Weekend discussion: Goodbad movies · 11:31pm Sep 9th, 2016
It's Friday afternoon, we're going to hit the weekend lull soon, and Bad Horse is out of town, so for a few blissful days I don't have to pretend to be literary. 
So let's get some idle chatter started! This one's inspired by an offhand comment over in ScarletWeather's blog:
What's the most embarrassing movie on your all-time favorites list, and why is it actually good?
I'll kick us off with an old, now-neglected 1985 cult classic: Ladyhawke, which scores a whopping 65% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is, according to its critics, a ploddingly paced, dated film with a dull and silly plot -- which is true, but in the same way that Star Wars is about an incestuous hick farmer working out his daddy issues. You can look at it that way, but you'll miss the entire point.
Let's start with the premise. In medieval Europe, there's this Catholic bishop running around turning his enemies into werewolves, which could only be more metal if they added Jack Black and some dragons. I mean, seriously, this movie does not go halfsies on the metal. The lead character is Rutger Hauer, riding around on the Fourth Horse of the Apocalypse, looking like he's preparing to bite the head off of a raptor at tonight's concert:
This is the good guy.
Did I mention that the hawk he's holding is his girlfriend? Because she is. The bishop flipped his shit when he heard that his crush Isabeau was in love with his guard captain Navarre, so he made a pact with the devil and leveled a curse which makes Navarre turn into a wolf at night and makes Isabeau turn into a hawk during the day. They manage to flee the bishop, but they can't meaningfully interact when one of the two is a mindless animal, so they try to keep their love alive on tiny stolen moments at sunrise and sunset. Is this a silly plot? Maybe, objectively speaking, but sweet stars is it rich with the tragedy of doomed romance.
And for a love story in which the two lovers can't actually have any meaningful interactions, goddamn but does this deliver. This borrows several pages (I now know, but didn't when I fell in love with it) from Japanese filmmaking, with lengthy shots that convey emotion through visuals. It's fond of visual scenery sweeps to convey the desolation and isolation of the world around the lovers, and so much of the relationship is encapsulated in long, tight shots of the protagonists' faces, telling its core story with silence and body language. In that way, I think Ladyhawke was ahead of its time -- American audiences of the 1980s weren't ready for films that emulated the Eastern classics, but a generation that has grown up with anime should be more willing to appreciate it on its own terms.
("But Bax," you cry, "what about The Magnificent Seven, the Western remake of Seven Samurai which was released in 1960 and is one of the most critically acclaimed movies ever?" It was a box office flop when it came out, and whiffed at the Academy Awards; all of its praise has been retroactive. And it also had the benefit of starring a huge bunch of actors who would go on to become megastars, which gave people more of a reason to re-evaluate it later on.)
And then there's the soundtrack. The soundtrack. Um. The soundtrack is ... well.
So we have here this super-metal story about demonic magic and animal transformations, with a high fantasy aesthetic and major Eastern/anime cinematic influences. And as the title card rolls and the movie starts, this is what we hear:
Fast-forward to 1:00 for the full effect.
Look, I love this movie, but I think it's fair to describe the soundtrack as "1980s prog-rock in a can". (And, indeed, it was produced by Alan Parsons of the Alan Parsons Project.) When the music director of Kung Fury was trying to figure out how to turn the 1980s up to 11 for that film, this is what he dropped acid and lay down to soak in.
But, gods help me, I like it. Ladyhawke's Wikipedia article says that the director was listening to prog-rock while scouting for locations, and became unable to separate his visual ideas from the music, and I'll buy that because somehow or another the music wormed itself into my brain and the same thing happened to me. I can't imagine Ladyhawke with a real soundtrack. It would be like taking the Yes out of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. [1]
And then there are the parts of this movie which everyone agrees are good -- and even if you disagree with me on all of the above, here's something worth the price of admission. The third protagonist of the movie is a young Matthew Broderick, playing a pickpocket who Navarre press-gangs into breaking into the bishop's fortress, and he freaking steals the show. He's basically the movie's Jar Jar Binks except that he's actually cool, peppering the movie with snarky wisecracks that leaven the grim desperation of the core plot, and his dialogue is one quotable gem after another. Picture transplanting Ferris Bueller (yes, he's that Matthew Broderick) into a fantasy movie, making him actually useful, and giving him a character arc to go along with his snappy lines. How do you fit wisecracking comedy into your metal-anime-prog-rock fantasy? I don't know, but it's beautiful.
