The FilmNerds Blog

Earlier this week, Disney announced that Guillermo del Toro would be helming a film version of its classic theme park attraction The Haunted Mansion (no, you’re not crazy; they already tried it once with Eddie Murphy back in 2003). This marks Disney’s latest attempt to turn one of its theme park attractions into a movie franchise, with previous attempts meeting varying levels of success (Pirates of the Caribbean yes, Country Bear Jamboree no).

In light of that news and because I spent my middle school years visiting Walt Disney World on a weekly basis, I decided to come up with three pitches for new movies or even movie franchises that could be built around classic Disney theme park attractions. Now most of the rides in Disney’s theme parks are based on films, so this list is based only on rides or attractions with no ties to pre-existing films.

The Hall of Presidents

The Ride: One of the original opening day attractions in the Magic Kingdom back in 1971, The Hall of Presidents features Audio-Animatronic figures of every US President. The leaders of the free world come to life on stage and offer their timeless wisdom to the crowd of bored children who would rather be on Splash Mountain.

The Pitch: Night at the Museum meets 1776. A wax museum with figures of all the presidents comes to life at night and personalities clash. Bill Clinton and JFK set out to crash a sorority slumber party. George W. Bush keeps calling FDR “Hot Wheels” and pushing him perilously fast through the hallways. William Henry Harrison dies in the first five minutes. Plenty of opportunities for stunt casting (your suggestions are welcome below).

It’s A Small World

The Ride: A musical boat ride through all the countries of the world, united by the spirit of unity and the desire to crush the remaining sanity of parents with their endless, repetitive melody.

The Pitch: High School Musical set in the United Nations. When the new Secretary General takes office, he decides to use his background in musical theater to resolve the world’s problems and demands that all UN speeches be delivered in the form of a song. The magic of music begins to loosen up those uptight UN delegates as world peace and spontaneous choreography begin to break out everywhere. The love ballad duet between the Israeli and Iranian delegations is truly a show-stopper.

Maelstrom

The Ride: Located in the Norway pavilion at EPCOT, this ride takes visitors on a journey through Norwegian mythology, complete with vikings and angry trolls.

The Pitch: Pirates of the Caribbean with vikings. Granted, Disney already owns Marvel and thus owns the upcoming Thor movie which deals heavily in Norse mythology but there’s an opportunity to go more of a whimsical adventure route with this type of material. Johnny Depp would of course play the womanizing drunk viking.

The FilmNerds RoundTable crew is back with an in-depth discussion of Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending blockbuster Inception. Listen as host Matt Scalici and guests Ben Flanagan, Ben Stark and Francesca Scalici discuss how Inception may influence Hollywood and talk our way through some of the film’s unanswered questions, including the mysterious ending . Click on the link below to listen or right click to download it. You can also find the podcast on iTunes by searching for “filmnerds” at the iTunes store.

http://filmnerds.com/podcast/Inception.mp3

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.

We come to a curious installment on this list of the Top 50 releases of 1983 as for the first time we are dealing with a re-release of an older film. I considered skipping The Rescuers since it was originally released in 1977 but thinking back on why I started this project, which was to re-create the 1983 movie-going experience, I decided ultimately to include it.

I’ve been unable to find any further background regarding this (if you have any information, please drop some knowledge on me in the comments section below) but Disney’s theatrical strategy for the year 1983 appears to be fairly simple: money for old rope. Disney re-released three of its previous hits in 1983 (Robin Hood, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Rescuers), usually pairing the films with a new animated short (in the case of The Rescuers it was Mickey’s Christmas Carol).

There are a few likely reasons behind this strategy. Firstly, the home video market in 1983 was still in its infancy and for many Disney fans a re-release was their only opportunity to see some of their favorite classics again. Secondly, with the exit of the original crew of Disney animators following The Rescuers, the new Disney crew was having a bit of trouble creating the same kind of magic that their predecessors had managed to turn out on a regular basis. Disney’s releases throughout the 80′s releases were certainly never major financial disasters but they failed to capture audiences and critics in the same way that so many of the great ’60s and ’70s Disney films had and perhaps the folks in Burbank were beginning to get just a little bit concerned about maintaining the integrity of the Disney brand.

Whatever the reasoning, Disney’s strategy paid off as its three re-releases dominated the G-rated movie market in 1983. The Rescuers raked in $21 million and finished second among G-rated releases behind its older sister, Snow White (more on her in a few months, I guess).

While it ranked as a major success for Disney both during its initial release and its 1983 re-release, I think it’s safe to say that The Rescuers doesn’t appear to hold the same cache today among fans of the Disney Animated Classics. Most of us could sing a song from or recite a line or two from One Hundred and One Dalmations, The Jungle Book or Robin Hood but does anyone out there really have a distinct, specific moment from The Rescuers that sticks out in your mind?

