In 1985:
Ronald Reagan began his second term as US President;
Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in the Soviet Union;
Hulk Hogan and Mr. T defeated Rowdy Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff in the inaugural Wrestlemania;
Elmo first appeared on Sesame Street;
New Coke debuted and, after a disastrous couple of months, was removed from US stores;
David Letterman debuted his first Top Ten List;
U.S. Route 66 was decommissioned;
Pete Rose became the MLB all-time leader in career hits;
Super Mario Bros. was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System.;
Calvin and Hobbes, The Golden Girls, and Tommy Hilfiger debuted;
Kiera Knightley, Derek Hough, Chris Paul, Carey Mulligan, Colbie Caillat, Lana Del Rey, Michael Phelps, Emile Hirsch, John Francis Daley, Calvin Johnson, Bruno Mars, Jack Osbourne, Carly Rae Jespen, Kaley Cuoco, Frankie Muniz, and Dwight Howard were born;
While Henry Cabot Lodge, Marc Chagall, Edmond O’Brien, Karen Ann Quinlan, Gale Sondergaard, Ruth Gordon, Simone Signoret, Yul Brynner, Orson Welles, Phil Silvers, and Roger Maris died.
The following is my list of the top ten films released in 1985:
10) Prizzi’s Honor
Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson), a hitman for a New York mafia family, is sent to Vegas to fill a contract, where he falls in love and impetuously marries the widow of his latest victim, Irene Walker (Kathleen Turner), who also happens to be a professional murderer. Their sudden marriage causes problems with Charley’s boss, Don Corrado Prizzi (William Hickey), who believes Irene kept some of the money her husband had stolen.
Charley’s former lover, Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston), spies on Irene to curry favor with her family and sabotage his relationship.
When Don Corrado orders Charley to kill Irene, he’s torn between two worlds and debates what he will do, “Do I marry her? Do I ice her? Which one of these?”
Directed by John Huston, this gangster comedy is like The Godfather (1972) filtered through the Marx Brothers. Nicholson is fantastic and the romantic tension with his real life paramour Anjelica Huston is palpable, while Kathleen Turner is at the peak of her considerable sex appeal.
9) Come and See
Less than 420, 000 Americans died in World War II and there are hundreds of films about the American experience in the war including Casablanca (1942), From Here to Eternity (1953), The Longest Day (1962), The Great Escape (1963), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and Saving Private Ryan (1998).
Approximately 450, 000 people British citizens died in World War II, and there are hundreds of movies about the British experience in the war including Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), and Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
Recent scholarship puts the Soviet death total at close to 20 million, but while Doctor Zhivago (1965), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), and Reds (1980) document the 1917 revolution which brought communism to Russia, there are very few films dealing with the deaths of these 20 million.
The Soviet regime enforced strict controls over the films made about the Russian experience in World War II because they were afraid filmmakers would expose the atrocities Stalin inflicted on his own citizens. This fear prevented artists and filmmakers from exploring the painful experiences of the second World War on the eastern front.
Because there hasn’t been a war fought on American soil since the US Civil War, American films portray war as something you send people to do, not something which shows up on your doorstep unannounced. In contrast, this film possesses an urgency not often found in American war films, capturing the helplessness of fleeing from your home without knowing if you have a safe place to spend the night.
When Flyora’s family is killed by Nazi soldiers, he initially hides, then unsuccessfully joins the Russian military effort where he witnesses horrifying atrocities, but mostly he wanders the countryside searching for a new home and family.
The movie ends as he finally succumbs to the violence of war by shooting a picture of Adolf Hitler. As he fires, a montage of images trace Hitler’s life backwards from his rise to power to his humble origins, ending with a picture of him as a toddler in his mother’s lap. This movie about the absolute horror of war reminds us Hitler was once a little boy.
Even if you knew he was destined to become the epitome of evil, could you kill three-year old Hitler? Flyora stops shooting when the image of the child appears, showing a capacity for compassion larger than the capacity of evil responsible for the death of 20 million.
