We’re back with the fourth installment of our monthly feature The Untounchables, the FilmNerds staff’s attempt at creating a Hall of Fame for filmmakers. Each month, a panel of contributors here at Filmnerds including Ben Flanagan, Corey Craft, Graham Flanagan, Benjamin Stark, Craig Hamilton and myself, Matt Scalici, will cast our ballots for who we believe to be the greatest filmmakers to ever live. The top three vote receivers each month will be inducted into our list of Untouchables and enshrined here on this site. You can find a link below to the first three groups of directors admitted to our virtual Hall of Fame but today we present to you the winners of our fourth ballot, the next three members of The Untouchables.

First Ballot Inductees

Second Ballot Inductees

Third Ballot Inductees

 

Sidney Lumet

Sidney Lumet played a substantial role in my film education at a very young age, particularly my very early college years starting around 2003 when I read his book “Making Movies,” an essential guide for budding filmmakers or general film lovers. With that, I learned maybe more than I wanted to about the filmmaking process, but I gained enormous respect for a director that never got the credit he deserved, not that he wanted it. In the book, the technical wizard fills you in filmmaking as a mechanical process, as if telling a story was like running a business (which it is). But he also reveals candid moments on the sets of his masterworks like “Network,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “12 Angry Men,” and many of his other lesser known known titles. One that sticks out involves Lumet slapping an actress in the face to get the proper emotion that would work for the scene, a moment he said he regretted immediately even when the actress thanked him for it afterwards. Upon reading that book, I took that opportunity to explore as many of his films I could get my hands on, even buying a couple. Watching one after another, I, like everyone else, still found difficulty pinpointing Lumet’s unique visual style or technique. You might say he’s one of the greatest “invisible” auteurs ever, putting the camera precisely where it belongs to let the story and characters do the work for him. But you can’t watch “Network” or “12 Angry Men” without the sobering realization you’re seeing the work of a master director, even a master of chaos, as we see in the aforementioned titles that couldn’t work without Lumet’s steady hand. He never lost control of a set or a situation on-screen, thus, never losing our attention.

- Ben Flanagan

 

Charlie Chaplin

Before Preston Sturges, Woody Allen, and the Coen Brothers, there was Charlie Chaplin. Not only was Chaplin one of the first writer-director hyphenates, his Little Tramp character is one of our most resilient Depression era cultural icons, along with Mickey Mouse and Superman. With an unorthodox, organic directing technique and ruthless control, Chaplin cranked out dozens of comedy shorts in the early decades of the 20th century, before hitting us with an incredible melee of feature films. Check out this streak, a figurative evolutionary chart of cinema’s journey into Sound: The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), City Lights (1931), and Modern Times (1936). All are considered classics, all were box office successes, and all of them tell us something new and interesting about America, from the heartfelt perspective of a British shape shifter. Unfortunately, I’ve only seen a handful of Chaplin’s shorts and features, but his is work that is easily digestible and always an absolute wonder and delight to take in. Do yourself a favor and reacquaint yourself with the Tramp. Check out Graham Flanagan’s Great Scenes entry from The Circus here.

- Benjamin Stark

Francis Ford Coppola

For the most part, our Untouchables series has covered filmmakers who maintained pristine reputations for the majority of their careers after hitting it big but rarely in film history has a director reached such heights and fallen into such insignificance as Francis Ford Coppola. After bursting onto the scene as a respected screenwriter in the early ’70s, Coppola’s reputation instantly rocketed into the stratosphere with the 1972 release of The Godfather, a masterpiece of American filmmaking that in one fell swoop placed Coppola foremost among the new generation of filmmakers revolutionizing the industry and the art form in that decade. Two years later, he proved the exception to every rule when it came to sequels with the release of The Godfather: Part II, marking the only time in history that a Best Picture-winner was out-shone by its own sequel. In the minds of many, Apocalypse Now stands are arguably the most important film of the 1970s. Coppola’s work on those three unquestioned masterpieces places him easily in the pantheon of great American artists and while his post-1990 work made far less of an impact, Coppola’s filmography features a number of other gems ranging from the quiet intensity of The Conversation to the melodramatic emotion of The Outsiders to the delightfully offbeat comedy of Peggy Sue Got Married. And yes, no matter what they say, I’ll always stand behind The Godfather: Part III as a gut-wrenching and tragic conclusion to the story of one of the most iconic characters in film history, Michael Corleone.

- Matt Scalici

 

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

The power of the sequel was evident to the major studios in 1983, with eight (by my count) sequels finishing in the top 25 at the box office that year. All of those eight are unqualified financial successes though most of them were critical failures, so much so that some of them (like Superman III and Jaws 3-D) effectively ended their franchise’s ability to continue making successful sequels. It’s a sign that to me shows that the sequel game was still in its infancy in 1983. Sequels to great movies are almost always going to succeed financially but people are only willing to be burned once.

