Top 5 Movie Summers | Archive

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00:00:45
Speaker 2: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?

00:00:48
Speaker 3: You're not interested in armed?

00:00:49
Speaker 2: Now?

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Speaker 3: No, Look, we're going to do this thing.

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Speaker 4: We're going to have a conversation.

00:00:55
Speaker 5: Hey, film spotters. Time for our Wednesday archive drop. We're looking ahead to Friday show our summer movie preview. And Josh, I don't think you were part of the conversation I had with Sam where we picked this top five. We plucked this top five from the archive. Do you know what we mean when we say if you don't read anything here on the notes page in front of us, when we say movie summers?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, what is that conjure? You know what we're talking about? Yeah?

00:01:22
Speaker 1: I mean movie Summers. When I was younger, that was the movie season and it usually kicked off around July. But then things became sooner and sooner moved into June, Memorial Day became the first big movie, and it would stretch into well, you know, then things got dicey in August. To me, that's a movie summer. It's maybe not so much as big of a thing as it used to be, but it was a thing.

00:01:48
Speaker 3: It definitely was.

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Speaker 5: I wondered if there'd be any confusion with you or with our audience, because there was on my end at first. Was this a top five we did where we were thinking about how summer or a summer was depicted on screen or were we thinking about actual, actual years? And it turns out we were thinking about actual movie years, the best summers. When you look at May to August, the movies that came out, the plethora of movie choices, the quantity and the quality. How did we think about those? How did we rank them? I'm not going to list them right now, but Sam put this in our notes that if you google top five movie summers, the first five that come up here, three of them appeared on our list. So I don't know, we're in good company anyway with some of our choices.

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Speaker 1: Okay, we're gonna share that with you now. Maybe a few unique picks also So from June twenty twenty two, here is our top five movie Summers.

00:02:48
Speaker 3: How fast did they Well, we talked to t Rex. Is thirty two miles or not? T Rex?

00:02:57
Speaker 5: You said, you've got a t Rex, so you can a top five. I am really excited about. It's our top five movie Summers. Coming at really the perfect time, Josh, as we are coming off as we tape this one of the best weekends, certainly in recent memory and maybe ever in Chicago, right, just gloriously sunny and.

00:03:21
Speaker 3: Pretty nice, craazy, just perfect.

00:03:24
Speaker 5: And even today I just got back from taking the kids to the pool for the first time, so I am primed and ready to go.

00:03:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've been hitting the pool too, and it was funny. Saturday was so gorgeous here in Chicago. And yet, of course, what do we still do? We kept it off at the end of the day with a movie. We joked about it. We said, we went as a family to see Hello Dolly at the Music Boxes seventy Millimeter Festival.

00:03:49
Speaker 3: It was so beautiful. Where why are we going to sit inside?

00:03:52
Speaker 1: But you know, when you love movies, that's how you end a gorgeous summer day.

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Speaker 5: Now, I am actually really pumped about this top five, partly because it's one of my secret favorite types of top fives, which is ironic because here we are talking about art and we like to think of ourselves at least a little bit as creative types.

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Speaker 3: I love spreadsheet top five. Oh yeah, this is right here, Allie.

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Speaker 5: I hate math, and yet I love spreadsheets and I love being able to look at all the movie titles and years next to each other and make my assessment.

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Speaker 1: And here's how our brains are wired differently. That's absolutely the right way to do it, much more efficient, way, better approach. I don't want to be anywhere near a spreadsheet, so I'm using the old fashioned Google doc for this thing. It's completely ungainly, but that's where I'm more comfortable. So no spreadsheet for me. But I knew that's how you do it.

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Speaker 5: Well, that is how I started, too, with the ungainly Google doc, and I realized I needed something more potent. Now I'm just neurotic enough to have considered going the extra mile and actually assigning a numerical ranking to every film and seeing how the average came out. And I suppose I was just too lazy for that. Josh it didn't happen.

00:05:13
Speaker 1: Did you create an advisory board out of listeners of some sort to consult and make sure every decision you were making, every slot in the spreadsheet looked okay?

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Speaker 3: Did you do that? I did not do that.

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Speaker 5: Our mechanisms for forming our lists a little bit different. I don't know how different our criteria can be. We'll find that out here in a moment. Did we at least align on and we touched on this briefly in our film spotting Slack. We limited ourselves right, going back to seventy five.

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Speaker 3: That's for summer. Yeah, the summer that.

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Speaker 5: Everyone kind of points to as the season where the whole notion of the blockbuster summer really began, of course, with Steven Spielberg's Jaws.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I did. Absolutely.

00:05:57
Speaker 1: Jaws was kind of the foundational moment that we identified.

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Speaker 5: Let's jump in, then tell us about your list and give us your number five.

