Iro's One Movie a Day Thread

You never had a BB gun have ya

Australia does have some pretty strict gun laws.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Ha! too funny.

I had a BB gun and that movies right, you can shoot your eye out, ouch.

I think those who like A Christmas Story is so in part to nostalgia as you say.

I think I may be the only person who's never seen A Christmas Story, and has no desire to see it because of all the hype.

Valid point - I guess in my case the hype got to the point where I had to see it.

I've never seen it or know the hype about it.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Apparently it's a really beloved cult classic that became a holiday favourite for more or less the same reason that It's A Wonderful Life - because TV played the hell out of it at Christmas-time. It almost sounds like thirty years of Stockholm Syndrome.

I've seen It's A Wonderful Life many times, and I love it. Maybe the difference is that I saw It's A Wonderful Life before I heard all the hype about it, so I was able to judge it on the movie itself, not compare it to anything that I'd heard about it.

With A Christmas Story, I've seen a few scenes, and the commercials that air on TV every year, and it just looks like a movie about an annoying kid. There's nothing in the trailer that makes me think that I'll like the movie, and I can't understand what everyone else sees in it. I'll probably watch it someday just out of curiosity, but I don't have hopes for it.

A Christmas Story isn't just about an annoying kid. It's about several annoying kids.

That just makes it sound worse.

I first saw A Christmas Story at the movies when it was out. I was 11 then, which is probably the perfect age, and I liked it a lot. I don't think it's a great movie, but I think it's a great Christmas movie, and I still enjoy watching it at this time of year. I feel much the same about Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase, but I think A Christmas Story is superior. It's too bad you didn't like it, but it's certainly only made it's mark because of Christmas.

#5 - Italian Spiderman
Dario Russo, 2008



Italian Spiderman is an affectionate parody of old-school exploitation films that follows the titular superhero as he becomes embroiled in an adventure that involves a powerful meteorite and the suited-up luchadore villain who intends to use the meteorite for evil.

That GIF above has become an infamous reaction image in its own right, but its quality (or lack thereof) says a lot about what kind of film you're getting into when you watch Italian Spiderman. While technically a ten-episode web series edited together into a single video, the resulting compilation should qualify as a short film anyway and has its own IMDb entry listing it as such so I'm counting it. I watched this because I've recently started watching the spy-themed comedy Danger 5, so I figured I'd given Dario Russo's breakthrough hit a chance as well. Italian Spiderman is a lovingly-crafted homage to foreign '60s exploitation films that rip off popular Western characters and are very obviously shot on shoestring budgets. If you have any familiarity whatsoever with movies of that nature then you can easily spot all the various tropes being mocked here. Bad dubbing, dramatic zoom-in shots, visible puppet-strings - it's all here. You can't deny there's attention to "craftsmanship" here, but then there's the real question - is the humour actually funny?

Deliberately parodying works of entertainment that already qualified as "so-bad-it's-good" is a tough balancing act to get right. When you go to this much effort in order to make a deliberately bad movie, have you really just ended up making a bad movie? The more subtle the distinction between knowing mockery and actual incompetence, the less clever it seems. Quite the paradox, really. Italian Spiderman gets the vibe of the film right, but never seems to do anything worthwhile with it. Having the film be dubbed into Italian with the occasional snippet of gratuitous English may be true to the subject matter but there's nothing particularly funny about it - an overly hammy dub is usually funny, but here it just becomes tiresome and not even deliberately poor subtitles make up for that. I can't even imagine this film's dialogue being any funnier if it was dubbed into English instead, but at least it would make the film slightly easier to follow. The lead character is the kind of self-absorbed, amoral protagonist that exploitation films tend to feature that are generally terrible people from an objective standpoint, but even the gags designed to mock his unheroic nature don't work. The best example is when he punches a man and tells him to respect women only to end up punching a woman and telling her to make him coffee only seconds later. Heroes of other parody movies such as Austin Powers and Frank Drebin are called out on their glaring personality flaws and undergo at least some character development over the course of their movies, but that just doesn't happen with Italian Spiderman and it makes for some frustrating viewing.

Tying in with the (deliberately?) poor handling of Italian Spiderman as a character, the film's origin as a series of short videos makes the full version feel very fragmented and thus emphasises ludicrous action sequences over any decent character or narrative development (even within the context of a Z-grade parody). The film clocks in at just under forty minutes, but you quickly become very used to the deliberately awful filmmaking on display. Every noticeable use of green-screen, every glaringly fake animal puppet, every logical inconsistency, every excessively violent and bloody death...after a while it does become about as tedious as many actual exploitation movies. While I can sort of appreciate the effort (or lack thereof) that went into simulating the exact look and sound of bad old movies (right down to shooting the whole thing on 16mm), it doesn't matter if I don't get any laughs out of it. I'll at least concede that it's the work of a first-time filmmaker, but if the nicest thing I can say about the film is "Hey, at least it looks awful" then you probably haven't done too well. At least that GIF will live on in infamy.

