Hacker Cinema
Tremors
1990 · Film · 96 min
Directed by Ron Underwood
Val McKee and Earl Bassett are in a fight for their lives when they discover that their desolate town has been infested with gigantic, man-eating creatures that live below the ground.
4 positive3 neutralfrom 7 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
7 comments on Hacker News
Most non-American movies are slop, melodramatic vaudeville, or tear-jerking gut-punches. Most American movies are slop too, but America can afford to swing at more pitches and consequently get more hits.
Have you ever tried to watch Korean movies from the last 20 years? It's all melodramatic romance-crime-poverty slop, with the rare Kim Ki-duk or Bong Joon Ho in there to balance it out. And that's a country with a wonderful reputation for quality film-making.
I mean you get zombies on a train and that's a fun popcorn flick, but it's forgettable. It's no Tremors, Twister, or Independence Day.
In Indonesia for every The Raid there's 999 poorly acted, poorly shot melodramas with a thin well-trodden story.
And don't get me started on "let's yell at each other for 120 minutes" Russian cinema.
American movies are by far the most watchable, especially when you don't feel like going on a heart-wrenching journey of despair, which is all international cinema excels at.
I prefer kagi's approach. If I add a "?" to the end of my search query, I get a LLM response at the top of my search results. Any LLM response includes source links to quickly verify the information presented. So, if I am using search engine to quickly check a fact, say "What year did Tremors come out?" I get the following at the top of the results:
Quick Answer
The movie Tremors was released in 1990 12. It is an American monster horror film starring Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward 12. References r/movies on Reddit: Tremors (for those who saw it when it came out www.reddit.com Tremors (1990 film) - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org
Some that haven’t been mentioned yet: Matinee, The First Great Train Robbery, Dave, Ghibli movies (Laputa, Mononoke, Totoro, Kiki, …), Mad Max 2, Nightmare Before Christmas, Edge of Tomorrow, Tremors, Godzilla Minus One, Watchmen, The Fly, Dark City, Passengers, Predestination, Strange Days, WarGames, Tron, Timecrimes, Sneakers, The Frighteners.
A nice read.
Slightly off-topic, but Stargate is one of those movies, like the 90s Mummy, like Tremors, that's really much better than it needed to be, and remains greatly entertaining today. The care they put into the Egyptology really speaks to that.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
I loved it as a teenager, but it's... aged poorly. IDK, maybe that's not fair. I am sure my standards have improved quite a bit since then. Certainly, if you like campy, cheesy sci-fi and don't mind some community-theater grade acting in the first few episodes, it'll be right up your alley. It's not as bad as, say, Tremors (same era, shlock sci-fi), but it's also not a prestige series like Star Trek. It's probably somewhere between Stargate and Farscape in terms of quality.
That is a great movie! Have you watched Tremors?