Animal House...saw it when it came out. Laughed until I hurt but I was eighteen or so and not too terribly sophisticated so take that for what it's worth. It was most definitely the high mark of the "National Lampoon" brand...everything else since has been unremarkable and yes, I include "Vacation" in that critique. I appreciated the extremely crude yet sophisticated humor of the National Lampoon magazine which had (sort of, by way of the Harvard Lampoon) already dished out the "Bored of the Rings" and would also give us the sage wit of P.J. O'Rourke.
Saturday Night Fever...what can I say? I hated disco with a passion so, no, I didn't see it and probably never will. Didn't see "Urban Cowboy" for about the same reasons. I did go to Gilleys once when Neil Young performed there but that is as close to "Urban Cowboy" as I ever got.
The Sound of Music...classic Rogers & Hammerstein musical with almost nothing in common with the true story of the Von Trapp Family Singers story. Nevertheless, it is a very well produced, acted and directed musical and worth seeing.
Grease...never saw it because I couldn't stand the lead actor and actress. I wasn't crazy about the 1950's genre either...just not my thing. I did see "West Side Story," though, and thought it was mostly okay.
Shrek...saw it with my kid (the one who is currently in the Army) when it came out in 2001. You do things like that when you can...see a family friendly movie because there are so few released. It was better than average (average being crap like "Care Bears") and I particularly liked the not quite hidden ridicule of Disney and its CEO Michael Eisner (who was portrayed as an arrogant midget). Well worth seeing but the sequels are mostly crappy.
Austin Powers...saw part of the first one and then lost interest and changed the channel.
Apocalypse Now...forced myself to go to it, stay awake through it and not get up and leave before it was over. Such is the respect that I had and continue to have for Coppola as a film maker. I guess everyone is entitled to produce a crappy movie every now and then. At least he isn't M. Night Shyamalan.
The Simpsons...watched it for the first season or two and then got bored and never went back. Bonus points to anyone who remembers where the Simpsons appeared before they had their own show.
Seinfeld...watched most of the shows although I liked it a lot more in the earlier seasons before the writing took a decidedly crude turn due to what I can only assume was a dearth of ideas. I saw Jerry Seinfeld a year or two before he got the television sitcom on an hour long HBO special and it was the funniest thing I had seen in years...way better than anything George Carlin was doing at the time.
There's lots of stuff that I haven't seen and it's mostly because there's just so much stuff to see these days. It used to be that there were only three networks that produced shows and almost all of them were produced in house. That changed in the seventies when independent production companies got seriously rolling...I seem to remember that Mary Tyler Moore's MTM production company was one of the first successful ones.
Same thing with movies. There are just a zillion that come out every year and I honestly do not know how anyone can see them all. And, of course, most aren't worth seeing. I have to read reviews and, given the liberal bent of most reviewers, have to read between the lines and consider the source when judging what to actually pay money for. Pay per view is a bargain at $6 compared to $10 and up movie tickets.
ADDED
"Casablanca" is a classic and well worth seeing. "The Maltese Falcon" is good, too. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" is NOT to be missed...my personal Bogart favorite.
Some of the Sean Connery Bond films are good as long as you remember when they were made. Some sucked. All of the Roger Moore Bond films sucked...horribly over produced with none of the wit and charm of Connery. The first Daniel Craig Bond film was very good...the second one, not so much.