That’s not to say that it’s an unenjoyable film while you’re watching it, just that it doesn’t seem to have the same resonance that some of its Disney brethren have. The heroes are likable enough, two mice named Bernard (Bob Newhart) and Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor) set out on a mission to rescue an almost unbearably cutesy little girl named Penny. Bernard and Miss Bianca work for the Rescue Aid Society, a sort of mouse version of the United Nations complete with ever-so-slightly offensive Asian mice.

Penny is an orphan who has been kidnapped by Madame Medusa (voiced by Geraldine Page in her most menacing role until Interiors), a pawnshop owner who needs a small child to fit down a whole in the Louisiana bayou so she can obtain a fantastic jewel called the Devil’s Eye. It’s not a premise we dwell on for very long as essentially the point is that Madame Medusa is putting the girl’s life at risk and doesn’t care.

Madame Medusa has her fun moments but as Disney villains go, I’m betting she’s one of the least recognizable today. I suspect that’s because there’s not much originality to her. She’s basically a slight variation on Cruella de Vil, arguably one of the greatest and most memorable of all the Disney villains. Disney animators were initially considering using Cruella as the villain in The Rescuers, an idea that was ultimately shunned out of a desire to avoid producing sequels. Frankly, I think it would have been a good idea but I appreciate Disney’s desire to create something new, something studios certainly don’t bend over backwards to do these days.

Plot-wise, The Rescuers just feels a lot like its main villain, largely unoriginal and cobbled together with elements from previous Disney movies. It’s a fun ride but you’re left in the end feeling that you haven’t really seen anything new.

One thing that is rather original about the film is the opening sequence, a rather artfully put together montage of canvas paintings set to the film’s theme song “Who Will Rescue Me”. The song is pretty corny but the visuals are very interesting and unlike anything I remember seeing in other Disney films.

I wish I was going to get a chance to review an original Disney film from 1983 rather than a re-release because it would give me a better feel for what kind of content Disney was really producing during that era. As it is, I have to be content watching a film that I’m sure a lot of people enjoyed revisiting in theaters but that just doesn’t hold up as a particularly memorable film years later.

Next Up: The second Stephen King adaptation on our countdown, Christine.

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.

We now reach our first film of the countdown to gross over $20 million at the box office and it also happens to be the first of three films released in 1983 based on the works of author Stephen King. All three films performed almost identically at the box office so you’ll be seeing them in fairly rapid succession here on the blog over the next few weeks.

Heading into 1983, King had already had two successful films made out of his novels in 1976′s Carrie and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece The Shining (a film adaptation which King vehemently disapproved of) and was also becoming a reliable hit-maker in the print world as well. But 1983 marks a new point in King’s career, a year in which he went from being a well-known novelist whose work lent itself to the screen to being a major entertainment franchise. According to Box Office Mojo, King has been the creative inspiration for 38 theatrically released films, making him possibly the most oft-adapted American writer of all time. Not every film made from King’s work has been of equal quality (as we’ll see in the next few installments of Back to the Movies) but it’s clear that as a writer one of King’s greatest strengths is coming up with a premise that everyone, including movie producers, finds intriguing and fraught with possibilities.

The premise of The Dead Zone, directed by a young David Cronenberg, is fairly simple and not all that unfamiliar sounding to fans of science fiction and horror. A man with the bizarrely boring name of Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) gets into an auto accident and awakens from a coma five years later to find that he has psychic abilities. As a premise, it could go either way: in the hands of a mediocre writer it could turn into a series of small episodes where Johnny uses his abilities to solve minor problems for people like some sort of superhero (in fact, that’s exactly what happened with the television adaptation of this story made for USA Network a few years ago). In the hands of a more twisted mind, it becomes a fascinating vehicle to explore what a true curse such a gift would become were an average person to find themselves in possession of it.

After his initial discovery of his gift helps to save the life of a young child, Johnny suddenly finds himself becoming a local media sensation, viewed as a fascinating freak show to some and a delusional wacko to others. Johnny does what he can to stay out of the limelight but when a desperate sheriff (played by the awesome Tom Skerritt) comes to him for help in an unsolved serial murder case, Johnny feels that lending his talents to the case is the right thing to do.

How that situation resolves itself I will leave unspoiled as it serves as a sort of climax unto itself, a standalone episode within the film that works as a fascinating example of where Johnny’s story could go if using his gift weren’t slowly destroying him both mentally and emotionally.