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Speaker 1: At number five, I didn't have to go back to the seventies, didn't have to go back to the eighties or the nineties. Adam, here is a relatively recent movie Summer in my number five slot. It's two thousand and eight. Get each year each pick here, something of a subtitle, something that jumped out to me as why this particular summer stood out. And I'm calling this one two thousand and eight the summer of Superheroes. So the big one, you've got The Dark Knight. I mean, maybe in the conversation for best superhero movie of all time. This is one we revisited on the show a couple of years ago and both thought it stood up. And so you've got The Dark Knight there right at the top. You've also got this same year Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr. Kicking off the MCU. Essentially, I look at my ranking, my MCU ranking list on Letterbox, Adam, it's my number six MCU film. Now, I will nod to those who think the MCU has ruined cinema. This is obviously not going to count towards a great movie summer for you. I get that, But as someone who thinks more often than not, these are decent, entertaining, well done films. That is to its credit to the of two thousand and eight credit. And so I've got those two superhero movies at the top. Could you call Wally a superhero?

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Speaker 2: Though?

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Speaker 5: I wondered if you would go there, and I don't want to steal any of your Thunder, But before you said iron Man, I thought you might go fleap the tee from my beloved Man on Wire kind of a superhero pulling off the feet of walking between the two towers back in the seventies.

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Speaker 1: It's another credit to that movie Summer. Yes, absolutely, maybe superhero. I think Wally probably a little bit more of a superhero for me though, And I look at my Pixar ranking, I've got Wally at number four. So if you put those as the two best movies of the summer for me, the Dark Knight and Wally, that's quite a one two punch. As I said, I think iron Man is one of the stronger MCU films. And now let me throw a couple other titles out that came out. Some great comedy you had in this summer. Kung Fu Panda, another animated effort I liked quite a bit. Tropic Thunder fantastic. I mean, I want to see Ben Stiller back in that mode in some way again. Step Brothers my kind of Adam McKay movie. He was still making those just straight out hilarious comedies. And then you had Pineapple Express as well. Who knows how well that one holds up. Maybe not so well if I were to revisit it, but at the time sort of the perfect zone out summer comedy that I thought worked quite well.

00:08:43
Speaker 5: It's been two months you've been coming to me, right.

00:08:45
Speaker 4: So with the suit.

00:08:46
Speaker 3: I'm a process server, your servant like a butler.

00:08:51
Speaker 6: No no, no.

00:08:52
Speaker 2: I'm no.

00:08:53
Speaker 3: I serve out like subpoenas. I gotta wear like disguises.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes disguise.

00:08:58
Speaker 3: I had an easy job like you. You have the easy job on you smoke all day.

00:09:05
Speaker 5: I know.

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Speaker 3: We don't like to talk about Woody Allen anymore. Vicky Christina is good.

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Speaker 1: Vicki Christina Barcelona is good, and it's sort of in that phase where he was making match points. And there was another one that came out not too long after Vicki Christina that I'm forgetting that was decent as as well. Even as someone who's been a Woody Allen skeptic really my whole life, there are some of his early films I recognize are quite good, but I've been pretty skeptical of him. I do think Vicky Christina Barcelona's is a really strong film, so I credit the summer of two thousand and eight with that one as well. Quick note here from a listener. Got great responses from listeners on social media about their favorite movie summers, and this one came from Brendan Cassidy, who's at Brendan J. Cassidy on Twitter. Two thousand and eight first comes to mind between The Dark Knight, Wally, iron Man, Hellboy two another one that I did like, and speed Racer. Brendan throws in there at the end. I wish I could say I was one of the cool folks who liked speed Racer at the beginning. I have not revisited it since, so I can't. People are not cool. I can't say I'm trying to be cool now. But some, you know, some folks would say that also was a highlight of two thousand and eight. I don't need it, though, for two thousand and eight to be my number five pick.

00:10:22
Speaker 5: Okay, is Blue Jasmine? Maybe the other Woody Allen film you were thinking about it?

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Speaker 3: The Gosn't It isn't though I know people deson a claim a few years ago.

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Speaker 1: I know people do like that one as well. I wasn't well white as high on it.

00:10:35
Speaker 3: I wasn't either, but that is neither here nor there.

00:10:38
Speaker 5: Two thousand and eight actually a perfect transition, Josh into my top five because I strongly considered it really did take it down just to the final cut, and it ended up being an honorable mention.

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Speaker 3: And here's why.

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Speaker 5: For me, when I talk about that spreadsheet, I had a cutoff, and that cutoff was fittingly for film spotting the top five. I thought of these Summers in terms of those big five titles and really visualizing it even as kind of a movie poster if you were looking at a collage of the year and it was comprised of the best five films of that year, which Summers then really started to emerge as elite in two thousand and eight came close, But for me it didn't have that clear number five. I had Dark Knight and Iron Man and Man on Wire of course, and Wally and you mentioned a lot of other really good titles, but there just wasn't a clear number five for me the way there was with some of my other movie years. So that poster approach is really what drove my thinking, and I wonder how much of a factor this will be as we get through our lists. We are children of the eighties, and I'm sure, like me, you tried very hard to be as objective as possible, whatever that means. Go back and look at these titles all through the lens of ten, twenty, thirty, forty years, whatever it's been since these movies came out, and be realistic about how you value them. And yet, of the forty seven summers we considered, I had twelve that made my initial cut based on the movie poster approach, and of those twelve, seven were from the eighties.

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Speaker 1: Judge, I mean that makes sense, and we'll see how many I have as the list shakes out.

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Speaker 3: I do like the poster idea.