In sum, this is a movie that absolutely should not work. It's this bizarre melange of genres, influences and tones. And yet everything pulls together, and I enjoy the experience every time I rewatch it.
What's your own guilty movie pleasure? Let's kick it off in comments.
--
[1] In hindsight, I probably could have condensed this post down into "Ladyhawke is the American JoJo," and been equally accurate and insightful. On the other hand, Ladyhawke's plot doesn't even register on the JoJo plot insanity scale. [2]
[2] Seriously, click that link.
> inb4 Equestria Girls
As soon as I saw 'Ladyhawke' I leapt down to the comment box to say that I LOVE 'Ladyhawke'. And then I jumped back up to read your thoughts on it. And then I jumped back down to hit 'post comment'.
And I guess, if I chose a movie off the top of my head, I'd go with Clue, also from 1985. That's a definite cult classic right there. It's often panned but I love it.
Well now that you've come clean, I'll admit it.
I also liked watching LadyHawke. Mostly because of that gloriously unfitting but somehow perfect music.
I've technically already taken my turn but my most embarrassing movies are an aggregate combination of You've Got Mail and French Kiss, romantic comedies that feature an initially antagonistic set-up between the two destined soulmates that pans out into a wonderful relationship. The hilarious thing is it's not even remotely projection. I just have this itch that can only be scratched by snappy dialogue and banter between not-yet-couples. I still love that one scene in You've Got Mail where Tom Hanks begins waxing poetic about the all-encompassing nature of The Godfather.
If we want to talk about really embarrassing things I like, I'll need a long and awkward set-up so I can explain why I was deeply invested in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha for like three straight shows until Vivid happened and argh.
Dude, I fuckin' love LadyHawke. :D I can't remember when I found it initially, but I eventually got myself a DVD copy.
Guilty pleasure would imply I care what the critics say. I generally don’t, to such an extent that I have no idea what sort of ratings the movies in my collection have.
But since you started with Ladyhawke, I can raise you a Krull. ;)
I thought LadyHawke was just okay
And if we're going for worst favorite movies... well, the most embarrassing entry in my DVD collection is undoubtedly Hercules in New York. If the name doesn't ring a bell, it's Arnold Schwarzenegger's first movie--back then, he was just some Austrian body builder trying to learn English (fun fact: he learned his lines for the movie phonetically, and his accent was so incomprehensible that the studio ended up just dubbing over him. The DVD has both the dub and his original delivery; original is obviously the way to go), and he was in fact credited as "Arnold Strong" because they thought Americans might react better to that.
The movie is bad in every possible way. "Mount Olympus" is clearly someone's NYC garden, with traffic clearly audible in the background; the musical score is some guy on a bouzouki playing the same damn dance tune ad nausium; this was an actual scene in the actual movie (please, take three and a half minutes to enjoy that if you haven't seen it before, as you haven't really lived until you've seen Conan taking kidney punches from a fursuitter); and I am really just scratching the surface here. It's also a movie I've probably watched twenty times or more, of my own volition. It is a strangely captivating film, with a clumsy, oafish charm to it.
Note that I didn't say it's a good film, though. This is a guilty pleasure we're talking about, after all!
Unfortunately it seems even some of my more trashy favorites (The Lost Boys, the Clue Movie) are well regarded on Rotten Tomatoes. I remember liking Waterworld, which seems pretty universally panned, but I barely remember it other than the action was pretty fun.
