and move on with your life".
Cruise's performance is jaw droppingly bad. I hadn't seen an early Cruise movie in a long time and I had forgotten how much better of an actor he is now compared to then. Unless he's grinning his face literally contorts like he's got Bell's Palsy or some shit when he's trying to be angry or sad or something. His timing is awful on the two comedic scenes ( like when he's trying to sing in the bar ).
Look, I loved that movie and the Top Gun theme screams patriotism and the U.S. motherfuckin' A. to me like a Sousa march. I still love that movie in the same way you love something average but you have a deep connection w/, like a profoundly mediocre Tex-Mex restaurant in the small town you grew up in ( shout out to Ta-Molly's and La Familia ). 
 
 

I bet you're fun at parties.

Dude, I love terrible B movies. That's being lost here, I love this damn movie. 

For the record, I'm typically the bartender / designated driver at most of our parties so people put up with me at the bare minimum.

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Onboard 2.0

Onboard 2.0 9083

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9 minutes ago, Eskimohorn said:

 


Animal House is both low-brow and high humor. It still works on multiple levels except for the sexual assault part.

 

Yep, it holds up much better than Top gun. The well played, if exaggerated time capsule it is of late 50's to mid 60's college greek life.

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ScottishHorn

ScottishHorn 172

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57 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

Yep.  It's why Caddyshack, Animal House, Stripes, etc are still funny to me.   I don't have to disect it.

I watched a documentary on the making of Caddyshack.  It was basically a wild and crazy party for 6 straight weeks.  It's amazing the movie was even made.  I dont think there was much of a script either.  They basically wrote it as they were making it.

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Art Vandelay

Art Vandelay 1712

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Two CSBs about Top Gun...

1) My Dad is a retired airline pilot (and former Air Force). When he was still flying for the airline, he would occasionally have overnight layovers in Austin, and I would always go meet him at his hotel for a few beers. One time while I'm still at UT, I go to meet him at the Holiday Inn bar and he's got his co-pilot with him. Turns out this guy had flown F-14s in the Navy and did a lot of the stunt flying for Top Gun. I asked him if it was fun and he gave me a big grin and said, "Oh yeah. We got to do all kinds of shit we're normally not allowed to do." Nice guy, and looked like he could've played a part in the movie. This was probably 1992 or 93, so only 6 or 7 years after the movie came out.

2) My brother-in-law is also a pilot. A little background about him: He flew F-18s in the Navy. He just missed the cut for Top Gun school, but did become a Navy test pilot, which is even more exclusive. He was also voted Naval Aviator of the year once. Then he retired from the Navy and ended up flying F-15s with the Air Force Reserve. So, a pretty serious pilot.

Anyway, I've known him for more than 25 years but a couple of years ago we're having drinks in Austin with my sister, and the movie comes on the TV in the bar. So we start talking about it. He tells me the Kelly McGillis character (which I always assumed was pure Hollywood B.S.) was based on a civilian woman that consulted with his squadron. Wow. I had no idea. Then he casually tells me that he's about 99% sure that a couple of lines about Maverick's character were based on him. I think he's bullshitting me, but he goes on to explain that some guys he had flown with early in his Naval career were consultants on the script. During that time, my brother-in-law was known for some pretty crazy stunts, including high speed fly-bys, buzzing towers and such -- a couple of which almost cost him his wings. And he was famously "dating" an admiral's daughter at the time.

Quote

Son, your ego is writing checks your body can't cash. You've been busted, you've lost your qualifications as section leader three times, put in hack twice by me, with a history of high speed passes over five air control towers—and one admiral's daughter!

He said he saw the movie when it came out and hasn't sat through the whole thing since.

Oh, and to stay on topic: As cheesy as it is in parts, I still love me some Top Gun.

Edited by Art Vandelay
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C-Man

C-Man 27230

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12 minutes ago, Art Vandelay said:

2) My brother-in-law is also a pilot. A little background about him: He flew F-18s in the Navy. He just missed the cut for Top Gun school, but did become a Navy test pilot, which is even more exclusive. He was also voted Naval Aviator of the year once. Then he retired from the Navy and ended up flying F-15s with the Air Force Reserve. So, a pretty serious pilot.

