A lawyer – renegade buddy cop movie successfully mixes together courthouse drama, action and thriller, but lacks that extra little something ingredient to really become a classic.
80s-o-meter: 92%
Total: 85%
Kategoria: 1988
#578 The Seventh Sign (1988)
Years ahead of its many 90s descendants, Seventh Sign is a supernatural end-of-the-world thriller that builds up towards its eerie final in a convincing and visually pleasing way.
80s-o-meter: 87%
Total: 84%
#567 Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Made with considerably higher production values, Halloween 4 regrettably loses much of the organic feeling of its predecessors and presents an invincible and more plastic Myers.
80s-o-meter: 90%
Total: 80%
#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%
#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%
#507 Michael Keaton Marathon: Beetlejuice (1988)
Tim Burton’s and Michael Keaton’s take on a deceased couple doomed to haunt a mansion is a truly unique, delightful and entertaining movie experience.
#496 Moonwalker (1988)
A series of a technically immaculate short films tied loosely together with embarrassing, ego-tripping child saviour messiah parts then paired with some amazing musical numbers.
#493 Cop (1988)
Cop is an ultra violent study of the killers, their victims and a cop who will stop at nothing. James Woods’ acting work is like the movie itself: Tough, hardboiled and relentless.
#483 Halloween 2016: Ghoulies II (1988)
The sequel does the unthinkable mistake of taking out basically everything that actually worked in the first movie, and keeping only those dreadful, gremlins-without-charm puppets.
#480 Halloween 2016: A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 – The Dream Master (1988)
No matter what the movie is actually like. by the third sequel the stigma of being that ’just another sequel’ really starts to set in – and usually makes it challenging to watch the movie with just a face value. With that in mind, let’s dive into Elm Street part 4, directed by a fellow finn Renny Harlin.
Harlin’s directorial take of the franchise is flashy and at times almost music video like, in a true tradition of the eighties generation MTV. Effects are top notch and a step up from the previous movie.
The take is funny with obvious humoristic elements scattered throughout the movie, but on the other hand also without depth or substance. The seemingly quickly hacked up plot is a mere the necessity to move from a imaginative kill to another and Freddy’s lines throughout the movie consist mainly of just various kinds of wisecracks.
Freddy movies were never scary movies in a traditional sense and The Dream Master takes the franchise even further away from pure horror, and towards the main stream dark tongue-in-cheek adventure. Three sequels for one movie is already obviously too much, but Harlin’s decision of not even bothering to explain everything but just have a good time actually translates well to the silver screen.
Ultimately The Dream Master is much more entertaining than its predecessor The Dream Warriors, and remains the second best sequel of the series.
The Dream Master may have the depth of a long music video, but it does the best out of what the series has left at this point and makes an entertaining 90 minutes out of it
#469 Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988)
It has to be admitted: A movie about the last stud searching for fertile women prisoned in the post apocalyptic wasteland by a bunch of mutant frogs while wearing a pair of explosive underpants sure sounds like a riot. Starring the always sympathetic Roddy Piper known from the later cult classic They Live (1987), Hell Comes To Frogdown plays all its cards with the awesome synopsis and within the 15 first minutes of the movie, and the rest of the film can’t keep up with the built up premise.
Obviously made with campiness in the mind, the movie could’ve been one of the great cult classics of the era – but as it is now, it somehow just tries and promises too much and delivers too little.
It’s not a completely lemon though, and still worth your while just as long as you know not to expect too much out of it.
Although it has the makings of a cult movie written all over it, Hell Comes To Frogtown doesn’t just deliver enough quirkiness and fun to make it to the hall of fame
#467 Paramedics (1988)
One of the bastard childs of the Police Academy series, Paramedics is a patchy, aimless effort to copy and paste elements from the more successful comedies of the era.
#462 Bat*21 (1988)
Based on real life events of a failed Vietnam war mission followed by some chaotic rescue attempts, Bat*21’s strongest asset is its anti-war undertone.
#461 Vice Versa (1988)
Superior one of the two very similar body switching movies (the other one being Like Father Like Son) of the late 80s, Vice Versa is a perfect vehicle for Judge Reinhold, who’s portrayal of a 12-year old feels spot on throughout the movie.
#457 The Kiss (1988)
Standing above average in the often flawed horror genre, The Kiss also has its flaws – loose plot ends to name one – but in total it’s entertaining enough to spend 90 minutes on.
#456 Doin’ Time on Planet Earth (1988)
Adam West as a cult leader aiming to leave the earth with a spinning restaurant, DTOPE was obviously aimed as a cult classic, but ultimately is just not weird and/or good enough.
#445 Midnight Run (1988)
The totally surprising chemistry between leads along with the witty manuscript and its great array of characters make Midnight Run a great comedy, and almost a perfect road movie.
#443 Heartbreak Hotel (1988)
A teenager uses an idiotic plot to kidnap an Elvis who doesn’t look like Elvis, who then goes around singing and fixing problems in this frustratingly stupid concept of a movie.
#432 Monkey Shines (1988)
Romero’s Monkey Shines succeeds beautifully in conveying the idea of a homicidal monkey, but fails when taking the concept too far into the telepathic mumbo jumbo.
#430 Young Guns (1988)
Featuring an all-star cast, Young Guns is yet another western taking huge liberties in its story to cover the fact that Billy the Kid or his life events were never really that interesting.