So I guess I'll go with something that is well regarded, but that most people haven't seen or wouldn't think of as a great movie.
Gojira
That's right. The OG. The Original Godzilla. 1956 baby, Japanese version or bust.
I loved Godzilla movies as a kid. Even the cheesy 70s Godzilla movies, and the dull as fuck American one. My poor family was subjected to many rewatchings of my tapes of Godzilla vs Monster Zero and Terror of Mechagodzilla. As I matured so did my taste in kaiju films, moving on to the darker Godzilla films of the eighties and nineties when I became a teenager (although the Gamera films of that era were better, of all things). It wasn't until I was a young adult though that I finally got to see Gojira, the film that started it all.
My entire exposure to the big G up until that point had been his later franchise, which were all basically melodramatic pulp adventures of varying quality. Cool monsters go to cool places and do cool things. The best you can hope for is a little menace and edge as opposed to the camp of early sequels.
Gojira is nothing like that at all.
There's a slow burn, and a mystery to it all. A mounting sense of dread as something begins moving through the sea around Japan, and when the monster finally makes it's appearance, it's nothing like any of the later films. In those films, Godzilla is a monster, and he may blow up a tank or a skyscraper here or there, usually on his way to fight a scarier (or nicer) monster.
In Gojira he's a walking avatar of death and human destruction. You watch as Godzilla methodically makes his way across Tokyo, destroying everything in his path. Moreover though you see the human perspective and the human horror of the event. People scream and flee, people wail in helplessness as the buildings fall down around them. In other movies godzilla may destroy a tank with his fire breath. Here you get a front row seat as a group of people have the skin and muscle flash fried from their bones as they flee screaming from the monster. In other movies we get the Emmerichian perspective of a disaster; something big and grand, to excite and maybe inspire a hint of fear. Here we get it shoved in out faces the simple fact that if a giant monster were to destroy a city, people would die. Thousands of people would die, alone, screaming in mad fear for mercy and god and nothing else that could hear them as the roof caved in and the fire burned.
It's a nightmare inducing sequence.
Godzilla was always meant to be a metaphor for the horror and destruction that nuclear weapons unleashed upon the world, and never was that more clear than at his first and easily best outing. Films like Pacific Rim may have recaptured the charm and fun of Godzilla's later movies, but nothing has yet to beat the original for sheer emotion and meaning.
So yeah, give it a watch sometime.
(Just make sure to watch the Japanese original. The American version is awful.)
Iron Monkey.
It's a 1990s martial arts film, and it starts out with cool tongue-in-cheekish action and acting hammier than pork itself and then it gets going and the fight scenes... just...
... there aren't words. It's amazing. Just go here and skip to about 01:13:30 (final fight, so spoilery if you want to watch the whole thing), and watch two minutes. Just two minutes, that's all I ask.
Ah, a topic I can wax rhapsodic on for quite a while...
Six String Samurai - Buddy Holly must journey through the desert and defeat the incarnation of death if he is to make it to Lost Vegas and get the crown of the deceased King Elvis. Little bit samurai movie, little bit post-apocalypse, fantastic soundtrack, all good. And there was a fimfic crossover with it, but alas the author never got beyond the first chapter. Which is a shame, as it was off to a really good start.
Miami Connection - A movie that would feel at home in either Equestria Girls Verse or Pony Verse. It starts off with ninjas killing drug dealers and then goes to the main characters, in their band, singing about friendship and making dreams come true. There's more musical numbers interspersed between the killings and friendship talk.
Orgazmo - Trey Parker and Matt Stone make fun of both religion and porn. Easily one of the best intro songs of all time, likable characters, memorable set pieces. Watch this and it's very easy to see where a lot of the tone of Book of Mormon came from.
Really anything those two have done - BASEketball, Cannibal :the Musical, and of course Team America
The Hebrew Hammer - a Jewsploitation movie. Exactly what it sounds like.