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Speaker 1: I think that helped me distinguish between my number two and number one, that sort of thinking, how much weight do I give a single fantastic movie that happened to come out over the summer compared to a handful that maybe none of them individually are as good, but as a pack, yeah, you know, they do make that summer. It's probably something that doesn't bear out in each of my picks as I'm looking at them now, but it did help me make that distinction at the top.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, and occasionally for me, depth was a factor two, even beyond the top five as we get through the list. But I did want to comment on the eighties part of it, because at first I was looking at these lists and I'm thinking, Man, these two thousands and twenty ten summers are just brutal. And then I realized, of course that not only in the eighties where we at our most impressionable, it's the time when film cast as greatest spell over us, even if we didn't maybe blossom into full blown cinophiles until a decade later. As is true for me, I look back now and I realize how much of an impact those films had on me. And of course then I had to step outside myself, Josh, and realize that it's probably going to be the same for a lot of our younger listeners, who are going to look back at the titles in some cases we're talking about and they're going to dismiss those the same way I'm dismissing movies from the two thousands or the twenty tens, and they're going to really value them. In short, my John Hughes is probably their Harry Potter.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Harry Potter definitely is going to have that sort of impact or go back to the MCU. I mean, how many you know we joke about the nineties kids, the twenty ten's kids or whatever you call them, might point to, looking back when they're older, a summer when there were two MCU movies that they absolutely loved reformative for them in the same way and ignite their excitement about going to the movies. And I can see that being the case down the road. Absolutely, my number five movie. Summer is not an eighty summer, but it is close. We got to the end of one of the best, if not the best decade for cinema ever, the nineteen seventies, and in nineteen seventy nine, here's what the movie poster looks like. And I know one of these won't resonate with you, Josh, but for audiences at the time, the movie mattered, and even for audiences like me who caught up with it a few years later and still like it now, it does round out the top five nicely. You've got nineteen seventy nine Apocalypse now number one, or if you're so inclined, you could go Alien number one.

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Speaker 3: That right there.

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Speaker 5: Makes summer seventy nine one of those summers that you just almost want to imagine yourself going back in time, walking into the theater, unsuspecting, having no idea what Copol is up to with Apocalypse Now, maybe heard some of the horror stories about it's making and people dropping out and all the money he's spending, but really not having a sense of its reputation at that point. Obviously you're not coming to it with a certain perspective as we did later and experiencing Apocalypse Now, experiencing Ridley Scott's Alien, and then if those movies may be felt, I don't know, a little bit oppressive, a little bit too much to take in. You could wash that down with the Muppet movie.

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Speaker 3: I'm Spender, I'm Wondorf. We're here to heckle him upet.

00:15:58
Speaker 5: Movie channel in that straight ahead private screening room date.

00:16:02
Speaker 3: Private screening. Yeah, they're afraid to show it in public.

00:16:05
Speaker 5: Oh, how great of a family comedy is that film? And another great comedy my number four from that year, Monty Python's The Life of Brian. Finally, for me, I've got it at five, but other people might have it even higher. The follow up to Rocky, Rocky and Apollo Creed doing battle again in Rocky two. That top five was the reason why seventy nine made my list. And there's a few others, Meatballs, you get Bill Murray really planting himself on the movie map, and that Ivan Reitman summer comedy Breaking Away, another like Meatball's great teen movie from the decade. And there was a lot of horror, and most of it I haven't seen, but I'm gonna go ahead and throw a nod to the people who may have actually seen these films back in the theater. In seventy nine, You've got Amityville Horror, not so good, but was actually the number one film at the box office that year. I think I saw in Rotten Tomatoes. It was the last time a horror movie ever topped the box office.

00:17:11
Speaker 4: Twenty eight days after the Lux family moved into their dream drops, they were running for their lives. What happened to them is an experience in terror you will never forget and you will believe in the Amityville Horror.

00:17:30
Speaker 5: You also had Phantasm, and you had Cronenberg's The Brood, And you know, if you were a Bond fan, you got to go see Moonraker. I could also throw in, but I don't think you'll let me count it that they re release Jaws in nineteen seventy nine.

00:17:44
Speaker 1: No, I don't think we're going to allow that atom that's the sort of cheating is just beyond the pale.

00:17:49
Speaker 3: But I'm with you. I'm with you on this pick.

00:17:51
Speaker 1: I'm with you enough that nineteen seventy nine is my number four because this is really a summer of masterpieces. When you look at it, you already named I think what are the two most people would agree our masterpieces? Apocalypse Now an Alien. I'm going to say it. The Muppet Movie is a masterpiece as well. And I love how you characterize it as a chaser, because, yeah, that was one other thing to consider when it comes to these movies. What feel like summer movies, right, generally comedies, big action, that sort of stuff. Alien has its action, but it doesn't really feel like a summer action movie to me. Apocalypse Now absolutely does not have that summer vibe to it. But then you have the Muppet Movie coming along and balancing that.

00:18:34
Speaker 3: Out a little bit.

00:18:35
Speaker 1: So those three really were the reasons why it ended up here at number four. Apocalypse Now. When we did our I think it was in twenty twelve. YEP, our citing sound inspired lists best of all time, we did a ten and then we did a second time. For me, Apocalypse Now was in that second ten, so it's in my top twenty of all time. You get a movie like that out in a summer, you have to consider it for this list. Yes, Rocky two is not going to be a credit to me as much as Moonraker. I mean, you've got Roger Moore possibly at his cheesiest, my favorite Bond loved that when it came out.

