A kids’ radical road adventure movie that offers little for the grown ups, The Wizard should only tickle your fancy for its shameless promotion of the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Which is all good by me.
80s-o-meter: 95%
Total: 62%
Kuukausi: helmikuu 2017
#563 White Ghost (1988)
White Ghost, an action movie about a blonde skinny curly mulleted Rambo stuck in the Vietnam jungle builds up to be a passable – if highly dumb – action movie once it gets going after the long buildup.
80s-o-meter: 85%
Total: 60%
#562 Prison (1987)
Renny Harlin’s Hollywood directorial debut leaves the plot shallow and the characters paper thin, but as an horror thriller it’s more than a passable 90 minuter.
80s-o-meter: 80%
Total: 72%
#561 Flash Gordon (1980)
Look, I just wasted two hours of my life with this one, please don’t do the same.
80s-o-meter: 0%
Total: 0%
#560 Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989)
The sixth Police Academy got a lot of bad rap when it was released, but personally I liked it much better than the previous iteration.
Police Academy 6: City Under Siege successfully restores the series to its roots and offers a solid whodunnit plot instead of just a series of loose jokes.
80s-o-meter: 92%
Total: 84%
#559 Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach (1988)
Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach loses it core acting talent, leaving Assignment Miami Beach a crippled and unmotivated exercise low on wittiness and substance, and high on inane slapstick.
80s-o-meter: 89%
Total: 38%
#558 Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987)
Very similar to the previous Police Academy movie, Citizens on Patrol sees the return of G.W. Bailey, has a kick ass soundtrack and feels like the most well rounded sequel up to this point.
80s-o-meter: 86%
Total: 76%
#557 Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986)
Although at best just collection of loose sketches, Police Academy 3: Back in Training does manage to outperform the previous instalment in the humour department, and delivers the light, frivolous comedy the movie goers came to except.
80s-o-meter: 84%
Total: 75%
#556 Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985)
Even though the story is transferred to a different location and new characters – some of them even creative and humorous – are added, compared to the original Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment feels watered down in many ways.
80s-o-meter: 82%
Total: 61%
#555 Police Academy (1984)
A comedy with a great array of funny and memorable characters that started an uniform sub-genre of its own, Police Academy is an 80s landmark comedy often imitated, but never surpassed.
80s-o-meter: 80%
Total: 90%
#554 Highlander (1986)
A box office flop that later gained a cult status, Highlander sure is style over substance, but when a movie looks this good I don’t really even mind.
The sound department is equally as awesome and compliments the events on screen beautifully, thanks to the superb soundtrack by Queen.
80s-o-meter: 75%
Total: 80%
#553 Spies Like Us (1985)
Directed by the great John Landis, and starring front line comedy skill along with some celebrity cameos, Spies Like Us is a lukewarm experience much less than the sum of its parts.
80s-o-meter: 78%
Total: 58%
#552 Testament (1983)
Sometimes a made-for-TV movie can outperform its commercial companions simply by having the liberty to take a more bold stance artistically, instead of aiming just for the lowest common denominator.
Testament is a prime example of a movie like this.
It’s an uneasy and unnerving portrayal of the survivals of a nuclear falloff on a small Californian town and its people trying to cope with the new reality while looking for any glimmer of hope that just seems to keep on slipping further away. It’s a chilling ride that delivers its grim message in a tone that is true to itself.
80s-o-meter: 65%
Total: 95%
#551 The Evil That Men Do (1984)
A movie that could’ve been titled ’Death Wish The Mexican Tour’, The Evil That Men Do repeats pretty much everything Bronson’s other movies have done before, in a very unenthusiastic manner.
80s-o-meter: 30%
Total: 39%
#550 Something Wild (1986)
A refeshingly different combination of a romantic comedy and a triller rolled in one movie, the real gem in Something Wild is its latter part with the intensive performance by the superb Ray Liotta as the chilling ex-boyfriend from hell.
80s-o-meter: 82%
Total: 76%
#549 The Wild Life (1984)
A spiritual sequel to the superb Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Wild Life beautifully captures the few quick passing moments of being young, but feels overall much less weighty than its predecessor.
80s-o-meter: 88%
Total: 82%
#548 Scalps (1983)
A bunch of kids do some digging in the sacred indian land and then get killed one by one in Scalps, an extremely low quality slasher that really has nothing special going for it.
80s-o-meter: 30%
Total: 19%
#547 To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)
To Live and Die in L.A. is stunningly beautiful, raw, deadly and unforgiving. If you are looking for the most bad ass crime action movie of the 80s, you’ve got it right here.
80s-o-meter: 98%
Total: 100%
#546 The Holcroft Covenant (1985)
Although the premise of the nazi treasure is promising, The Holcroft Covenant with its 80s European locations feel stuffy and too many clever twists and turns in the plot make it really tiresome to follow.
80s-o-meter: 40%
Total: 59%
#545 Exterminator 2 (1984)
With the graphic kills present in the first movie cut out from this sequel, Exterminator 2 loses the interest of its core thrill seeking audience, and the only exceptionally cool thing about it is the cheapish but entertaining video game like synth soundtrack.
80s-o-meter: 88%
Total: 52%