Bubba Ho-Tep - Bruce Campbell makes a good Elvis, and Ozzy Davis is a great JFK. This is a movie that explores what it means to get old, to stand up for yourself again, and to kick soul-sucking mummy ass! Long awaited north American blu-ray coming in Nov. Directed by the guy behind Phantasm and also an excellent soundtrack from the same guy who did Six String.
John Dies at the End - Loser stoners John and Dave get involved in Lovecraftian end-of-the-world levels of shit. They deal with it because they have to, not because they're at all qualified to. Paul Giamatti is fantastic in his role. Also from the director of Phantasm. Given my bibliography here on Fimfiction, how could this not be here? BTW, go read Bon Bon Dies at the End if you haven't.
Killer Condom - a well hung gay detective in NY must investigate the rash of castrations targeting the gay community. Set in NY, shot in NY, all dialogue and the main actor is German (playing an Italian). It's from TROMA, so you know it's quality.
Crank - I love me some Jason Statham, and this is him and at his balls-out (through really that's the sequel) craziest. Great action, preposterous story, much ass-kicking by his baldness. If you liked Crank, check out...
Hardcore Henry - because it's almost certain you never did. I was one of the few who saw this in theaters. It's more like watching a video game than a movie. You have cut scenes, training sequences, stealth sequences, mob-defense sequences, all of that. The action is over the top and then some. Worth seeing for Sharlto Copley as the many faces of Jimmy, he is hilarious.
I could certainly go on, but I think I can call it here and go get dinner.
4201679
Freaking John Dies at the End movie was fucking fantastic. I'm just sad they fused the two stories together and we didn't get to see Shitload in action.
4201663
Hahah... Waterworld. I remember that one.
I actually liked that one as well.
~Skeeter The Lurker
4201708
You like everything Skeeter.
It hardly counts
4201663
Ooo! And Godzilla! Though, I'm a fan of the 1998 version, the one with Matthew Broderick.
I honestly couldn't tell you why, either.
~Skeeter The Lurker
4201711
I wouldn't say I like everything, but rather my tolerance is high.
A byproduct of 10 years in retail, I guess. Hey, how about that? It's good for something!
~Skeeter The Lurker
4201719
You just confessed to liking the 1998 Amerizilla movie.
That's a pretty fucking high "tolerance."
...Although your taste in avatars does redeem you. Somewhat.
(Also, dark secret, but I loved that movie as a kid god forgive me)
4201735
True enough. I fully admit that it wasn't good.
But for some reason, there was just something about it that I like. Don't ask me what, I couldn't tell ya.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Did they get the soundtrack confused with Lazerhawk?
This sounds like a movie I absolutely must watch. Also, I guess this means that I really do have to watch JoJo now? The meme got me into Yes, so I figure this is just going the rest of the way.
As far as guilty-pleasure movies go, the closest I can come is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which I wouldn't even really call a guilty pleasure because it's just an awesome movie all around. I'm too young and inexperienced to have seen many truly fantastically terrible movies.
4201559 Well duh Rainbow Rocks of course
Let me tell you about
The Lawnmower Man.
that is all I can tell you.
Oh man, Ladyhawke. I haven't seen that in an age. Great film.
Johnny Mnemonic is terrible in every way, but it has a ranting Keanu Reeves and a psycho-religious Dolph Lundgren, so what's not to like?
The original American Ninja. It's just pure, concentrated 1980s ninja-craze terribleness. I'm extremely susceptible to 1980s ninja-craze terribleness.
The 1986 'classic' The Wraith gets bonus points for originality, starring a ghost and his ghost car that he uses to mutually explode other, evil peoples' cars, which then reforms and drives off.
Oh, laws, The Brave Little Toaster.
