John Badham
 

Isn't interesting that sometimes you find yourself watching a movie, and you say woah, that movie was great. And then you find yourself watching another movie, and you liked it too. And then eventually you find out it was by the same director.

while surfing the johnny depp thread, I remembered nick of time. I searched for who was the director on imdb, and found out it was john badham, who also directed Blue Thunder, among other things.

anyway, the guy has an impressive list of movies under his belt

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000824/

I saw Blue Thunder recently again on HBO, and for me it was the epitome of the 80's action movie. Cold, gritty and fun! No being PC or anything. Heck, he was blowing up buildings on LA. Good fun :)

John Badham's a director who many consider a hack. He churned out one truly great film in the 70s, at least IMO, (Saturday Night Fever) and then pretty much took whatever studio offers came his way. Some were fun (Wargames, Stakeout, Dracula 1979, Short Circuit) and then there were the really medicore films that failed at the box office (Blue Thunder, American Flyers, Point of no return, Another Stakeout, Drop Zone, Nick of time and so on) Since those string of lackluster films far outweigh the good ones Badham has been sent to what is referred in the business as Movie Jail (TV-Land...Which he started from) and hasn't been released since.

I got the chance to meet him once and he was a very likable, smart guy. He suffered a bit from the studio syndrome and some bad choices of projects that didn't come together as well as he hoped. At least he still is working...

I like Dracula and the dancing scenes from Saturday Night Fever, but otherwise Badham's one of my least favorite directors.

I guess I like hacks :D

I like a lot of those flicks too! :lol:

The thing that I especially appreciate about Badham is that his goal seemed to be to provide <i>entertainment</i> with little or no pretensions. And for me, he generally does.

Badham directed a great TV-movie in the early 70s called Isn't It Shocking?. One of the most original suspense thrillers I've seen even to this day.

I personally like Drop Zone and Nick of Time.

I like Nick of Time. It just barely misses being a really good movie. Not sure why.

He's made a lot of standard movies.

Badham hasn't made a good movie since the 1980's.

I often wonder if Richard Donner is going the way of John Badmam...Donner hasn't made a good movie in about 10 years (Maverick was the last Donner movie I really enjoyed).

I liked Stakeout the best