Dissolve's Forgotbusters: Movie Hits That Audiences Forgot

Rabin (his style as well as his subjects, often) was such an afterthought to this site. He was more of a personality. It's all the other stuff I will really miss. I'm sure they will land on their feet, but I don't know if the already massively constricted writing market can make room for half a dozen more tenured voices. I wonder how long this has been in the pipes? Hopefully long enough to give them time to devise some "what next?" scenarios.

Given the fact that they hadn't even finished this week's feature on Grizzly Man, I'd say they proabably weren't given much time.

so.. where do all the fun loving film fans go now? i miss it!

To the movies, silly!

Perfect candidate: Presumed Innocent, one of 1990 top fifteen grossing movies, starring a serious Harrison Ford.

Good call. Too bad this series isn't still around, because I'd love to read an essay on how the "legal thriller" drama became so passé in the years since PI.

And by "drama," I mean "genre"

it sure took awhile though

and even then it just moved to TV

the Poppy Bush-era musical interzone between 1988-1992 also existed for mainstream movies: floral print ties, baggy suits, overt sexism.

Alan J. Pakula's staid trilogy of mainstream entertainment: PI, Consenting Adults, The Pelican Brief.

i miss the legal thriller genre - nice, cheap adult entertainment. presumed innocent kind of a bridge between aids fear glenn close sex thrillers of the 80s and grisham legal thrillers of the 90s. i think i generally like it better than any of the former or latter though, the political angle is fun, raul julia is awesome, john spencer - "the lady was bad news". interesting structure as these things go iirc. the twist at the end seems a bit corny now but at the time had to be a mindblower, esp considering in combination w/ the initial implication of 'omg indiana jones WAS guilty'. amazing to think what a hubbub was made over harrison ford's caesar at the time as well. not sure why that legal thriller genre went away - too many david kelley lawyer shows on tv? not enough grisham bestsellers to feed the pipeline? the best one i can think of from the past ten years or so is michael clayton, where the legal aspect is ancillary basically, or the social network, where the thriller aspect is questionable. it's funny to compare the relative (relative) legal sophistication of something like presumed innocent to something like the verdict, which probably kicked this whole cycle off about ten years earlier.

god speaking of forgotbusters i caught disclosure on tv a few weeks back, such a strange, awful hackish movie. the misogyny is kind of amazing also, ted bundy or jack the ripper could have written it.

amazing to think what a hubbub was made over harrison ford's caesar at the time as well.

the pressing question upon the movie's release.

I had no idea that Turow's book is considered some kind of touchstone. Anyone read it?

Yes, it's a pretty good legal thriller w/ overreaching literary pretensions (book def better than the film). I guess it's a touchstone because it predates Grisham (Turow again is a better writer than Grisham)

The Raul Julia character appeared as the main character in Turow's next book The Burden of Proof, which was then itself made into a miniseries (on ABC?) with Hector Elizondo starring. No disrespect to Elizondo, but that's a heck of a downgrade.

best legal thriller remains Anatomy of a Murder, although I'd question whether it's a thriller.

The Verdict, which I've seen several times, always seems rather junky.

Aside from Newman's closing speech to the jury, the moment of The Verdict that always sticks with me is Milo O'Shea telling Newman, "You're not going to get a mistrial, boy!"

For whatever reason.

Milo O'Shea's scene with Mason, Newman, and the bowl of clam chowder is my second favorite after Mason's monologue to his junior lawyers.

Presumed Innocent is closer to Witness for the Prosecution than it is to Anatomy of a Murder, imho

yes

I'd assume that the decline of the legal thriller has to do with the eventual phasing out of adult audiences at the movies (no surprise that the genre thrived longer on TV). And yeah, I wasn't taking into account the 90s run of Grisham adaptations in my earlier post; obviously, those were huge. I don't remember much about PI (aside from my easily being able to ID the killer even at 11-years-old), but I'll take its granola pulpiness over the sanctimony (and homophobia) of Grisham any day.

(Though obvs Anatomy of a Murder >>>>>>>>> any of these)

i do miss this series though, i wish he had looked at more older 'wtf was this? how the fuck was it a big hit?' movies vs more recent (ie past thirty or so years) hits that made you go 'o yeah, i remember that, hadn't thought about that movie in forever'. like when you look at top ten grossing films lists for the seventies there's often one or two that you're like 'wtf' and it'll like not even be available on video anymore, like one of the movies from that jack davis poster thread only it was a huge hit.
eg
this was the sixth highest grossing film of 1976
http://cfdb.owmconsulting.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/In-search-of-Noahs-ark-Christian-Movie-Christian-Film-VHS-Video-James-L.-ConwayBrad-Crandall1.jpg

these are two of the ten highest grossing films of 1975

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/Film_Poster_for_Aloha%2C_Bobby_and_Rose.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/Film_Poster_for_The_Other_Side_of_the_Mountain.jpg

like summer of '42 and billy jack have been kinda lost to time but anyone who knows '70s pop culture knows of them even if they've never bothered to actually watch them (which yeah, ok, the in search of movies totally qualify here also). the only ppl i know who know anything about aloha, bobby and rose are like ppl who have two lane blacktop memorized.