The second half of the movie almost serves as an entirely separate story, with Johnny trying to start his life over in a place where no one knows about his abilities. There’s also another advantage of moving away from his hometown for Johnny in that it allows him to put his former fiance Sarah (Brooke Adams), who ended up getting married and having a baby while he was in a coma, out of his mind once and for all. Or so he thinks…

What makes the second half of the movie really interesting, in addition to Walken’s superb acting throughout, is the appearance of Martin Sheen as the maniacal rising star politician Greg Stillson. As a huge fan of Sheen’s great work on “The West Wing” as a beneficent, principled president I got a real kick out of seeing him play the complete opposite, a dirty politician who has used pessimism and anger to facilitate his rise to power. Sheen’s performance, like his character’s storyline, just skirts the edge of being overblown and ludicrous but somehow manages to stay believable, thanks not only to great acting and directing but also to King’s attention to detail in his story. King manages to drop breadcrumbs all along the way in the story that all begin to pay off in the film’s final act.

Minor spoiler alert for this paragraph and the video below: A great example of this film’s ability to actually pull off a scene that could be disastrously outrageous comes when Johnny shakes hands with Stillson and has a vision of the future that essentially determines Johnny’s motivation for the rest of the film. In this vision, we see Stillson as the President of the United States in a room at what is presumably Camp David. He pressures a general into putting his hand onto a briefcase-sized hand scanner before inputting a sequence of numbers. Stillson then walks out of the room to face a group of advisors to whom he makes a chilling proclamation.

(End Spoiler)

It’s a scene that I’m convinced shouldn’t work and wouldn’t work if had a different writer, a different director or a different actor involved. But as with a lot of things in this movie, the combination of King, Cronenberg and the superb actors involved make potentially ridiculous scenes into believable and chilling ones (Roger Ebert pointed out in his review that the fact that they are believable is exactly what makes them so chilling).

According to most of the reviews of the day, The Dead Zone is far and away the best of the three Stephen King movies released in 1983 (almost every review nearly spits when referring to Cujo, released two months earlier). It’s a tough call, but I’d say for me The Dead Zone is perhaps my favorite of the 14 films I’ve seen for this project thus far. If nothing else, it has led me to strongly consider picking up King’s original novel, a major achievement considering I’m not much of a reader. The Dead Zone certainly isn’t the scariest King-based film ever made but it is one of the most interesting, character-centric films I’ve seen based on his work.

Next Up: The re-release of the 1977 Disney animated classic The Rescuers.

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.

While reading through some of the 1983 reviews for Jim McBride’s Breathless, I was reassured to find that most critics at the time were just as baffled by what they saw as I am watching it today in 2010. Just stating the premise of the film is flabbergasting enough: it’s an American remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic of the same name (well, technically Godard’s film is called A bout de souffle but it’s well known to American film buffs as Breathless). The classic French film is credited as one of the first pieces of true New Wave cinema and was notable because…well, it wasn’t really about anything.

That’s certainly oversimplifying things but in general, what made Breathless so revolutionary at the time was that unlike the vast majority of Hollywood studio films up to that point, it refused to adhere to typical conventions like using dialog to advance the plot and having clear protagonists and villains. It was also unconventional from a technical standpoint, with virtually no artificial lighting, handheld camerawork and improvised dialog. These were all things that changed the way people thought about film and its affects can be seen even in mainstream Hollywood studio films today.

But that’s the 1960 film. We’re here to talk about the 1983 film. A little research around the old internet will tell you that director Jim McBride considered Godard’s original film to be hugely inspirational to him as a young filmmaker and as a tribute to that classic, McBride wanted to create something that could recapture the experience he had watching the original film.

The inherent problem with trying to recapture the feeling you had when you saw something that reinvented filmmaking is that in order to truly recapture that feeling, you yourself would have to reinvent filmmaking. Half-Hearted Spoiler Alert: this film didn’t do that. Nor was McBride really trying to do that.

What he was really trying to do was to translate the characters and their relationship not only from French to English (and Paris to L.A.) but also from 1960 to 1983. I’d be wrong if I said they didn’t get anything right in this translation but there are a few really notable things that simply got lost in the translation.

In the original film, the male lead Michel is a street tough who models his personality after the coolest guy he can think of, Humphrey Bogart. His American equivalent Jesse (Richard Gere) is also a young ruffian only this time his role model is Jerry Lee Lewis. Here’s the problem with that swap: Jerry Lee Lewis is not a good stand-in for Humphrey Bogart. Anyone looks cool acting like Bogey. Most people look like idiots when they act like Jerry Lee Lewis. Maybe not all people, but Richard Gere sure as heck does.

His bizarre outbursts of dancing and rockabilly wailing are so off-putting, uncool and out of place that it makes it impossible for me as a viewer to root for this guy or even to enjoy watching him do anything. He’s unlikable in a way that makes him hard to watch.

Unfortunately, his female cohort, while easy on the eyes, is not much easier to watch in terms of her performance. French actress Valerie Kaprisky was plucked from obscurity to play Monica, Jesse’s love interest in the film (Michel’s love interest in the original film was an American girl, get it?). While her character is meant to be a brilliant young architect with a bright future ahead of her, Kaprisky looks like a newborn baby deer. Nearly every review at the time points out the constant clueless look on Kaprisky’s face and it’s no less painful 27 years later watching her fumble her way through the melodramatic dialog.

