TIN MEN - Two feuding, loudmouth know-it-alls...talk about Tin Men.

U.S. Release Date: MARCH 6, 1987

and

Jan 28, 2025

What if those idealistic young men in the cult classic coming-of-age comedy/drama DINER had taken a few missteps in life? If the big dreams and bold ambition they boasted of, exploring a world beyond their post-WWII Baltimore, amounted to little more than an aluminium siding sales gig and a lot of petty male posturing? Writer/director Barry Levinson, it would seem, wondered the same thing…

TIN MEN is Levinson’s second film in his loosely-connected ‘Baltimore Quadrilogy’ - the aforementioned DINER in 1982 announced to the cinematic universe his character smarts and crackling dialogue; his masterwork AVALON followed in 1990; then, the little-seen LIBERTY HEIGHTS nearly a decade later.

At the height of their ‘80s-era fame, DANNY DE VITO and RICHARD DREYFUSS (comfortably ensconced as part of Disney’s Touchstone studio players) play feuding aluminium cladding salesmen, their escalating animosity ruining their lives and impacting all around them (including a terrific Barbara Hershey). It’s funnier than it sounds. Here’s the trailer…:

Revisiting Levinson’s hit for a 2015 piece in The Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg focussed in on the filmic nature of the relationship between the director and his hometown. “Tin Men captured a moment in Baltimore when it still seemed exciting, rather than futile, to get in the game,” she writes. “Levinson makes subtle use of Baltimore's architecture and geography to heighten tension and to add character shading. And for all that Tin Men is a personal story, it's one rooted in Baltimore institutions and bureaucracy.”

THE PODCAST

From their favourite Baltimore diner booth, siding salesperson Dan Barrett and picnic hater Simon Foster talk fast and loose about small men talking big in this week’s BEST MOVIE YEAR podcast:

Simon and Dan have undertaken to watch 100 movies from January through December of 1987 to answer mankind’s most pressing question: Was it the best movie year ever?

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Start your journey through this wonderful film year with our past episodes…

Coming Soon, on BEST MOVIE YEAR: 1987

1987: Best Movie Year?

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