00:19:13
Speaker 3: As a kid.

00:19:14
Speaker 1: I probably caught up with it a couple years later on VHS or something like that. But yeah, Moonraker definitely is a reason why nineteen seventy nine is on my list at number four.

00:19:25
Speaker 5: I will be curious to see how much more overlap we have, Josh, and for the really pedantic listeners out there, I will go ahead and preemptively note that, no, the Muppet movie couldn't really be a chaser two. Apocalypse Now came out I think two months before it earlier in the summer, did follow a month later Alien. My number four is the summer from.

00:19:48
Speaker 3: The movie year.

00:19:50
Speaker 5: We devoted our first best year ever Series two back in twenty nineteen commemorating twenty years of this great cinematic year. Yes, it is nineteen ninety nine. The case against ninety nine would be that it's not a particularly deep summer. Outside of the top five, I'll get two in a second. You've got South Park, Bigger, Longer, and uncut. Fan of that, You've got John Sales and Limbo also enjoy that film. The David's for There and notting Hill, Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts is fine. I also know there is a fair amount of love out there for both bow Finger and Dick.

00:20:32
Speaker 3: In terms of the big summer tent.

00:20:34
Speaker 5: Pole movies, though, Josh, the movies that should have defined the summer of ninety nine, it's a bunch of films that I still haven't bothered to catch up with, did see and don't really care about, or did see and really didn't care for. It's movies like Wild Wild West and The Mummy, and Tarzan and Deep Blue Sea, American Pie, even Adam Sandler's Big Daddy. If you look the three highest grossing films of the year, one of them is in my top five. The other two Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me? That was a lackluster sequel, and speaking of lackluster sequels, Josh no Star Wars Episode one, The Phantom Menace. While the movie we were all most highly anticipating back in ninety nine, it's not going to make the movie. Poster is going to make the movie Poster. Our five movies that helped spur this year to number three on my list of the best movie years ever back in twenty seventeen when we did that Top five, Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick, of course, Kidman Cruise. And then you've got two horror films, both of which we know how much of a fan you are, The Sixth Sense m Night Shyamalan and The Blair Witch Project, two movies that had everybody talking that summer, talking about the twist, whether they saw it coming, trying not to ruin it for people, and the film that as we've talked about a little bit here on the show, and we did our nine from ninety nine review of Blair, which people weren't sure if it was real, if it was really all a hoax, whatever it was. The marketing around that film was very effective, and then we both feel strongly that it lived up to that marketing. The search of the three missing Montgomery College students continues in Frederick County tonight.

00:22:26
Speaker 7: Test days and thousands of man hours have been unable to produce any clues.

00:22:30
Speaker 1: We have a few leads, a few of the options we want to take advantage of and just try to put together some some pieces to this puzzle.

00:22:39
Speaker 5: How about the iron Giant Bradburg setting the table for his amazing Pixar work, a great animated film from that year, and I'd run out the top five with Tom Tickverers pumping high concept thriller that was probably a gateway art house film for a lot of cinephiles back in nineteen ninety nine.

00:23:00
Speaker 1: Run, Lula Run, talk about stealing my thunder Adam, you went right out and grabbed my number one.

00:23:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, and maybe this should have been a joint list.

00:23:10
Speaker 1: It is an incredible, incredible lineup, and I think why I have this at number one. Even as you're listing those titles, I can picture the theaters that I went to for the top three, which I would say are The Blair Witch Project, The Sixth Sense, and Eyes Wide Shut. As you said the expectations, what you did know about it. In the case of Kubrick, just knowing that this was a master with a late career effort, and then all of the buzz surrounding blair Witch Project in sixth sense, So if you're talking about and the Phantom Menace, I mean, which I, as you know, still appreciate, but I remember thinking about that and anticipating that this was just it felt like a momentous summer at the time, and it has stood the test of time to remain a momentous summer in retrospect. Maybe not in all the ways we expected, some ways.

00:24:03
Speaker 3: That surprised us.

00:24:04
Speaker 1: I think something like the Iron Giant was a surprise sixth sense obviously a surprise, and you know, blair Witch Project a surprise, but yeah, people have been talking about it since Sundance that year. So yes, it's the experience of being able to put myself. And maybe this isn't a fair way to evaluate this because obviously I couldn't do this for the seventies, and I couldn't do it really as much for the early eighties at least the nineties. Totally there and this summer totally hit. Keep in mind too, when you talk about the blair Witch Project, I've got that as my number two horror film of all time that same list six senses number eight. So this for me as I'm giving it, you know, the subtitle is the Summer of Horror, just with those two movies on it. And as I'm looking at my nineteen ninety nine top ten list so compiled at the time, I've got Blair Witch six cents, eyes wide shut. Let's see what else here. I really love South Park, Bigger, longer, and uncut. Put that on my top ten. Put The Phantom Menace on my top ten. I think half of my top ten for that year came out in the summer, So that's why I had to put nineteen ninety nine right at the top of my list.

00:25:15
Speaker 5: Talk about truly stealing your thunder. I spoiled your number one summer job.