Anyway, I've known him for more than 25 years but a couple of years ago we're having drinks in Austin with my sister, and the movie comes on the TV in the bar. So we start talking about it. He tells me the Kelly McGillis character (which I always assumed was pure Hollywood B.S.) was based on a civilian woman that consulted with his squadron. Wow. I had no idea. Then he casually tells me that he's about 99% sure that a couple of lines about Maverick's character were based on him. I think he's bullshitting me, but he goes on to explain that some guys he had flown with early in his Naval career were consultants on the script. During that time, my brother-in-law was known for some pretty crazy stunts, including high speed fly-bys, buzzing towers and such -- a couple of which almost cost him his wings. And he was famously "dating" an admiral's daughter at the time.

He said he saw the movie when it came out and hasn't sat through the whole thing since.

Oh, and to stay on topic: As cheesy as it is in parts, I still love me some Top Gun.

Uecn.gif

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Parliament

Parliament 14260

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During that time, my brother-in-law was known for some pretty crazy stunts, including high speed fly-bys, buzzing towers and such -- a couple of which almost cost him his wings. And he was famously "dating" an admiral's daughter at the time.

 

 

 

Penny Benjamin?

 

 

 

 

 

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Eskimohorn

Eskimohorn 5635

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Hmm.  I realize it was set in a college, but that doesn't make it highbrow.
Plus, it was Oregon, so extra-non-highbrow.
 


Donald Sutherland scenes were all brilliant as a washed up professor, talking about how boring Milton was.

The Delta defense has been used countless times in real life

Dean Wormer was so well played. Having heavies play these roles really worked

Flounder getting introduced to the losers twice

Donna and the kiln accident

Bernstein’s classical score

The postscript fates of all the characters, not sure that was used in a comedy before

This was a cutting edge counter comedy with wit, originality and societal commentary. A welcome relief in a post-watergate age.
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Rimbo

Rimbo 25976

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3 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Cs87.gif

I didn't feel good about it.

The last two-thirds of the movie were always weaker than the first third, but I'd failed to register just how much weaker. The scene with the monkey, and the scene with Dreyfuss immediately following it, are as good as anything Peter Sellers has ever done.

The rest... was not one of Blake Edwards' better products despite Sellers' efforts.

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tantric superman

tantric superman 4667

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6 hours ago, Eskimohorn said:

 




This was a cutting edge counter comedy with wit, originality and societal commentary. A welcome relief in a post-watergate age. 

This was an attempt to moviefy the tried and true humor of National Lampoon.  It was a movie version of what everyone who was a fan had already experienced through the radio and magazine. 

I'm only taking a bit of issue with your highbrow and cutting edge comments.  This was feeding the kids what they wanted. 

 

I'd argue that Monty Python/Holy Grail was doing the same thing, but that was a movie that had a highbrow undercurrent.

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Dbeasy

Dbeasy 15068

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The sex scene is so bad I can't believe they filmed it. Brilliant borderline on violent blue lighting, "Take my Breath Away" pounding in through the speakers, Tom Cruise being lowered via some sort of crane device ( seriously, he's like completely parallel with the ground ) on top of Kelly McGillis to assume the Missionary Position, the two of the standing at attention before moving their arms over each other like they are robots being told how to simulate sex. The real topper though is the fight scene just before they bang, which is like a perfect maelstrom of horrendous acting and terrible dialogue about the fact that Maverick "has a real brilliance in his flying, but you're also a complete fucking lunatic".  It's like watching my 5 YO play acting a fight between 2 adults or something. For sure though my favorite scene is directly after Goose dies and Cruise is standing there in tighty-whities trying to be sad and Viper's all like, "Fuck 'em, he's dead. Cut that asshole out of your life. You've got to let him go ( he's been dead for like 4 hours ) and move on with your life".
Cruise's performance is jaw droppingly bad. I hadn't seen an early Cruise movie in a long time and I had forgotten how much better of an actor he is now compared to then. Unless he's grinning his face literally contorts like he's got Bell's Palsy or some shit when he's trying to be angry or sad or something. His timing is awful on the two comedic scenes ( like when he's trying to sing in the bar ).
Look, I loved that movie and the Top Gun theme screams patriotism and the U.S. motherfuckin' A. to me like a Sousa march. I still love that movie in the same way you love something average but you have a deep connection w/, like a profoundly mediocre Tex-Mex restaurant in the small town you grew up in ( shout out to Ta-Molly's and La Familia ). 
 