This isn’t a bad movie. There are some moments that really work, particularly the moments more focused on mood than story or dialog. McBride pulls off some masterfully great looking shots and managed to find all the most photogenic spots in Los Angeles and the surrounding hills. While the two main characters are both hard to take in large doses they each have their moments, particularly Gere who plays up Jesse’s immature, jealous rage with great effectiveness.

The New York Times review at the time suggested that it would be easier to view the film in a positive light had it not taken upon itself the comparison to Godard’s revolutionary masterpiece. I’m coming to this movie without any particular affinity for the original film. While I appreciate the influence that the French New Wave movement had on many of the films I love from the ’70s and onward, the original films themselves just don’t do it for me.

That said, I appreciate what Godard was trying to in his version of Breathless and it should be respected. While Godard’s film was effortless and revolutionary, this remake feels forced and unoriginal. It’s quirkiness and penchant for referencing other films may have been partially influential to guys like Quentin Tarantino (who calls it one of his favorite movies) but aside from that there certainly haven’t been many films made like it, and probably for good reason.

Next Up: The first of a trio of  films from 1983 based on the work of Stephen King, The Dead Zone.

We arrive at the first movie on this list that I’ve already seen, Bob Clark’s holiday classic A Christmas Story. For the purposes of this blog, I’ve decided to give a fair re-watch of all the films I’ve already seen on the list, in the hopes of gleaning something new from them in the context of all the other major releases of 1983. Upon my most recent viewing, which has to be at least the 10th time I’ve watched the all the way through, my feelings and overall opinion of the film hasn’t changed but viewing it in the context of the other films of its day that I’ve now seen, my appreciation for it has perhaps grown a little.

Unless you don’t have cable or live under a rock, you’ve probably seen A Christmas Story. It’s a collection of Depression-era stories surrounding one Christmas season in the life of young Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) narrated by an adult version of the main character. The narration is in fact voiced by the author of the stories upon which the film was based, writer and radio personality Jean Shephard. When it was released in November of 1983, the film opened to respectable numbers, finishing with a total of $19.2 million on a $4 million budget, a success by anyone’s measure.

But it wasn’t the theatrical run that made this film into the classic it has become today (I’d say without a doubt this is the most widely-known and popular of the films I’ve reviewed on this list thus far). In the late ’80s the film began to fill time on some of the smaller broadcast networks around the holidays (FOX, TBS and WGN) and after seeing the success it was having, Turner decided to start using the film as a part of its regular holiday programming on its various cable channels, including TNT and Turner Classic. By the late ’90s, the film was ubiquitous around Christmas time and these days you can regularly find 24-hour marathons of the film running every Christmas Eve.

So of all the Christmas movies out there, what about this film made it take American pop culture by storm and become one of the great modern classics of the genre? There aren’t many big names in the film in terms of stars. Billingsley had a moderately successful TV career after the film and the movie’s biggest name, Melinda Dillon, while a major name in the ’70s and ’80s has since faded from popularity.

In my opinion the film’s cultural appeal comes down to two contrasting elements: dark comedy and nostalgia. This is a strange combination and not one you’d expect to see in a Christmas movie. I think when you ask most people about this film they wouldn’t think of it as a dark comedy but a quick review of the film’s biggest laughs shows that there’s definitely an edgy quality to the comedy in the film. The Skut Farkus scenes, the frozen tongue incident and particularly the department store Santa scene are all prime examples of dark comedy, certainly much darker than what we see in the vast majority of Christmas films. They help highlight the embarrassing absurdity we often feel when thinking back on certain childhood memories, which is a unique angle to take when making a nostalgic film about childhood.

Director Bob Clark is certainly no stranger to exaggerated, edgy comedy. He directed the now infamous sex comedy Porky’s as well as its sequel released earlier in 1983. The more outrageous scenes in A Christmas Story showcase Clark’s particular comedic strengths as a director, none more so than my favorite scene in the film, Ralphie’s fantasy sequence involving soap poisoning. The acting in the scene is so perfectly cartoonish, exactly the right tone for the fantasy sequence of an indulgent, short-sighted child.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE “SOAP POISONING” SCENE

This scene happens to stand out as my favorite but if you ask anyone who’s seen the film about their favorite scene, you’ll probably get a variety of answers. This film has the amazing quality of having almost every scene qualify as a classic, memorable film moment. That’s due in large part to the episodic format, which worked similarly well in other nostalgic films like Radio Days and Meet Me In St. Louis. Our memories are broken up into little episodes and stories so it only makes sense that a movie about nostalgia and memories should be formatted the same way.