00:25:21
Speaker 3: I don't know where to go from here.

00:25:23
Speaker 5: Well, obviously we both have good taste. We'll see how we do then with my number three movie summer. And as I was earlier bemoaning the lack of good options from the twenty's or twenty tens, I've got twenty fifteen as my number three movie summer. And here's another case like ninety nine, where three of the bigger titles people might point to from that summer didn't mean much to me, those being Avengers, Age of Ultron, Jurassic World, and Straight Out of Compton, which certainly had its redeeming facets. That was a film that I felt, ultimately couldn't overcome some of the pitfalls of that type of biopic. Outside of that, though, Josh, there really is a lot of depth here. You've got in the movie poster mad Max Fury Road x Makina from Alex Garland Inside Out. We just talked about it last week on the show and our Pixar pull question. Amy one of my favorite documentaries from that year. Maybe a weird choice to have in the movie poster, but that's how much I liked it. And there's a lot of competition for these last two spots. I've got Amy and Mission Impossible Rogue Nation, but you could throw in Magic Mike XXL as well that movie, and actually Magic Mike was just on last night flipping channels for a little bit. Magic Mike XXL is another one that seems to be on kind of HBO just every so often as I'm flipping channels, and both films are undeniably rewatchable.

00:27:00
Speaker 3: I get caught up in them every time.

00:27:02
Speaker 5: It's just kind of background movies if you're a little bit distracted, but also you find yourself getting caught up in them every time. And if those titles aren't enough, there were a bunch of smaller films from that year that I think we were positive on all of them, Josh, at least the ones we both reviewed. Noah Boumback's Mistress America, great collaboration with Greta Gerwig there as the writer co writer with bound Back. He directed it Love and Mercy, the biopic ish movie about Brian Wilson, and To the Tour, the biopic ish movie about David Foster Wallace. We saw Joshua Oppenheimer's follow up to The Active Killing, The Look of Silence, and Yeah, I can't believe it's taken me this long to get there.

00:27:51
Speaker 3: How about Pitch Perfect too?

00:27:53
Speaker 5: And I know people are screaming right now at their listening devices, Josh, because I've talked about how great the Summer of twenty fifteen is, and I haven't even mentioned the movie that surely had to be the biggest movie of the summer, at least second to Age of Ultron, and it's the film that did compel the two of us to take the plunge and actually immerse ourselves in the Fast and Furious series.

00:28:21
Speaker 1: Like it or not, you and your friends are a part of it.

00:28:24
Speaker 3: Now, I don't have friends of a family.

00:28:31
Speaker 5: Furius seven one of the better entries in that series or saga, whatever you want to call it. I haven't even mentioned another film I know you like even a little bit more than me, and that's the Amy Schumer comedy train Wreck, Yeah, which is very good. So a lot of films from twenty fifteen I think to justify this pick, but especially when you look at those top three Fury Road X makin an inside Out. I don't know if you ever had this happen to you, Josh. I was sure that those three films all made my top ten films of twenty fifteen. I would tell people that those three movies are not only three of the best films of that year, they're three of the best films of that entire decade. And I went back and looked at my list. Somehow You've got Inside outber four, which I know you like the film obviously. I just think of myself as even loving it more and somehow it wasn't in my top ten that year. Does that ever happen to you where you're like, I know this is in my top ten.

00:29:33
Speaker 3: Surely it is. You look back and it's not there.

00:29:35
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, of course I've got I've got some crazy stuff on my top tens.

00:29:38
Speaker 3: When you go you go back.

00:29:40
Speaker 1: Twenty fifteen though, holds up pretty well for me, and it's why I did consider this year. Train Wreck was on that top ten as well, but then the big ones you just mentioned Inside Out, Fury Road Xmakina.

00:29:51
Speaker 5: My favorite movie of that year? Was it your Was it your number one that year? I think it was my number two year, number two? I was one or two.

00:29:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, so so if it's it's my number one. I had to give twenty fifteen some consideration but didn't make the cut.

00:30:04
Speaker 3: However, answer me this, how do you feel about it?

00:30:09
Speaker 5: Her?

00:30:09
Speaker 3: Ai is beyond doubt?

00:30:11
Speaker 2: No, nothing analytical, Just how do you feel? I feel She's amazing.

00:30:19
Speaker 5: You've got two more picks to get to. You're three and two. This is where math comes in and where math gets annoying. You have your number three and number two left. I've got my number two in number one and it turns out we share those same movie years, just in a slightly different order. Tell us why eighty two is your number two.