As sequels go, Staying Alive, which is the sequel to the iconic 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, doesn’t quite fit the mold of many of its other critically disastrous sequel brethren. For one thing, it has remarkably little to do with its predecessor. Yes, both movies heavily feature music and dance and follow the cocky, hot-headed Tony Manero (John Travolta) on his quest for stardom but aside from that, Staying Alive doesn’t really feel like it’s even attempting to recapture the things that made Saturday Night Fever such a hit with audiences and critics. While the original film attempted to capture the electric atmosphere of the disco scene, Staying Alive moves away from that world entirely and follows Tony into the world of Broadway dancing as Tony tries to breakthrough as a chorus line dancer.

Audiences in 1983 may have flocked to theaters the first few weekends but after that the film quickly fell off the map as fans of the original film, a movie that defined a subculture to the rest of the world, realized that the sequel didn’t have what they were looking for. Critics blasted the pic, with Roger Ebert calling it “a big disappointment” and commenting on how little the film cared about the characters or story and instead was intended to be little more than “a Walkman for the eyes.”

Like most bad sequels, Staying Alive was the result of nearly everyone from the first film re-assembling for the sequel – except of course for the most important person from the first production, director John Badham who had moved on to directing a slew of critically and commercially successful movies by now, including 1983 hits Blue Thunder and WarGames. Returning for Staying Alive off-screen was offbeat screenwriter Norman Wexler (click here to read his bio and understand why he might not be the guy you want to hang your hat on for emotional realism in a film) and producer Robert Stigwood. In the process of putting the project together, Stigwood supposedly saw Rocky III on a plane and had the epiphany that Sylvester Stallone, who had directed two of the most financially successful sequels of all time in the second and third Rocky films, would be a perfect choice to handle what Stigwood hoped would be a big money sequel to a critically-acclaimed and iconic ’70s film.

The choice of Stallone was the first move in what I believe was a domino effect of failure. While Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever was an uneducated, emotionally stunted young man, he was by no means an uninteresting person to listen to. His dialog is remarkably clever and interesting and it reveals a lot to us about his character. I believe in Stallone’s tinkering with the screenplay on Staying Alive, he attempted to turn Manero into a bit of a Rocky Balboa type figure, a man almost completely incapable of expressing himself and even when he does doesn’t really have much interesting to say. On top of that Stallone decided that instead of heavily featuring the Bee Gees, the group responsible for making Saturday Night Fever‘s soundtrack the best selling soundtrack album of all time (a record that still stands), he would instead feature his brother Frank Stallone who was attempting to launch his own pop/rock career. Frank’s song “Far From Over” is featured heavily in the film, including in the opening credits sequence shown below, and while it went on to earn multiple award nominations and score big on the pop charts, it’s a song done in that typically overdramatic ’80s rock style that just doesn’t have anywhere near that same evocative feeling that the Bee Gee’s monumental string of hits brought to the original film.

While Travolta has his moments, I frankly found him a lot more likable and charming in Two of a Kind, probably a result of the fact that unlike that film which paired him with Olivia Newton-John, Travolta has no chemistry with his co-stars in Staying Alive. Singer/actress Cynthia Rhodes plays good girl Jackie and while she’s likable enough, the movie gives us no real reason to root for Tony to end up with here. Meanwhile femme fatale Laura is played by British-born Finola Hughes who received a flood of criticism for her work here as a highly unlikable and bitchy dancer who for some reason continues to attract Tony despite her vicious attitude towards him.

The single-biggest issue that makes Staying Alive difficult to sit through is the interminable musical sequences, the aspect alluded to by Ebert in his “Walkman for the eyes” comment. The movie features no fewer than five (there could have been more) sequences that showcase an entire song, uninterrupted from start to finish. Most of them are built around highlighting the dancing but some, such as two different duets sung by Cynthia Rhodes and Frank Stallone, are literally just extended scenes of two people playing and singing a song on stage while Tony watches from the floor. It’s a lack of understanding about what the audience liked about Saturday Night Fever and even the visual fireworks Stallone attempts to inject, like in this remarkably absurd super slow motion dance scene, can’t keep us from nodding off and wondering when we can get back to the story.

There are a lot of film nerds out there, including quite a few who contribute to this site, who feel that there’s something inherently wrong with making sequels in the first place. I don’t always agree with that provided that you attempt to take what worked in the original film and add to it and expand on it in interesting ways. What Staying Alive does is abandon almost everything that made Saturday Night Fever great and include a few spare parts to justify calling this a sequel.

