I love lists. I keep lists of everything I’ve ever watched, read, albums of bought and podcasts of listened to every episode of. I love the arbitrary act of ranking things, of putting two pieces of work that have absolutely nothing in common against each other and simply asking myself “which one do you choose?” I have a ranking of every film I’ve ever seen (a list that is so absurd to qualify I could change the placement of every film any time I open it). And I have a ranking of every film from a particular year.
On top of the enjoyment I take in making these lists, it’s helpful to put films together and place them within the historical context of when they are made. Looking back on a singular year can bring into perspective changes, in culture, ideals, and in beliefs. Art is a window to the past, and the window we’re gazing through today is one of He-Man and VH-1, Carl Sagan’s Contact and cold war tensions, 1985. Throughout the years I’d seen only a handful of films from 1985, and while many of them are considered to be the best of their decade there are more than a few major gaps in my viewing resume.
These newsletters focusing on specific years will function as both an appreciation of my past rankings and a reckoning with my current thoughts on the films, plus an update on the rankings with new films I’ve watched specifically for this update. If speaking on, critiquing, and appreciating art is important, the recontextualization that comes with time and aging is just as important. You aren’t the person you were before, and damn if that isn’t fascinating.
At the start of this writing, my rankings for 1985 were as follows:
1. Back to the Future
2. The Breakfast Club
3. Re-Animator
4. Police Story
5. Come and See
6. God's Country
7. Smooth Talk
8. The Goonies
9. Demons
10. Commando
11. Better Off Dead
12. A View to Kill
13. Spies Like Us
14. The Return to the Living Dead
15. Fright Night
16. House
17. Agnes of God
In addition to these films, I was able to watch two more from the year for this essay. Two Academy Award winners, Out of Africa and The Time to Live and the Time to Die. There are many more films from the year that I have not yet seen, as any film fan will have blind spots. A quick round-up of my most regretful blindspots for this year include Ran, After Hours, Shoah, and Brazil.
Many factors play a part in the ranking of a film, as many things can affect one’s enjoyment of the film in the first place. How many times have you simply been not in the proper mental space for a particularly trying film? What part does nostalgia play in the appreciation of these films, some I haven’t seen in decades? It’s in contrasting the artistic merits, the personal relationships, and the place these films hold in culture that I present my updated ranking of films from 1985.
1) Back to the Future
There is an undeniable power in a film that, even well over a decade since you last watched it, can still be confidently placed as the best film of its year. Robert Zemeckis’ time-traveling adventure comedy has pervaded culture and stands as one of the best cultural-defining films of the entire 1980s. It encompasses the decade’s true “fun for the whole family” philosophy, a film that is not too adult for children and not too dumbed down for adults, with just enough thrills to keep everyone on the edge of their seat. True lightning-in-a-bottle filmmaking.
2) Come and See
One of the most harrowing films ever made, this one rises in the rankings based on the sheer audacity of the effort on display. Watching this made me physically ill, and thinking about it can still just leave me staring off into space for an untold amount of time. Brutal, chaotic, and absolutely fierce in its portrayal of the war on the western front of World War II. A film I hold dearly in my heart that I also don’t know if I could ever bring myself to watch again.
3) Police Story
Jackie Chan was a childhood favourite of mine, from Shanghai Noon (Dey, 2000) to Rumble in the Bronx (Tong, 1995) I would watch his films over and over again. I even started doing karate because of him and Jet Li. So when a couple of years ago the local cinema was doing a retrospection screening of his Hong Kong action series Police Story I was thrilled. And thrilled is a great way to encompass this film and everything that makes Jackie Chan so special. Though the story is nothing to write home about (or in a newsletter about), it’s the stunts that will amaze anyone watching this film. From death-defying jumps to jaw-dropping car chases and more, Police Story set the standard for danger on screen.
