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Recent Posts
- 42 (2013) vs. Remember the Titans (2000)
- Admission (2013) vs. About a Boy (2002)
- Oz the Great and Powerful (2012) vs. The NeverEnding Story (1984)
- Dark Skies (2013) vs. Dark Skies (1996)
- Oscar Wrap-Up 2013
- A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) vs. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
- Oscar Smack-a-thon!
- The Tiersky Top Ten, 2012
- Smackdown Smacks Down the 2013 Oscar Nominees
- Broken City (2013) vs. City Hall (1996)
- Men of Steel (Smackdown’s Superman Smashup)
- Les Miserables (2012) vs. The Fugitive (1993)
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- courtney on Brave (2012) -vs- Mulan (1998)
- Elvin Hence on POTC: On Stranger Tides (2011) -vs- POTC: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
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- » Movie Review – The Grey Fernby Films on Taken 2 (2012) -vs- Taken (2008)
- » Movie Review – Les Misérables Fernby Films on Les Miserables (2012) vs. The Fugitive (1993)
- scottderricksonrocks on The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008) -vs- The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
- SciFi lover on The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008) -vs- The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
- Edward on The Thing (2011) -vs- The Thing (1982)
- Wesley Martin on The Walking Dead (AMC) -vs- Falling Skies (TNT)
- James on The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978) vs. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Tag Archives: high school
42 (2013) vs. Remember the Titans (2000)
There are few conflicts more dramatic than the battle for racial integration, particularly during the turbulent years of the mid-twentieth century America. 42’s Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), the first player of color in Major League Baseball, is a ferociously talented athlete who struggles to overcome the rampant bigotry of the game in the post-WWII era. A quarter-century later, Remember the Titans’ ace football coach Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) faces the unenviable task of integrating two racially separated high school football squads in Virginia, the cradle of the Confederacy.
Both of these characters are resilient, heroic fighters who triumphed over the narrow-mindedness of their times. Each overcame long odds and passionate opposition to push his country in the right direction and his team to glory. And without them both, who knows, we might not have anything more fun to watch on weekends than NASCAR and golf.
Clearly, both these contenders have got an incredible will to win, but only one can be Smackdown champion. Batter up! Continue reading
Posted in Biopic, Drama, Sports
Tagged African American, baseball, Brooklyn Dodgers, Chadwick Boseman, Coach, Denzel Washington, Ethan Suplee, football, Harrison Ford, Hayden Panettiere, high school, integration, Jackie Robinson, Kip Pardue, Ryan Gosling, School, T.R. Knight, Virginia, Will Patton, Wood Harris
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) -vs- The Breakfast Club (1985)
Just in time for fall, we are reminded, thanks to Hollywood, of everything we loved and hated about high school. Twenty-seven years after The Breakfast Club, the coming-of-age story of five students locked together in high school detention, The Perks of Being a Wallflower introduces us to Charlie, a freshman boy in dire need of friends. Both films use humor to examine the pain of being a high school misfit, an immutable movie (and real-life) trope since before James Dean played chicken in Rebel Without a Cause.
Charlie’s group, like the various Breakfast Club miscreants before them, break through seemingly impossible barriers to get to know each other and themselves, without even having to worry so much about being dateless for prom or being given a “swirly” — having their heads shoved into a flushing toilet — by the school bully. What is this madness! Continue reading
Posted in Comedy, Drama, Romance
Tagged Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Detention, Dylan McDermott, Emilio Estevez, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, First Love, Freshman, high school, Joan Cusack, John Hughes, Judd Nelson, Kate Walsh, Logan Lerman, Mae Whitman, Melanie Lynskey, Molly Ringwald, Nina Dobrev, Paul Gleason, Paul Rudd, senior, Stephen Chbosky, suicide, the eighties
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The Dark Knight Rises (2012) -vs- The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
We’ve know it’s coming all year — a super heavyweight championship — and now it’s finally here in the beat-down heat of summer.
Fresh off the super-fan orgy at San Diego Comic-Con, we have the Sony 3D reboot of The Amazing Spider-Man against the third and final installment of Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight Rises (July 20).