DOWNLOAD: Back to the Movies Podcast – Staying Alive (with guest Francesca Scalici)

Next Up: Clint Eastwood directs and stars in the fourth installment of the Dirty Harry series, the 1983 smash hit Sudden Impact.

 

1.) Greater Appreciation
It’s no secret that movie audiences – and therefore, movie media outlets – are bored stupid. Greater attention paid to shock projects and publicity stunts are clear indicators that movies aren’t regarded as “special” anymore. The fewer movies you watch, the greater a commodity they become in your life.

2.) Better Digestion
The more you consume, the less you process. If you pick a high-nutrient piece of entertainment carefully, you’ll get more thought, excitement, and pleasure out of it. Also, taking control of your viewing habits and properly compartmentalizing your intake re-trains your attention, allowing for a richer understanding of story.

3.) Less Noise
I’m sure there is a statistic out there somewhere that details how much television a person watches daily, or how many movies people watch weekly. Regardless of the number, imagine the amount of narrative that we ingest on a given day. Next, realize that your brain continues to process all the different parts of these narratives – combined with latent and new memories in your actual life – as you sleep. We’re a society of noise and distraction, and we’ve yet to find out how that relates to stress, sleep, and stability. Having fewer narratives to process again translates to richer experiences, deeper dreaming, and greater focus.

4.) A Return to Awe
We often complain that movies no longer feel mysterious, the way they did when we were children. It’s easy to blame that on studios’ over-reliance on CGI, but how much of that is because we’ve allowed movies to be so accessible and disposable? If you knew Super 8 was the only movie you got to see this summer, how would it affect your anticipation, or your overall feelings about cinema? A trip to the theater should feel like a treat, like a visit to an amusement park or a museum, rather than a convenience store.

5.) More Clearly Defined Tastes
The post-60’s “film buff” has evolved into the Information Age “film nerd”, and a love for quality, personality-defining movies has evolved into a white-washed love for all movies. I think anyone considering movies to be a religion should probably take some time to worship at the altar of Percy Jackson or Limitless next time they get a chance. The medium is clearly fallible. Taking a step back and choosing your entertainment carefully gives you control over the garbage vying for your attention, and will allow for a personal connection to form between you and the movie.

6.) Personal Effectiveness
On that note, movies are only as good as the personal connections and experiences we bring to them. The average movie is two hours long. How many miles could you run in that span of time? How many awesome conversations could you have? How much work could you get done? Watching fewer movies allows us to live life, which not only enriches the soul and our environment, but also enriches the movies we give our time to.

7.) Diversification
In the same vein, how precious do movies become when they’re leveraged against books, paintings, comics, or music? Instead of ingesting yet another movie, spend that time reading a history book or listening to a philosophy lecture. So much of my film nerd life has been spent tragically illiterate, pouring hours and hours into movies without the slightest perspective on the full breadth of the narrative idea, and how it is functional in other media. Not seeing a well-utilized dolly shot for three months will completely re-energize the technique’s meaning, and calcify cinema’s legitimacy and importance.

8.) Fewer Comparisons
One of the great tragedies of millennial film nerd culture is the increasing trend of movies to be likened to sports. The rise of the “list” and Oscar chatter has pitted completely disparate films against each other like gladiatorial slaves. I’m preaching to myself here, as I am guilty of this on numerous occasions. I wish I could approach every film as my first film as a viewer; not in a naive, insular, childish way, but in a way that understands that every film must function alone, within its own universe, on its own terms.

9.) Voting for Quality
Almost every minute spent on a film sends its producers a message – “Give me more of this.” There is an overwhelming cry from movie audiences for more quality, and less quantity. The easiest way to convey this is to vote with your dollar, and to vote with your time. If a movie looks bad, don’t talk about it. Don’t go see it out of morbid curiosity, don’t exert time or energy on it. Just ignore it. Bad art goes away if you ignore it. If you feel like a movie might be bad, just do yourself a favor and skip out on it.

10.) Economics
The less money or time you spend on movies, the more valuable each movie experience becomes. You begin choosing your media wisely, and according to a specific set of decisions. There is a growing sentiment among independent content creators that piracy is a sign of the future, that eventually, all content will be intangible and free. I completely disagree. The act of buying a CD or an iTunes single has, for me, only bolstered my love for what I purchase, and has widened the margin between time spent listening to background filler and time spent enjoying music I truly love. I’ve attempted to limit my theatrical visits this year, as well as my absorption of blu-rays and streaming content, in an effort to keep an account of the movies I see.

