Boardwalk Times at 7: The 7 Best Touchstone Pictures Films
The adult wing of Walt Disney Studios and its seven best films.
April 2nd marks the 7th anniversary of Boardwalk Times and, to celebrate that, we’ll be doing a few Top 7 lists! First off is my list of the seven best films of the now legendary run from Disney’s Touchstone Pictures. (With a whole bunch of runners up.)
March 9th, 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the first movie released under Disney’s Touchstone Pictures banner, Splash (1984).
Touchstone was the brainchild of then-CEO Ron Miller, Walt Disney’s son-in-law, who was looking for a channel through which Disney could produce and release feature films aimed towards a more strictly adult audience after the relatively poor showings of such tentpole releases as The Black Hole (1979), Tron (1982) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) had called into question the willingness of Disney’s core audience to embrace more mature fare.
Miller was ousted by the Disney Board of Directors before the release of Touchstone’s first film, but his idea had been a strong one that subsequent executive teams used to great advantage.
Culling this down to seven is a task fraught with peril, but here goes!
Tin Men (1987) — Picking up the tone of Barry Levinson’s first hit film Diner (1982) and sandwiched between the much more brash Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) and Good Morning Vietnam (1987), the director produces one of his most gentle and quirky comedies. A strange character study of aluminum siding salesmen, Richard Dreyfuss, Danny DeVito, and Barbara Hershey give a masterclass in underplaying eccentric characters in this often overlooked gem of a film.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) — It is often said that the Disney Renaissance began with The Little Mermaid (1989), but it is hard to argue that the pump wasn’t primed right here with a film that invented a whole new way of working with animation — taking Disney’s earlier experiments in mixing live action and animation and adding a convincing level of visual dimension to classic characters — while gleefully dynamiting any studio restrictions that might’ve slowed it down. Ariel may well have ushered in Disney’s second Golden Age, but Roger got the public’s attention first.
Dead Poets Society (1989) — Australian master director Peter Weir was not the first to work on this film — production began under director Jeff Kanew who was replaced early on — but it is hard to see it as anything other than a Weir film. Psychologically intense in a way that resembles so many of his earlier movies — Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) — the film has a headiness to it that alternately leaves the viewer cheering and afraid to breathe. Weir pulls a career-defining performance out of Robin Williams in this masterpiece of poetry and desperate compassion.
Ed Wood (1994) — Tim Burton’s best film, this movie takes all of the director’s visual and narrative eccentricities and assembles them in a way that brings the audience a striking awareness of their relevance. As with all of Burton’s finest work, this film is personal by way of farce, which is an exceedingly unstable tightrope to walk. He walks it here brilliantly.
Starship Troopers (1997) This is certain to be a controversial pick, but it is a genre-shattering, broadly comic, subversive film, at war with its own source material; it is completely unique. The disdain it shows for Robert Heinlein’s 1959 novel of the same name would’ve ground the film of a lesser director into the mud, but Paul Verhoeven seems to thrive in judo flipping Heinlein’s odd, and often contradictory, philosophical views into bathtubs full of gore. It’s a strange experience, to say the least, and pushes the boundaries of what an adaptation can be.
Rushmore (1998) — Wes Anderson’s second film is the one that brought him to the attention of the public at large and it has, in many ways, defined a certain kind of filmmaking ever since. It is hard to imagine modern comedy without this film; the style that begins here and grows through the rest of Anderson’s work is that iconic. It is also very, very, funny.
Runner’s up: that’s right, I’m not playing by my own rules. I couldn’t not mention these favorites. Mea culpa.
Splash (1984) — Trivia: The Disney attraction Splash Mountain was actually named after this film, not the physical act of splashing at the ride’s end. Also, If the public didn’t know that Tom Hanks was going to be a star before this, they did now.
Good Morning Vietnam (1987) — Tour de Force for Robin Williams that bore very little in common with Adrian Cronauer’s actual biography.
Snake Eyes (1988) — Ridiculously fun film by Brian DePalma that rekindles the sense of playfulness of his early work.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) — This film, much like Tron, has exploded in stature and iconicism since its only moderate success upon initial release.
My Boyfriend’s Back (1993) — Director Bob Balaban predated the comic zombie trend of the 2000s with this strange and funny teen horror.
Face/Off (1997) — John Woo, John Travolta, and Nicholas Cage make a movie that feels like a classic John Carpenter/Kurt Russell film.
The Ref (1994) — Another film that has grown in reputation over the years; this is a Christmas movie for cynics. Dennis Leary has never been funnier.
Kundun (1997) — Martin Scorsese’s meditation on the life of the fourteenth Dalai Lama is mesmerizing. Disney’s refusal to promote it, seemingly due to not wanting to offend China (See also: Doctor Strange (2016), but, oddly, not Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)) all but buried this important movie.
Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion (1997) — Pure joy.
Summer of Sam (1999) — Often criticized as too self-indulgent of a work for auteur Spike Lee, this is a haywire masterpiece and deserves a reassessment.
Cradle Will Rock (1999) — Tim Robbins pet project about the Federal Theatre Project during the Great Depression is a view into a piece of American history that deserves more light than it gets. And what a cast!
High Fidelity (2000) — The film takes huge liberties with Nick Hornby’s terrific novel, but it all works. Jack Black particularly shines here.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) — In some ways, this is the high point of the early Wes Anderson films. He would continue to grow, but this represents a remarkable maturity for a director’s third film.
So that’s my list. What about yours? What is your favorite Touchstone Pictures film?
Stay tuned for more 7th Anniversary celebrations from Boardwalk Times!
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times