1982 in film.

Top ten box-office films of 1982:

1. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
2. Tootsie
3. An Officer and a Gentleman
4. Rocky III
5. Porky's
6. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
7. 48 Hrs.
8. Poltergeist
9. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
10. Annie

What are your top three films for 1982? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be:

1. The King of Comedy
2. Fanny and Alexander
3. Blade Runner

What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later?

YEARS IN FILM • forum.chorus.fm

 

The first two were easy to pick, but I struggled between Blade Runner and The Thing. The King of Comedy is such an uneasy thing to watch, and it really sells Pupkin as a loser. Fanny and Alexander doesn't get enough credit in Bergman's filmography, but his sense of time and place is as good here as ever. Blade Runner got the edge because of its philosophical components, but the creature's forms in The Thing are often more believable than millions of dollars of CGI today.

 

1. Blade Runner
2. King of Comedy
3. Rocky III

 

1. The Thing
2. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
3. King of Comedy

some great/weird ones this year

 

1. King of Comedy
2. Fanny and Alexander
3. Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Love The Thing and Smithereens too, not as high on Blade Runner as many but I respect it.

 

Scorsese is going to end up being the most represented director in the final bracket. Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson might do well later on and we might see a lot of Christopher Nolan votes but Scorsese might beat Francis Ford Coppola pretty quickly.

 

Other good ones:
Smithereens
Halloween III: Season of the Witch
Basket Case
Grease 2
Poltergeist
Friday the 13 Part 3
Slumber Party Massacre
5 Element Ninjas
Creepshow

 

I lurk these threads a lot to try and learn about films I've never heard of/seen... but seeing this just made me laugh out loud. Very curious about this take!

 

baffling

 

Isn't Grease 2 a known embarrassment?

 

It’s really fun! A bunch of great set pieces like the bowling alley, super catchy songs, incredibly campy. I probably saw it 200 times as a child. I unironically enjoy it more than the first one

 

Grease 2 is a camp classic

 

1. The King of Comedy
2. The Thing
3. Carry on Pickpocket

I really didn't know what to make of The King of Comedy the first time I'd seen it. At that point all I'd seen of Scorsese were his explicitly violent films, so something like this, which is dark and uncomfortable, but then also light and comic at times I really couldn't make head or tail or if. It's really grown on me since, and it's a really subversive and fascinating watch. Rupert Pupkin is an absolute lunatic, but you sort of can't help but root for him

The Thing I also watched pretty young, but I obviously loved that straight away. Fantastic and gruesome practical effects, and one of the all time great lines in horror; " I don't know what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off!"

The third maybe should have been Blade Runner, but I feel like I respect it more than I actually enjoy it. So I went for Sammo Hung's Carry on Pickpocket, which basically has everything I love about his films in a short scene. He does the Charlie Chaplin bread dance, tries to flirt coyly with Deannie Ip, busts some sweet moves on the dancefloor and then kick some guys in the head. Perfect. What a guy.

Honourable mentions would include Fanny and Alexander, Fitzcarraldo, Brothers from the Walled City, A Good Marriage & Human Lanterns.

Brothers from the Walled City is particularly worth tracking down, as it was filmed in the Kowloon Walled City, which was a ludicrously densely populated lawless mini-enclave in HK that is scarcely believable actually existed up until the 90s.

 

This is another fantastic year for films with a wide variety of genres that had at least one great effort but outside of my first pick the other two could easily be swapped with several other films, that said I will settle on these -

1. The Thing
2. Poltergeist
3. Tenebre

Other favorites from the year include; Creepshow, Fitzcarraldo, First Blood, 48 Hrs., Blade Runner, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Missing, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

 

1. Blade Runner
2. The King of Comedy
3. Fast Times and Ridgemont High

 

Also a really good band

 

yes indeed

 

What’s the band - Brothers from the Walled City or Kowloon Walled City?

 

Kowloon Walled City haha

 

This belongs in the Unpopular Entertainment Opinions thread.

 

1. L’Enfant secret
2. I Are You, You Am Me
3. Querelle

Fanny and Alexander is obviously a major work, but I haven’t seen it in close to a decade and again it’s just something that doesn’t really align with where my preferences sit at the moment. I recently watched Room 666, which is a fascinating documentary by Wim Wenders where he simply asks a selection of filmmakers “What is the future of cinema?” It’s really interesting to reflect on these answers some 40 years later, and also to measure how certain answers reflect the later works of those filmmakers who still continued to produce films. Raul Ruiz’s On Top of the Whale is another great curiosity from this year.

 

It is correct and I’ve been on record as a defender for years! You dorks haven’t even watched

 

believe it or not i actually have watched the movie that is bad

 

I look forward to someone putting Mac and Me on their 1988 list and then acting like we are crazy for questioning them.

 

In 8th grade my choir teacher put Grease 2 on in our last week when we were all done with everything school-wise and pretty checked out, and she knew we’d seen Grease basically every time we had a substitute the last two years. She stopped it about half an hour in because she thought it was bad.