Movies are, in our moment, the narrative medium of choice. They have become, and should remain, special capsules of our story. For me, that “special” feeling is going away, and fast. Part of that is undoubtedly age, some of that is cultural climate. I think it’s undeniable, however, that there an invisible movement arising that believes movies are easily digestible content, that movies are made for a moment, like a sports event or a pop song, and then are to be archived and forgotten (unless they are deemed objectively extraordinary). I would urge moviegoers to resist. Don’t go to the movies blindly. Be smart. Movies are not a global economy, to be fed wildly for fear of collapse. They will survive if you don’t go see every lame duck that waddles into theaters or the crimson kiosk at Walgreen’s. Hold steady, and when you find a gem you just can’t avoid, go all out and chow down like it’s Thanksgiving.

That’s about it for this time. Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to keep your eyes glued to The Nocturnal Third’s official site for updates as we approach the release of a film you may or may not choose to see.

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

It’s easy to scoff and laugh off Mr. Mom as a relic of early ’80s American culture, an artifact from the days when feminism seemed novel and subverting gender roles was still actually had some shock value to it. It’s true, the basic premise of Mr. Mom, the massively successful comedy starring Michael Keaton as a “stay-at-home dad”, wouldn’t be considered very fresh or novel today. And yet recent reports have MGM planning a remake, not so surprising in an age where just about every film successful or otherwise gets remade but noteworthy enough that it’s worth considering why MGM feels this premise still has some relevance to 2011 audiences.

Mr. Mom was one of two extremely successful screenplays in 1983 from a then largely unknown John Hughes (the other being National Lampoon’s Vacation) and while Vacation’s screenplay became a somewhat twisted, highly irreverent movie, the similarly family-oriented screenplay for Mr. Mom became a much more family friendly finished product. While Mr. Mom doesn’t exactly fit in with the teen-oriented films Hughes would become known for in the years following, there are a lot of similar themes in Mr. Mom including the basic idea of exploring the stresses and anxiety that come along with traditional domestic life in America. While the trials and tribulations of upper-middle class white teenagers doesn’t seem like compelling drama, it’s something that audiences (particularly the ones that went to the movies a lot) could identify with and the same is true for the audiences that shelled out $64.7 million to see Mr. Mom in 1983. Despite the sometimes wacky nature of the comedy here, there’s something that resonated with what audiences were going through in their own lives.

It’s a recession-era story (another thing that makes it play well in 2011) about a Detroit auto engineer played by Michael Keaton who loses his job. He and his industrious wife (Teri Garr) both set out to find jobs and she happens to find one before he does, a pretty good job in fact that’s capable of supporting the family. Keaton’s character Jack suffers the predictable indignities of domestic life as he learns to take care of cooking, cleaning and taking care of their three kids but deals with a couple of other less predictable obstacles as well. For one, Jack’s neighbor Joan (Ann Jillian) is attempting to seduce him and while Jack’s a good guy, her advances start to get to him before long, culminating in a fun dream sequence that mixes Jack’s personal fears and desires with his new obsession with soap operas.

Jack’s marriage faces a threat on the other side of the aisle as well (though not much of one) in the form of his wife’s creepy boss played by Martin Mull. In the race for the top “’80s douchebag” of the year, Mull’s character here makes a compelling case as he walks the fine line between legitimate threat to Jack’s manhood (as seen in the scene below) and creepy mustachioed lecher as we see later in the film.

As you would expect with a major studio comedy, the film is littered with nice supporting performances, including Jeffrey Tambor as the bumbling executive at Jack’s auto company, Christopher Lloyd in a very brief role as a co-worker of Jack’s and character actress Miriam Flynn (who steals the show as Cousin Eddie’s wife Catherine in National Lampoon’s Vacation) as one of Jack’s female neighbor friends.

Obviously, the movie lives and dies with the casting of its two leads and I think with all due respect to Hughes’ screenplay, the movie’s lasting success today is owed almost entirely to Keaton and Garr. While Keaton had been working regularly in TV (including two starring sitcom roles) it wasn’t until 1982 that he really became a legit threat as a movie star with a breakout performance in Ron Howard’s offbeat comedy Night Shift. That role landed Keaton the lead role for Mr. Mom, a major opportunity for him and a role that ultimately catapulted him to becoming one of the biggest stars in Hollywood for the next ten years or so. As for Garr, she was already well established having made her name in a number of the biggest films of the ’70s and early ’80s, particularly the massively successful Tootsie the year before which dealt with similar themes of changing gender roles and women in the workplace and which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Garr is probably the most likable and believable comedic leading lady I’ve seen to date in 1983. Like most great leading women of their day, her combination of intelligence and general likability made her appealing to the female audience and while she certainly wasn’t a bombshell, she had the girl next door appeal (or in this case ‘wife next door’) appeal that made her a hit with men as well.