#6 - Billy Madison
Tamra Davis, 1995



The immature drop-out son of a wealthy hotel tycoon ends up engaging in a wager that he can finish every possible grade of school within a certain period of time in order to prove that he is capable of running his father's business.

Billy Madison is another one of those films where I'd watched practically all of it but didn't count it because I hadn't watched it from start to finish. A peculiar distinction, but I stick by it. I also figure that, despite Sandler being considerably unfunny in the bulk of his cinematic outings (especially the recent ones), I should at least try to watch this one (as well as Happy Gilmore, but I'll get to that later). Given the presence of Sandler, I of course lowered my expectations suitably and the result...well, it wasn't too bad. Granted, Sandler as the titular man-child can be rather grating, especially during the early scenes where he's communicating almost exclusively in whiny gibberish, but as the film progresses the jokes actually improve. Swapping out the annoying kid-like sing-song voice for a petulant hamminess was the right decision on Sandler's part, especially the scene where he gets an eight-year-old classmate to call up their attractive teacher. Even without having seen the movie in full, I was already capable of quoting a variety of lines from the film and even in their original context they're still funny enough (such as Chris Farley's brief role as a bad-tempered bus driver or Steve Buscemi of all people as a former classmate of Sandler's). The "straight" characters play their relatively one-dimensional roles well enough and act as suitable foils to Sandler's zaniness. Despite the ridiculous nature of the high-concept, the writing on offer makes it seem plausible enough that you can just roll with it without much question.

So yeah, I'm not about to change my mind about the various other Sandler vehicles that annoyed me over the years, but I'll concede that Billy Madison is at least intermittently funny. Being on the lighter side of ninety minutes doesn't hurt either. Some jokes fall flat, sure, but I think the fact that I'll reference jokes from this about as frequently as I'll reference Anchorman or Fletch or even The Big Lebowski is a testament to a certain unspoken quality that the film possesses. Though I may give it what's technically a negative rating, it's still surprisingly solid.

#7 - Happy Gilmore
Dennis Dugan, 1996



Another Adam Sandler picture, this time about a wannabe hockey player who discovers he has a talent for playing golf and enters into pro tournaments in order to raise the money to save his beloved grandma from a sadistic nursing home.

This has long been touted as the best Adam Sandler comedy and, once again, this is another movie that I've never quite seen all the way through (yeah, there's a good chance you'll be seeing quite a few movies I've never seen "all the way through" on this list). Coming so soon after the release of Billy Madison, it does feel like a slight improvement on that particular film. The same tropes are there - underdog narrative, blonde love interest whose initials are "V.V.", slick upper-class douchebag antagonist, etc. - but they're all used to slightly better effect in the context of a sports movie rather than the fairly implausible "back-to-school" premise. It also helps that Sandler drops Billy's annoying voice permanently, substituting in a truckload of rage issues that always result in something funny. You could easily make a list of the various sports underdog clichés that are at work here, but in the context of a comedy they become a bit more tolerable and amusing. Some of the gags are surprisingly clever ("I eat pieces of sh*t like you for breakfast", anyone?) and there's not nearly as much gross-out humour as you'd expect - instead there's a lot of humour milked from the contrast between blue-collar loudmouth Happy and the entire pro golfer community. All things considered, this is probably the best Adam Sandler vehicle I've seen yet (and yes, that does include Punch-Drunk Love, but I'm considering revisiting that just to make sure). Even if you usually can't stand Sandler you should be able to appreciate the familiar yet comfortable humour inherent in this comedic take on sports movies.

Happy Gilmore is my favorite Sandler comedy by far, and really just a fun movie in general. I'm glad you liked it!

As you said, Billy Madison isn't bad either.

For a Sandler film without a certain lady, I think this is the best one I've seen and I remember it as the funniest one I've seen. I really didn't like Billy Madison very much, but as you said, this is pretty much the same thing, but done a lot better. Still think I was tiring of it after about an hour, though.

i like early sandler, but even as a kid i don't remember thinking happy gilmore was any more than decent. billy madison was one of my favorites as a kid and i still really like it.

