1988 in Film: The 50 Greatest Movies of the Year - Page 4 of 6

30. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

First they parodied just about every film genre under the sun with The Kentucky Fried Movie. Then they poked fun at the glut of disaster films with Airplane! And then they spoofed Elvis Presley musicals and Cold War spy thrillers in Top Secret! Now Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker take aim at ’50s/’60s cop shows with their most straightforward send-up yet. Actually, it’s a big-screen reworking of their short-lived TV classic Police Squad!, but never mind: the jokes fly just as fast and furious as their previous outings, with running gags that keep getting funnier the longer they go on. (My favorite: the Looney Tunes-esque bodily harm that keeps coming to O.J. Simpson’s character, a gag that’s even more gratifying 30 years after the fact.)

Leslie Nielsen, who proved himself an A-plus deadpan comedian in Airplane!, perfects that persona here as Lt. Frank Drebin, the most dim-witted police detective since Inspector Clouseau, and it’s a blast watching him bumble his way through a romance with Priscilla Presley AND foil the dastardly plans of Ricardo Montalban through no effort of his own. It’s the ZAZ formula perfected, too, silly and crass and 100% sincere in its efforts to make us laugh. – – – D.W. Lundberg

29. Married to the Mob

This Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle does not contain the fizz and excitement that can be found in other 1980s romantic comedies. Married to the Mob wants you to seriously invest in the redemption arc of a mob wife who wants to step away from her old life and re-invent herself as a clever career woman. Naturally, Pfeiffer plays the former mob wife and is frequently called upon to widen those legendary eyes as her character’s husband is murdered and she begins to fear for her life. Perhaps Jonathan Demme and company couldn’t really decide what tone the film was supposed to take on, and the film that tries to do too many things at once.

It is a more mediocre effort from a director who would go on to attract great acclaim for his work on films like Rachel Getting Married. He does succeed in letting the luminous Pfeiffer do her thing, and she comes close to rescuing a couple of scenes, even though she has to deliver dialogue that never quite crackles in the way that it should. Yes, it’s watchable, but that shouldn’t be enough. – – – Zita Short

28. Heathers

Rebellious teens use murder to get back at their high school’s popular clique in this wicked black comedy directed by Michael Lehmann and written by Daniel Waters. Tired of her friends’ – all named Heather – cruel behavior toward her school’s more unpopular students, Veronica (Winona Ryder) teams up with intriguing new student J.D. (Christian Slater) to get revenge, but becomes increasingly disturbed by his behavior when it becomes clear that he is intentionally killing teens and staging their deaths as suicides.

Heathers may sometimes feel dated in its very 80s aesthetic, but over 30 years after its release, its dismantling of the typical teen movie tropes feels as fresh and relevant as ever. And Ryder and Slater (along with a supporting cast that includes the likes of Shannon Doherty) turn in memorably sardonic early-career performances. The film’s occasionally flippant portrayal of teen suicide doesn’t always sit well when viewed through a contemporary lens, but its use of violence to dissect high school social hierarchies and the extremes some will go to to fit in makes it a memorable cult entry in a genre that’s become riddled with clichés. – – – Katie Carter

27. Scrooged

Scrooged isn’t pretending to be something it’s not. An 80s-ified twist on the immortal Dickens tale, this version doesn’t feature miserly Ebenezer humbugging his way through the cold streets of London. Rather, Scrooged features a loathsome Frank Cross (imbued with a near-Jokerish level of unfeeling sociopathy by a game Bill Murray), a newly-promoted television executive eager to fill his channel with depraved weirdness, including a horrifically dark upcoming Christmas special. Hungry to make a name for himself and callously bending the network to his will, Frank doesn’t care how many underlings he needs to fire or lives he needs to ruin to get everyone on board with his vision.

Inevitably, his long-dead boss who he idolized for being properly and cruelly capitalistic visits Frank a la Jacob Marley and sets him on the path to becoming a reasonably decent human being. Frank is whisked to and fro along his personal timeline by the three classic Christmas Ghosts – this time in the guise of a cigar-chomping Brooklyn taxi driver, a hilariously violent pixie, and a gigantic mute skeleton with a television for a face – as he sees how he was shaped by ignoring the love given to him in his youth and the dreadful effect that his lack of love for others in the present day could potentially have on multiple lives in the future. Truly a must-see modern Christmas classic and one you can’t miss. In the words of Frank’s terrifyingly beloved commercial: your life might just depend on it. – – – Gabriel Ruzin

26. Dom za vešanje / Time of the Gypsies

Though Emir Kusturica’s fever-dream coming-of-age story focuses primarily on men and masculinity, it is bookended by women’s anger. Time of the Gypsies opens on a bride berating her drunken husband for ruining their wedding day and closes on an equally enraged newly-wed. In between, the young hero, Perham (Davor Dujmovic), journeys from his village in Yugoslavia to the busy streets of Milan and Rome as he attempts to steal enough money to marry his sweetheart back home, Azra (Sinolicka Trpkova).

It begins as a farcical depiction of pastoral life with shades of magic realism and fantasy, but Time of the Gypsies also offers a chaotic, visceral parody of American gangster films, particularly Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. The genre shifts are seamlessly executed and reflect Perham’s struggle to establish his own identity through imitation. His grandmother’s favorite child, and the only to have inherited her supernatural abilities, Perham is torn between his close connection to the women in his life and pressure to emulate the wealthy and successful men of the village.

