So last night I re-watched two movies that I recall liking as a kid, The Last Unicorn and The Pebble and the Penguin. I have no idea why I used to like the latter movie at all. It sucks, from start to finish. It has scenes that make no sense, and not even the great voice-acting can save it, the jokes can't save it, it just fucking sucks and it's an insult to animation. Don Bluth allegedly hated it so much that he demanded to be un-credited as this crap-fest's director. Then there is The Last Unicorn. I liked it as a kid, but the last time I saw it, I was like six, so it was slightly hazy in my memory. And holy shit, what a great movie. With offerings for animated movies at the time of The Last Unicorn's release was Disney and Warner Bros stuff. Then this quirky, almost grim-dark but very well-animated and seriously evocative work comes to the scene. Even the conclusion is bittersweet and kind of dark. It's just all-around good. Focus: Upon a second viewing, what movie or TV show has utterly fallen flat for you personally? Why? Alt-Focus: A series or show that kept its luster, or somehow even got better with time.
Basically any Adam Sandler movie, particularly Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. 14 year old me thought they were hilarious, 28 year old me cringes whenever I try to watch them. A lot of people who grew up in the 90s still rave about them, but theyre just not that great. His more serious roles are okay, but nothing noteworthy.
Alt-Focus: My friends and I were obsessed with the movie Office Space in high school and probably watched it 15 times over the course of a few years. I watched it again last Christmas for the first time in eight or so years with my old high school friends, and it held up magnificently. I don't know what it is about that movie, but damn near every line in it amuses me. After not seeing it for so long though, it is really strange watching it now and being the same age as the characters. I was so used to them being a decade older than me, but I guess I caught up.
Dukes of Hazard reruns are on now and then. This show was my first obsession, I NEVER missed an episode, even when their faggy cousins took over for that one atrocious season but Jesus Breakdancing CHRIST that show is geared for a Down Syndrome-level audience. I mean, it's one of the dumbest shows ever made. But hilarious. No town has ever had more conveniently-placed mounds of hard-packed construction dirt.
The Power Rangers movies DO NOT hold up at all. When I was a kid, I could watch them over and over again. Now, I see how bad he writing was and how tacky and fake the stunts are. You can literally see the harnesses the acts use to do acrobatics. On the other hand, "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" still holds up for me. That is a quality movie for all ages.
Focus:Last Action Hero: A movie I remember thinking, I get what they were going for, and I can dig it, when I watched it when I was younger. Everything was a meta meta meta joke. I thought it was just another poorly timed release that was sunk by critics because it didn't live up to the dollar amount expectations at the box office(like Waterworld). Wrong. I rewatched it the other night, and while it does maybe a handful of things right, totally sucks over all. Mostly because the content was ultimately written for children and teenagers there really isn't a real adult edge to any of the parody or slapstick the movie uses to try and lampoon action movies. You kind of wish they just went with an R rating and went more blue. Alt Focus: Galaxy Quest: How a parody movie should be done. It too was edited down for a pg 13 rating but still retains adult humor masked by cleaver writing and great acting. I love how the aliens humanoid form and demeanor is kind of a disguised retard, with the tard haircuts and childlike thought process. Sam Rockwell and Tony Shalhoub both steal every scene they are in.
Alt-Focus: The Simpsons. If you tuned in for that recent FXX marathon, then you watched a good number of episodes last seen when you were a child or teen. So did I, and holy shit were they funnier than I remembered. I can't speak to anything recent, haven't watched the show in years, but those early seasons were fucking BRILLIANT from a grown-up perspective. Did you ever wonder why your parents seemed to laugh harder than you?
Season 3-10 is the best satire TV has ever offered. My daughter now loves it, but strictly as a cartoon perspective, the other day the John Waters episode was on and she had no clue why I was cracking up so much. HOT THTUFF COMIN' THROUGH!!!
The Last Unicorn is amazing. Fun Facts: Christopher Lee also does King Haggard's voice in the German version, and yes, that is actually Jeff Bridges and Mia Farrow singing. Also, America does the soundtrack. I loved the shit out of Land Before Time as a kid. I rewatched it my 2nd year of University, and it was just awful. I wanted to cut out that little fucker Petrie's tongue with a rusty bread knife.
I thought Tron was amazing back in the day. Tron is an utterly nauseating-looking shitfest that makes no sense with the cast laughably wearing Cooper hockey equipment in photo-negative light. Suuuuuucks and ditto for the dumbass sequel.
I re-watched another old movie, Forrest Gump. Maybe it's because I hate Jenny, but that movie doesn't hold up. Also, and I'm sure others have pointed this out, "Momma always said life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get." I just go, "You know exactly what you are going to get, you are going to die. That's it." Also, every box of chocolates I've ever bought had a map that describes the chocolates. And if you take a nip of a chocolate, and you don't like it, you put it the fuck back and leave it for someone else.
I tried to watch the Robin Williams Popeye movie with the kids on Netflix. I remembered it vaguely from when I was a kid, and they loved Jumanji. About an hour in, I looked over at my kids and said, "Wow, this is pretty awful." My ten year old said, "It's not awful, it's painfully terrible." And there you have it.
The box of chocolate line got out of hand but that movie is a classic and I don't give a shit about all the haters problems with it winning best picture. It holds up and then some, you really can't ever go wrong with feel good nostalgia movies and this one is the king of them all. A fucking retard over comes his disabilities and finds love all while weaving through the major events of 3 boomer dominated decades, set to the best of the best oldies station. As far as executing a decent/cool concept this one knocked it out of the park.
If we're going to say "fuck haters" then you agree Waterworld was good when it came out, and it's still good now because it relied on amazing real sets, painstaking invention and first-rate stunts. I just watched it and it's still a very fun movie, didn't at all deserve the comparisons to Ishtar and Heaven's Gate that critics constantly joked about.
Look, I hate a character in it, and I hate the conceit of the key movie line. No one is arguing it isn't a fucking hallmark of American cinema, but it was based on a book, couldn't fully admit the main character was a retard (unlike a latter film about a Southern US retard, Slingblade.) and yet, I still like the movie. It's just bitter in parts.
That is a movie that I am always amazed anybody thought was good. But, interestingly, overseas it made a freaking killing.
I thoroughly enjoyed Forrest Gump, but I agree on Jenny. I know I'm supposed to feel sympathetic towards her because her dad was a psycho and blah blah blah. Watching her drift from one self destructive tendency to the next wasn't compelling. I also didn't care for how she was tied into that running motif. At the end, there's supposed to be that touching moment where Forrest finds out he has a son, but the first thought in my head was that she's been raising his kid for 5 years and was too much of an emotionally destroyed cunt to tell him. So he missed out on everything in the beginning of his life. And it seemed more like she was just finally dumping him on Forrest because she was about to die rather than her finally coming to terms with her miserable existence. I know what the point of the movie was, but I couldn't help looking at it that way. In other news, I have no soul. Focus: The Thin Red Line. I know this is a classic to a lot of people, but on additional viewings I just don't care for it. Watching guy after guy die in agony while x soldier fantasizes about his wife gets tiresome and drags for a long time in the first half of the movie. Then, I realized that these guys acted nothing like soldiers, and instead acted like an artist's rendition of soldiers. Everyone throughout the film is constantly philosophical and seems to never think, or talk about much of anything other than the war. "From where does this evil come? From what root does it grow?" Wow, that's so deep. Piss off and give me Apocalypse Now.