00:30:39
Speaker 1: Well, because it's the summer of Spielberg. That's the subtitle I gave this, which people may be wondering. Why wasn't ET the only Spielberg film that came out that summer. Well, he had a pretty heavy hand involved in Poltergeist, which is a horror film that has made my Top ten Horror Films of All Time list. I think I've got it number nine there, and yes, Spielberg was a producer. It feels very much like a dark Spielberg film. The credited director, Toby Hooper all sorts of production stories about how heavily Spielberg was involved in that. Whatever the case, it's a really incredible horror film and one of the reasons I have nineteen eighty two as my number three movie summer here Spielberg's touch. Let's go back to ET, though my favorite Spielberg film. In my twenty twelve cit and Sound Inspired Top twenty of all time list, it makes that bottom ten group. Also, we've already talked about Fury Road Adam in twenty fifteen, one of the years. One of the summers you picked, how about Mad Max two The Road Warrior? Hard to say which is better in terms of a George Miller movie, Fury Road or Road Warrior. If I were ever forced to pick, that would be incredibly tough. I love Mad Max too. You also have just a little movie called Blade Runner coming out in nineteen eighty two. I'm a big fan of Tron. It might be a while before others who look at this summer get to Tron, if they get to it at all, but I think that's one of the best films of that summer. And then we've talked about how comedies are crucial to have as part of the mix. Here in your favorite movie summers, You've got a great one with fast times at Ridgemont High Arm.

00:32:24
Speaker 4: What's the reason for your truancy?

00:32:27
Speaker 2: She couldn't make it on time?

00:32:30
Speaker 3: You mean you couldn't or you wouldn't. It was like a full crowd scene. The food lunch, food will be eaten on your time.

00:32:39
Speaker 4: Why are you continuously late for this class, mister Spicoli? Why do you shamelessly waste my time like this?

00:32:51
Speaker 2: I don't know.

00:32:53
Speaker 1: Jase Kowski on the Larson Film Facebook page. He dropped this comment simply, the summer of eighty two made me a movie lover. We've talked about which summers are the formative years for us. Eighty two was one for Jase. A couple of titles that are highly rated by others, maybe not so high by me, but The Thing, An Officer and a Gentleman. Those both came out in eighty two. So a significant movie summer for me. And I've got it at number three.

00:33:21
Speaker 5: Yeah, significant and so good. I stole your thunder now you're returning the favor. Nineteen eighty two is, in fact my number one, number one the summer. Yeah, it's number one, And you really did list all the titles, but offen to put it over the top for you.

00:33:37
Speaker 3: Hey, hey, you kid.

00:33:40
Speaker 5: It's part of the reason why I think eighty two is such a good movie year. No, it's not in the movie poster. The top five for that year looks something like this to me, Blade Runner, Et The Thing, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And then here is where we really get into what makes eighty two so deep. You could have any number of films at least five or six contending for that fifth spot, and everybody listening might have a different answer. You could go Poltergeist, you could go An Officer and a Gentleman.

00:34:14
Speaker 3: You could go.

00:34:15
Speaker 5: With Mad Max to the Road Warrior, one of three big sequels from that summer. I know noted Josh that you skipped two movies that you don't care for but are pretty great. And I loved them when I was a kid in the early eighties, and I still think they're very good now. Rocky three and Star Trek two. Give it to me, give me a little con.

00:34:36
Speaker 3: That's right. I saw that. I was of con.

00:34:39
Speaker 1: Do I even want to put this on my list because then I have to deal with con?

00:34:47
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you do have to deal with con and it belongs as part of the conversation. Also, folks wanting their kind of boomer and nostalgia fix that year. Diner came out in early May. But I have yet to list the film that actually, for me would be in the top five. I know a lot of people overlook it. This is my particular hill to die on. One of my all time favorite movies happens to be the George roy Hill film starring Robin Williams and Glenn Close. The world, according to Garb that was also eighty two, So maybe tough put that in the top five when you're talking about movies like Blade Runner, Et, The Thing, Fast Times, and Poltergeist, but it would be in the poster for me. And you were talking about your year ninety nine as the horror year, and certainly I wouldn't describe ET as a horror movie or Blade Runner. But it's interesting to see those three titles together and think of them kind of as three varying takes on the creature feature. You know, three movies that really explore this idea of the other, whether it's the thing from another world in The Thing, the thing from another world that's benevolent in ET, or these replicants, these things that are just like us, they take the form of us, not unlike that creature in the Thing.

00:36:05
Speaker 3: And that's a film.

00:36:06
Speaker 5: I know you're not as big a fan of Josh, that Carpenter film, but just speaking to something primal about human nature, the nature of human nature, the notion of fear itself, about survival, about paranoia, and Fast Time, the seminal teen sex comedy that really created the blueprint for better or worse for so many films that followed throughout that decade, and.

00:36:30
Speaker 3: I'm talking about horror movies.

00:36:32
Speaker 5: I imagine seeing Fast Times at Ridgemont High for a lot of parents in the early eighties was a kind of horror experience. Right, Oh, that's what our kids are up to. I really didn't need to know that. And of course Poltergeist, the movie that then was about those parents, that sixties generation parents now reckoning with some of the decisions that they're making later in their life. That's a film that still absolutely holds up. And you joke about an officer and gentlemen. I've always been a fan of that film. The movie that everybody's parents if you were a kid like us back then, it's probably the film that everybody's parents went to.

00:37:09
Speaker 3: See, that kind of prestige.

00:37:11
Speaker 5: Quote unquote adult film. Your dad was probably seeing it because it was about the military. Your mom was probably seeing it because it had Richard Gear in it, looking so good in those naval whites. Lewis Gossa Junior giving a performance that went on to be awarded Best Supporting Actor, the first black actor ever to win that award.

00:37:33
Speaker 6: I've done some check in, I look through your files. I know about your mama the ball me. You know, your father's an alcoholic, You a chaser.