There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about the comedy in Mr. Mom, though at the time I have to believe it was a pretty early example of a mainstream comedy (as opposed to a wacky, Airplane! style parody) using references to other fairly recent Hollywood films. The references to Jaws and Chariots of Fire, while both completely overdone and played out today, were pretty timely and fresh in 1983 and in fact the Chariots of Fire scene in Mr. Mom is one of the better comedic uses I’ve seen of that memorable Vangelis score.

The fact that Mr. Mom seems to work so well today despite the fact that there’s nothing particularly original or compelling about its premise along with the fact that director Stan Dragoti never really reached the same level of success again with his subsequent comedies like The Man with One Red Shoe or Necessary Roughness both speak to the fact that this movie’s success is all about John Hughes’ impressively sharp screenplay and the charm of its lead actors Michael Keaton and Teri Garr. If MGM does go through with its planned remake, the casting of those two leads along with the need for a smart, perceptive screenplay will be just as crucial to the movie’s success.

DOWNLOAD: Back to the Movies Podcast – Mr. Mom (with guest Francesca Scalici)

Next Up: John Travolta is back as Tony Manero, only this time he’s wearing spandex. It’s the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, the 1983 hit Staying Alive.

 

For the first time in this series I’m profiling a show that hasn’t yet completed its run, which of course leaves open the possibility that the show will go out like many potentially great shows have before it by either overstaying its welcome or betraying its own identity and losing track of what made it so great. In this case, I think anyone who has seen the first three seasons of Breaking Bad will tell you that either of those scenarios seem extremely unlikely.

Breaking Bad is a series that doesn’t attract a lot of viewers, a fact I believe is attributable to a rather unpleasant sounding premise and an advertising campaign that’s not exactly easy on the eyes (the cover of the Season 1 DVD box features star Bryan Cranston wearing no pants and a green dress shirt tucked into his underwear). On its most surface of levels, Breaking Bad is not the same kind of visual feast as its prettier, more popular AMC sibling Mad Men. There’s no glamour, no fantasy escapism and hardly any sex.

The beauty of Breaking Bad is all in the narrative, a story that unwinds so perfectly logically and yet so consistently unpredictably that every hour of the show brings both an adrenaline rush and a satisfying intellectual discussion about the human heart and what it’s capable of. There is no other show on television that sparks as much post-show discussion in my household and that’s primarily due to creator Vince Gilligan and his writers’ willingness to break one of the cardinal rules of television writing: never let the character’s change.

In one of the opening scenes of the pilot episode, high school chemistry teacher Walter White (Cranston) explains to his class that chemistry is the study of the way basic elements can change their nature when put in different situations, a perfect foreshadowing of what’s to come for Walt himself. Walt is a quite typical family man, struggling to take care of his family on a teacher’s salary. When Walt is told by a doctor that he has terminal cancer, that normally stable element finds himself in an unusual situation and the changes he begins to undergo are drastic. Unlike the characters we see in movies who find out they have a short time left to live, Walt doesn’t suddenly become introspective and seek out the meaning of life. Instead he becomes more desperate than ever to find a way to take care of his wife, his son and yet-unborn daughter. Through chance and happenstance, Walt discovers a way to make a great deal of money in a short period of time: making crystal meth. Walt’s background in chemistry gives him all the know-how he needs to produce the city’s best product. All he needs is a business partner.

Enter Jessie Pinkman (Aaron Paul), a former student of White’s whose ultimate destiny was to drop out of school and become one of the many small-time meth dealers in Albuquerque. The creation and handling of Jessie by the writers of Breaking Bad is perhaps the most under-appreciated aspect of the show. While Cranston has earned an Emmy in each of the show’s three seasons on the air, Paul only earned recognition for his work for the first time this past season. But the careful balance between comedic idiocy and sincere, almost heartbreaking decency that Paul weaves into everything Jessie does is what dictates the tone of the show. If this were only a show about Walter White, it would be a dark show indeed. Jessie’s struggle to be at times, believe it or not, the moral compass of the two is at once hilarious, endearing and tragic.

The entertainment value inherent in the premise drives the first season entirely, as Walter becomes a classic “fish out of water”, a straight man trying his best to negotiate his way through a world filled with some of the most unpredictable, mentally unstable scum imaginable. When the show’s first major “villain” crops up at near the end of the first season, a Mexican meth lord named Tuco (Raymond Cruz), it’s clear that Walt and Jessie are in over their heads and that the stakes will only continue to rise. And rise they do.