The film works on so many levels, from the story to the pitch-perfect delivery of the narration. But what elevates it to the classic it has become and will always be are the three excellent lead performances. Billingsley’s chubby face and awkward glasses embody what we all felt like as children, the weakness, the vulnerability, the innocence and the foolish ability to remain hopeful and happy throughout all that. Melinda Dillon has some terrific comedic moments as the loving and selfless mother and Darren McGavin as the father, or “the old man” as he’s called in the film, delivers a truly classic comedic performance embodying the absurd confidence of a father emboldened by his status as head of the household.

A Christmas Story‘s position so far down this list is the perfect example of a film outliving its box office performance to become a classic through video and television. It was a story that would be told many more times in the years following the dawn of home video but A Christmas Story remains one of the earliest examples of the rule that classics are rarely established instantly.

Next Up: An American remake of the French New Wave classic Breathless.

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 next phase of our Back to the Movies journey, we encounter an example of one of the most unique film voices of the 1970s and ’80s, playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon. I have to admit, I had no prior experience with Simon’s work prior to seeing Max Dugan Returns, his surprisingly strong-performing 1983 “family comedy”, but I had a basic impression of Simon from what I’ve read and heard from others.

Simon’s name doesn’t hold quite the same sway in 2010 as it once did but in 1983, he was certainly a highly respected name. He had already earned a Tony for his legendary stage comedy The Odd Couple along with four Oscar nominations for Best Screenplay. Simon made his name writing comedies and light dramas that typically centered on average, blue collar folk dealing with the struggles and pleasures of everyday life.

And that’s exactly what we see in the opening minutes of Max Dugan Returns, a single mother named Nora (Marsha Mason) tries to support her son Michael (played by a very young Matthew Broderick) on a teacher’s salary. We see her rushing to get out of their messy, somewhat ramshackle house on the way to school and growing more and more exasperated as the day goes on, leading us to believe that seemingly nothing can go right for Nora.

Then in walks the premise: Jason Robards, in an extremely entertaining turn as the title character Max Dugan, shows up late one night with only a briefcase to his name. Max is Nora’s father, a man she hasn’t seen for years after he was imprisoned for some non-violent, mostly harmless financial shenanigans. After serving his time, Max has the last few years stealing money from a casino (it’s okay though because they casino owners screwed him over) and now wants to share that money with his long-lost daughter and grandson. Obviously, as a person of high moral fiber Nora refuses to take any of that dirty money. Ah but there’s a catch: Max reveals that he’s dying of a non-specific disease and won’t be able to die in peace unless Nora takes the money.

Despite Max’s impassioned pleas, Nora still refuses to make herself and her son an accomplice to a crime by accepting the money, though she does allow Max to live out his final days with his family.

Okay, there’s the setup – now the fun starts. Since Nora won’t accept any of the money, Max decides to take another strategy. Fabulous gifts start showing up at the house wrapped in red bows with the explanation that they’re prizes that Nora has won on “one of those game shows that you don’t have to enter to win.” Nora is obviously upset by this development but doesn’t want her son to know what’s really going on and so we’re treated to a number of delightful scenes of Broderick enjoying the latest in cool 1983 technology. The shelf full of AV equipment in particular is a real treat, as is the shoulder-mounted home video camera and the kitchen appliances. The “prizes” alone make this movie worth watching for the nostalgia factor.

While the story is a little easy to see coming, the film is not without its merits particularly when it comes to the performances. Robards is a remarkably charming actor and he’s really what makes the film work. Broderick in his first film performance does what Nicolas Cage did in Valley Girl, which is to immediately show the potential and qualities that would later make him a major star. Broderick was somewhat discovered by Simon for a role on stage and shortly thereafter cast in Max Dugan Returns and the mix of sincerity and youthful mischief with a good measure of braininess thrown in, the qualities that made Ferris Bueler such a beloved character, were all there in 1983 when Broderick made his screen debut.

Donald Sutherland also turns in a nice performance as Nora’s boyfriend who also happens to be a cop. His character is trying to carefully balance trying to be a good boyfriend while also following his gut instinct that something might be up with Nora and the mysterious older man living in her house and Sutherland does a really good job making the character a sympathetic sort of villain.

My impression coming away from my first Neil Simon experience is that there’s an awful lot of similarity in his writing style to one of my favorite filmmakers of all time, Woody Allen. While Allen set his stories in a world full of slightly less sympathetic characters (typically self-aware intellectuals) dealing with less family-friendly problems (dysfunctional sex lives), the comedic tone is very similar between the two writers.

The Woody Allen connection isn’t a coincidence. Allen worked alongside Simon and his brother Danny as a TV writer in the 1950s and has been quoted as saying that he learned everything he knows about comedy writing from the Simon brothers. In addition, Max Dugan Returns is one of three screenplays Simon wrote that was directed by Herbert Ross, a one-time collaborator with Allen when he directed the screen version of Allen’s breakthrough stage effort Play It Again, Sam.

