1986 in film.

Top ten box-office films of 1986:

1. Top Gun
2. Crocodile Dundee
3. Platoon
4. The Karate Kid Part II
5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
6. Back to School
7. Aliens
8. The Golden Child
9. Ruthless People
10. Ferris Bueller's Day Off

What are your top three films for 1986? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be:

1. The Sacrifice
2. Hannah and Her Sisters
3. Blue Velvet

What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later?

YEARS IN FILM • forum.chorus.fm

 

This is the year @phaynes12 has been waiting for.

 

1. Mauvais Sang
2. Blue Velvet
3. She’s Gotta Have It

Ferris Bueller comes close; sequences in that film are as energetic and magnificent as anything else I’ve enjoyed in a movie. Edward Yang’s Terrorizers has given me the most complex feelings of anything I’ve seen from him, even if it’s not in my top 4 Yang. Aliens and the Fly are great. I also think people should see Loose Corner, an experimental Anita Thatcher film I got to see as part of the Prismatic Ground festival a couple months ago. What a year!

 

1. Blue Velvet
2. The Fly
3. Labyrinth

Another great year. Also love Castle in the Sky, In a Glass Cage, Aliens, Texas Chainsaw 2, Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer.

 

1. The Color of Money (give me 5 points for this, cowards)
2. Aliens
3. Ferris Bueller

 

1. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
2. Stand By Me
3. Blue Velvet

Great year! Other close ones:
Manhunter
Vamp
Ferris Bueller
Spookies
Aliens
Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
One Crazy Summer
Terror Vision
Platoon

 

Castle in the Sky

 

1. Terrorizers
2. Blue Velvet
3. The Fly

As far as Edward Yang's catalog goes Terrorizers gets overshadowed by Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day (two of the best movies of all time so it's understandable) but it's probably the most crushing and emotionally affective depiction of urban isolation and loneliness I've ever seen

 

1. Terrorizers
2. The Fly
3. When the Wind Blows

A Brighter Summer Day or Yi Yi are probably better films from Yang, but I've spent more time mulling over Terrorizers than both of them combined. A really intriguing portrayal of urban ennui, and like I said whenever it was talked about in the other thread, the image collage that makes up the famous image of the film is an absolutely remarkable image. I'm surprised the actress here never appeared in anything else, as she was remarkably photogenic in this.

I only saw The Fly recently, but I was absolutely disgusted by it, in the best way. Full of absolutely horrifying moments, with the abortion scene / dream, waiting in anticipation and disgust for what will be coming out is one of the most horrific moments in cinema that I can recall. At it's heart though, it's also a tragic romance, which makes Brundle's transformation that much worse.

When The Wind Blows is a terrifying and heartbreaking Raymond Briggs animation, about an elderly British couple trying to survive and wait out following a nuclear strike. It's apparent from about the first minute in which direction it's going to end in, but that doesn't make the journey that much more tragic. Between this, last year's Barefoot Gen and the subsequent year's Grave of the Fireflies, this was a rich time for animated films depicting nuclear war.

Honourable mentions for me this year would include Lynch's violent and distressing portrayal of the horrors of suburbia in Blue Velvet.

Carax's Mauvais Sang, a strange sort of sci-fi film about a sexually transmitted disease spreading around disaffected youth. It features a who's who of French cinema before they became stars in their own right.

Rohmer's The Green Ray is another excellent entry in his Comedies and Proverbs series, about a lonely woman on her holiday, unable to escape her own isolation wherever she goes and whoever she's with.

From Hong Kong, we have some excellent action films. John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, starring the impossibly cool Chow Yun Fat, was one of the first "heroic bloodshed" films, which would basically become the template for mid-90s Hollywood cinema. Less influential, but still great is Righting Wrongs (alternatively known as Above the Law), a ludicrous Yuen Biao and Cynthia Rothrock film, which contains several incredible set pieces, and a bizarrely tragic ending that the film did not need at all. There's also the excellent The Seventh Curse, by cult director Lam Na Choi, which features Chow Yun Fat and Maggie Cheung investigating some black magic stuff in Thailand, which is basically The Temple of Doom through the lens of Hong Kong insanity where nothing makes sense.

 

I thought Platoon would do much better.

 

It's the weirdest thing bc it's not even really a particularly high stakes moment but when I watched the movie for the first time and she turned the light on in the room to reveal the collage on the wall, I physically felt the air being sucked out of my chest

 

1. Blue Velvet
2. His Motorbike, Her Island
3. Mauvais Sang

Another tough one to narrow down. Also considered Sarraounia (Hondo), The Green Ray (Rohmer), Stranger than Paradise (Jarmusch), and Dust in the Wind (Hou).

A few other strong/interesting works this year from Kaurismaki (Shadows in Paradise), Godard (Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company), Akerman (Golden Eighties), Oshima (Max, mon amour), Oliveira (My Case), and Woo (A Better Tomorrow).

And another great Akerman short too, for good measure:

 

1. Aliens
2. Blue Velvet
3. Little Shop of Horrors

 

Great year

1. Blue Velvet
2. Aliens
3. Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Honorable mention to The Fly (the ending sequence is a hall-of-famer)

 

Despite being another stacked year picking my top three was actually easy but choosing the order of that top three was a little bit more difficult but they are -

1. Manhunter
2. Aliens
3. The Hitcher

Other favorites include; Stand By Me, The Fly, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Flight of the Navigator, When the Wind Blows, Mona Lisa, Big Trouble in Little China, Night of the Creeps, House, 52 Pick-Up, Platoon, Highlander, Chopping Mall, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, Raw Deal, Invaders from Mars, Running Scared, and F/X.

 

1. Blue Velvet
2. The Fly
3. Stand By Me

this is a pretty deep year and a few others might fit into 2 or 3. Platoon is right there, but I went with Stand By Me because it is an excellent coming of age film where Platoon is good but not quite an excellent war film. Aliens is fun but isn’t on the level of its predecessor. When the Wind Blows is really great, that could have been listed. I need to see Terrorizers and The Sacrifice.

 

Since Blue Velvet is leading by 200 votes, people should read Ebert's review. It is one of the biggest misses of his career.

 

TCM2 has a shot at being my favorite horror movie ever. It's so good!
Friday the 13th Part VI is maybe my favorite of the series, tied with 4. Lot of fun, great humor and some good kills.
Spookies is a fucking mess but I loved it. Everything but the kitchen sink in that movie
Vamp is probably the biggest recent discovery for me. Just everything that I want in a horror movie. Great music, great lighting, solid atmosphere. All around a solid flick. Gonna be a staple around Halloween for me

EDIT:
also this

 

1. Big Trouble in Little China
2. Aliens
3. The Color of Money

 

What did he offer you?

 

...i don't know what this means.

 

my man

 

I’m pretty sure the French love that film lol. It was on the Cahiers du Cinema best of ‘87 list. It’s definitely not my favourite Scorsese (and nowhere near my favourite from this year) but it’s far from a bad film.

 

Yeah I liked it but when I'm thinking of the best of Scorsese or the best of 1986 it never crosses my mind