 

Nice write up. So Top Gun is the El Patio of movies. I get it now.
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Liquor and Poker

Liquor and Poker 3659

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On 6/7/2018 at 10:15 AM, Johnny Sack said:

Road House

WTF??

On 6/7/2018 at 10:02 AM, Parliament said:
On 6/7/2018 at 9:52 AM, Brisketexan said:
What I like are the ones that go full circle: you thought it was awesome at the time, and now see that it’s SO bad...that it’s awesome.

See: Iron Eagle.

Starship Troopers

You realize that Starship Troopers is meant to be satirical, right?  It's actually a sendup of militarism and military culture.

I get that it has no real connection to the book, which is militaristic and reactionary itself.

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Parliament

Parliament 14260

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1 hour ago, Liquor and Poker said:

WTF??

You realize that Starship Troopers is meant to be satirical, right?  It's actually a sendup of militarism and military culture.

I get that it has no real connection to the book, which is militaristic and reactionary itself.

I did not realize that.  I thought it was cheese shit on a stick.  Once I realize it's satire, I came to appreciate it's message.

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Onboard 2.0

Onboard 2.0 9083

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6 minutes ago, ScottishHorn said:

Road House is still awesome.  Iron Eagle is awesome but it was awesome because it is so unbelievably terrible.   Chappy is one if my favorite character names of all time.  

I like Road house more now than then. Then it was a typical Hollywood fist fight, with a hot chick thrown in for good measure, formulaic diversion.  I like it more now because of that for some reason.  Saw Iron Eagle recently, and was a bit embarrassed to be watching.

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ScottishHorn

ScottishHorn 172

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23 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

I like Road house more now than then. Then it was a typical Hollywood fist fight, with a hot chick thrown in for good measure, formulaic diversion.  I like it more now because of that for some reason.  Saw Iron Eagle recently, and was a bit embarrassed to be watching.

My favorite think about Cobra Kai (the modern karate kid spinoff series) is that Iron Eagle is Johnny Lawrence's motivation to getting his act together.  So awesome...haha

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hookem48

hookem48 4700

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On ‎6‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 8:08 AM, LongestHorn said:

Using various methods, I and my friends snuck into this movie a half dozen times.  Great soundtrack.  But the animation is now, well, dated. 

 

ok, now you motherfuckers have gone too far.

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MrPhlegm

MrPhlegm 3413

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Good to see you back, you big nutjob.

Been moving and blew out a disc in my back. Fucking sciatic nerve got pinched and made the inside front quad cramp like a motherfucker. Pain city. Hard to post bent over to take the pressure off. Disc swelling is finally going down. Had to ride to the er in an ambulance. Got morphine and everything. Pain was screaming bad. Er gave me hydrocodone and prednisone and a steroid shot and muscle relaxers and that started the healing. Fucking florida passed a law changing who could hand out opiods. Gotta be a fucking "pain specalist" went into effect may 1. May 15 I blow out my back lifting a bag of potting soil and my gp cant give me pain meds? Fuck that shit. Anyway lifted a whole ton of shit moving today. Got most all the furniture out of the rent house. Two men and a truck are badass. Taking lyrica for the pain and it seems to work. Going to physical therapy tomorrow to strengthen my back as reccoed by the spine orthopedic doc I went to. No pain today good shit.

 

Anyway any movie with Sarah Jessica Parker in it.

 

Hey Bueller ya might want to get one of these for the wife.