Rising Sun isn't much different -- both are Crichton by the numbers, but instead of covering up corporate crimes with a sex act, you get weird "japanese culture" orientalism surrounding a sex act that was part of a corporate crime cover-up

Crichton probably deserved a lot of blame (especially for the recurring sexy crime plot device) but I think there were a handful of movies that mined that space, like Ridley Scott's Black Rain (a cop drama involving a liason with Japanese cops)

sorry, that was an xp to a mention of Disclosure

aaron sorkin really missed his calling here, malice so easily the best thing that guy is ever gonna write -

https://youtu.be/8g2dkDh4ov4

- you coulda been a contender you fool!

Presumed Innocent has the (SPOILER) worst character-who-did-the-murder-explains-at-length-how-and-why-they-did-it scene ever! but it's a good movie IMO. especially this bit where Ford as the suspect, gives his own summing up of what the prosecution will say

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XJ1JOwyWbc

also the soundtracks is the bomb.
and yeah to echo balls doesn't it fucking suck that Raul Julia died so young?

yeah crichton and demi moore are such weird 90s phenomena that have aged so poorly in general, kind of a dull humourlessness to both of them as well.

i wish he had looked at more older 'wtf was this? how the fuck was it a big hit?'

this is so otm. I'm fascinated by films that were hugely popular but is now completely unavailable/forgotten/unknown - there are so many of them!

may raul julia's ghost forgive me but madea in gone girl reminded me of him.

yeah i can see that.

forgot how sleazy Harrison was in this actually. and those suits, ecchh.

check out the #1 films of 1975: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1975_box_office_number-one_films_in_the_United_States

We're so blockbuster oriented (thanks, Jaws!) that to look at a year when Dog Day Afternoon, Shampoo, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Let's Do It Again could hit #1, sometimes in the third week of release, is like studying trilobite skeletons.

re 1990: Bonnie Bedelia in her second suffering wife role in a blockbuster.

never heard of Let's Do It Again.
Milkman Clyde Williams (Sidney Poitier) and his best friend, Billy Foster (Bill Cosby), are members of a fraternal lodge, The Brothers and Sisters of Shaka, that needs money for the retirement home they sponsor. Since Clyde has a gift for hypnotism, they decide to fix an upcoming boxing match by hypnotizing the underdog fighter (Jimmie Walker).

0_o

never heard of Let's Do It Again.

!! movie is pretty good, the soundtrack is incredible (Curtis Mayfield + The Staple Singers)

i know weekly movie box office is hard to read into pre-jaws changing everything cuz it was super rare for things to go in wide release everywhere iirc but still, holy cow at that the day of the locust adaptation being #1 for almost a month. like i guess someone could look at se7en being a blockbuster also but that's some cartoonish grimness, it's frank miller dark. day of the locust is ~your dreams will never come true/your life is inconsequential~ grimness, it's fucking iceman cometh dark.

This is boggling my mind:

The Man Who Fell to Earth
Julia
The Front
Coming Home

all #1 for at least three weeks.

As the title hints, Let's Do It Again was a followup to the popular Uptown Saturday Night, with the same stars, so it was able to build on that momentum I think.

in 1980 Coal Miner's Daughter was #1 for nine weeks

yeah i remember that movie being huge

haven't seen it in a very very long time but iirc as oscar bait biopics go it's pretty good

It is.

do we have a thread about movies that seem to exist to be oscar bait?

Cissy Spacek was on a roll

movie is okay

xp

lol @ Reds holding at #1 for two weeks in the fall of '81 during Reagan's first year in office.

I don't think I really noticed it as a thing until The Cider House Rules but I wasn't really up on my film criticism

xp to self, obv

but yeah, I think I said this upthread, but Forgotbusters was a great premise/pitch unfortunately dreamed up by a man driven to write over-long, recap-oriented, and too-clever prose, at the expense of actually addressing the premise.. feel like any given movie, tossed to this thread, would quickly generate much more informative and interesting commentary that really interrogates; to what audience did this appeal? what chords did it strike? what became of those folks? etc. but he would pick super-hyped genre junk. who can possibly explain why this mega-hyped, action-packed blockbuster with big-name stars was popular in 1992?? The Dissolve deserved better imho.

dying laughing - ringo starr's caveman was the #1 movie at the box office for two weeks in 1981. alan alda's four seasons was the big memorial day blockbuster. baby boomers man.