Cinematic Throwbacks: July 1980/1990/2000/2010

1980:

This was not technically the first spoof movie, but it was the first one to really hit.

I think the ZAZ team perfected this more by the time they got around to The Naked Gun, but we don't get that without Airplane. 

This movie has to have one of the all time best ratios of jokes to laughs. Very few jokes in this thing don't land. And many that do land are completely iconic. 

This movie completely changed the careers for Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack and of course Leslie Nielsen.  I do wish that instead of Robert Hays, we had original lead David Letterman. That would have been amazing. 

1990:

Die Hard 2 is a classic late 80s/early 90s Hollywood sequel, for better and worse. 

Arriving barely 2 years after the original Christmas classic, this one is truly a rehash. It copies the premise, many of the characters (even one or two that have no business being here), they even set it at Christmas (even though this time it isn't really worked into the story).

It's a fun movie. Willis is hitting his stride. That plane crash sequence remains a stunner. There are a few other good action beats. 

But like a lot of part twos of that era it's all about repeating itself. The series really scaled heights again with the next 2 entries (yes, including the fabulous Live Free Or Die Hard) which went someplace new and didn't just give us another terrorist holding a place hostage at Christmas. 

2000:

Of all the big spoof movies, none was ever as aimed right at my sweet spot as this. I was a huge fan of all the Scream era horror flicks. I always appreciated how in this movie they got jokes in there about some of the little details that only real fans would catch, like how violent Ryan Phillippe is in I Know What You Did Last Summer as Freddie Prinze stands by passively, or how Neve Campbell flails about in Scream.

This movie wasn't a ZAZ production (a couple of the sequels did have their involvement), instead this was the Wayans Brothers, with Keenan directing, and Marlon and Shawn as 2 of the stars. The movie launched Anna Faris, who is barely even recognizable here, as well as Regina Hall.

This movie holds up as still pretty funny, especially when it stays focused on the horror targets.

No, X-Men is not the "first" of the modern comic book superhero flicks. Blade hit 2 years earlier. But Blade was a much more minor character, in a lower budget movie, that I'm sure most regular moviegoers did not even know was based on a comic at all. 

X-Men was unmistakable. Everyone knew this thing was based off a comic book. And it set the template for so much of what was to come.

You had the movie itself being sold on the brand recognition rather than any big stars (not that Halle Berry & Patrick Stewart in particular weren't already big names). You had the filmmakers taking great strides to ground it in some reality, down to the costumes. And maybe most key if all, you had the reins of such a film being handed to a director not known for such big blockbusters.

Yes, Bryan Singer has become a rather complicated figure of late. But he was maybe THE key person here. 20 years later it's become very much the norm for a big comic book movie (or even just a big franchise movie period) to be entrusted to a director with no experience doing such films (almost every first time MCU director had never done such a movie beforehand), but back then it sure wasn't. But Singer's success led to Sam Raimi getting Spiderman, and even Christopher Nolan  doing Batman. 

This movie itself holds up pretty good. You can tell it was made on a much lower budget than you would see today. It doesn't have THAT great a main bad guy plot, but this intro movie nails the character casting and relationships. Stewart and Ian Mckellen remain 2 of the best CB movie castings ever. Obviously this movie launched the career of Hugh Jackman, who was an instantly iconic Wolverine. Anna Paquin, Famke Janssen and Rebecca Romijn are all great, and would continue to be. I always enjoyed Ray Park as Toad, including his little Darth Maul homage. Only Berry kind of gets short shrift in this one. The sequels gave her more to do. 

Of course this movie launched a whole X-Men universe that was mostly very successful and almost always underappreciated, and is of course over now, save for Deadpool.

Loser is probably largely forgotten amongst the teen movie boom of its era. It didn't do well at the box office, wasn't well received critically, and hasn't exactly become a cult film either, rather surprising considering this was Amy Heckerling's follow-up to Clueless. 

It's one I always have liked watching though. Chief reason among them is Mena Suvari. Back in 2000 I was very much buying all the Mena Suvari stock. Of all the American Pie cast, I liked her the most. Cute as hell, seemed sweet, could act. And she's really appealing in this movie, opposite Pie co-star Jason Biggs (whose own career never really got to where I thought it might). It's a charming rom com, and as I recently learned, very much ripped off in part from The Apartment.

Gotta mention the trio of rapey roommates. Biggs has 3 roommates in the college-set movie, all misogynist pigs, and who spend most of their screentime either roofieing women or trying to. They aren't presented as good guys, but their actions are largely played for comedy, and while they do get their comeuppance, it only happens in closing title cards. It's creepy stuff, and would never jibe today. 

2010:

My favorite film of 2010, and one of the best films of the recently ended decade. 

This film was just a masterpiece. Christopher Nolan cashing in all his chips from The Dark Knight to make the biggest, most star studded sci-fi mind-bender imaginable, the kind of film that only he has the clout or the ambition to make anymore. 

It's become tediously trendy in recent years to hate on Nolan (some are basically glad COVID came around just so Tenet got delayed), but the guy is the only filmmaker of the last 20 years who can truly stand with Tarantino as the very best. 

It's insane how a film this intricate and potentially confusing is so clear and easy to follow. It's so well written that you never even notice much that so much of the dialogue is exposition. The set pieces are incredible. It has one of the best casts ever, with top notch DiCaprio, Tom Hardy's first big role, Ellen Page in one of the last really good parts anyone's bothered to give her, and a slew of other great actors in top form.

It's kind of criminal that this didn't win a slew of Oscars. It won some tech awards, but that's all. 

This movie isn't necessarily all that memorable. I myself hadn't watched it in years til the rewatch for this blog. 

There were a lot.of these live action Disney adventure flicks back in the day. This one starred Nicolas Cage as a sorcerer trying to prevent a witch or something from taking over the world or whatever. And there's a lot.of Macguffin-y stuff involved. And Alfred Molina is the bad guy. Look, the plot is gibberish, and the film is overstuffed with CGI, but I enjoyed the movie then AND now, and for different reasons I think. 

Then I saw a fun, unpretentious comedy. Now I see it as the last time we got a Nic Cage summer blockbuster, and one of the last times a Cage movie period was any good. The most dated thing in it is that Hollywood was trying to make Jay Baruchel into a movie star, but his obvious miscasting plays well here, and I always dug Teresa Palmer, who was also in her little run of big parts in big movies that just never clicked into her being a star.

So, next month is August, and it looks like a pretty thin month of memorable anniversaries, but the ones we do have are pretty notable: Scott Pilgrim vs The World turns 10, Bring It On turns 20 (I may have some thoughts on how the ending sucks) and the film that WAS high school me, Pump Up The Volume, turns 30.