There are points at which the intensity reaches “squirm in your seat” levels, including the now-classic Season 2 episode “Grilled”. The episode features an ingenious tension-building device involving Tuco’s sick, elderly uncle who is able to communicate only by tapping a bell. The episode is on par with the kind of tension-based writing Quentin Tarantino has made his name on.

A major part of the show is Walt’s struggle to keep his drug trade hidden from his pregnant wife Skyler (Anna Gunn), a struggle made all the more difficult by the fact that Skyler’s brother-in-law Hank is a DEA agent (Dean Norris). Like Jessie, the Hank character is initially played for laughs, an overconfident blowhard who is more of a jock than a detective. But as the series goes on Hank gathers complexity, showing both what an incredibly competent agent he is and how fragile he can be when facing the fever pitch intensity of the drug world.

I will avoid talking about too many other characters that appear after the pilot since each character that comes into the lives of Walter and Jessie has an impact on where they ultimately end up and even on the men that they become as the series progresses, just as each element can be changed by the other elements it comes into contact with. Walter’s journey from the man he is in the pilot episode to the man he is at the thrilling cliffhanger ending of Season 3 is a stunning story about the power of a single choice in life. From one slightly abnormal decision made by a good man in a moment of desperation comes an almost unthinkable, yet totally believable, series of events ever deepening in intensity. Where Walter is headed, we still don’t know but what is clear from the first three seasons of this stunning show is that both he and Jessie are on a path that they can no longer turn back from. They live in a world completely shaped by the consequences of their actions and it’s a narrative so well-written, so well thought out by the writing staff that it makes you wonder whether the writers are writing the story or simply allowing the story to write itself.

Where to Watch It: The first two seasons are available on Netflix and while you can’t see Season 3 on DVD until June 7th, AMC is currently replaying the complete series two episodes at a time every Wednesday night.

 

Note: Back to the Movies is a special feature on the FilmNerds blog in which Matt Scalici will be watching the Top 50 highest-grossing movies of 1983 in order from 50 to 1.

As we enter the Top Ten on our countdown of the highest grossing movies of 1983, we begin with a curious success story, a movie that’s both unique and perfectly definitive of 1983 pop culture. Out of the remaining ten films on our list, I would informally estimate that Risky Business is referenced in the pop culture of 2011 than any other film in the top ten with the possible exception of No. 1 (I’d call it a toss-up). What’s most impressive about Risky Business, the reason it was both a commercial success at the time and remains an effective movie today, is that while it’s built on paper like a typical Hollywood hit, it has the soul of an art film and really says something about life and about the world which its characters inhabit.

Before becoming a $63 million hit with almost unanimously positive critical reception, Risky Business looked like anything but a sure thing to most of the people involved in its production early on. The premise of Paul Brickman’s screenplay sounds like a pretty conventional teen sex comedy, similar to some of the earlier entries seen here on Back to the Movies: a rich teenager named Joel (Tom Cruise) loses his virginity to a beautiful young prostitute (Rebecca De Mornay) and the two ultimately decide to open a brothel catering to Joel’s high school buddies. Sounds like wacky antics will ensue and to some extent they do but the movie isn’t just about the crazy scrapes these characters find themselves in. There’s a great deal of subtext going on here as well dealing with the money-obsessed culture of the ’80s, sex and the loss of innocence, and even the suggestion that all forms of business are in essence equal to prostitution. Those points are made with varying degrees of effectiveness but the fact that a movie like this is even talking about those issues puts it into an elite stratosphere among movies that could technically call themselves sex comedies.

It’s those unconventional themes that also nearly kept the movie from being made in the first place. Studios were scared off by the idea of a “brainy sex comedy” as Porky’s seemed to have laid out the perfect blueprint for a successful sex comedy a year earlier and exploring themes of commercialism and sexuality were not exactly part of the formula. With the major studios passing, the film’s producers wound up turning to the fledgling Geffen Company, a startup studio founded the previous year by music mogul (and eventual Dreamworks co-founder) David Geffen. The Geffen Company had made a splash in 1982 with the well-reviewed box office flop Personal Best but with Risky Business, they saw an opportunity to make waves with both critics and audiences. It was a risk that ended up paying off in a big way for Geffen, who would end up producing films for the likes of Martin Scorsese and Tim Burton later in the decade.

Tom Cruise was without question the biggest breakthrough star of 1983 judging from the 40 films I’ve seen so far on this countdown. After making an early splash in 1981 with a small but memorable role in Taps, Cruise absolutely exploded in 1983, with a small supporting performance in The Outsiders followed by three starring roles: the sex comedy Losing It (which did not make the Top 50) which was released in April, then Risky Business in July and finally All The Right Moves later that year. Of those three starring roles, there’s no question that Risky Business was the moment that set Cruise on the path to becoming the Hollywood icon he would eventually become but Cruise’s ubiquity in theaters in 1983 was a big part of cementing that star status.