While Simon’s work in Max Dugan Returns isn’t anywhere near as thought-provoking and edgy as Allen’s stuff, fans of Allen’s work would still enjoy the writing from a comedy standpoint, with lots of clever references and wordplay. While it’s a pretty conventional comedy, it’s not hard to understand why this film did as well as it did in 1983. It’s a comedy about a financial miracle landing on your doorstep during a tough time. It’s something I’m sure would probably resonate pretty well with today’s audiences about as well as it did in 1983.

CLICK HERE to view the original theatrical trailer.

Next Up: The cable holiday staple A Christmas Story.

It’s been a long ride already but we’ve made it through the first ten films on our countdown of the Top 50 films of the year 1983. Ten films in, I’m actually quite pleasantly surprised at the overall quality of the films. Looking down the list, the road ahead of me contains quite a few of what I believe will be stereotypically bad ’80s genre films but this first group of ten included several movies that I feel really hold up well almost 30 years later. All ten of these films are available on Netflix for those of you who would like to sample some of them for yourselves and in addition to including links to my full reviews I’ve written for the blog, I’ve also included trailers for each film and 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 the group of ten at the end of the list.

50. Educating Rita

Review: http://filmnerds.com/blog/2009/10/26/no-50-educating-rita/

Ebert: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19831028/REVIEWS/310280301/1023

NYT: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=1&res=9F00E3D71138F932A1575AC0A965948260

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49. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

Review: http://filmnerds.com/blog/2009/11/03/no-49-monty-pythons-the-meaning-of-life/

Ebert: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19830401/REVIEWS/304010301/1023

NYT: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F03E4D7123BF932A05750C0A965948260

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48. Cheech & Chong Still Smokin’

Review: http://filmnerds.com/blog/2009/11/18/no-49-cheech-and-chongs-still-smokin/

Ebert: N/A

NYT: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F01E7D9103BF934A35756C0A965948260

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47. Gorky Park

Review: http://filmnerds.com/blog/2009/12/09/no-47-gorky-park/

Ebert: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19831216/REVIEWS/312160301/1023

NYT: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B04E1D91738F935A25751C1A965948260

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46. D.C. Cab

Review: http://filmnerds.com/blog/2010/01/29/no-46-d-c-cab/

Ebert: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19831222/REVIEWS/312220301/1023

NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/16/arts/film-dc-cab-humor.html?scp=2&sq=D.C.%20Cab&st=cse
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45. Richard Pryor: Here and Now

Review: http://filmnerds.com/blog/2010/04/21/no-45-richard-pryor-here-and-now/

Ebert: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19831028/REVIEWS/310280302/1023

NYT: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=990DE3D6133BF93BA15753C1A965948260

44. Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

Review: http://filmnerds.com/blog/2010/05/13/no-44-spacehunter-adventures-in-the-forbidden-zone/

Ebert: N/A

NYT: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A04E6D9103BF932A15756C0A965948260

43. Krull

Review: http://filmnerds.com/blog/2010/05/21/no-44-krull/

Ebert: N/A

NYT: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F02E1DA143BF93AA15754C0A965948260

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42. All the Right Moves

Review: http://filmnerds.com/blog/2010/06/02/no-42-all-the-right-moves/

Ebert: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19831025/REVIEWS/310250301/1023

NYT: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9504E0DC123BF932A15753C1A965948260

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41. Valley Girl

Review: http://filmnerds.com/blog/2010/06/07/no-41-valley-girl/

Ebert: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19830429/REVIEWS/304290302/1023

NYT: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C05E7D9103BF93AA15757C0A965948260

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Best of 50-41

Best Male Performance: Chris Penn in All the Right Moves
Honorable Mention: Nicholas Cage in Valley Girl

Best Female Performance: Julie Walters in Educating Rita
Honorable Mention: Lea Thompson in All the Right Moves

Best Score/Music: Krull (score by James Horner)
Honorable Mention: Valley Girl (New Wave soundtrack)

Must-See for 2010 Viewers: All the Right Moves
Honorable Mention: Gorky Park

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 a piece of box office history, Valley Girl is an interesting item. Produced independently for around $350,000, Valley Girl was the first film ever picked up for distribution by the short-lived Atlantic label, which didn’t last through the ’80s but was responsible for two of the biggest independently-produced hits of the decade in Night of the Comet and Teen Wolf. Valley Girl’s box office total of 17.34 million made it one of the most profitable independent releases of the 1980s.