00:37:45
Speaker 7: That's why you don't mesh mail because deep down to eyeballs, deep down inside, you know that all these other boys and girls are better than you are.

00:37:57
Speaker 3: Not right, ma'am uh isn't that right? No, sir, No, sir.

00:38:05
Speaker 5: We've mentioned like twelve films Josh that came out alone in the summer of eighty two that are all still worth seeing and worth discussing, and that's why it's my number one.

00:38:18
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:38:18
Speaker 1: It's pretty incredible to think about that all being hacked into just a couple of months, isn't it.

00:38:23
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:38:24
Speaker 1: If do we get that with the world of streaming nowadays, we probably get just as much in terms of quantity of the content. But yeah, that is a ton of good stuff. So number one for you, number three for me, Yeah, which means I'm moving on to my number two. And this is where I was really struggling with the question of is it the poster approach? Do you want, you know, quantity essentially although all quality as well, or could there be one film that is just so towering you almost have to reckon with the summer because that one film came out as long as the rest of the season wasn't a dud. And this is what nineteen eighty nine was for me. It was the summer of an all timer. It's when we got Do the Right Thing, the only film of any.

00:39:12
Speaker 3: Of these we've discussed.

00:39:13
Speaker 1: I talked about how we did that sit and sound inspired top ten of all time back in twenty twelve. Do the Right Thing was on my top ten at that point, and so it's just in a different stratosphere than any other movie we've talked about. And it came out in the summer of nineteen eighty nine. Okay, so I've got to take this summer seriously. What else came out that might actually not only landed at this list but put it pretty high up, if not number one, number two where I've got it. Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. I think we both consider that not just an Indiana Jones sequel, but really in its own right and incredible adventure film. Dead Poets Society, which we've revisited together Adam on the show and thought held up similarly. Could say the same thing about Batman. Tim Burton's Batman hugely appreciated that.

00:40:05
Speaker 3: On a revisit.

00:40:06
Speaker 1: And then you have a couple here that some people might not like as much, some people might rank as highly as the ones I just said when Harry met Sally sex Lies and videotape, the announcement of Steven Soderberg, And for me, James Cameron's The Abyss. I love the Abyss, a hugely underrated cameraon movie. And maybe that's just because he's made other films that have become these box office and cultural juggernauts. And I know there is affection for the Abyss out there, but I would actually put The Abyss right up there with some of his most acclaimed films. So for me, nineteen eighty nine had to be at number two. Had a couple of listeners give support on social media. Greg Milliken on Twitter, He's at my tweet lord most memorable summer ever at the movies, and then Rich Stearn's on Facebook. I don't know how much I factored this in, but he offered this up Weekend at Bernie's. Always vote for Weekend at Bernie's if you say so.

00:41:01
Speaker 5: Rich, I did laugh quite a bit a Weekend at Bernie's back in ninety nine. I'm not gonna lie the sequel not so much, Josh, I'm sorry. Where in that litany was Roadhouse?

00:41:11
Speaker 3: Oh? Have I seen Roadhouse? Oh? Man, if you haven't, that's our next live show. I would love nothing more. And I think that would be a great choice.

00:41:23
Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe more apropos for our friends at the blank Check podcast to watch Roadhouse versus Us. But you know it's a movie that I do remember with a lot of affection from nineteen eighty nine. No, it's not on the movie poster. Josh, you almost nailed it. Here we are sharing another pick, and we're even sharing the same slot. For me, it really came down to eighty nine verses eighty two. And even though we agree ninety nine is obviously a great year made both of our lists, these two were in a tier all by themselves. And it's that that poster you had them in almost the exact same order as me, Do the Right Thing, Last Crusade, Dead Poet, Society, Batman, and then for me instead of Abyss or when Harry met Sally ahead of sex Lies and Videotape, I've got the Soderberg in that fifth slot, followed by the Abyss and the Rob Reiner comedy classic with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, and a big movie that summer too that maybe no one's going to go back and need to rewatch. Lethal Weapon two was a big hit. Vampire's Kiss, the Nicholas Cage movie that I still need to see came out in eighty nine. And maybe we won't talk too much about Star Trek five, The Final Frontier.

00:42:40
Speaker 3: Josh, Final Frontier, I think that's the one I like.

