45 Movies For 45 Years: 1985

1985. There were a lot of good movies that came out that year. Stallone was back in two of them, Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV. Oprah had her acting debut in The Color Purple. And the world was learning that Goonies never say “die”.

It was the year that I turned eight years old. I was in the third grade. I had developed a fascination with reading. I read every book that I could get my hands on. My town’s public library was one of my favorite places, followed closely by my school library. And not only had I discovered a love of reading, but I had also discovered a love of science fiction.

One of my favorite books of that time was a “choose your own adventure” story. You would read the first couple of pages of the book and you would make a choice. The page that you read next would depend on your choice. It was great because you could go back and make different decisions and have a whole new story. This particular story had to do with time travel. I thought that the concept of traveling to the past or the distant future was intriguing. I used to run around in the woods behind my house pretending I had been transported to a prehistoric time when dinosaurs still lurked around every corner.

It should be no surprise to anyone who knows me that the movie from 1985 that affected me most was Back To The Future.

It was a classic and unexplainable trope in some of the old goofy sci-fi stories that a teenage boy would be friends with some crazy old inventor usually called “Doctor” or “Professor”. It was a way to have a story for kids about someone their age having an adventure with technology that they couldn’t have created on their own. The Professor made the shrink ray or the clone maker. In this case, the Doc made the time machine.

Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, is friends with Doc Brown who created a time machine out of a DeLorean. The Doc’s machine runs off of plutonium, which he stole from some Libyan terrorists. They track him down as he’s showing off his invention. The Doc gets killed, and Marty jumps into the DeLorean to get away, accidentally sending himself back in time 30 years to the year 1955.

Once he’s there, he finds that his presence has disrupted history from occurring the way it should and that his existence in the future is in jeopardy. So, he gets Doc’s younger self to help him solve the problem and send him back…to the future.

I get worked up just thinking about this movie. The premise is a little goofy. Yeah, it’s weird for a 17-year-old kid to be friends with a man in his sixties or seventies, but it works to get us to the part of the story set in the 50s.

If there is one thing that this movie gets right, it’s the feel of the 50s. You can almost believe that Marty went there. The clothes, the music, the colors, the advertisements…all of it is there to create a sense of nostalgia. This movie wasn’t made for me. This movie was made for parents and people just a little older than them. My mom was born on November 25, 1955, which is just a couple of weeks after the timeline of the movie. People that were a little older than that would remember this time from when they were kids. That’s who they were shooting for.

Even though it has its roots in science-fiction and has a few scenes with special effects, it’s a pretty small film. Once Marty is transported to 1955, the movie depends on the story and the characters to carry it, and not on special effects or CGI. And the characters delivered. Crispin Glover is a weird guy and no one else could have played the role of George McFly. He was a coward that Marty helped to find his backbone. He not only ensured that he and Lorraine (Lea Thompson) would get married, but he made their future better. Thompson was great as Marty’s mom, even though it was creepy that she tries to “get with” Marty….**shiver**.

And who can forget Thomas F. Wilson as the big bully, Biff Tannen? Everyone has known a Biff in their life. He’s the guy that thinks he’s the greatest at everything, but he’s just a tiny weasel in a big suit.

Fox and Lloyd hold this movie together. Even though there was an age difference, they are one of the best comedy duos of all time. They have a chemistry between them that worked not only in this film but was the best part of the two sequels that came later. It seems so strange to find out that Fox almost didn’t play Marty. Eric Stoltz was originally cast because Fox was busy making Family Ties. They nearly filmed the entire movie with Stoltz in the lead but just realized that the chemistry wasn’t there, and the movie wasn’t working. They were able to work out a deal with NBC to get Fox at night and on the weekends. They reshot almost the whole film. If that had not happened, then this series would not be the well-loved classic that it is today.

I quote this movie so much it’s accepted by my family as part of my dialogue. How many times have I gotten into a car and said “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”? It’s a number that is too high to attain. “This is heavy” is a staple of mine as well.

And, yes, the paradox stuff doesn’t quite work out. We know that if you changed history and it was something that caused you to not exist that it would be pretty instantaneous. You wouldn’t watch a picture of your family slowly fade and then see your fingers and hand disappear. But this is a family comedy, not a straight-up sci-fi film, so it works.

So today I’d have to say that Back To The Future is not only my favorite time travel movie of all time, but it is the most defining movie for me that came from 1985.

