Looking back a few decades to one of my favorite years in film
I was recently perusing my past top 10 lists, looking for one year that had so many good films, in multiple genres, it was difficult to winnow them down to 10. That year — drum roll, please — was 1986, when 27 made it to my long list. Here was my eventual top 10, alphabetically.
“Aliens”: A sequel that knocked the excellent previous film off its pedestal. Sigourney Weaver cemented her Ripley character as an icon. “Big Trouble in Little China”: Director John Carpenter had worked in horror, adventure, and biography, but this time took a turn toward nutzoid ethnic comedy, with a big dollop of the supernatural.
“Blue Velvet”: Life in smalltown Lumberton, North Carolina, proved to be more ominous than idyllic. David Lynch’s film is funny, scary, erotic, violent and perplexing.
“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”:
When Matthew Broderick’s title character decided he needed a one-day break from high school, an elaborately orchestrated plot ensued.
“The Fly”: Isn’t there some unwritten rule that remakes are never as good as the original movies? Well, that argument evaporated with this one in which brilliant inventor Jeff Goldblum developed a matter transporter because moving vehicles gave him motion sickness.
“Hannah and Her Sisters”:
Woody Allen was maturing as an auteur. He nabbed writing and directing Oscars for “Annie Hall” almost a decade earlier, and was awarded another for writing this rich, wise, funny, and sad tale of love lost and found and longed for.
“A Room with a View”: The teaming of director James Ivory, producer Ismael Merchant, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and (early 20th century) novelist E.M. Forster made for a classy, political, humanistic, and surprisingly funny movie.
“Salvador”: It’s an exhausting film to watch, and that’s a compliment. Directed by Oliver Stone, and cowritten by Stone and photojournalist Richard Boyle, it’s the true story of Boyle (played slimily by James Woods) during his time covering the violence and human suffering in early-1980s El Salvador.
“Sid and Nancy”: Tough and vulgar and brimming with negative energy, this is a tough look at the relationship between British punk rocker Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) and his super-groupie American girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb).
“Trouble in Mind”: There’s no standard plot, and no specific beginning, middle, or end, but writer-director Alan Rudolph permeates his film with constant camera movement, soft facial closeups, confounding (but fun) use of time and place, and unique characters.
Ed Symkus can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com