There are a few classic films that I simply refused to rent while growing up, specifically for the reason that I knew I should see them for the first time on a big screen. Of these, I managed to see both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner in a theater, while others, such as Lawrence of Arabia and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, were on television too often to ignore them on the small screen first. One film that I'm still dying to see in a theater is Terrence Malick's Badlands. A few years ago I actually went to a special screening of the film in Connecticut, but it was disappointingly (understatement) projected from a DVD copy. Then two months ago it played one show at NYC's IFC Center, but I had to miss it for another engagement.

Last week Entertainment Weekly presented an article/photo gallery titled "23 Movies You'd Like to See on the Big Screen," which lists these kinds of films (there's actually many more than 23 cited), most of which should ONLY be seen on the big screen, as they were originally meant to be. The list includes obvious epic choices like 2001, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone With the Wind, The Greatest Show on Earth and The Ten Commandments, as well as other classics, like Malick's Days of Heaven, Casablanca, Once Upon a Time in the West, Star Wars, High Society, Halloween, Singin' in the Rain, To Kill a Mockingbird, Psycho, Oklahoma!, The Music Man, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Searchers, Stagecoach and The French Connection.

A dreamy fairy tale about a psychotic killer and his teenage girlfriend, Badlands features two fine performances (Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek) and a compelling story. Spacek's matter-of-fact narration and Sheen's modest charm draw you into a drama that appears to unfold spontaneously. Writer/director Terence Malick made a radical departure into more visual storytelling with his next feature, Days of Heaven. Because Days of Heaven is so dependent upon those visual components, Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere has sounded the alarm that Criterion's upcoming re-issue of the film on DVD will look "really different" than the previous version.

Wells pointed to a blog entry by Criterion's Lee Kline in which Kline described the process involved. A new film interpositive was needed for the transfer; Malick initially wanted Kline to "simply match the existing transfer because he'd always liked it," but finally agreed to be present for the color-correction process. Once there, he "made it clear that the new transfer needed to feel natural and not too 'postcardlike.' ... The natural beauty of the land needed to be represented, since that was what they were going for when shooting. ... I told Terry that people were really going to be pretty surprised by this new transfer, since it was such a radical departure from before, but he said it was perfect."

Wells relates that he saw the film in 70mm in 1978 and "no viewings since have ever come close in terms of basic visual grandeur." In response to a reader's comment, he writes that Kline's alarm "was almost certainly due to Malick naturalizing the look by making sure the visual values were in no way heightened or warmed-up or made to look 'too pretty.' ... The Criterion Days of Heaven may be perfectly fine, but something tells me it's going to look much better on high-def with a perfect plasma screen than on, say, my Sony flat-screen or other tube screens owned by Regular Joes."

   • Big Momma's House 2 - In Martin Lawrence's desperate minstrel show, the comedian reprises his role as undercover FBI agent Malcolm Turner, again donning a fat suit to become the sassy, black Southern matron Big Momma. He has to stop a potentially destructive computer hacker, and the movie is broad, shameless and pandering in most every respect. Lawrence appears to assume that we automatically like him and Big Momma, and does little to endear them to us any further. Incessant mugging, weak slapstick and Teflon catchphrases fill in the many cracks of its already shaky foundation, leaving a hammy house of horrors that should have been condemned when it was still a half-baked pitch.
    • Grandma's Boy - Adam Sandler's longtime second-banana, Allen Covert, gets his shot at a lead in this stoner comedy, but despite his appealing, aw-shucks demeanor, the movie, about a 36-year-old video game tester who moves in with his grandmother and her two roommates, is just irredeemably stupid. It is sad to see three lovely ladies like Doris Roberts, Shirley Jones and Shirley Knight stooping for laughs like this, though based on the fact that practically no one saw it in theaters (or will go out of their way to rent the DVD), it is a very minor tragedy.