Released in 1980

Raging Bull (1980)

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011
★★★★★

I’m your brother and you ask me that?

Raging Bull is an unforgettable portrait of man who seemed to lack the capacity and imagination to ever be happy. It’s not a film you watch to be uplifted or reassured about the human condition. The most pleasant thought you can take away from the story of Jake La Motta (Robert DeNiro) is how fortunate you were not to be one of his friends. Or him.

Raging Bull

Stacked next to La Motta, DeNiro’s other great role for director Martin Scorcese, Travis Bickle, is a poster child for well-adjusted contentment. (more…)

Director:  | Released:  | 129 min. | Rated:  | Genres: , , , , 

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The Final Countdown (1980)

Saturday, December 1st, 2007
★★★★★

Still think it’s a dream?

For what it tries to be, about the only thing I can find wrong with The Final Countdown is the title. There really is no countdown involved and, even if there were, there would be nothing particularly final about it. We shouldn’t let that hamper our enjoyment about what has to be the best movie ever made about a time-traveling aircraft carrier.

The Final Countdown

This is one of those movies that would be nothing without its cast, as it depends upon actors with a certain level of gravitas that you need to sell a profoundly silly premise and this film has scored a jackpot in that department.

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Director:  | Released:  | 103 min. | Rated:  | Genres: , 

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Flash Gordon (1980)

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
★★★★★

Klytus, I’m bored.

This is the kind of movie that Ed Wood would have made if he’d ever had the budget. It has everything: bad writing, bad acting, bad special effects and bad music. Is it cheesy? There’s enough cheese on screen to keep every restaurant in France supplied with sauce for a year. Is it campy? It goes beyond camp. This is an entire Boy Scout Jamboree. Is it corny? Like Iowa, baby.

Flash Gordon

Okay, Mr. Smart Alecky Movie Reviewer Guy, stop beating around the bush. Did you actually like it?

Um… yeah.

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Director:  | Released:  | 111 min. | Rated:  | Genres: , 

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The Big Red One (1980)

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
★★★★★

By now we’d come to look at all replacements as dead men who temporarily had the use of the arms and legs.

The Big Red One, Samuel Fuller’s fictionalized retelling of his own experiences as a member of the 1st Infantry Division in World War II, is a particularly effective grunts-eye view of the war, despite its somewhat meager budget. It follows an unnamed Sergeant (Lee Marvin) and four soldiers of his “first squad” who manage to survive the war with him. They join him as inexperienced “wet-noses” before the invasion of North Africa and follow him to the very end of the war, when they liberate a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.

Big Red One

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Director:  | Released:  | 113 min. | Rated:  | Genres: , 

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Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006)

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
★★★★★

I never thought this would go the distance.

In the early seventies, producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind successfully translated Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers into a pair of films, shot together as one. Despite being sued by several of the performers demanding payment for two films instead of just one, the Salkinds must have thought it was successful enough to attempt repeating the experiment when they adapted Superman for the big screen later that decade.

Superman II: The Donner Cut

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Director:  | Released: ,  | 115 min. | Rated:  | Genres: , ,  | Franchise: 

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The Blues Brothers (1980)

Wednesday, February 1st, 2006
★★★★★

It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses.

Hit it.

Regardless of whether or not I like the movie, The Blues Brothers has something serious to answer for. This is probably the film that convinced movie producers that sketch characters from Saturday Night Live could be successfully translated into movies. Therefore “Joliet” Jake and Elwood have to shoulder part of the blame for travesties like A Night at the Roxbury and It’s Pat.

The Blues Brothers

The problem is that the Blues Brothers weren’t sketch characters. They didn’t have a catch phrase and their only “schtick” was a genuine respect for the music that they covered. This gave screenwriters Dan Aykroyd and John Landis the freedom to craft an actual story around the characters. If the story is a little too slight to support two hours and thirteen minutes of running time, that doesn’t matter too much. Like their Blues Brothers appearances on SNL, this movie is mostly about the music.

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Director:  | Released:  | 133 min. | Rated:  | Genres: , , 

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Airplane! (1980)

Thursday, December 15th, 2005
★★★★★

Surely, you can’t be serious.

I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.

When Airplane! appeared on the scene, people acted as if they had never seen anything like it before, but of course they had. What the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams created was a two-hour cinematic vaudeville act. Set-up, punchline. Set-up, punchline. Bah-dum boom. All that was missing was a drummer in every theater to deliver the rimshots.

Airplane!

This is a good thing, too. Movies hadn’t been this funny since the Marx Brothers were making Duck Soup, and haven’t really been this funny since. The only thing to come close to this level of shameless wall-to-wall laughs was Jim Abraham’s and the Zucker Brothers’ short-lived TV classic, Police Squad, which inspired the Naked Gun movies.

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Director: , ,  | Released:  | 88 min. | Rated:  | Genres: 

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