Cruise’s performance here is certainly worthy of the hype it ultimately created for him going forward and while the nuances of his performance in many key moments in the film are impressive, I think it’s ability to serve as a sort of broadly-drawn icon that makes this performance so memorable and effective. EVERYONE, whether you’ve seen this movie or not, is aware of the image of Cruise sliding around his parents’ empty house in his socks, underwear and a dress shirt playing air guitar to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll”, perhaps one of the most over-parodied moments in ’80s cinema. But there’s another moment that I think was equally iconic for 1983 audiences, even if it isn’t as widely referenced or parodied today. In this scene, which comes about midway through the film when Cruise has decided to take on the ambitious goal of promoting and running a brothel out of his home while his parents are out of town, Cruise takes a quick turn from being a shy, awkward teenager to being a slick, polished and confident salesman. The Ray Ban shades Cruise dons throughout the sequence were a bit out of fashion at the time but many believe their sudden re-emergence on the scene in the mid-80s was directly attributable to Cruise’s use of them in the film to portray a classic image of Hollywood cool.

(Click image to view clip)

While Cruise is clearly the biggest name in the film today, he shared the bill in 1983 with fellow newcomer Rebecca De Mornay. Her performance received equal praise from Roger Ebert at the time who said she “somehow manages to take that thankless role, the hooker with a heart of gold, and turn it into a very specific character. She isn’t all good and she isn’t all clichés: She’s a very complicated young woman with quirks and insecurities and a wayward ability to love.”

The supporting performances are strong all around as well but Joe Pantoliano as Guido and Curtis Armstrong as Miles nearly steal the show in every scene they’re in. Something else that nearly steals the show: the soundtrack. As was the case with The Big Chill, the producers of Risky Business appeared to have run wild with their ability to secure a number of hugely popular songs and at various times those songs either work perfectly (“Old Time Rock and Roll”) or completely and inappropriately take over the scene (Phil Collins “In the Air Tonight” during a sex scene), though I should mention that the snippets of original music created for the film by Tangerine Dream are perfectly and fantastically “’80s” music.

These very high highs mixed with almost inexplicable mistakes are the common mark of a first-time director and while Brickman’s ambitious ideas weren’t all perfect, he shows a tremendous amount of promise and originality as a filmmaker in Risky Business. It’s a shame that he didn’t continue to hone his skills as a director as I believe he could have developed into a really impressive filmmaker with a unique voice. As it stands today, Brickman’s legacy is Risky Business and there’s certainly no reason to be ashamed of that. In that one film, Brickman helped mainstream audiences define cool in the ’80s, then asked them to think about the consequences of that coolness and ultimately helped capture the essence of the year 1983 in a way no other filmmaker did.

As a special bonus I’ll be recording podcast discussions with some of our regular FilmNerds contributors (as well as some special guests) on each of the final ten movies on the countdown. Click the link below to download the first episode in which I discuss Risky Business with FilmNerds contributor Graham Flanagan.

DOWNLOAD: Back to the Movies Podcast – Risky Business (with guest Graham Flanagan)

Next Up: Michael Keaton does things a woman should be doing! It’s Mr. Mom.

We’re back again with the third installment of our feature The Untounchables, the FilmNerds staff’s attempt at creating a Hall of Fame for filmmakers. Each month, a panel of contributors here at Filmnerds including Ben Flanagan, Corey Craft, Graham Flanagan, Benjamin Stark and myself, Matt Scalici, will cast our ballots for who we believe to be the greatest filmmakers to ever live. This month we welcome a new voter to the panel, Craig Hamilton who writes a fantastic film blog for The Examiner in Nashville.  The top three vote receivers each month will be inducted into our list of Untouchables and enshrined here on this site. You can find a link below to the first two groups of directors admitted to our virtual Hall of Fame but today we present to you the winners of our third ballot, the next three members of The Untouchables.

First Ballot Inductees

Second Ballot Inductees

 

Akira Kurosawa

It’s easy to see Akira Kurosawa as a filmmaker of grand, full-scale epics. All those flapping banners, wide vistas, volatile relationships, and period settings take his audiences on temporal vacations, visiting themes and stories usually reserved for Shakespeare or Homer. However, for every Ran or Kagemusha, Kurosawa gave us a Stray Dog or Ikiru… stories about the societal pressures and tensions of modern Japanese culture. Even at the heart of his legendary samurai films lay small-scale stories about individuals clashing with social structures. Yojimbo’s Sanjuro disrupts the order of a crime-ridden village. The Seven Samurai remind their patron farmers of their own system’s hypocrisy and rot. Kurosawa is high in the pantheon of the great directors because he was able to combine aching, humanist performances with equally expressive frames that show off exquisite blocking, composition, and decor. A filmmaker could have no better cheat sheet than one that reads “how would Kurosawa do it?”