Adam Sandler was my favorite actor during my teenage years. I still enjoy several of his earlier films, but Happy Gilmore is the cream of the crop. I especially love all the stuff with Carl Weathers and the gator. Not to mention the infamous fight with Bob Barker ("The price is wrong, b!tch" ) . I suck at golf and I have no interest in the sport, but the few times I've stepped up to a tee, I'm always tempted to take a Happy Gilmore-like swing.

I used to love Billy Madison, too, but it hasn't held up for me as well. The last time I re-visited it, I found it more obnoxious than funny.

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I'll take this Sandler over the Sandler we currently have, where he only makes movies to go on vacation with friends. AND PEOPLE PAY HIM TO DO IT!!!!

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

#8 - Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films!
Mark Hartley, 2014



"From the creators of Not Quite Hollywood comes a brand new high-stakes thrill-ride! Two men united by one dream seek to take the world by storm! Prepare yourself for a rollercoaster ride jam-packed with...VIOLENCE! SEX! MONEY! FAME! You've never seen a team quite like Golan and Globus in...ELECTRIC BOOGALOO!

In the 1970s, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus wanted to make amazing movies like the ones they were seeing come out of Hollywood, so they produced enough hits in their native Israel to make the move to Hollywood and take over Cannon Films. During their time with Cannon, they managed to churn out countless movies of every conceivable style and genre (but not quality) until a series of large commercial failures drove the pair apart and led to the demise of Cannon Films. There are many actors, writers, directors, producers and executives who have something to say about these two and their company and a lot of it gets said here.

Stylistically, this is a pretty standard documentary. Hartley doesn't deviate too wildly from the same combination of talking heads and archival footage (with the occasional special effect) that worked wonders for him in Not Quite Hollywood. While that film was a bit nebulous in that it was about an entire country's cinematic output, having a more specific subject works just as well. On the other hand, it's a little hard to know just how well it depicts Golan, Globus and Cannon Films. The tone of the first third or so is set by the pair's getting their big break on a wave of sexploitation movies. This initially prompts eye-rolling as they produce The Wicked Lady, a stylish enough Regency-era period piece that gets filled with gratuitous nudity anyway; after that, it gets uncomfortable as they produce Death Wish 2, which leads into director Michael Winner trying to defend a graphic rape scene from that particular movie during an archived TV interview. This makes for a disturbing segue between their sexploitation films and their much more violent films. Marina Sirtis recounts some rather unnerving anecdotes during this sequence as well. The rest of the film moves onto their extremely campy action films, but there's this shadow that hangs over the rest of the film, leaving me wondering if there was a dark side to these goofy entrepreneurs and their employees.

Tonal misstep aside, it's an interesting subject. Though a fair bit of lip service is paid to both Golan and Globus as a team, Golan himself gradually becomes the greater presence as several people recount their experiences with him and imitate his thick accent. Between the tales and film footage, Golan comes across as a larger-than-life oddball who seems somewhat charming even with his lofty aspirations and clueless nature - like Tommy Wiseau only with ludicrous amounts of money. The movie also serves as a highlight reel for a lot of memorably terrible movies. There are the low-rent action movies such as the Death Wish sequels, Chuck Norris vehicles like Missing in Action and Invasion U.S.A., plus a lot of ill-advised ninja movies (including the notorious American Ninja series). There are bizarre left-field films like Lifeforce, Invaders from Mars, and of course both Breakin' movies. The film even takes the time to look at the surprisingly good movies that the studio produced such as Love Streams or Runaway Train. The turning point comes when the studio deviates from their low-budget success formula and tries to make major hit movies such as Superman IV and Over the Top, which is the beginning of the end for Golan and Globus' bizarre moviemaking joyride.

Electric Boogaloo concludes with the appropriately tragicomic story of how Golan and Globus, having had their falling out, race against one another to see who can release the first movie about the "Lambada" dance craze. Each one's drive to outdo the other ends up splitting the box office and making both films flop as a result - a fitting end to the story of two partners who accomplished weirdly impressive things together but lost what little spark they had when they were apart. The end titles then reveal that Golan and Globus, when approached to appear in this film, not only declined to do so but set about making their own documentary about Cannon Films that managed to get released first. It's quite the punchline to what comes across as a joke that got played on a lot of moviegoers during the 1980s - interviewees are just as likely to pan the pair and their movies as they are to defend them. Definitely worth watching if you have at least a passing interest in cinematic oddities and the people responsible, but unlike Not Quite Hollywood and its celebration of Ozploitation, this film seems a bit more balanced in regards to its subject matter and will just as easily show a seamy underbelly as the campy surface.