45 Movies For 45 Days: 1984

By 1984 I was old enough to notice there might be some good TV shows and movies that didn’t involve cartoon animals and Muppets of various sizes. I spent hours in front of the television in the company of Sesame Street and Captain Kangaroo. But I started to pay attention a little more often when my parents watched their shows. I started noticing things like The Incredible Hulk and The Dukes Of Hazzard. Live-action entertainment was beginning to pique my interest.

And it was a pretty good year for live-action movies. Indiana Jones was exploring the Temple Of Doom, theaters were full of Gremlins, and the crew of the Enterprise was back in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock.

Several of the movies that came out in 1984 are on my list of some of the best ever. One of these days I'll make my top 100 list and all of the ones I just mentioned will probably be there. 1984 also had Beverly Hills Cop, The Karate Kid, Police Academy, Footloose, Romancing The Stone, and Splash. All are fantastic movies, in my opinion. Some of them spawned franchises. Some are classics today. But one film released in 1984 affected my childhood more than any of the others…

Ghostbusters.

I didn’t see the movie until after it had been out for a couple of years. I remember that my dad was going to watch it when it aired on HBO a few months after it had left theaters and invited me to watch it with him. But seeing the lady in the library burst into a scary monster was all that my seven-year-old eyes had to see to realize that it wasn’t the movie for me. I hid in my room until he called me back a couple of hours later to show me the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man rampaging New York City. That did get my attention, but not enough for me to brave that monster again. At least not for a while.

It was a year or so before The Real Ghostbusters started coming on TV on Saturday mornings. I started watching that cartoon from the first episode. I loved every second of it. The idea of a group of men that could battle ghosts with proton beams captured my imagination. I had my mom buy me action figures for my birthday and made up my own stories. I bought myself a proton pack with a beam made of Nerf and ran around in the woods behind my house pretending to be on an adventure with Peter, Egon, Ray, and Winston. Slimer was always hovering over my shoulder, waiting to eat every crumb I might have dropped on the ground.

I was a full-on Ghosthead. And I had never watched the movie.

It wasn’t until the announcement of Ghostbusters 2 that I finally got brave enough to give the original another shot. I went to the local video store and rented it. I was probably 10 or 11 at this point. So when I saw that library ghost this time, she was not nearly as scary. I didn’t even think she looked real. I let out a deep and satisfying sigh of relief, sat back, and enjoyed one of the best movies ever made.

Ghostbusters is a paranormal, science fiction, horror-themed film. But, first and foremost, it is a comedy. They could have made a scary version of this same story, but the decision to make it funny and fill it with actors that had cut their teeth on Saturday Night Live was genius. It gives us a jumping-in point with the audience because we know that this stuff isn’t real. It doesn't even look real on the screen. By making it funny, we forgive some of the less than stunning special effects.

Not that all the effects are bad. Some of them are pretty good for 1984 standards. Stay Puft looked as real as he could. The images of some of the ghosts that escaped and ran loose in the city looked pretty good. The two gargoyles didn’t look great. They were going for a whole Harryhausen kind of stop-go animation that I never thought looked quite right even at the time. And it completely takes my kids out of the movie today.

The characters make up for so much of that. We know exactly who these guys are from the very beginning. The personalities of Peter, Ray, and Egon, played by Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, and Harold Ramis, were telegraphed so well that they each filled a needed slot. We had the brain, the tech guy, and the street smart. Dana and Louis, played by Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis, were also great. Moranis adds the comedy sidekick character that he has always done so well.

The one character that I felt for was Winston, played by Ernie Hudson. He was intended to be played by Eddie Murphy. Hudson stepped in after Murphy bailed. He thought he was one of the main characters throughout the movie. Eventually, his character was re-written so that he appeared halfway through the film and given only a handful of lines. Hudson took a bit of a hit with that. But, to his credit, he’s the one that still makes himself available at Ghostbusters events whenever he can.

So, as far as sci-fi/horror it lacks some substance. The story is pretty simple and would be weak if taken seriously. But the fact that this is the bottom layer of a cake in which the top layer is a comedy works just fine. It takes the edge off and makes it so that even though we’re watching the fate of the city, as well as that of the world, we’re having a good time.

It was followed by a sequel a few years later that takes a lot of flak I don’t think it deserves. How often do you get a sequel that compares to the original? Not very often. But it was fun.

And then there is the story of the 2016 reboot that got its legs knocked out from under them before given a chance to stand up. I went to see it in the theater. It was not the terrible movie the critics make it out to be. It was funny and a lot of fun. It doesn’t compare to the original, but I never expected it to. I hope that they get a chance to do another one, but that may be hoping for a lot.

So, in a year when so many of my favorite movies were released, I can say that only one had as big of an impact on who I am as this one. Ghostbusters will always be my favorite 1984 film. It possibly makes my top ten list. Maybe one day I’ll make that list and find out.