4) God's Country
Louis Malle is secretly one of my favourite filmmakers. It was a discovery over a course of time, not a conscience effort in searching out his works. Instead, I just would come across a film, adore it, and then discover it was made by the Frenchman. God’s Country was one of the films that locked him in as a master of the craft for me. A documentary that takes place in the prosperous year of 1979 and follows up during economic ruin in 1985, we see the rise and fall of a rural American community during the decade of excess. Malle’s deeply entrenched sense of sympathy is what makes all of his films special, from Elevator to the Gallows to My Dinner with Andre, and here that sympathy transfer into a boiling rage as to the discarding of the people of Glencoe, Minnesota. One of the best documentaries of the decade, as it shows the facade of the American Dream blistering in the sun.
5) The Breakfast Club
Another generation-defining classic of the decade, it is always nice when you watch a film held in such high regard and you can agree with the sentiment. While the film does fall for some cliches (that likely are only cliches because of this film) the overall morals of the story still hold strong and resonate four decades later. Isolation, expectation, and loneliness in a world full of people will be forever relevant for teenagers and adults alike.
6) Smooth Talk
The debut film of Laura Dern, this quiet coming-of-age drama doesn’t rely on the set pieces or quirky characters found in The Breakfast Club or other Hughes affairs. Instead, it’s simply about a young girl discovering womanhood, both the joys and the pitfalls within it. While the film could be meandering in its portrayal of middling lower-class existence and the quiet wishes of youth, it’s within its final act that it really sets itself apart. The character of the Stranger (played with oily disdain by Treat Williams) introduces an edge to the film that I wasn’t expecting, and takes the film to territory I didn’t think it was originally capable of. Quiet, sincere, and angry.
7) Re-Animator
In a decade dominated by low-tier slasher fair (by this time we were already on our fifth Friday the 13th film), an adaptation of horror icon H.P. Lovecraft’s work stands tall. A gloriously gory film that never takes itself too seriously, Re-Animator is right up there with The Thing (Carpenter, 1982) as some of the best grotesqueries to be put in screen. A campy affair that would feel at home being told on Tales on the Crypt, this one is perfect for a Halloween night in.
8) The Return to the Living Dead
The cross-genre of zombies and comedies is one oft tried but rarely perfected, Outside of Shaun of the Dead (Wright, 2004) we are left with failed combinations of the two genres, unable to balance the horrors of the dead with levity. The Return of the Living Dead may be the closest we’ll get outside of London, as the film dives deep into absurdity to draw laughs from outrageousness more than character. Edging towards a Troma film level of bombasticness, the film throws everything from punks having sex in a graveyard to janitors falling into barrels of fresh corpse juice, and the audience is left to hold on for dear life.
9) Demons
Italian horror maestro Dario Argento’s Demons is much like many Italian giallo films, for better or worse. While the film contains many horrific sequences and grotesque images, it does so at the cost of story and character. And while those elements are not necessarily what you come to a horror film for, the best ones combine the genre and artistic elements. This is less of a cohesive film and more like a series of nightmares, sequences loosely connected together and motifs strung along to make a facsimile of cohesion. And while it’s a fun ride when watching the flesh tear and the bloodshed, in the end you’re left feeling like nothing has been accomplished.
10) Commando
Possibly Arnold’s most egregiously macho film of the 1980s (a category that could be its own newsletter sometime), Commando is as stereotypically 80s as a film can get. A lead who’s more muscle than man, a feisty female sidekick who’s mostly there to ogle, the main villain being someone from our hero’s past back for revenge. If you asked a chatbot to write you an 80s action film it would just start playing this movie. And while these tropes are fun for what they are and as a view into what the decade found appealing, it’s the film equivalent of Dead or Alive’s one hit ‘You Spin My Around’: dated.
11) Fright Night
An 80s vampire film that has the unfortunate existence of not being The Lost Boys (Schumacher, 1987), Fright Night can’t help but live in the shadow of that other film. Much like other films falling in this middle ground, there is nothing particularly wrong with this film (and Chris Sarandon is incredibly fun in his role as a scene-stealing vampire). It simply doesn’t have the extra juice, that “it girl” factor, to make it stand above the crop of films around it. A good movie, a fun night in, but one that’s far from essential.
