This list is what you hope a top movies list for a year should be. It’s culturally well represented. It’s genre – ly well represented. There’s a couple all timers. Great directors. New voices. And the first version of Ron Shelton movie vs. Penny Marshall Movie. AND something new: anime films aplenty, including a double dose of Studio Ghibli!
Usually there’s some magic and optimism in a Studio Ghibli film, but that is most certainly NOT the case here. Set during the waning days of WWII in Japan, this movie turns that beautiful hand drawn animation into a nightmare of melancholy surrounding two kids just simply trying to stay alive.
Advocacy documentary of the highest order. Errol Morris’s doc was so brilliant and convincing, it overturned a conviction for a wrongfully accused man in jail, and basically created a new type of documentary, and inspired shows like Catfish, To Catch a Predator.
The adopted son of a projectionist grows up through the films showed at his cinema. Time and setting increase the importance of this story, as the boy is in wartime Italy. And the story then uses the cinema to teach life lessons to the boy about the big stuff. It’s ambitious and really life affirming, and Hollywood loves it because it also shows the power of movies to change a life.
Bruce Willis forever changed action movie heroes. Previously, the hero was basically a superhero, jacked and better than every villain in the movie. In Shane Black’s story, Willis laments that he’s even there in the first place, wisecracking along the way. In addition, Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) is an all timer of a movie villain, smart and rational, using the security systems in place to his advantage.
The movie that made Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki international sensations. Like his other classics, this movie uses magic and allegories to teach children about life and nature. It’s beautifully drawn, magical, and emotional as you’d expect from Miyazaki, the master of the art form. But mostly, Miyazaki captures that wonder only children feel as they learn the magic of the unknown world around them.
Barry Levinson’s drama avoids all the after school special traps this movie is set up for. Dustin Hoffman is excellent but smartly unchanging as Raymond, the autistic savant and brother to Tom Cruise, a pretty self obsessed jerk who slowly opens up to this brother he didn’t know he had.
The unholy offspring of Mad Max, 2001, and The Terminator. Set in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo, this R rated anime still wows on multiple fronts. The R rating it has it earns and then some, boasting some eye popping violence even John McClane would turn away from. As shocking as the violence is today still, so is the story, a forerunner of great upcoming sci-fi stories like the Matrix. This movie packs in as many ideas as badass action setpieces, whirring you around so fast you jump with joy as your head spins.
Body swap movies were the rage at this time, but Penny Marshall and Tom Hanks’s involvement meant this one became the timeless one. Fulfilling that kids fantasy of becoming an adult, Hanks is wonderfully innocent and charming as a boy wished into adulthood, and Penny Marshall’s deft direction makes sure this movie stays grounded emotionally while all the magic happens around it, making it even more magical for the viewer.
Eventually, this movie will probably become my favorite sports movie. Ron Shelton, the writer/director, WAS a minor league baseball player. So clearly, his understanding of the day to day life of the sport is spot on, hilarious, and much deeper than you think. In addition, he’s a pretty great romcom writer too, penning a great love triangle between Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon (those two got married after this), and Kevin Costner. Sarandon and Costner pop in the movie though, creating two of the great sports movie characters Crash “long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses” Davis and Annie “church of baseball” Savoy.
This Robert Zemeckis classic is movie magic at its finest. One of the best blends of live action and animation ever put to film, Bob Hoskins stars as a police detective investigating a murder in Toon Town, where the animated Roger Rabbit is the prime suspect. The movie is goofy, shockingly well written, amazingly staged and directed, and just the right amount of scary to make it one of the great original family movies of all time.
