50. Tucker: The Man and His Dream
Francis Ford Coppola conceived of his motor industry entrepreneurial tale around the time he was embroiled in The Godfather double bill of the early 1970s. Tucker: The Man and His Dream was not actually revved and ready to go until 1988, on the eve of the filmmaker’s third and final mafia family saga.
Even with the likes of Marlon Brando and Burt Reynolds cited for the lead character of lifelong-car-fanatic-come-engineer Preston Tucker over the years, the eventual casting of Jeff Bridges was the smoothest choice. Bridges, renowned for his freewheeling swagger, encapsulated the ambition and charm of Tucker, as well as fitting the mould of Coppola’s stylish blend of comedy and drama.
A pioneer of various revolutionary safety implements including seatbelts and pop-out windshields, Tucker’s “car of the future” echoes the more recent “way of the future” in 2004’s The Aviator. Not only would the Scorsese flick make a perfect double bill with his filmmaker buddy’s Tucker, but Coppola cast Dean Stockwell as the ubiquitous Howard Hughes in 1988. The familiar faces of Martin Landau, Joan Allen, Elias Koteas, Christian Slater – among others – also feature. – – – Robin Write
49. Talk Radio
Talk Radio, based on a stageplay by Eric Bogosian, also stars Bogosian in the leading role of radio shock jock Barry Champlain. In February of this year, conservative talk radio pioneer Rush Limbaugh died, perhaps as strong a signal as any that the era of the raging shock jock had closed. Yet so much about Oliver Stone and Bogosian’s film feels timely. The tagline, “The Last Neighborhood in America,” could very easily be used to market a social media app.
Protagonist Barry Champlain, with his unorthodox views and combative style, resembles nothing more than the modern phenomenon of the twitter troll. Or, perhaps if we’re being more charitable, a podcaster. Robert Richardson’s camerawork is memorably claustrophobic. The studio – which the audience, like Champlain, rarely leaves – is both confining and lived in. The movie’s most sensational asset is star and co-writer Bogosian, expanding a character he created for a one man show into a fully tragic figure. Perhaps of Stone’s ‘80s output, this is the film most deserving of reappraisal. – – – John Connelly
48. Eight Men Out
It was a baseball movie about the 1919 Chicago White Sox, but not Field of Dreams. It also featured Charlie Sheen, but not Major League. John Sayle’s Eight Men Out is an underseen and underappreciated baseball film. It tells the story of the infamous “Black Sox Scandal”, in which the team purposefully lost the 1919 World Series to win gambling money that far exceeded their regular salaries.
The detail Mr. Sayles used here was vital: How disgruntled the players were, how they made deals, and how they played on the field to follow up on the bribe. It was basically walking us through the team’s actions, clearly portraying how guilty they were. “Say it ain’t so, Joe”, is the lasting line from this film. The kids looking up to the ballplayers, almost as deities, contrasts with the real life situations faced by the men, who needed to make a living.
This film features wonderful performances by John Cusack, Gordon Clapp, Michael Rooker, David Strathairn, and the late great John Mahoney. I mentioned earlier that Charlie Sheen is in this, but it’s odd to think that he isn’t featured as much as you’d think. Eight Men Out, aside from being a movie about baseball, really is a history lesson. It’s a picture of the times, specifically more than 100 years ago, of how differently sports were managed then. It would be hard to fathom now seeing professional athletes needing an offseason job to take care of their families, as they did then. – – – Christian Fuentes
47. Powaqqatsi
That eternally flowing music from the maestro Philip Glass may be synonymous with the increasingly dubious Truman Burbank of his paranoid reality. But one of the all-time great music anthems was indelibly used some tens years prior in Godfrey Reggio’s extraordinary Powaqqatsi. A visual document on the real world of sorts, and a follow up to the equally blistering Koyaanisqatsi from 1982, Powaqqatsi is an unrivalled account of the unfathomable transformative life before us.
With an astute, perpetually beautiful emphasis on the Third World, Powaqqatsi affords us the luxury of exploring the way of life amidst the dirt, the mud, the rocks. And in that, the celebration of the relationship between people and the land. Somehow bringing us closer to the varying aspects of the modern world, lest we forget. The tossing of homegrown seed or the religious jives form a powerful significance to parallel the hustle-bustle of city life where the sun still rises and the water still falls. – – – Robin Write
46. High Hopes
Surprisingly only his second feature film, High Hopes in its title and its worn down tone, offers a blueprint for British filmmaker Mike Leigh’s legacy. In a filmography that has not even reached twenty pictures, Leigh has woven one of the largest impressions in British cinema’s patchwork of the last five decades. Partly explaining the huge gap in his CV from the debut Bleak Moments in 1971 to the TV-aired Meantime in 1983, is Leigh’s insistence of allowing performer-driven process over an actual physical screenplay.
High Hopes is set during Thatcher’s England and the trailing working-class society. The central characters of Cyril (Phil Davis) and Shirley (Ruth Sheen), although patterned alongside many of Leigh’s detached strays, offer refreshingly encouraging points of view. Provisional support in Leigh’s bleak and witty cultural perspectives is offered by the elderly mother (Edna Doré) and sister (Lesley Manville). – – – Robin Write
45. Wàngjiǎo Kǎmén / As Tears Go By
Wong Kar-Wai’s directorial debut stars Andy Lau as Wah, a middle-grade Triad enforcer who struggles to keep his plucky subordinate Fly (Jacky Cheung) in line. In the first of her many collaborations with Wong, a luminescent Maggie Cheung appears as Wah’s ‘cousin’ Ngor, who is sprung upon him when she travels to Hong Kong for medical reasons and then vies for both his attention and affections.
