Friday Movie Night, part II

We are still watching movies on Friday nights with friends. A few of them collaborated to build a bot on our Discord server that allows us to nominate movies, and on Friday afternoon, it creates a poll with 3 random movies for us to choose from. Three cheers for democracy!

Here is the latest batch, plus a few I forgot from the last post.

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension — what the heck even WAS this movie? I enjoyed seeing very old actors when they were not old. Much of it is set in New Jersey, which immediately makes it awesome. I *think* they were trying to pay homage to 1938’s War of the World radio show, but I’m not 100% sure. It was fun and 80s fashion is always great, but think I needed another drink. Also, Jeff Goldblum was disturbingly quasi-sexy.

Tango and Cash – Holy 80s, including Sylvester Stallone in fabulous 3-piece suits and Teri Hatcher before her plastic surgery. Kurt Russell’s adorable. Can you call it a buddy cop movie if the cops aren’t buddies until the end?

Army of Darkness – This is the third movie in the Evil Dead series and it was okay. Maybe if I had seen the first two I would have been more enamored. I think the SFX department bought out all of the Spirit Halloween stock to create the undead army.

Weekend at Bernie’s – Thanks to the Internet we know a corpse couldn’t take a beating like that, but it was still a funny little romp. We watched it over Labor Day weekend, a bonus.

Real Genius – Evil military people who want to use science to destroy? Check. Group of plucky college uber-nerds fighting THE MAN? Check. Bebe Val Kilmer? Check. It was an 80s teen movie for better (madcap hijinks and pranks) and for worse (sort of sexist, but in a way I’m used to). The soundtrack brought me back to a simpler time when all I had to worry about was nuclear war. It was my favorite of this bunch, but The Big Lebowski is still my favorite, though.

Better off Dead – TWO DOLLLLARRRRS. I did see this movie as a teen, and with the exception of cringey high school student stereotypes, stalkery overtones, and suicide jokes, most of it holds up. I always remembered the Ricky character as a dorky nerd, but he was really a boundary-breaking creeper and the actor was really good at playing a boundary-breaking creeper. Turns out he was played by Dan Schneider, former producer of a bunch of Nickelodeon shows with a few unsubstantiated #MeToo-ish clouds over his head. The movie does a great job showing how I remember teenhood – everything was THE BEST or THE WORST or THE MOST AWKWARD.

Ninja Scroll – My first anime movie. There were ninjas, but I don’t recall a scroll. WM warned me that it was borderline rapey, but … eh? There are far worse rapes in movies. It was overall kind of dumb.

Time Bandits, Idiocracy – I didn’t attend these weeks – sometimes I just fall asleep by 9:30 on a Friday night and there’s nothing to be done about it.

As my friend C said, “It’s not the movie itself, it’s who you watch it with.”