STILL RESONATING 30 YEARS ON: 1987’s touchstones include ‘Matewan,’ ‘Radio Days,’ ‘Empire of the Sun’ and, yes, even Mickey Rourke
It was the ’80s, so the films of 1987 naturally had big stars, big hair and big soundtracks.
The year’s most popular movie, however improbably, was a remake of a French comedy, “Three Men and a Baby,” starring Steve Guttenberg, Tom Selleck and Ted Danson and directed by Leonard Nimoy. It beat out more star-driven and action fare such as “Beverly Hills Cop II,” “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “The Untouchables,” “Lethal Weapon,” “The Witches of Eastwick,” “Predator” and “RoboCop.”
Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” took the best picture Oscar over James L. Brooks’ media satire “Broadcast News,” starring William Hurt, Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks; the John Patrick Shanley-Norman Jewison romantic comedy “Moonstruck,” with Cher in her Oscar-winning role; and the Glenn Close-Michael Douglas thriller “Fatal Attraction.” Douglas won lead actor for Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.”
Other films made a lot of noise, as the soundtracks for “Dirty Dancing” and “La Bamba” topped the album charts, while “The Princess Bride” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” remain audience favorites 30 years later.
Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” which netted a single Oscar nomination, now has the most votes on IMDB of any film released in 1987.
But the year might be best remembered for a lot of films that quietly made an impact and still resonate three decades later.
From Oscar contenders that failed to rock the vote to smaller movies that we may have forgotten, here is a look at some of the year’s gems:
Game of scribes
It was a fine year for writer-directors.
After establishing himself as one of America’s best playwrights with “American Buffalo” and “Glengarry Glen Ross” and writing the screenplays for “The Verdict” and “The Untouchables,” David Mamet made his film directing debut with the carefully constructed crime thriller “House of Games.” Starring Joe Mantegna as a slick Seattle con man and Lindsay Crouse as an anxious therapist eager to learn the rules of the trade, the film featured the writer’s trademark staccato dialogue delivered with deadpan aplomb by a slew of Mamet regulars such as Mike Nussbaum, J.T. Walsh, Ricky Jay and William H. Macy in a small role.
With “Matewan,” John Sayles moved from the more intimate scale of his earlier films “The Return of the Secaucus 7,” “Lianna,” “Baby It’s You” and “The Brother From Another Planet” to a sweeping historical tale set against a 1920s West Virginia labor dispute. Starring Chris Cooper, David Strathairn and James Earl Jones, the film beats its social justice drum loudly and harkens back to a time when cinema celebrated the American worker.
Following his breakout 1982 film, “Diner,” Barry Levinson made a string of larger-scales hits, including “The Natural,” “Good Morning, Vietnam” and the Oscar-winning “Rain Man.” In the midst of all that, he found time to return to his native Baltimore for the character-driven “Tin Men,” a loose followup to “Diner.” Danny DeVito and Richard Dreyfuss starred as feuding aluminum siding salesman in 1963 Baltimore, and Levinson again demonstrated his flair for capturing the vernacular of a particular species of American male, effusive about work, food and pop culture, clueless about the women around them.
In “Hollywood Shuffle,” director Robert Townsend and co-writer Keenen Ivory Wayans satirized an industry that hasn’t changed much in the interim with regard to race. Based on his own experience of being deemed “not black enough,” Townsend played a struggling actor who dreams of great roles, only to be offered nothing but slaves, butlers and jive-