12) The Time to Live and the Time to Die
As discussed in the last newsletter, The Time to Live and the Time to Die is not a bad film in any way, it simply doesn’t have anything to make it memorable. Whether it originated the cliches that it has or it was already living well within these worn-out ways, the film falls into the trap of stereotype. A blueprint film, following the exact track you can expect from hearing the logline. And while it does these tropes well, in a time of some innovation in world cinema, this film doesn’t make its mark.
13) The Goonies
Now we get to the portion of our rankings where nostalgia takes its toll. I never watched The Goonies as a child, and until about five years ago it was just something I vaguely knew of in the countless references throughout other films and TV shows. Once I finally got around to seeing it I couldn’t help but feel that the time had passed, and the window had closed for me. While I can appreciate what it is going for and why the elements of childhood adventure have so engrained this film in the minds of children for decades, that whimsy is lost on me as an adult. Instead I’m left with a strange film that isn’t quite funny enough, nor adventurous enough, nor smart enough, to retain me.
14) Spies Like Us
Another film that may have been held in higher regard had a seen it at the right time in my life, Spies Like Us is a film that (much like Fright Night) lives in the shadow of other, better films of the time. Between Caddyshack (Ramis, 1980) and Stripes (Reitman, 1981) all of these jokes had been done before and done better by the time this film came about.
15) A View to a Kill
Another victim of not seeing it at the right time in my life, A View to a Kill is the final Roger Moore Bond film, and thank God for that. Nothing says international spy like an almost sixty-year-old man hooking up with a twenty-year-old for queen and country. Another series that has never resonated with me much, James Bond can’t help but feel old-fashioned and stuffy in most of his pre-90s outings. Add to that Roger Moore who very much does not want to be making this film and we’re left with really not much at all (except an always interesting Christopher Walken)
16) Better Off Dead
Better Off Dead, the sub-John Hughes high school flick, really never stood a chance. It features John Cusack before he figured out how to be charming (only to lose it again unfortunately), a dull-as-can-be foreign exchange student subplot (something the decade really couldn’t get enough of), and really nothing else. The good news is it’s at least not full of the gross-out humor and actual assault of other 80s comedy films, but that’s faint praise at best.
17) Agnes of God
Agnes of God is an unfortunate example of what can happen during these rankings, a film that could be perfectly fine (great even!) falling victim to passing time. This film doesn’t fall to the bottom of the list because I disliked it, but simply because it’s been wiped almost completely from my memory. And while this may be an unfair ranking, I do feel that the complete void it has left in my memory is an indicator of quality. I watch many movies, usually 150-200 in a year, and rarely does absolutely nothing come from those experiences. A moment, a feeling, a singular line, something almost always stays with me. And if it didn’t, I’m guessing there was nothing worth remembering.
18) Out of Africa
The temperament of dramas from this time is one that I am likely to never be on the same page as. This is apparent when talking about the Best Picture-winning Out of Africa, a sleepy colonialism drama that eschews character development and plot elements for beauty shots of the savannah. While I am not opposed to the exploration of such beautiful terrain, when framed through a story of a white woman discovering the power of the “uncivilized” world, the power of the majestic quickly dims. A textbook example of what people assume the Academy to be; out of touch and dull.
19) House
I don’t hate the Steve Miner horror comedy House, but it does lack the two things you would expect from that description: scares and laughs. In the film that is aping heavily on Poltergeist (Hooper, 1982) William Katt inherits a home from a distant aunt only to discover not everything is as it seems (unless you have a portal to hell in your closet, in which case this will probably hit a little closer to home. While I will always give points to some original practical monsters, I look back on this film and only remember the lame jokes and complete mess of a plot. At some point it feels like they abandoned all sense of coherency in favor of (as cheap as possible) thrills.