But more importantly, Valley Girl introduced several new elements (and a new star) into the pop culture lexicon. For one, it introduced the concept of the “valley girl” to the nation at large. The concept had already been articulated brilliantly by Frank Zappa in his 1982 song “Valley Girl” but it wasn’t until the film was released that the nation became aware of the stereotype, particularly the now infamous “Valspeak” slang.

Secondly, Valley Girl‘s soundtrack is considered a landmark moment for New Wave music. The genre was already hitting its peak of popularity in 1983 but Valley Girl‘s usage of the music sort of synthesizes a moment in time culturally on film.

But perhaps the film’s greatest revelation, and judging from the reviews of the time one that was not fully appreciated in 1983, was the introduction of a young and budding actor named Nicolas Cage. At the time, Cage’s only previous film role was a cameo in Fast Times at Ridgemont High under his birth name, Nicolas Coppola. The story goes that in order to avoid the appearance of nepotism, the young actor changed his last name to audition for a part in his uncle Francis Ford Coppola’s film Rumble Fish. Cage earned the part and quickly moved on to film the much less prestigious Valley Girl, which ended up getting released a few months before Rumble Fish.

This may sound like one of those stories about an actor who before becoming famous took a part in a bad movie that he would later regret. That couldn’t be further from the truth. For my money, Cage’s work in Valley Girl is nothing to be embarrassed about. Not only is Cage’s performance just as quirky, interesting and authentic as anything else he’s done throughout his 27-year career but the fact that he wrung such an entertaining performance out of such a weak screenplay might perhaps make this performance one of his most impressive.

Cage plays Randy, a Hollywood punk (which means he has a little die in his hair and wears leather) who decides to crash a party full of rich, shallow kids from, where else, Valley High. Meanwhile, said party is also being attended by Julie (played by Deborah Foreman), who just recently dumped her totally grodie boyfriend Tommy (Michael Bowen). Randy and Julie see each other across the room and the Romeo & Juliet parallels can carry you the rest of the way through the story.

Before I continue any further, I have to talk about the character of Tommy. Tommy represents the first example on our list of one of my absolute favorite things about movies from the ’80s: The Douchebag Boyfriend. In many ways, the Douchebag Boyfriend is one of the key elements of the high school film. When what’s at stake in the story is high school love, social acceptance and an untainted sense of self-confidence, the Douchebag Boyfriend represents the ultimate threat to all three of those things. He is the ultimate figure of evil in the world of high school romantic comedy. To that end, Michael Bowen does a fantastic job of creating a perfectly, hilariously douchey bad guy. Bowen would later make a career out of being a douchebag, with memorable roles in Jackie Brown (as the bad cop to Michael Keaton’s good cop), Kill Bill (as Buck, who came to…) and “Lost” (as Juliet’s angry boyfriend).

But as with any teen-theme romantic comedy, the film hinges on the relationship between our Romeo & Juliet. After establishing how incredibly dull and shallow Julie and her friends are in the opening scenes, the movie quickly takes a surprising and refreshing turn by injecting Julie into Hollywood, a world of punk culture, New Wave music, rough streets and essentially different-thinking people. Julie becomes enamored with living life outside of the boring, superficial life she’s been a part of for so long and the film’s most memorable sequence gives us a montage of the two young lovers on a series of dates set to the New Wave classic “Melt With You” by Modern English. It’s a surprisingly effective moment and the chemistry between the two leads is palpable during their scenes together, which unfortunately are too few and far between.

The vast majority of the film’s running time has our hero and heroine separated, talking to their friends and family members about whether or not their relationship can work because of their differences. It’s during these sequences that the film really starts to drag and lose momentum. Cage brings such vibrancy and enthusiasm to every scene he plays that it seems to invigorate every other actor sharing the screen with him. The movie simply comes to life when Cage is on screen and when he’s not, the energy quickly drains out of the film.

Despite the movie’s hot and cold nature, I have to say I came away pleasantly surprised at how between a strong effort from a young Nicolas Cage and some thoughtful direction by young director Martha Coolidge, this clearly weak screenplay actually is able to produce some effective screen moments. If every other high school comedy I encounter during my Back to the Movies journey is as good as Valley Girl, I’ll have no problem sitting through them all. Unfortunately for me, I doubt that will be the case.

Next Up: Max Dugan Returns starring Jason Robards and Matthew Broderick.

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.

While it’s still pretty far down the list of the top-grossing movies of 1983, I would say that All the Right Moves is the first relatively iconic film on our list. It seems to have grown in stature over time since its initial release, probably because of the eventual superstardom of its star Tom Cruise.

By the time All the Right Moves hit theaters in October of 1983 (one week before I was born, by the way) Cruise was already one of the hottest young stars in Hollywood thanks to the massively successful hit Risky Business released just two months earlier. In fact, most theaters were probably still showing Risky Business at the time that All the Right Moves premiered. Nearly every review written at the time mentions Risky Business so it was clearly a major cultural phenomenon that probably affected the way a lot of viewers approached All the Right Moves and almost certainly affected the film’s gross.

