My Favorite: Movies: 1984

1984 has special connotations due to the George Orwell novel. It was the year Ronald Reagan won his “Morning in America” reelection to the United States Presidency. I bet there were some editorial cartoons that year linking the two.

It was also the year the ~~Oakland~~ Los Angeles Raiders beat the Washington ~~Redskins~~ (I live in the DC general area now; I still wish the football team would change its name) – a game that sealed my fandom of the Raiders and doomed me to many recent years of misery as they’ve fallen into deep ineptitude. But that game was tremendous. With seven seconds left in the first half, Jack Squirek intercepted a Redskin screen pass for a touchdown. Then the most amazing run by Marcus Allen:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPrm4PpOStA?rel=0]

None of which I guess has too much to do with movies but it’s nice for me to vary how I write each of the posts in this series. First off let’s go to IMDB to refresh my memory of what movies from 1984 I’ve seen and which ones I missed.

HAVE SEEN: Gremlins, Beverly Hills Cop, The Karate Kid, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Footloose, Splash, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Romancing the Stone, The Natural, Bachelor Party, Terminator, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Moscow on the Hudson, Sixteen Candles, Blame it on Rio, Ghostbusters, Swing Shift, Once Upon a Time in America, This Is Spinal Tap, Blood Simple, Amadeus, The Flamingo Kid, All Of Me, Red Dawn, The Philadelphia Experiment, The Last Starfighter, Top Secret!, Body Double, Starman, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension,

HAVE NOT: Police Academy, Revenge of the Nerds, The Killing Fields, Dune, A Passage to India, The Cotton Club, The Woman in Red, Against All Odds, A Soldier’s Story, Firestarter, Lassiter, Supergirl, Broadway Danny Rose, The River, The Bounty, Country, 1984, The Little Drummer Girl, Racing with the Moon, The Razor’s Edge, Hotel New Hampshire, The Brother from Another Planet, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Dreamscape, Johnny Dangerously, The Ice Pirates, Give My Regards to Broad Street, Paris, Texas; The NeverEnding Story, Repo Man, Purple Rain, Stranger Than Paradise, Night of the Comet, Racing with the Moon, Impulse

There are a lot of good movies that year. My sentimental favorite is Ghostbusters which also happens to be a very funny comedy. The Natural is also a movie I remember very fondly — I saw it while I was in high school and as much as I liked the movie, I also loved debating the meaning of it with just about everyone. I had also read the the 1952 novel it was based on. Hollywood of course, tweaked the story towards a more happy ending (but then again I do wonder if the last shot of the movie is actually Roy Hobbs in heaven, having died hitting the winning home run).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcPQeClnilY?rel=0&w=550&h=413]

TOP TEN