 

https://www.thumpermassager.com/massagers/equine-pro/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-7rbh6LO2wIVDsfjBx03rgo-EAEYASAAEgKT-PD_BwE

 

OU sucks, fuck aggy, fuck the swine.

 

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686

686 3449

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One more comment on the poor lost souls that keep mentioning Starship Troopers as not holding up: there is so much going on in the coed shower scene, that ~2 minutes is just masterful, peak Verhoeven. Here’s an essay reflecting on it 20 years after release:

 

“One of the more good-humoredly fascistic scenes in Starship Troopers is the coed shower scene. Like a lot of on-screen ’90s nudity, this was a key talking point in a long-ago era before you could google any sex act that anyone has ever imagined. From the director of Showgirls and Basic Instinct, it vibed transgressive. The rumor was that Verhoven had been naked behind the camera while his cast was naked up front, a fact confirmed by Verhoeven himself in a 2012 interview with Empire. This sounds prurient, but the effect of the scene isn’t really voyeuristic, and it’s certainly less weird than all those times Michael Bay introduces female characters underbutt-first. The nudity might even be part of the movie’s illusion: a way of getting you to focus on everything besides the point.

The shower scene arrives early in the movie, after apparent lead character Johnny Rico (Caspar Van Dien) has joined up with the Mobile Infantry, the sci-fi army that fires cool future weapons and does awesome space stuff. “JOIN THE MOBILE INFANTRY AND SAVE THE WORLD!” is how one newsreel advertises this career option, which sounds like funny only-in-satire hyperbole until you remember that 1998 ad where a marine fights a lava monster with an Arthurian super-sword. “SERVICE GUARANTEES CITIZENSHIP!” is the odd postscript to that newsreel, one last advertisement promise that sounds more insidious every time you hear it.

 

It’s tantalizingly unclear what a “citizen” is in the movie’s context. The original Robert Heinlein book went more in-depth, but Verhoeven barely read the book and hated what he did read, so don’t get too hung up on canon. Johnny’s parents don’t want him to join the army and seem to be doing just fine for sub-citizens. Actually, they live in Buenos Aires, a fact that’s only strange because Johnny and all his friends are played by Americans so white they all had guest arcs on Beverly Hills, 90210.

It’s possible that the beginning of Starship Troopers is meant to be a fun utopian future, where the world peacefully formed a global government and then decided to make American english the lingua franca. All that military drapery makes you doubt that anything was peaceful, though. You start to wonder: Are Johnny and his friends growing up in some long-established totalitarian uber-regime? Is this what daily life would look like in some 400-hundred-year-time-jumped Man in the High Castle where America used its brief span as World’s Only Superpower to take the whole thing over?

This is the stuff of dark-future terror, but part of the fun of Starship Troopers is how Verhoeven keeps recoding our perspective. There are visual references to Leni Riefenstahl, and half the hero’s plot depends on a high school romantic triangle. The upper-level government spooks wear uniforms that recall the SS, but the different branches of the military have no-bull gender equity (Space Captain Brenda Strong!!!) Actually, the most immediately despicable soldier is Jake Busey, a white dude so white-dude-ly that he was in Shasta McNasty.

Busey’s just been abused by a drill sergeant, taught a lesson that involved a knife going through his hand. The scene that follows is, broadly, the “getting to know the squad” scene, plot-sacred since the days of Sands of Iwo Jima, introducing all the soldiers who might die gloriously in the fifth reel. Team chatterbox Kitten (Matt Levin) walks into the group shower, clearly the sarcastic one. “We all have one thing in common,” he moans. “We were all stupid enough to sign up for the Mobile Infantry.”

He goes around the horn, asking his squadmates what led them to sign up. A farmboy wanted off the farm. A dude smart enough to get into Harvard needs scholarship money. A woman named Djana’D (Tami-Adrian George) says, “I’m going into politics, and you know, you gotta be a citizen for that, so here I am.” Another women named Katrina (Blake Lindsley) says, “I want to have babies,” which earns an eyeroll from Djana’D, but nobody blinks an eye when this second woman says, “It’s a lot easier to get a license if you serve.”