Recently divorced Emma Moriarty (Sally Field) moves with her young son, Jake (Corey Haim) to a rural Arizona town where she meets the eccentric and opinionated local druggist Murphy Jones (James Garner).
Slowly, the two develop a tentative relationship, but when Emma’s ex-husband returns, complications ensue.
This is a by-the-numbers romantic comedy, but Garner is so incredibly charming and debonair he makes you forget how slight the film is. Despite a considerable age gap, his chemistry with Field is electric and makes the film better than it should be.
7) Shoah
After countless films about the Holocaust and Hitler’s Final Solution, we should be prepared for any level of depravity, but Claude Lanzmann ten-hour documentary which includes interviews survivors of concentration camps, former Nazi officials, and local residents of cities where unspeakable atrocities occurred unearths new disturbing facts.
I’d never heard of gas vans, which were designed so the carbon monoxide exhaust went into the interior of the vehicle. After driving for an hour, everyone inside was dead.
Szymon Srebrnik survived a shot in the head at a concentration camp just before it was liberated. The Nazis were desperately trying to kill everyone so there would be no witnesses to their crimes.
Younger residents of Dachau and Treblinka downplayed how bad it was and made a few ill-advised jokes, while most of the older residents feigned ignorance. When Lanzmann reminded them trains were leaving full and returning empty, some of them admitted they knew but kept their mouths shut out of fear. When he asked why they weren’t afraid for the Jews, someone justified their behavior by asking, “When you cut your finger, does it hurt me?”
Abraham Bomba worked as a barber at a concentration camp cutting the hair of the arriving prisoners and claimed he was only doing his job and couldn’t be held responsible for what else went on there.
Lanzmann interviewed former Nazis with hidden cameras so he could get an honest description of the evil they helped perpetuate.
The Holocaust has become a powerful rhetorical device detached from actual events. Lanzmann called his film Shoah (the Jewish word for the Holocaust) because it doesn’t come loaded with associations and allows us to see the material with fresh eyes.
It’s important we don’t forget real evil, which treats human beings as problems to be discarded, exists in the world. This film does a service to humanity preserving the memory of this unspeakable evil.
Now in her twilight years, Carrie Watts (Geraldine Page) frequently dreams about her long ago abandoned childhood home, Bountiful. She wants to make a return visit, but her son, Ludie (John Heard), prevents her from making the trip. He knows Bountiful was decimated by the two-headed giant of the Depression and World War II and is afraid the shock of seeing the pitiful remains of her ancestral home will kill his mother.
Despite his efforts, a determined and resourceful Ms. Watts stows away on a trip to reconnect with her past.
This is powerful film about loss and memory. A reminder the past is ephemeral and growing old means more than experience and an aging body, it means the accumulative loss of friends, family, and the things which formed us.
John Heard’s career is a tragic tale of unfulfilled potential. Early on, he showed promise, but his personal demons significantly hampered his career.
Geraldine Page was nominated for an Academy Award seven times before this winning role, but sadly, much like Carrie Watts’s hometown, her career has been largely forgotten.
Alfred Molina (William Hurt), a homosexual imprisoned by the Brazilian government, passes the time describing scenes from one of his favorite films (a wartime romantic film which also doubled as a Nazi propaganda film).
He agrees to befriend and spy on a fellow prisoner, the revolutionary Valentin Arregui (Raul Julia), in exchange for an early release, but unexpectedly falls in love with him. Faced with the loneliness of prison life, Arregui reluctantly returns his affection, culminating in a passionate, physical encounter during Molina’s last night in the prison. As he leaves the next day, Arregui gives Molina a phone number and message for his comrades, but when the secret police follow him to the rendezvous, a violent encounter leaves Molina mortally wounded.
William Hurt exploded into the public consciousness with his outstanding performance in this film and more than deserved his Oscar while Raúl Juliá, best known as Gomez Addams, demonstrates a talent far beyond what he was allowed to do elsewhere.
Part love story, part magical realism, part metafiction, this film brilliantly explores the power of memory and imagination, the camaraderie of prison, and the resiliency of the human spirit.