Wong’s debut film is perhaps his least distinctive, with its most obvious influences being Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and the earlier works of the New Wave – particularly those of Wong’s mentor, Patrick Tam. Nevertheless, while the aestheticization of gangster violence in Hong Kong cinema didn’t originate with As Tears Go By, it was here that it reached near-perfection.
Every frame remains fresh, vibrant, and neon, with romance and action seamlessly flowing together with a shared dynamism. It reaches its emotional peak with the most iconic kiss in Hong Kong cinema, filmed with Wong’s step-printing technique that slows down the visuals yet imparts them with breathless energy. Fittingly, the scene is underscored by a Cantonese cover of “Take My Breath Away” – it certainly had that effect on me and audiences at the time, who made it Wong’s highest-grossing film domestically until The Grandmaster. – – – Calvin MacKinnon
44. The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time kicked off a long-running series of 14 films, all with varying degrees of success, but director Don Bluth’s original 1988 film remains one of the best and most memorable animated movies of the 1980s, and a staple for many 90s kids’ childhoods. Set in prehistoric times, herbivorous “longneck” dinosaur Littlefoot (voiced by Gabriel Damon) and triceratops, or “three-horn,” Cera (Candace Hutson) find themselves on their own after an earthquake kills Littlefoot’s mother (Helen Shaver) and separates the young ones from the rest of their herd. Teaming up with new friends Ducky (Judith Barsi) and Petrie (Will Ryan), they set out to follow Littlefoot’s mother’s advice and find a haven known as the Great Valley, encountering dangerous situations like bad weather and T-Rex attacks on the way.
The Land Before Time boasts an occasionally uneven tone, veering from overly cutesy for the adults to a bit too scary for the kids, even though extensive cuts were made to make the film less dark. But its messaging rings loud and clear. Almost immediately setting up a conflict between the different species (as Cera’s father states, “three-horns don’t play with longnecks”), the remainder of the film sets out to dismantle these prejudices and promote a message of acceptance. The characters are loveable, thanks both to an energetic voice cast (plus narration by Pat Hingle) and the artists who designed them, and even when some of the middle drags, the tear-jerking opening and closing scenes bring it all together. – – – Katie Carter
43. Miracle Mile
Steve DeJarnatt’s sublime genre-hopper sets out as a quirky romcom before morphing into a tense, race against the clock thriller as a nuclear nightmare grows ever closer – or does it? Musician Anthony Edwards turns up spectacularly late to his date with waitress Mare Winningham at the diner where she works and answers a ringing payphone outside to discover the caller is claiming to be a soldier in a missile silo which has just fired upon Russia.
Superb performances from the entire cast bolster the escalating, nerve shredding tension and the climax is terrifying and devastating in its unique and surreal way. The diner scenes have the feel of a great one-act ensemble play and the brilliantly atmospheric Tangerine Dream score is a character in itself, switching between dreamy and heart-pounding as the screenplay piles on the peril. Even as the timer nears zero, with no tangible evidence that anyone is under threat, is it all just a massive hoax and has our hero unwittingly triggered mass panic in Los Angeles? A peculiar, heartfelt gem of a movie with a genuine gut punch of an ending that left me sitting in a cinema unable to speak or get out of my seat. – – – Darren Gaskell
42. The Accidental Tourist
This heartwarming charmer succeeded in capturing the hearts of audiences in 1988. It reproduced the unique tone of Anne Tyler’s beloved novel and brought quirky, immensely likeable characters to life. William Hurt was on hand to portray the emotionally repressed, anti-social Macon Leary. We watch as this man processes the grief he feels as a result of his son’s death, while also falling in love with a spirited dog walker.
It is one of those curious comedies that manages to provide a serious meditation on the pain of letting go of people that you love, in spite of including light-hearted moments. It blends passionate romance, hard-hitting domestic drama and whimsical comedy. That delicate balance is achieved with a wit and grace that was rare in big studio dramas of the 1980s.
The film doesn’t trade on gratuitous sexual content, children getting gunned down or the idea of men behaving badly. The Accidental Tourist is content to focus on delicate emotions and relationship conflicts that can’t be resolved with one big argument. It understands that the rhythms of life are more complicated than the contrived plot beats found in most daytime soap operas. We would be very lucky indeed if Hollywood chose to produce a romantic drama with this level of sophistication in the 21st century. For now we’ll just have to fall back on the charms of The Accidental Tourist. – – – Zita Short
41. Chocolat
One of the greatest living filmmakers, Claire Denis, explores her youth in French Africa for her feature debut, Chocolat, the first of many films exploring her anti-colonialist perspective. Set in Cameroon, the story follows France (Mireille Perrier), a white woman who dwells on her childhood memories of her friendship with Protée (Isaach De Bankolé), her family’s Black servant, known as “the boy.” France attempts to reconcile her experiences and feelings for Protée, yet she cannot, so she punishes herself psychologically and physically for being part of colonialism. Still, her torment is but a small measure of what Protée experienced under colonial repression.
Denis considers the connections between African natives and European women under colonialism, reframing traditional subjectivity and questioning the masculine cinematic gaze in her distinct, ponderous style. Denis’ hypnotic portrait of memory, desire, and unresolved conflicts transgresses patriarchal modes of representation with a poetically rendered masterpiece. Through entrenched symbolism, Chocolat resolves that there can be no closure between the colonizer and colonized. Denis would return to these themes later in Beau Travail (1999) and White Material (2009).- – – Brian Eggert
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