Baby (Jennifer Grey) has the summer of her life while learning how to dance from the hired workers at her summer camp. I’ll admit, I thought this movie sounded pretentious and dumb when I started watching it. But someone who lives in the real world wrote the script; there’s a great father/daughter relationship, a shockingly great study of the plight of the working class, and a solid coming of age story, surrounded by beautiful settings, great music, and sexy shirtless Patrick Swayze.
Like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, this romcom wins the day because of cultural specificity. Filled with Italian customs and traditions, Loretta Castorini (Cher, proving she can act) has choose to marry smartly or marry for love, choosing between Danny Aiello and Nicholas Cage. Olympia Dukakis is also excellent playing Cher’s mother, so much so that she got an Oscar for her performance. If this ranking seems high for you, snap out of it!
Stanley Kubrick’s war movie is a tale of two halves. The 2nd half is just ok, using elaborate sets to capture the tension of Vietnam. However, the first half is a masterpiece, showing the life of marine recruits working through boot camp. R. Lee Ermy, a military man in his past life, is eye-opening as the drill sergeant, maintaining a level “10” while dispelling some of the most vile, cutting insults you’ll ever hear. Matching and exceeding him is Vincent D’Onofrio, the bumpkin Private Pyle drawing the ire of the platoon. Kubrick shows how the military breaks and reforms you physically and especially psychologically, with potentially amazing or horrifying results.
Mad Max brought Mel Gibson to America, but Lethal Weapon put him here to stay. Gibson’s Martin Riggs, traumatized by life events, is the patrolling risk taker, putting it all on the line to catch the bad guys. So in smart fashion, he’s paired with the timid family man Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover). I believe you call that mismatched buddy comedy, but this one was so well executed and beloved it inspired a generation’s worth of 1990 buddy cop iterations, though I’m most partial to the Lethal Weapon 5 sequel.
Horror comedies simply weren’t a thing. Well, enter Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell to confuse and entertain you. Yes, there’s totally scary sh*t going on, but amidst all that Campbell’s Ash seems ok and into it, embracing the crazy and running with it. Plus, you get the inventive crazy nonsense of a wall throwing up on our hero, fighting your own hand, and a conversation with a reflection. Novel, inventive stuff that landed Sam Raimi the Spiderman movies.
Brian de Palma’s gangster movie about Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and his group of cops trying to take down bootlegger legend Al Capone (Robert De Niro). This movie starts of with a bang, and keeps the tension high throughout, no better than a baby carriage laden shootout through Chicago’s Union Station.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Certainly Michael Douglas’s Dan Gallagher feels that way, after a torrid affair with Alex Forest (a never better Glenn Close). Alex has made spouses think twice about cheating on their significant others, in fear for their pets, and families, should the lover choose not to be ignored.
Right before The Simpsons became a TV sensation, James L. Brooks takes us deep into the world of Washington News Reporting. Besides being a brilliant story about what goes into making a TV news piece, Brooks also crafts a complicated, brilliant love triangle between the affable doofus William Hurt, the neurotic wit Albert Brooks, and Mrs. Incredible herself Holly Hunter, proving why Pixar gave her that moniker.
Big year for Michael Douglas. His Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s cautionary tale about greed ironically has become a hero of Reaganomics, an amoral corporatist who with do anything to achieve…more. Just more. Stone’s screenplay smartly puts Charlie Sheen between Gekko and Sheen’s dad in the movie & real life Martin, who’s an honest hard working man lacking ruthless drive.
Romantic Comedies and Fantasy Princess stories had to be told a certain way until this Rob Reiner masterpiece. Reiner still tells a great romantic comedy, but he does it while mocking all of the stupid rules of the genre. The bad guys are not really bad, they’re mostly sweet hired guns with lots of interesting dreams and thoughts. The good guy wins by more fights with words than with swords, the magical wizards would rather be left alone than help out. Love can be expressed while rolling down a hill in a silly way. Most importantly, the movie is an entertaining bundle of joy that will make a 9 year old boy ok with the kissing scene you know is eventually coming.