4) Clue
Six individuals known only by color-coded pseudonyms receive a cryptic invitation to a weekend dinner party hosted by Mr. Body. After the guests learn they’re all being blackmailed by Body for various embarrassing offences, Mr. Body is murdered, then the cook, then the maid, then a passing motorist, then a police officer, then a singing telegram.
Featuring a stellar cast, Tim Curry as Wadsworth, the butler, Martin Mull as Colonel Mustard, Christopher Lloyd as Professor Plum, Madeline Kahn as Ms. White, Eileen Brennan as Ms. Peacock, Michael McKean as Mr. Green, and Lesley Ann Warren as Ms. Scarlett, this innovative film randomly assigned three different endings to prints of the film, which meant moviegoers could see the movie three times and encounter a different resolution.
There are many memorable scenes: Colonel Mustard counting bullets, the nonchalant death of the singing telegram, “Communism is just a red herring,” Ms. White’s bizarre speech about jealousy, “I’m gonna go home and sleep with my wife,” Tim Curry’s frantic reenactment.
My love for the film is colored by personal nostalgia, but it’s an uproariously funny film which captures the spirit of game night, setting the standard for board game inspired films, thirty years before Battleship and Ouija.
3) Return to Oz
Worried Dorothy’s continued obsession with Oz portends she’s losing her grip on reality, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry consult a psychiatrist who suggests electroshock therapy.
As they’re prepping Dorothy for her first treatment, the power goes out. In the confusion, she runs away, and once again finds herself transported to her beloved magical land, accompanied by the farm’s eggless chicken, Bilinda.
Oz is in crisis, and Dorothy, with the help of new friends Tik-Tok, Jack Pumpkinhead, and The Gump, must defeat the Gnome King and Mombi (the Evil Witch of the North), who possesses a terrifying ability to change her head.
This pseudo-sequel to the classic 1939 film discards the former’s bright and cheery disposition. There are no upbeat songs or dazzling Technicolor, the denizens of Oz are slightly misshapen, and Fairuza Balk brings a hardened realism to Dorothy wholly missing in Judy Garland’s performance.
Many critics have lamented the dark tone, complaining it was inappropriate for a children’s film, but I love this film because it pushes boundaries, encouraging kids to face their fears and overcome them.
After Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) converts a DeLorean DMC-12 into a time machine, his friend, high schooler Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) gets stuck in the past, thirty years earlier.
When Marty accidentally prevents his parents Lorraine (Leah Thompson) and George (Crispin Glover) from becoming a couple, he enlists the younger version of Doc to help restore the timeline and get back to his own time.
The amazing chemistry between Lloyd and Fox drives the movie, even though their relationship seems odd in retrospect. Why is this sixty-year-old man hanging out with an eighteen-year-old kid?
This film is great because of the subtle things it gets right, the talk about The Honeymooners being a “classic,” Lorraine’s baby brother loving his crib, the future mayor as a marginalized burger flipper, inventing the skateboard, “Ronald Reagan, the actor?,” Johnny B. Goode, the Libyans, Calvin Klein underwear.
A part of the cultural lexicon, this is the essential time travel movie. It’s a perfect deconstruction of nostalgia, demonstrating how time distorts and warps our perceptions of the past and reminding us our parents were once kids with dreams and desires very similar to our own.
During the Great Depression, Cecilia (Mia Farrow) goes to the movies to escape her bleak existence. When she’s watching The Purple Rose of Cairo for the umpteenth time, one of the primary characters, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels). miraculously walks out of the screen and joins her in the theater.
Tom and Cecilia fall in love, but this is complicated when Gil Shepherd, the actor playing Tom in the movie, arrives to convince him to return to the fantasy world of the film.
Drawing inspiration from Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. (1924) among others, this film asks if reality or fantasy is more important.
Movies about movies are one of my favorite motifs; movies about the Golden Age of Cinema even more so.
During his fertile collaboration with lover Mia Farrow, Woody Allen could do little wrong; this is no exception.