Make Your Own Movie Marathon

Marvel executed a ballsy strategy of producing comic book movies like the comics themselves, with separate stories that connect to a big arc culminating in a spectacular crossover. This shouldn’t have worked, but a combination of the right lead actor, right director, right script and dazzling effects made the near-perfect Iron Man be the launchpad.

In select cities across the country, Marvel will celebrate its triumph by running a marathon of its movies: Iron Man (2008), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor (2011), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and newbie The Avengers.

Looks pretty tempting, right?

While I don’t think I’ll really travel to Boston or New York and catch all six movies, it did get me thinking about my geek movie nights.

What kind of movie marathons would I like to put together?

Walk with me.

Black movie marathon: The Wiz, Shaft, Friday, Juice, Roots

TV sketch comedy blerds Key & Peele, in one offhanded joke about people freaking out about movies you haven’t seen, created a canon of black films that, if blackness were a religion, would be on the altar somewhere. It’s like, if you haven’t seen these movies, you have missed out on being black somehow.

I’ve lost count of how much these movies would come up whenever I was around three or more brothers and sisters born in the ’70s or ’80s. Couldn’t go without talking about ’em.

Roots rules them all.

Even today, it packs a wallop, and it’s easy to see how this film joined the national conversation on race. America still doesn’t talk much about slavery, its original sin. Too painful. I first saw Roots as a kid, and I remember my mother couldn’t watch it more than once when it first aired.

Yet it’s also bizarre how the whipping scene, where Kunta Kinte is forced to accept his slave name of Toby, later was played for laughs by black comedians over and over. I can’t even begin to explain that one, but Chappelle’s Show took it 21st-century in his Roots bloopers sketch, where he pranks the white actor whipping him by breaking character and pretending to be angry. The actor goes from pretend-anger in the scene to real-fright when Chappelle steps off the riser, a shield on his back, the illusion broken.

Shaft was so cool that even the watered-down remake starring Mace Windu, Batman and Tara Gregson got some heavy play.

The Wiz has a lot going for it: Childhood nostalgia and a love of Michael Jackson go a long way toward papering over how not-good the film is. And the sheer beauty of the song “Home” continues to captivate. Diana Ross sang it beautifully, Stephanie Mills elevated it to sultry gospel, and a 22-year-old Whitney Houston released her lungs on the American TV public in 1985 with her rendition.

Juice stuck with my generation because it was kids – kids who looked like us – caught up in the inner-city drug trade nightmare that we knew was close. Some of us didn’t escape it. And, like The Wiz, it carries on the long tradition of black musicians/entertainers being cast in movies rather than straight-up actors.

You even can add Juice to a ’90s ghetto drama marathon with Menace II Society, Fresh, New Jack City and Boyz N The Hood. Probably should end with New Jack City because the realism is blended with a pulp quality that, after the Hughes Brothers and John Singleton’s stark realism, you’ll desperately need.

Sci-fi flops marathon: The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Battlefield Earth, The Land of the Lost, Green Lantern, John Carter

Now this one most closely resembles a marathon, as a grueling, boundary-exploding endurance test what will leave you dehydrated with shit running down your legs. Sure, you haughty fools of the MST3K generation, think that you’ll be amused by ragging on these hapless creations. But they will crush you.

Watch Eddie Murphy’s soul die on camera in a comedy movie that’s never funny. Battlefield Earth at least gives you John Travolta in dreadlocks and platform boots. But the movie warps your mind with its awfulness so much that it infamously made Jon Stewart crazy for a week in July 2001 on The Daily Show when HBO showed the movie endlessly. Among his cracks at the film He calls it “a cross between Star Wars and the smell of ass.”

Yes, those movies are bad.

But then the marathon gives you a break with Land of the Lost, which at least is stupidly-bad, has hottie Anna Friel, Danny McBride doing his thing, and lots of Will Ferrell screaming. Unless you are tired of Will Ferrell screaming. But Green Lantern and John Carter will crush you under the weight of their wasted potential, with non-charismatic stars, elaborate production designs, watered-down emotional heft and voiceover prologues. Green Lantern lacked the soul and gravity of Geoff Johns’ reinvention, and became an overproduced sigh.

