Everybody makes lists of what they consider the greatest movies.
Or the worst movies.
Or their favorite movies.
I want to do something a little different. I’m going to pick 10 movies that weren’t in the running for big awards, that didn’t make any best-of-the-year lists, that no one would call the director or the actors’ finest work. On a scale of zero to five stars, I’m pretty sure no one would rate any of these greater than 2.5 stars, some some of them would we way worse.
The only other qualification is that they to be movies I have watched at least half a dozen times and would gladly watch again.
So, in no particular order …
“1941” — Almost universally regarded as Stephen Spielberg’s worst movie, although I think I’d cast my vote for the one where Tom Hanks lives in the airport.
For some reason, Spielberg decided to attack a genre that has rarely been done successfully — the epic comedy. It sort of worked with “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World” but didn’t work so well with “The Great Race.”
Or “1941.”
It’s an epic comedy about panic in Los Angeles in the days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, from a wild USO dance to Civil Defense workers watching the coast for submarines to a crazed pilot who claims to be shooting down Japanese planes.
It has some great moments and too many draggy ones.
But I love it, and when I’m in the mood, I’ll watch it again.
“Purple Hearts” — Ken Wahl is a Navy doctor and Cheryl Ladd is an Army nurse. They meet in Vietnam and fall in love despite obstacles and dangers put in their way. It’s a coming of age for a young doctor looking for nothing more than a lucrative career as a surgeon who learns first at a firebase and then on a covert mission what his ife is really all about.
Ladd has one of her best roles as a nurse who has been through one tragedy and is scared to death of another one.
Not a great movie, but a lovely ending.
“2012” — I need to start by saying this is a truly bad movie. I will say one thing for it. Most of the time when a movie is about the end of the world, someone saves the day. In this Roland Emmerich mega-epic, though, the world really ends. Sort of.
It’s about the predicted end of the world from the ancient Mayan calendar, which turned out to be as big a goof as Y2K. In real life, that is. In the movie, the world ends except for a few thousand people who survive on giant arks.
So much is unbelievable — Los Angeles sliding into the ocean, an aircraft carrier crushing the White House, thousands of people milling around 29,000 feet above sea level without oxygen masks.
But it’s got the always likeable John Cusack and Woody Harrelson as a lunatic.
I’ll watch it again and again.
“Amazon Women on the Moon” — Through much of the 1970s and ’80s, a popular format throwing together a lot of short pieces that resulted in were the equivalent of someone watching television and flipping through the channels. It’s extremely uneven, but parts of it are hilarious.
Could Jack the Ripper actually have been the Loch Ness monster? How tragic would it really be far a black singer to be born without soul?
Parts of it are ridiculous, but they’re intended to be. Whether it’s Lou Jacobi as a middle-aged man watching TV in his underwear or the story of a flight to the moon where the American crew meets a tribe of gorgeous women, the story is at least entertaining and often more.
“American Flyers” — Kevin Costner has made a name for himself doing sports movies, from baseball to golf to professional football, but his first sports movie in 1985 was about bicycle racing. Costner plays a sports physician who was also a good enough cyclist to be an alternate on the U.S. Olympic team.
Costner’s character has a troubled relationship with his college-age brother, who is also a talented cyclist. They head west to Colorado to take part in a grueling three-day race in the Rocky Mountains.
It’s not a great movie, and it’s sort of corny in spots, but it’s a movie I can watch again and again and have over the last 37 years.
“The Betsy” — This is the only movie on this list that I would have to admit is a truly bad one, but it has an interesting saving grace. The top five billed members of the cast include three Oscar winners and two other Oscar nominees. Imagine Laurance Olivier, Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Katharine Ross and Jane Alexander all together in what is essentially a soap opera.
Throw in Lesley Anne Down and Kathleen Beller for pulchritude and you’ve a very watchable movie.
It’s a three-generational story about the American auto industry. with the fictitious Hardemans standing in for the real-life Fords. Olivier is the patriarch and Duvall the grandson taking the family into the modern era.
Not a good movie in any sense, but I enjoy it.
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” — The later television series is one of my favorite shows ever, a true dramedy. The movie on which it was based goes much more for laughs. Kristy Swanson is a very different Buffy than Sarah Michelle Gellar, and she has only one sidekick to help her instead of the TV show’s Scooby Gang.
Luke Perry is Buffy’s sidekick, Donald Sutherland is her watcher and Rutger Hauer the villain with sidekick Pee Wee Herman.
Throw in Hilary Swank at 17 and it’s a very watchable movie.
“Chances Are” — Cybill Shepherd in her prime and Robert Downey Jr. early in his career in a story of love and reincarnation in Washington, D.C.
She plays a widow who still pines for her long-dead husband and he plays a college graduate who is falling in love with her daughter. The problem is, as he comes to see, he is the reincarnation of her father and her mother’s husband.
Of course it all works out in the end, and it ends with a lovely song by Cher and Peter Cetera.
“Worth Winning” — I have always liked Mark Harmon, even if his big breakthrough was playing serial killer Ted Bundy. I could have put two of his movies on this list, but I bumped baseball movie “Stealing Home” to 11th place.
In this rom-com, Harmon plays a Philadelphia weatherman who is a very successful ladies man. His friends make a bet with him that he can’t get three different beauties that they choose to agree to marry him. Of course he eventually falls in love with one of them and the bet blows up in his face.
A goofy movie without any truly great actors in it, but there are some really funny set pieces in it, and of course there’s the Mouse Olympics.
Harmon at this best, and the lovely Madeline Stowe in her prime.
“Joe vs the Volcano” — Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were the royal couple of romantic comedies in the 1990s, making three films together. Everybody loves “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail,” but this was their first pairing and wasn’t nearly as successful.
Of all the 10 movies on this list, this is my guilty favorite.
Some people believe this is an overlooked gem, while others think it’s just silly.
Put me in the first group, although maybe it’s because I have a Brain Cloud.