- Ben Stark

Orson Welles

The life and career of Orson Welles are the stuff Hollywood is made of. Setting aside his career in radio, which alone would put him among the most interesting figures of the 20th Century, Welles will forever hold the distinction of making the most impressive debut of any filmmaker in history when at the age of 24 he made Citizen Kane, a movie that reinvented and challenged conventional filmmaking techniques, attacked one of the most powerful men in the world and over 70 years later is still widely regarded as the greatest motion picture ever made. But you don’t make many friends upsetting the status quo the way Welles did and sadly that revolutionary opening salvo would haunt Welles’ career for the remainder of his life, leaving him a highly respected figure among filmmakers but a reviled one among studio chiefs and power brokers. By the late ’40s, Welles abandoned Hollywood for Europe and while his work was far from regular, he did produce a number of phenomenal pictures in the years following World War II, including the politically-tinged mystery Mr. Arkadin and the brilliant crime noir Touch of Evil. Welles also stands as one of the few truly great actor-directors with his performances in Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil perhaps equalling his work behind the camera and his spectacular turn as Harry Lime in The Third Man holding up today as one of the greatest supporting performances in film history. Some see the Orson Welles story as a tale of unfulfilled potential. I see it as a story of an artist so revolutionary and so fearless that in one single work he did more to change cinema than perhaps any other single filmmaker.

- Matt Scalici

 

John Ford

I can’t write as much as I probably should be able to about John Ford, but what films of his I’ve seen have left some indelible images, and he’s unquestionably responsible for some of the most iconic scenes and shots in film history — and has reshaped the world’s collective imagery and iconography of the American West. In a long filmography that includes such classics as Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, My Darling Clementine, The Searchers and How The West Was Won, Ford made America look like it has never looked before or since, depicting the sweeping vistas of the West breathtakingly, often with his favorite star, John Wayne, in front of the camera. Not content with building Wayne as a star, he then promptly deconstructed him with The Searchers — Wayne’s best performance — and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” says a character in the latter film, and it seems an apt summary for the legend-building films of John Ford.

- Corey Craft

 

We’re heading into the home stretch on our Back to the Movies odyssey through the films of 1983 and upon reaching the top 20, we’re finally beginning to come upon multiple films that would be considered classics today along with several others that are less well known in 2011 but remain extremely watchable, enjoyable films for a contemporary audience. And then there are the three almost unbearable sequels…

For those of you who’d like to check out any of these films: out of these ten films, nine are available on Netflix with the only exception being Psycho II, which is available on DVD and is also available for instant streaming through Amazon’s paid streaming service Amazon Instant Video. In addition to including links to my full reviews I’ve written for the blog, I’ve also included links to the 1983 reviews by Roger Ebert (when available) and the film critics of the New York Times. I’ve also handed out some awards and superlatives for this group of ten at the end of the list. You can also find a link to my previous three recap pieces below:

Recap of 50-41

Recap of 40-31

Recap of 30-21

 

20. Psycho II

Back to the Movies Review

Roger Ebert Review

New York Times Review

.

19. Silkwood

Back to the Movies Review

Roger Ebert Review

New York Times Review

.

18. Yentl

Back to the Movies Review

Roger Ebert Review

New York Times Review

.

17. Blue Thunder

Back to the Movies Review

Roger Ebert Review (Not Available)

New York Times Review

.

16. Scarface

Back to the Movies Review

Roger Ebert Review

New York Times Review

.

15. Jaws 3-D

Back to the Movies Review

Roger Ebert Review (Not Available, though he has referenced the film negatively many times in other reviews)

New York Times Review

.

14. Never Say Never Again

Back to the Movies Review

Roger Ebert Review

New York Times Review

.

13. The Big Chill

Back to the Movies Review

Roger Ebert Review

New York Times Review

.

12. Superman III

Back to the Movies Review

Roger Ebert Review

New York Times Review

.

11. National Lampoon’s Vacation

Back to the Movies Review

Roger Ebert Review (Not Available)

New York Times Review

.

Best of 20-11

Best Male Performance: Al Pacino in Scarface
Honorable Mention: Mandy Patinkin in Yentl

Best Female Performance: Meryl Streep in Silkwood
Honorable Mention: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in Scarface

Best Score/Music: Scarface (music by Giorgio Moroder)
Honorable Mention: Blue Thunder (score by Arthur B. Rubinstein)

Must-See for 2011 Viewers: Silkwood
Honorable Mention: Scarface