Okay, you sit through the shaky animated beginning with a bunch of happy talking appliances VA'd competently but unremarkably by a few Saturday Night Live expats and the guy who voiced Tony the Tiger, and you endure a uncomfortable Little Richard montage. At this point you think, meh, this is pretty standard oatmeal kiddie fodder, and the biggest question you have is why the people putting the cabin up for sale put the "For Sale" sign up backwards so it could be read from in the house. Then the air conditioner self-destructs after an existential crisis, and you're like, holy shit, that guy just died.
Then the Van Dyke Parks soundtrack kicks in, and you think, eh, okay, it's still a little weird and corny, but there's something going on here; somehow a bunch of appliances searching for their previous owner starts becoming Man's search for the Divine, with all the pathetic shortcomings and failures of perception that quest always entails.
Then there is a terrifying psychedelic clown-related dream sequence and immediately thereafter the lamp recharges the car battery in a way that, I will have to somewhat shamefully admit, literally brings tears to my eyes when I watch it, and suddenly it's like WHAT THE FSCK EVEN IS THIS MOVIE, which is a feeling that lasts all the way through the climax where an endless stream of cars are fed into the annihilation of the auto crusher all the while trying to determine if they've lived worthwhile lives, receiving no answer or redemption for their search, merely the silence of death. This movie messes with my head something fierce, and not just because I can't figure out how the appliances are converting DC power into AC without adapters.
I'm going to have to say Circle of Iron. It's an early 80's Zen martial arts movie with David Carradine, Christopher Lee, Roddy McDowall, Eli Wallach, Jeff Cooper, and my whip sensei, Tony De Longis.
It is absolutely ludicrous, and has a traditional drinking game that will have you unconscious halfway through if you're drinking anything but watered-down American beer: Drink every time the big dumb blond guy (Cooper) asks a stupid question.
Example:
Blond Guy: "Why are we running?" (They are being chased by armed horsemen.)
Carradine: "Because it is very difficult to kill a horse with a flute."
It's a weird mixture of Zen philosophy and 80's chop-saki, and I find it utterly adorable.
Also came here to say that I love Ladyhawke! My gods, I'd forgotten *just* how sublimely ridiculous the music is. Wasn't this part of our post-BronyCon conversation?
But hearing it now for the first time in a few years--yeah, I like it too. It kind of sounds like Alan Parsons covering the airship music from some Final Fantasy game. Suddenly it occurs to me that if someone were to re-score Ladyhawke, I would want it to be Hansi Kürsch with Blind Guardian. It would be metal as hell, but if they didn't keep that 80s prog-rock feel it would be missing something.
I still need to see Kung Fury. And Ladyhawke. Again.
Anyway, your review is spot-on. I've always genuinely adored this movie for all the reasons you listed. And the climactic fight scene, which... well, I'd better stop there. :)
May I present for your consideration: Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King! (2004)
At least, that's the title on my DVD. Elsewhere it's been called "The Sword of Xanten," "The Curse of the Ring," and, originally, "Die Nibelung." I saw it first on the SciFi channel. It's a pretty decent, nice-looking and entertaining retelling of the Nibelungenlied. Admittedly it's been years since I've seen it and I don't remember which bits of the myth they fiddled with, but it stands on its own right as a better-than-average TV fantasy film. One liberty they've taken is to make the Brunhilde character "Queen of Iceland," but she's a badass pagan warrior queen and I will take it.
I feel the need to watch it again before I try to describe it any further. Epic fantasy metal movie weekend, away!
I almost want to go watch Ladyhawke specifically for Alan Parsons involvement. I have a number of Alan Parsons Project albums. Of course, I loved Harold and Maude with Cat Stevens sound track, but we're supposed to be talking about bad movies.
I'm not going to say it's a favorite, but I did actually have fun watching the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. It helps that I hadn't watched the series when I originally watched it, and enjoyed the whole concept. Of course,once I did watch the series, I preferred that.