Cruise plays Stefen Djordjevic, a high school football player from the town of Ampipe, Pennsylvania (the town is named after the fictional American Pipe Company which employs nearly the entire town). The town of Ampipe serves as the villain of the film, essentially. It’s a depressed, stagnant Rust Belt town that represents the opposite of the cinematic American dream, a place where no matter how hard you work, you have no chance of making a better life for yourself. Stefen’s only way out is a college football scholarship, a longshot for him considering his diminutive stature and limited physical talent. But against the odds, Stefen has started to receive a little bit of attention from smaller colleges, though his desire to go to the best engineering school possible leads him to spurn an offer from an unnamed state school at the beginning of the film (the school’s recruiter is played by a very young Terry O’Quinn aka John Locke from Lost).

When Ampipe High School’s season takes a turn for the worse, the road to a college scholarship gets a little bit tougher for Stefen. The film follows the always-reliable dramatic path of tragedy unfolding from a series of misunderstandings, misdirected emotion and unfortunate coincidences. The series of events that leads to Craig T. Nelson’s Coach Nickerson jeopardizing Stefen’s college career never comes off as forced, since each character is given enough screen time for the audience to truly understand all of their actions and the motivations behind them. It’s a classic example of well-written drama, a scenario in which the characters end up hurting each other and themselves despite having the best of intentions at the story’s outset.

Nelson and Cruise both do a great job of adding real sympathy and emotional depth to their roles but it’s two supporting performances that gave the film its most interesting dramatic moments. Chris Penn is absolutely heartbreaking as Stefen’s teammate and best friend Brian, the team’s most talented player who is forced to turn down a scholarship to USC after impregnating his girlfriend. A lot of fans and critics went after All the Right Moves for wrapping up its story too neatly and happily but Penn’s character arc to me balances this out and gives us a taste of the tragedy Stef would face if he never got out of Ampipe. There’s a moment where Penn’s character is trying to enjoy himself at a party with his classmates just before heading off to his honeymoon in Pittsburgh and the look on his face as he tries to convince everyone that he’s happy with his situation is absolutely devastating.

The other real gem in the film is a young Lea Thompson, another bright young talent nabbed that this film caught just before she took off. Thompson’s resume was virtually blank coming into All the Right Moves but in the two years following the film she would star in Red Dawn and Back to the Future, two of the most iconic films of the 1980s, and it’s not surprising to see why her career took off after this film. She exudes girlish charm and while she’s a beautiful girl, she’s comes off as identifiable rather than intimidating. To apply my 2010 perspective, she reminds me a lot of Rachel McAdams, a girl that is certainly attractive enough to be a romantic lead but gets most of her appeal from her friendly, girl-next-door personality rather than raw sex appeal. Thompson’s role as Stefen’s girlfriend mostly reiterates the same themes present throughout the rest of the film (she wants to be a musician but can’t afford college) but the biggest asset she brings to the film is the addition of yet another pressure on Stefen’s life, the pressure of maintaining a relationship. She’s a supportive girlfriend to be sure but she has needs too and Stefen’s lack of emotional maturity creates more problems for him to deal with throughout the film.

Director Michael Chapman hadn’t done much directing before this film, and didn’t much after either, but real film nerds know him as one of the great cinematographers of the late ’70s and early ’80s. His work on Taxi Driver and Raging Bull put him in the pantheon of great DPs and though he didn’t continue to work at that level going forward in his career, it should be noted that when he took on All the Right Moves, he was at the absolute top of his game and I think it shows. Chapman had the foresight to hire a then-unknown Jan de Bont to shoot All the Right Moves and it’s interesting to see de Bont working with such subtle material knowing that he would later go on to become one of the leading names in blow-stuff-up-real-good filmmaking. The bleak, depressed setting of the film is crucial to telling this story and that setting is brilliantly synthesized by de Bont’s blue and gray-toned photography.

Is the ending of All the Right Moves ham-fisted and too convenient? Absolutely it is. It’s a little odd to see a film like this so hesitant to end things in a more logical, if more depressing, way particularly when it takes its inspiration so obviously from one of the most dark, depressing dramas of the 1970s, The Deer Hunter. I suppose in the end the fact that our subject matter is football rather than the Vietnam War probably led the filmmakers to opt for a happier ending. Still despite the rather gutless resolution, the film stands up today as a really effective portrayal of a classic story of teenage angst. It works particularly well set against today’s backdrop of economic depression and seemingly bleak outlooks for the future.

All the Right Moves might be remembered today because of the big names who got their start in the film but it continues to endure as a watchable film because of truthfully it depicts its characters and their hopes, fears and desires.

Next Up: Valley Girl starring Nicholas Cage.