1980sSomewhere in Time (1980) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Universal halved the budget, the actors' strike stopped Reeve and Seymour promoting it, the critics were brutal, and it ran three weeks. Cable and video then turned…
1930sThe Natural (1984) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Levinson took a bleak 1952 novel about a man who takes the bribe and inverted its ending completely, which is either the film's great betrayal or the reason…
1980sLegend (1985) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Ridley Scott built a forest inside a Bond stage at Pinewood, burned it to the ground, and produced the most beautiful fantasy film nobody watched. Tim Curry under three-foot…
1980sHeaven's Gate (1980) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Cimino shot two hundred and twenty hours of film for forty-four million dollars, took three and a half million at the box office, and ended the era that…
1980sFlash Gordon (1980) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Dino De Laurentiis spent a reported twenty million dollars or more on a deliberately camp space opera, hired Queen to score it, and produced something no serious film…
1980sCaddyshack (1980) rates 8.5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The plot was abandoned during production and the film assembled itself out of whatever four comedians did in front of the camera. It should not work. It made sixty…
1980sAmerican Psycho (2000) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Mary Harron read a novel everybody called unfilmable and found the comedy in it. Made for seven million dollars, mostly in Toronto, and it is far funnier and…
1960sDirty Dancing (1987) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A film about class and an illegal abortion, marketed as a summer romance. Made for five million dollars by people nobody expected anything from, and still running forty…
1980sDonnie Darko (2001) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A time loop film that works better as a portrait of adolescence than as a mechanism. Failed on release for reasons of timing, found its people on DVD,…
1980sLeviathan (1989) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. An underwater Alien with a good cast and a wrecked Soviet ship. One of three deep-sea monster films released in 1989, and the middle one.
1970sThe Love Boat (1977-1987) rates 5 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Nine seasons of guest stars falling in love on the Pacific Princess. Artistically negligible, structurally brilliant, and it rebuilt an entire industry.
1980sAmadeus (1984) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Not a biography and not trying to be. A film about a competent man given exactly enough talent to hear genius in somebody else and never produce it himself.
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