“It’s not me. The whole movie stinks.”

John Carter isn’t that bad; unlike Lantern, you can see every cent that went on screen.

But WALL-E honcho Andrew Stanton had a much harder time making his first live-action film than his Pixar buddy Brad Bird did with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Stanton also went too fanboy on the movie, thinking that everyone knew who the hell John Carter was. Parts of Carter worked great, I thought, plus it did give us a hot Dejah Thoris. But any compliment of the movie shouldn’t be that it’s an improved take on the ’80s Flash Gordon movie.

Dystopian nightmare action marathon: Escape from New York, The Warriors, Rollerball, Death Race 2000, The Road Warrior

All these movies have that us-against-the-world suspense level necessary to drive the plot.

With Death Race and Road Warrior, you shouldn’t ever go wrong with fast cars on film, gruesome death and shit blowing up. Add a menacing, talented but crazy lead actor to the mix such as James Caan or Mel Gibson (he was “Hollywood crazy” back then, not the actual, racist crazy we now know), and you’ve really got something.

The best part of Warriors is the creativity of the gangs, plus that killer catchphrase. But Escape beats Warriors because of Snake Plissken. He follows a long tradition of criminal antiheroes, and many have walked in Plissken’s footsteps. Vin Diesel and Jason Statham, among others, owe their careers to Kurt Russell’s bad-assery. Remember that when you see that new movie Lockout, with Guy Pearce. The TV ads cite a review calling it “Die Hard mixed with Blade Runner,” but real geeks know it’s Escape From New York In Space.

Barry Levinson Is Overrated Marathon: Rain Man, Man of the Year, Envy, Toys, The Band That Wouldn’t Die

He’s so respected as a producer and director, but let’s face it, Levinson’s overrated.

But it’s because when he’s good, he’s so so good. So this marathon will give you the roller-coaster experience of being a Barry Levinson fan. Rain Man? Excellent. Man of the Year? Robin Williams being unfunny, which happens a lot now.

Then you get Envy, with funny-but-poisonous annoyances Ben Stiller and Jack Black together, fighting over something called the Vapoorizer. (Even worse, the promotional website is still running.) Let’s throw Toys in there; not great, but looks very cool and I have a soft spot for Joan Cusack’s doofy Alsatia character.

But we need a real high note to remind you of Levinson’s goodness, so we end with his documentary The Band That Wouldn’t Die, about the Baltimore Colts marching band, who soldier on in heartbroken dedication to honor the memory of a team whose owner packed up and left for Indianapolis in the middle of the night. Levinson, a man from Balmer, really makes the pain hang on the screen, and makes not-moving on look so good.

Bunch of folks walk into a trap of a killer alien marathon: Predator, Alien, Aliens, The Thing (1982)

Yes, Ridley Scott had to be in one of these marathons. And what’s better then mixing sci-fi discovery with the horror-film trope of a bunch of people going somewhere, and pretty much everyone dies? Each one of these movies is genuinely scary, classic Arnold Schwarzenegger is tough to beat, and Ellen Ripley’s working-woman toughness in Alien, melded with maternal ferocity in Aliens, is a sight to behold.

OK, I have a lot more of these marathons, but can’t go on forever. Here are a few more.

Mel Brooks marathon: The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs

The Producers shows Brooks’ demented humor post-The 2,000-Year-Old Man. Saddles is one of the best funny movies ever made. Frankenstein is in the next tier of funny movies. And Spaceballs, while stupid and late to the party as a Star Wars spoof, its ludicrous-speed gags are too many to ignore.

Living cartoon marathon: Big Trouble In Little China, Speed Racer, Crank, The Matrix, Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Fifth Dimension

All these movies took from their animated inspirations and made something wild and original.

Statham rules, Keanu Reeves looked like an anime hero in the movie that felt like the 21st century. Little China uses Raiden better than Mortal Kombat. Speed and Racer X come to life in a Hot Wheels wet dream. Buckaroo has Jamaican aliens, interdimensional space travel and undeniable ’80s rock and fashion.

Obviously, this could go on forever, so I’ll stop here.

What movie marathons would you create?