It’s Ali and Frazier. Well, technically, it’s DC and Marvel and Sony and Warner Bros. Oh, and Batman and Spider-Man.
These two awesome franchises — both successful with critics and hugely so at the box office — mean to fight it out in the cool, air-conditioned movie palaces of our globally warmed summer. Continue reading
Posted in Action, Adventure, Blockbuster, Book Adaptation, Crime, Major Star Vehicle, Sci-Fi, SummerSmack
Tagged Andrew Garfield, Anne Hathaway, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, Denis Leary, Emma Stone, Gary Oldman, high school, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Kirsten Dunst, Liam Neeson, Marion Cotillard, Marti Sheen, Marvel Comics, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Peter Parker, Rhys Ifans, sequel, Spider, Spider-Man, Stan Lee, Student, superhero, Tobey Maguire, Tom Hardy, villain, Web, Willem Dafoe
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The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) -vs- Spider-Man (2002)
What a difference a decade makes. Why, in that period of time, it’s possible to forget you’ve ever seen a specific movie, almost like it never existed.
Well, no, it’s not like that all, of course. Those of us over the age of thirteen do clearly remember the blockbuster films we saw just ten years ago. The question Columbia Pictures seems to be asking with the release of The Amazing Spider-Man is whether or not it matters. Continue reading
Posted in Action, Adventure, Book Adaptation, Bryce Zabel, Comic Book, Coming of Age, Fantasy, SummerSmack
Tagged Andrew Garfield, Denis Leary, Emma Stone, high school, Kirsten Dunst, Marti Sheen, Marvel Comics, Peter Parker, Rhys Ifans, Spider, Spider-Man, Stan Lee, Student, superhero, Tobey Maguire, Web, Willem Dafoe
9 Comments
American Reunion (2012) -vs- American Pie (1999)
In this matchup, the Movie Smackdown Arena has been converted into something that resembles the Iron Chefs’ Kitchen Stadium because we’re comparing an American culinary classic: Apple pie. Everyone loves a slice of warm, homemade apple pie, but which one is the best piece: the first or the last? If you ask Jim Levenstein, I think he’d say to just jump in headfirst and enjoy, but I wouldn’t recommend using the head that he did. Continue reading
Easy A (2010) -vs- Election (1999)
Smart women are as rare on film as they are in life. Rarer even. Smart high school girls might be the rarest cinematic species of all. You can count them on your two hands. Cooler and wittier than any real girl in any real high school, they’re who we wish we could have been. The girls who say what we wish we had said. Smart girls who use their smart mouths to get into (and out of) considerable trouble. The adults in these films are unspeakably cool too; perhaps this whole smart high school girl genre is for us grown-up girls (and guys) who revisit our high school hallways every night in our dreams and nightmares, still trying to dot those old i’s and cross those uncrossed t’s, to redress grievances and beat down those bullies that haunt us still.
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Posted in Comedy
Tagged adultery, campaign, gay interest, high school, hypocrisy, politics, religion, rumors, satire, sex, teens
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An Education (2009) -vs- Say Anything (1989)
Listen up, ‘rents. Being a father is never easy, but being the father of a teenage girl, and trying to get that one right is a true challenge. Both of these films — two decades apart in production dates and period settings — show fathers who, with the best of intentions, get it all wrong, but they get it wrong in exactly opposite ways.
You can care too little and you can care too much. When you’re in the middle of things, it’s not always so easy to see which is which. Believe me, as a father of girl who has just left her teenage years behind, these are matters I’ve thought a little bit about. I keep thinking of the famous Kenny Rogers’ song (“The Gambler,” written by Don Schlitz) that you gotta know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. Like that’s easy. Still, what we have here to consider are a couple of fathers who don’t know best, not by a long shot… Continue reading
Superbad (2007) -vs- American Pie (1999)
The Smackdown It’s been over a full decade since Eugene Levy caught his son Jim doing, well, unspeakable things to innocent baked fruit. I remember thinking that it was a great comedy if only I could keep my teenage boys … Continue reading
Posted in Comedy, Coming of Age
Tagged blow jobs, booze, Clinton, drinking, drugs, graduation, high school, party, sex, virginity
3 Comments