Also, while there were things I didn't like about it, I did actually like watching the original G1 My Little Pony movie. It had some fun musical numbers, even if not always performed well, Reeka and Draggle were honestly pretty likeable villains, Lickety Split is, well, dumb as a rock, the Smooze was, well, fun enough to have the G4 version disappoint me, and and it had a couple out of context moments that were, well, interesting...
[youtube=RUKJh77bCrI]
--arcum42
4201982
Oh gods, if you haven't seen Kung Fury you need to set aside 45 minutes like right now. It's free on Youtube and it will not waste a single moment of your viewing time. It is every insane trope of every cheesy action film of the 1980s compressed into half an hour of sheer shameless over-the-topness, and every time you think it's done it just keeps one-upping itself again. I mean seriously, it pits a lone rebellious cop against time-travelling martial arts master Adolf Hitler (he's the "Kung Fuhrer"), and that's the low end of the Rule of Cool scale.
If you have already seen it (or if you come back here after watching), here's a chaser, complete with David Hasselhoff:
SPOILER ALERT: The music video's visuals completely spoil about 3/4 of the movie. If you're just trying to get a sense of how over-the-top the film itself is, then once the first verse starts, launch another tab in front of this so you're just hearing the music.
4201938 Ladyhawke, I loved that one, and watched it as a kid. The toaster was an amazing work of song, idea, and dark nightmare fuel. It was glorious!
There's also, Rock and Rule. Seriously, Rock and Rule is a musical animated feature. It's got music by Cheap Trick, Chris Stein and Debbie Harry of the pop group Blondie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, and Earth, Wind & Fire. All of these folks, the main villain is. The villain is modelled after mick jagger.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086203/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm for a list of all the folks they nabbed. It's yes, post apoc adult. But something of a cult kind of thing that outside a few places, no one seems to have heard of. It's really out there in a way, like F.A.K.K. Out there. But enjoyable if you don't form preconceptions, given its age.
There's also that one gorbash dragon movie, flight of dragons, thats a fun animated guilty pleasure too. Based off the book very loosely, its unique, putting it simply.
This should surprise approximately no one.
Slow-burn, high-concept horror films aren't for everyone, and this pet project is far from Carpenter's best work. Still, its originality and imaginative shock scenes make it one of the better "bad" films out there--for fans of the genre, at least. I admit more than a little inspiration for my story The Visiting Hour came from this film.
Hm. I have to admit loving The Wizard of Oz probably a little more than a Kansas boy should. It played on TV every single year for about three decades, and I actually live in the town with the Wizard of Oz museum (which, to my shame, I've only been to once. It was awesome, though.)
For the best serious movie, you have to go all the way back to Big Jake with John Wayne, the original Big Damn Hero.
4201945 Ha! I'm so glad you mentioned Circle of Iron, and that I decided not to so I didn't inadvertently cross posts with you. Wild movie, especially the Eli Wallach cameo.
Dear sweet Luna I love Ladyhawke
I've seen so many movies ( somewhere over 1k at this point) I dont know.
Though Ladyhawke brought to mind one that I love but gets almost none in return. Willow.
4201938
You forgot the part where the repairman butchers a living character in front of the protagonists. That movie messed me up as a kid.
4201559
Having seen the first three, I'm hoping they've simply got a Star Trekian movie curse going on… or Rainbow Rocks was a happy accident.
Other than that, this is a toughy. My thoughts on movies slowly evolve over time.
- Wicker Man ranks as one of the worst movies I've sat through… but I do think one of the twists was so backhanded, so swift… it was probably an amateur directing move, but the first (and only) time I can't deny thinking it beautiful. Was it worth the price of admission? Eh, probably not.
- The Village I do think is worth that price. For all the movie's failings, I still love it.
