Nothing Lasts Forever (1984)

Absolutely the worst movie.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

What is it about the 1980s and really bad films? This cinematic misfire manages to ignore all the implied requirements of good filmmaking such as plot, decent acting, a cohesive storyline, and believable characters. The main problem with this movie is that it doesn't know what it wants to be: is it a dystopian future, a satire about consumerism, an allegory about capitalism, a fractured romance, a cautionary fable about oppressive government oversight, a musical? It tries and fails to be any of these things. Dan Akroyd appears for about two minutes of welcome comic relief. Bill Murray's role is a little more substantial, but not enough to rise above the cheap special effects or ultimate pointlessness of the trip to the moon so the seniors can buy things. See, when you push satire on an audience, you need to nurture relatable elements and draw them as broad allegories with which the viewer can connect; excellent writing can accomplish this, even with the obviously limited budget of a film like this; Terry Gilliam knows how to do this with films such as Brazil, my go-to example for an effective presentation of dystopia. We can connect with Sam because he's caught up in a bureaucratic nightmare. In Nothing Lasts Forever, we're given a never-ending parade of disconnected elements that don't form a cohesive whole or relate to anything. On top of all that, Zach Galligan's limited range renders an unconvincing hero, one who, by the way, doesn't learn anything other than how to play the piano. Yes, you read that right, that's the whole point of this film. He learns to play the piano.I had never heard of this film until I saw it on TV last night. Someone rightfully decided to bury this piece of junk, and it should have stayed buried. It's not the worst film ever made, but it's hard to imagine that, somewhere along the line, the people who worked on it didn't stop to realize they were laboring over mediocrity.

Never officially released, neither theatrically nor on home media, Tom Schiller's surreal science fiction fantasy Nothing Lasts Forever stars Zach Galligan as an eager young artist struggling to find his creative outlet in a New York City under the tyrannical rule of the Port Authority. Shot in black and white (for the most part) and with the sound recorded in mono, the film replicates the Classical Hollywood style of the late '30s and early '40s to create a dreamlike work that, had it been made during the indie boom of the '90s, would have easily found a cult following. Featuring strong supporting work from the likes of Dan Aykroyd, Lauren Tom, Apollonia van Ravenstein and Bill Murray – not to mention a midpoint shift in narrative that will leave an unsuspecting viewer reeling – Nothing Last Forever is an oddity of a film, perhaps too unusual for its time, that deserves, at the very least, a proper worldwide release.www.azim.org Movie And TV Database

A wide-eyed young man (Zach Galligan) arrives in New York with aspirations of becoming an artist. Once inside the confines of the city (which is VERY confined in this totalitarian society) he's prepped to become a working stiff, but an eccentric homeless person whom he has been overly generous to eventually guides the boy to his true fate.The only thing stranger than the fact that this picture has barely been seen anywhere (officially, anyway) is that it was financed by a major studio. "Nothing Last Forever" is not a movie that mainstream '80s moviegoers would have flocked to see. Quite the contrary, if it had been widely released there's absolutely no question that it would have been an epic bomb... which is exactly the appeal.Filmed mostly in black and white (with a few color sequences), it's simultaneously an homage and a parody of classic films. There are many breathtaking visuals and wonderful performances (from an amazing cast) and the film manages to get stranger as it rolls along, blending shadowy noir with kitschy sci-fi and light drama with heavy farce. As another reviewer pointed out, it's difficult NOT to draw comparisons to Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," which was made on a grander scale but is equally as offbeat, surreal and impossible to accurately describe. In other words, like that film, "Nothing Lasts Forever" is truly a work of art.Here's hoping MGM will one day give the movie the lavish release that it deserves. While it'll never be a multi-billion-dollar draw, there's definitely a huge cult audience waiting to discover this lost gem.

Zach Galligan of Gremlins fame, stars in this strange lost film, from a former SNL writer, Tim Schiller, in the 80's. This was produced by Lorne Micheals, and features cameos from Dan Akroyd as a Holland Tunnel inspector (who uses the only instance of profanity, this movie is PG) and Bill Murray as the villainous Captain of an interstellar bus which transports the elderly to the moon. Galligan is a young man whose been abroad for years, and returned home only to find that the New York Port Authority has seized control of the city, due to traffic problems. Galligan is a naive but kindly upstart who knows only that he wants to be an artist. After failing the mandatory "art test" used to determine, who is an artist and who isn't, he is forced to work at the Holland Tunnel with Akroyd, but not for too long, as he meets a fellow artist, falls in love and is taken through a short montage of the new york art world. The setting is essentially timeless, at one point, it suggests the thirties, at another they mention the 50's as part of the past, and at one brief moment, there's a strong hint of 80's, but the film is shot in black and white mostly, and made to resemble a science fiction from an earlyish period from the last century, 30's, 40's??? The plot takes a few turns from here which are surprising and fantastical and not to give away too much, but unfortunately since this movie has NEVER been released on home video or DVD(and doesn't seem likely too), I'll give a way a little more of what's to come...New York as you know it may be an illusion, the homeless are the secret masters of the city and possibly more, and the elderly have been taking routine bus trips to the moon since the 50's, they have chips in their heads which make them say "Miami" every time they even think the word "Moon", so they can't tell anyone. All of these plot elements are told with a matter of factness and a touching sweetness, at no point does this film become cynical, mean, perverse, or pretentious (not something most films as rare and surreal as this can claim). Others have rightly compared it to both Terry Gilliam and Woodey Allen at their most fanciful, but there's a sweetness to this, which gives it a charm all of its own. It's completely unique, very clever, and unusually heartwarming. See it by any means necessary, and as the secret society of bums commands,"Fear not, love all".