00:42:42
Speaker 5: That's probably the one you like, which would make total sense. But we don't need to extol the virtues of these films. It's just the variety, though encompassed in those five you've got Soderberg really setting the indie world on fire with sex, lies and videotape. Me in eighty nine, the aspiring but not quite college English major, seeing something like Dead Poets Society and having my world set on fire. Batman the defining comic book film, certainly of our childhoods, and really it's certainly a superhero film, finding film until we started to get all those MCU movies, of course much later, and Indiana Jones feeling at the time, you know, I wasn't a big fan of Temple of Doom when it came out in eighty four, and I still, of course had that deep appreciation for Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I remember coming to the Last Crusade kind of thinking, is this Spielberg just trying to reheat the magic a little bit? Is this film really gonna deliver on its own terms? And we've talked about it here on the show. Having seen it recently, fairly recently, not only with my kids on DVD, but then also seeing it at the Music Box with a big crowd. It was a magical experience and for me one of my favorite Spielberg films, not too far behind Raiders of the Lost Ark and Do the Right Thing, a movie I don't think I saw in eighty nine, Josh, I was still in a place in time, maybe not quite I've said this before, maybe not quite at that point point, as sophisticated a cinephile as you, I was one or two years away still from really getting into it. And in small town Iowa, we weren't getting Do the Right Thing at the single theater cinema. I certainly at that age wasn't able to drive to Des Moines and see that film either. And as we're thinking about movie summers, and we kind of started off talking a little bit about a summer like seventy nine and what it would have been like to see Apocalypse Now in the theater for the first time, or see Alien back in seventy nine. Do the Right Thing is also one of those time capsule movies. Sure, you really do wonder what it would have been like, how incendiary it would have been, how revolutionary it would have felt at the time, And then add to it, what if I could have seen it in my little small town, Iowa cinema. What would the reaction to that film have been. It's something that will only have to be a fantasy, Josh, but certainly not just one of the best movie summers ever. But the second choice on my list that I also had is one of my favorite movie years ever.

00:45:36
Speaker 4: You want Brothers on the Wall, get your own place, you can do what you want to do.

00:45:44
Speaker 7: What I tell you about that.

00:45:48
Speaker 1: So I did a little research Adam on my website and indeed Star Trek five, the Final Frontier, it's one of the rare good.

00:45:55
Speaker 3: Star Trek movies. So I think that's it.

00:45:57
Speaker 1: I've got to bump eighty nine up to number one now, given that you're incorrigible.

00:46:03
Speaker 5: Those are our top five movie summers. We would love to hear your picks or any other comments about the show feedback at filmspotting dot net. Did you have some honorable mentions, Josh that you want to fit in?

00:46:20
Speaker 1: I did give consideration, as I mentioned to one of your picks, twenty fifteen, and then the other two years that I thought about were nineteen ninety one Quickly Thelman, Louise, Jungle Fever, Terminator, Tube, Judgment Day, Boys in the Hood. Those were the movies that really made me give that year some consideration. And then how about two thousand and two. We just revisited Sam Raimi spider Man recently, really strong film held up for us. You had Shyamalan again with Signs, Spielberg with Minority Report, Leelo and Stitch Is a Disney movie that I really like, The Bourne Identity, and then About a Boy. I think those were the strong films. Of course, I'm a fan of Attack of the Clones. I love the prequel You are, so you know that works for me. So those were the other two years I did think about nineteen ninety one and two thousand and two.

00:47:07
Speaker 5: Well, making your case further for nineteen ninety one. I believe that not only did you not give proper recognition to Roadhouse earlier, but you did not call out Point Break either. Oh that's right, Swayzy Matt from nineteen ninety one mentioned it earlier two thousand and eight from your list one, I considered going back to the original, the one that started at all. That movie poster for nineteen seventy five starts with Jaws, is followed by Dog Day Afternoon, and then you throw Robert Altman's Nashville on it. From there, the esteem maybe drops, but that is a formidable trio. You've got Woody's Love and Death. You've got Cooley High, a movie we both like quite a bit. Also one I still somehow have never seen. But we all know that in movie theaters across the country at midnight, people are still watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And I mentioned off the top that seven of my twelve that I was considering or something we're from the eighties. I will not run through them all, but I think you just can look back at every year eighty four up to eighty eight you can make a case for, and I think the only one I'll single out here, Josh, that is the purest shot of nostalgia. Just when you look at the list, it's eighty four, another one of those years that a lot of people consider one of the best movie years ever. This is the summer that gave us Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid, Revenge of the Nerds, Sixteen Candles, Gremlins, Red Dawn, another Swayze pick, the Last Starfighter, of course, Prince in Purple Rain. I didn't see the never Ending Story, but a lot of people loved it in eighty four, and I've left out two films that I don't like that much, the Temple to Doom and Once upon a Time in America. Eighty four is the year I couldn't justify on my list because I don't know that I could look a lot of listeners in the eye and say that outside of nostalgia, all or even most of these films hold up. But it's the one I really have to highlight here, Josh, because I don't know how I could explain to someone who wasn't a kid in eighty four what it was like, just the endless parade of going to the theater and seeing these films and then rewatching them, and rewatching them, and rewatching them on HBO.

00:49:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just named my neighbor friends at their house, their entire VHS collection yep, with those titles pretty much.

00:49:30
Speaker 2: Star Wars, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid The Sound of Music. In the tradition of these great films about fighting back against the odds, twentieth century Fox presents another milestone in motion picture history Revenge of the Nerds.

00:49:51
Speaker 3: Nerds, Nerds.

00:49:52
Speaker 5: We do love to get your feedback. What do you think the best movie summer was? Do you remember going to the theater repeatedly, maybe back in your youth or even as an adult, and seeing the best set of movies. If you could go back in time and relive it, what summer would it be?

00:50:10
Speaker 3: Let us know.

00:50:11
Speaker 5: Feedback at filmspotting dot net. And if you would like to learn more about becoming a member of the Film Spotting Family, where you get unlimited access to the Film Spotting Archive and more, you can learn more at film Spotting family dot com.

00:50:23
Speaker 7: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore.

00:50:27
Speaker 1: Goodbye,