Twice Upon a Time (1983): A PG-rated cartoon fable about a despot out to give the world permanent bad dreams. It’s too abstract for grade-schoolers, but teens and grown-ups who like fairy tales with a Pythonesque, warp-speed edge should enjoy it happily ever after.
Under Fire (1983) : (seen) The most human political thriller in years, this look at three journalists (Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman, and Joanna Cassidy) in Nicaragua manages to score all its points and still be engrossingly suspenseful. Even the romantic subplot doesn’t seem stupid.
Used Cars (1980): (seen) Good-taste guardians have always hated this raunchy, high-spirited comedy, and that’s all to the good . Director Bob Zemeckis went on to the glossier Back to the Future trio.
Vampire’s Kiss (1989) : (seen) A cult has already formed for this outrageous black farce about a Manhattan trendoid (Nicolas Cage) who slips into insanity and thinks he’s a vampire. It’s another caustic slapstick money-loser from the pen of Joseph Minion.
While the City Sleeps (1956): (seen) Fritz Lang’s dirty little urban drama is a sleazy roundelay where everyone sleeps around for advancement and the compulsion for personal power within the press is revealed as the embryo of totalitarianism.
Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978) : Karel Reisz’s adaptation of Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers, about the corruptive effects of the Vietnam war, is taut, tense, bitter, and unremittingly cynical. Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, and Michael Moriarty try to move heroin and are chased by drug dealers.
Withnail & I (1987): (seen) British actor Richard E. Grant plays Withnail — an impossibly narcissistic leech who never stops talking (or drinking). The movie captures the toxic excess of the late ’60s with a clear-eyed purity and humor.
Zardoz (1974): (seen) ohn Boorman’s campily imaginative sci-fi fantasy where women are Amazons and men are nervous. Along comes the very potent Sean Connery, ready to penetrate the Vortex in general and Charlotte Rampling in particular.
A Zed & Two Noughts (1985): (seen / caveat: I love Greenaway, but his works are slow)
Peter Greenaway. With a plot that resonates but never resolves, and camera work that gorgeously uncovers the horrors of nature, Zed is chilly, beguiling gamesmanship.
I posted these here because I coulnd’t get the page to load without enabling a bunch of questionable junk. The above is from an archive made several years ago and shortened for faster reading and for inclusion of my own brief comments on this list.
Well since this list is from 1991 there’s been more than 30 years of movies to see since then and anything newer is probably more culturally relevant. I mean: Point Blank was kinda great in its time, but I think it’d just feel dated now. Sometimes a movie can shine above being dated and sometimes being dated makes a movie more interesting, but in the case of Point Blank… well… while I still like watching Lee Marvin, there are so many movies to see and so little time that it doesn’t need to be on a must-watch list.
Part 3 – Final bit:
I posted these here because I coulnd’t get the page to load without enabling a bunch of questionable junk. The above is from an archive made several years ago and shortened for faster reading and for inclusion of my own brief comments on this list.
Thanks for posting these instead of making us brave a listicle site. I can’t believe I’ve only seen two of them (Deathrace 2000 and Zardoz).
Well since this list is from 1991 there’s been more than 30 years of movies to see since then and anything newer is probably more culturally relevant. I mean: Point Blank was kinda great in its time, but I think it’d just feel dated now. Sometimes a movie can shine above being dated and sometimes being dated makes a movie more interesting, but in the case of Point Blank… well… while I still like watching Lee Marvin, there are so many movies to see and so little time that it doesn’t need to be on a must-watch list.