And then Kitten asks Johnny why he joined the Mobile Infantry, and Johnny refuses to say why, but his old high school pal/acrobat-football teammate Dizzy (Dina Meyer) knows he joined because he wuvs service-obsessed Carmen (Denise Richards), so she tells the squad Johnny’s here for a girl, and all the naked young soldiers laugh like this is the most hilarious thing they’ve ever heard.

But two big statements were just said here, which fly by so quickly that you’re still trying to understand them when someone slaps Caspar Van Dien’s butt. You need a license to have babies? Running for political office requires some time in the armed forces? “You gotta be a citizen for that,” we’re told, and what else do you gotta be a citizen for? This sounds like a full-blown military dictatorship we’re looking at, or at least a government where federal service grants you power that mere civilianhood cannot, which in the long tail of history equals out to around the same thing.

But this is also, weirdly, a reflection of a peculiar strain of ’90s action jingo. In Independence Day and Air Force One, Bill Pullman and Harrison Ford played presidents with enough military background to fire missiles at aliens and beat up British Russians. Both films reflect the ever-lingering influence of Top Gun, which mixed the vaguest Cold War propaganda with the most sanitized version of the MTV style and helped to redefine patriotism as a swagger-y performance of action hero coolness.

Top Gun‘s influence is basically everywhere — actual American presidents have taken PR cues from it — and you can maybe watch Starship Troopers as a kind of far-future direct sequel, all the tough young lovely soldiers fighting unknowable antagonists. The enemy MIGs in Top Gun are precisely as nefarious and vague as the bugs in Starship Troopers, and both pairs of uniformed good guys receive their missions like dutiful, unquestioning gamers anxious for the next level to begin. We’re done with the Top Gun program and now we have to fly here to shoot these guys in black helmets? Got it, cue the music. An insect race from across the galaxy with no apparent spacefaring ability fired a meteor through a wormhole at Buenos Aires? Sure thing, boss, that sounds plausible. We’ll nuke first and ask questions later!

Weirdly, though, nothing in the Starship Troopers coed shower scene is half as sexy as the volleyball scene from Top Gun. It’s kind of cute, actually? All these badass co-worker people bantering about 10-year plans, sans clothes, like they’re citizens of a commune that only accepts Highly Effective People? (The badass space soldiers of Aliens were casually coed too, but didn’t seem to have career ambitions.) That wasn’t the intention, maybe. In that same great Empire interview, Verhoeven said that the weird nonchalance of the scene was part of the subtext.

“The idea I wanted to express was that these so-called advanced people are without libido,” he said. “Here they are talking about war and their careers and not looking at each other at all! It is sublimated because they are fascists.”

Maybe? Verhoeven bangs the drum a lot for his films’ deeper themes, maybe recognizing (like Hitchcock in his later years) that there’s a young generation hoping to enrich the culture of their youth with the philosophies they learned about in college. And stamping “Fascism” across Starship Troopers genuinely enriches the film’s later parts, when the triumphalist military tries to stage a battle like the kind of heavily mediated aesthetic “event” that could make Brian Williams lick his lips while Baudrillard does whatever the French do instead of crying. The film will end with the great big battle still ongoing, like a distant Middle East conflict or whatever they’re fighting about in the new Star Wars trilogy. “THEY’LL KEEP FIGHTING, AND THEY’LL WIN!” is the final onscreen promise of the movie — a tease for a sequel, or a hint that all franchises depend on a state of neverending battle, on a world where all that matters is that there is a new enemy to fight.

But so weirdly, the coed shower scene is the most human moment in Starship Troopers. Someone wants to go to Harvard, someone wants to make a difference in politics, somebody wants to crank out dem babies, and somebody just hates farming. Nobody seems to care about whatever the Mobile Infantry’s mission is, and maybe this suggests some deeply embedded fascism, or maybe this implies all the possibilities life can offer when there’s no world-ending nemesis to focus on.”

 

 

Do you want to know more?

 

http:// https://ew.com/movies/2017/11/07/starship-troopers-shower-scene-fascism/

 

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