A recurring theme is the precariousness of shelter, perhaps best demonstrated in a scene in which a house swings in the air after being literally ripped from its foundations; Time of the Gypsies suggests the cycle of poverty and trauma the characters experience is inextricably linked to patriarchal structures. In the end, houses, and the men who build them, are insubstantial, prone to failure and destruction. It is the women, and their rage, that remain. – – – Shannon Page

25. Another Woman

This Woody Allen classic united two of the most talented actresses of the 1980s. Both Gena Rowlands and Mia Farrow were on top form in 1988 and they acquitted themselves nicely in this thoughtful drama. Rowlands portrays Marion, a disgruntled philosophy professor who is struggling to write her latest book. She is rocked to the core when she begins listening in on the therapy sessions carried out in a neighbouring apartment. Comments made by Hope, played by Farrow, remind Marion that she is deeply unhappy with certain aspects of her personal life. She resolves to make serious changes to her life and reconsiders whether she even wants to be married.

Allen clearly borrowed from Ingmar Bergman in establishing the tone and confessional nature of the story, but Another Woman seems less rigidly theatrical than one of Bergman’s efforts. Some of the monologues do verge on self indulgence and it might come close to being overly satisfied with its own achievements. If you are allergic to Bergman’s self seriousness, this might have you running for the hills. If you can put up with the pretentiousness of the whole affair, you will be rewarded with terrific writing and powerhouse performances. – – – Zita Short

24. Bull Durham

Ron Shelton’s Bull Durham is a movie about the love of baseball. Shelton, a former minor league baseball player himself, shows how much he loves the game of baseball and every aspect about it. He loves the dirt, the field, the homeruns, and the strikeouts. He loves the players and their interactions, showing us authentic scenes where players discuss superstitions, slumps, and wedding gifts. He loves the coaches and their methods, and he loves the fans, the announcers, the mascots, and everyone who supports the game. Shelton’s love for the game is all over the screen, which gives Bull Durham a realness that no other baseball movie has.

Kevin Costner, Tim Robbins, and Susan Sarandon are perfectly cast, and all give excellent performances. Shelton’s script is smart, sweet, and hilarious and gives us phenomenal insight into the grittiness of the minor league baseball system and the emotional ups and downs these players face. The Star is Born plot and the love triangle at the center of the film are captivating, well-developed, and keep you invested in the movie and the characters when the exciting baseball action is at a pause. Bull Durham is not only a top-tier baseball movie, but one of the finest sports movies ever made. – – – Kevin Wozniak

23. The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being was directed by Philip Kaufman and stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin. It is set in Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring and Soviet invasion of 1968 and is based on the Milan Kundera novel. Against the backdrop of political turmoil, a love triangle plays out. It’s the kind of romantic, sexy, grown-up film starring three beautiful people that we rarely see the likes of anymore.

The central trio all give extraordinary performances, but unsurprisingly, Binoche is the emotional heart of the film. Five years later, she would give a similarly emotionally raw performance in Three Colours: Blue. While the Three Colours Trilogy is still regularly held up as the masterpiece it is, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is barely ever mentioned today. If you’ve not seen it, I strongly urge you to discover its erotic pleasures. – – – Fiona Underhill

22. They Live

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick-ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum!” Quotable dialogue, iconic alien designs, and a punch-up that lasts over 10 minutes, They Live has it all! Like most post-Halloween Carpenter films, this gritty sci-fi action flick initially received a somewhat mixed reception only to gain popularity thanks in no small part to the rise of home video. Over the years the highly quotable film has attained cult-classic status and has become something of a rallying cry for political groups the world over (many of which unfortunately miss Carpenter’s original intent).

And it is perhaps the director’s most overt social commentary, laying devastating criticism at consumer culture and the power that rampant capitalism has wrought in a Reagan-era world (which, let’s face it, has barely changed). Unfortunately, They Live cannot keep its razor-sharp edge as the narrative grounds to a halt in the final third in which the budget wears thin and the story lumbers to an inevitable, although refreshingly hopeful, conclusion.

They Live remains the most important of Carpenter’s second-tier films, in the company of other ‘just shy from greatness’ efforts as Christine, In The Mouth of Madness and The Fog. And though the film may shuffle over the finish line, the legacy of They Live has more than proved its overall worth. – – – Gareth Green

21. Krótki film o miłości / A Short Film About Love

Twice lifting a segment from his masterful Dekalog series of the same year, Krzysztof Kieślowski was undoubtedly the most celebrated and busiest filmmaker in 1988. A Short Film About Love transferred Dekalog: Six to feature length film, where a lonesome young Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) takes to peeping at his older neighbour Magda (Grażyna Szapolowska) in an apartment across the way.

The voyeurism is hardly a horror show, but more an education on the lore of love, for both Tomek and Magda. Written by Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, Love depicts the ultimate emotion with a true sense of yearning and intrigue, as well as the reactionary suffering and burden that it may spawn. Perhaps encapsulated as Tomek’s telescope serves as the eyes to the mundane chores of Magda, rather than her sexual frolics. – – – Robin Write