4202097 I have seen Rock and Rule! And its rocktastic. Have you seen Fire and Ice?
4201938 I loved that movie when I was younger. I may have to rewatch that with the kids soon.
4201902 That was a fantastic movie.
4201679 Hardcore Henry was pretty good. Jimmy stole the show though, but thats what makes it worth watching.
4201644 Another fantastic fantasy movie worth watching! I liked it so much I actually own it on dvd.
4201569 Clue is awesome! I love Tim Curry. Cant forget Legend! He was great as Darkness.
4201663 I've seen Gojira. I've seen way to many if the films that followed it too.
4202247 I havent, but have seen wizards.
4202276 Wizards was a great one. Check out FIre and Ice it's not to bad.
I'll add two more obscure movies.
One is Starchaser: The Legend of Orin.
And the other is Gandahar. This is one im really curious if anyone has seen. I dont think I have ever met someone who has seen this. And its something that should be seen.
4202328 I used to work as a custodian of a local video store that wasnt a chain. So we got to see all sorts of stuff with the evening shift.
SPEED RACER (2008) (39% on rottentomatoes)
it's got everything one needs to dismiss it without even watching it.... it's an American movie adaptation of an anime, it's of a 50s anime that's infamous for its ridiculous voice acting, it's 90% CGI, it's a family-friendly action movie, it's by the Wachowskis...
yet it's my favorite movie of all time. and it's weird how many people I meet who feel the same way. we don't sorta-like it, we don't ironically-like it, we really do love it.
I could praise the storytelling and editing, but instead I'll just talk about the most obvious feature that everyone notices: the visuals! yep, there's so much CGI that you can't be sure if anything on screen isn't artificial besides the humans (and monkey). all the environments and objects look just a little bit too colorful and shiny to be convincing. there's excessive bullet-time and other gimmicks that were already cliche a decade before. and because it's about racing, all of this is going to move way too fast. headache-inducing eye-candy that's more like watching a videogame than a movie. . . ?
it offended my senses at first, but I think I was rather slow to catch on. about halfway through the movie, I realized I was watching it wrong. this movie is trying to be a cartoon. from then on, I thought it was beautiful.
this isn't the widespread tradition established by Jurassic Park, where computer images are meant to make imagination seamlessly blend with reality. Speed Racer wants to exaggerate its world, to the point where it's just a little bit more perfect than reality. everything's supposed to be too bright, excessively colorful, and weirdly shaped. the race tracks resemble wacky pinball machines, and the city architecture looks like it came out of The Jetsons. it's a silly story about a racecar driver, so why not have fun with special effects instead of being deadly serious?
yet it's not meant as a parody, like Kung Fury, nor emulating a specific style, like Sin City. it just plays it straight for the most part, which is probably what confused all the critics. they couldn't find the "joke" so they assumed it was failing at being realistic.
at many times it goes full-blown psychedelic with visual effects, leaving reality behind. there's a martial arts fistfight scene that's done mostly in the style of 1960s Batman: POW, BIFF, WHAM. cars crashing in the desert become oversized trails of dust clouds. Six year old Speed daydreams in school, driving his racecar drawn in crayon-lines. the whole movie opens with a few seconds of bright kaleidoscope effects, as if clueing you in as to what you're about to see. put yourself in the right mindset, and it becomes intoxicating.
I think the story's genuinely fun and charming too, and the editing style is interesting and unique. but we all know it's the graphics that scared everyone away.
this aint no Michael Bay. the Wachowskis were showing a new path that big-budget special effect movies could go in. and the world didn't notice it..... yet.
4202342
Oh man Gandahar had GLORIOUS animation. I believe the version I saw was the American dub rewritten by Isaac Asimov called "Light Years". I'm not sure how much of the story is the same, but the animation was intact.
If you enjoy those, you need to look for "Fantastic Planet". In my opinion it's one of the best animated films ever made.
4202056 Dagnabbit, I should've gone to bed instead of watching this.
...I regret nothing!
4202397 Light Years! I believe thats the version I saw/have somewhere. And yes the animation is gorgeous, and the story is meta trippy. I've seen Fantastic Planet pop-up as a recommendation a couple times on IMDB, ima go and stick it on my watch later list.
4202056 I just finished watching "Kung Fury". It's one of the best over the top love letters to the eighties ever! There wasnt just movie references, whole fight scene looked like an homage to arcade video games. What really got me was everything they used I have seen done. In film, tv and games from the eighties. It was so goddamn glorious. Even the vhs tape recording having bad spots, to the period computers and the text on the screens. That attention to detail was just amazing.
4202173
Oh yes, this and In the Mouth of Madness are both excellent and oft-buried flicks.
Now, then, for me, let's see:
Animated :
The Last Unicorn - The best of the 1980s melancholy wave of filmmaking for kids, I think; a world that is dreary and fading, where magic is real but everything is...less. It is as if Equestria knew alicorns once existed, could see the remnants of the princesses, but they were lost to them. The music in this is haunting and amazing, it has a surprisingly strong cast including Jeff Bridges, Christopher Lee, and Mia Farrow, and just...yea. It's great. Also one that I imagine isn't really a guilty pleasure so much as just a pleasure around here, but still.
Now, for a proper guilty one:
Transformers - Not the Bayformers one, but the original 1986 movie. Bayformers (The first, at least) is a fun popcorn movie that makes me laugh, but the 1986 animated? So much of it is just pure awesome. I bought it as a present to myself on my 10th birthday and I still love it over 20 years later. Stan Bush's music from this I still listen to for working out to jazz me up. The animation is gorgeous, it is Orson Welles's last role of his life, and it is pure octane awesome.
The Neverending Story - Live action but I still slot it in the 1980s category of kids flicks. Like The Last Unicorn, it's definitely melancholy and bleak through a lot of it - but I really, really am drawn to that. The story is powerful, there's so much cool, unique creature design, and it's just a great movie from the 1980s. RIP Artax though
To avoid going on and on about favorite 80s flicks - I don't know what it was, exactly. I think there was a post-Vietnam bleakness gripping America, but whatever the cause there are tons of films from that decade (Flight of Dragons, Secret of NIMH, Willow, Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, to name a few more) that have this bleakness in them that just...draws me in. I wish there were still flicks like that being made, but I'm not really finding any new ones in that category.
A bunch of 70s - 90s anime also captures this as well which makes sense when you consider Japan has always had a kind of soul-searching going on post-WW2; notice how the 2000s are where a lot of it fades away because the kids of the kids of WW2 are coming into their own and the national shock is faded into the past. But like, Miyazaki's work - yea. It has that bleakness too.
Now, for my ultra-favorite-totally not guilty pleasure and think its super underrated:
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - This is the best video game movie ever made, despite the source material being a Canadian Manga. You watch Scott Pilgrim and it is a video game come to life in the best way. Michael Cera makes the perfect 20-something falling between the cracks in life whose life goes completely radically weird in an awesome way. It's cinematically beautiful, has a decent love story, and is just absolutely 100% fun through and through. I could watch this on repeat for a long while before I'd get bored.
Jeez I want to go on and on but yea, gonna take a break and come back later.
I never was much of a movie person. My guilty pleasures tend to be more in games.
4201860 have you read the original Scott Pilgrim comic book series?
I haven't watched Jojo's bizarre adventures, but Yes is an amazing band.
4202233
didn't forget
can never forget
I Know How Many Runs you Scored Last Summer
scifinow.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/xiknowhowmanyrunsyuorgotlast.jpg.pagespeed.ic.REjnHFXEHy.jpg
It did just occur to me, going of critical reviews...
I REALLY like Treasure Planet.
It's a super abridged Treasure Island IN SPACE, but hot damn it is gorgeously animated, and the main cast are fairly loveable, largely on the strength of the VAs and the animation.
4201902
...Holy shit.
I have that on fucking Laser Disk!
~Skeeter The Lurker
4202553
I haven't. Never had access to all of them.
4201574 My mother and I have watched You've Got Mail soooooo many times.