45 Movies For 45 Years: 1983

I turned six years old in 1983. That was the year that I started the first grade. That’s pretty much the only thing that I remember about being 6. I went to school, and I watched a lot of Sesame Street. I wasn’t watching many movies at the time, but there were a lot of them coming out that year. John Travolta was Staying Alive, Matthew Broderick was playing War Games, and 007 was back in Octopussy.

I looked at the movies released in 1983. I tried to ask myself the tough questions. Is this your favorite movie of the year, or are you just saying that because of the others? Well, as I looked through the list once…twice…three times…there is no doubt that my favorite film of 1983 is Return Of The Jedi.

Jedi is the final installment of the original trilogy of Star Wars films. And, other than a couple of terrible Ewoks TV movies and a short-lived cartoon called Droids, it was the last we would see of the Star Wars universe for over 15 years.

It is my favorite movie from that year, but it is the weakest film in the trilogy. The level reached in Empire could not possibly have been matched or brought back down with satisfaction. Audiences had already expected how the story would end, and nothing that Lucas could have done was going to scratch the itch just right. So, we got the Ewoks…which were a weird species to enter the franchise. They were small, cute, teddy bear-like creatures that threatened our heroes with cannibalism and defeated an army of Storm Troopers with sticks and stones.

The story was a lot more loosely constructed than the last two had been. It was as if the studio decided that it would be three films and three films only. The trilogy was the king. Had it been fleshed out into four installments, it may have connected a little better.

But for its faults, it still has some great moments that are some of my favorites from the entire series. The scene in Jabba’s palace is a classic. The death of Yoda still makes my eye twitch when I see it. And the unexpected revelation that Luke and Leia were siblings…a revelation that was probably a shock to Lucas as well, since no one believes that he had planned that from the beginning.

Watching Vader sacrifice himself to save Luke was a wonderful scene as well. I don’t know if that one moment of goodness should absolve him of all the death and torment he had caused in his life, but it worked for the story.

So, every story has its ending…and while Jedi wasn’t a perfect ending to Star Wars, it is still a great installment in the franchise. And it is by far my favorite movie from 1983.

45 Movies For 45 Years: 1982

I was enrolled in a church-run school when I was very young. They had classes for children as young as three. They had three kindergarten classes, but two of them were just daycare or preschool. When I turned 5, in 1982, I went to 5-year-old kindergarten. The real deal. By this point, I thought I was a “big kid”.

The year that I became a “big kid”, there were a lot of movies that came out. People believed in aliens again with ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, teenagers were learning some very bad things while watching Porky’s, and Stallone was taking on Mr. T in Rocky III.

Remember that in 1979 the Italian Stallion was in the ring with the USS Enterprise to earn the top spot on my list. Rocky II won that battle. In the rematch, the decision goes the other way.

My favorite movie of 1982 is, hands down, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.

I have loved all things Star Trek since I was ten years old. The pilot for The Next Generation (TNG) was shown on television every day for a month. So, I watched it because it was the 80s and there wasn’t much else to watch. I fell in love with Star Trek, which I now see as a miracle because the first season of TNG might contain some of the worst Star Trek episodes ever made. As I was watching one evening, my dad came into the room. I casually mentioned that I had never watched an episode of the original series. He told me that they showed reruns late on Saturday night on our local TV station and I could stay up and watch if I wanted.

The world of Star Trek opened up after that. I decided that I had to devour every morsel of Star Trek that was available to me. Before streaming media, that meant I had to wait until it came on TV. I would record episodes onto blank VHS tapes and watch them over and over.

I went to my local video store and rented the movies. There were only four of them, but I cycled through them about 12 or 13 times before my dad jury-rigged a way for me to copy them onto some blank tapes using two VCRs…a very illegal thing to do according to the FBI warning at the beginning of the film. But my dad probably saw it as saving him a lot of money in the long run.

My ten-year-old self knew that these films were meant to be in a particular order. When I started watching them, that’s exactly how I did it. However, after I had seen all four about three times each, I started focusing on my two favorites, II and IV.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is the continuation of an episode of the original series entitled Space Seed. In that episode, Kirk and the crew meet a man who is a molecularly engineered super-soldier named Khan, played by Ricardo Montalban. At the end of the episode, Kirk leaves him stranded on a planet where he can’t hurt anyone.

After some disappointing reviews of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Paramount made some changes before moving ahead with a second movie. They decided to make this film a sequel to that famous episode. We meet Khan again at the and learn that Kirk stranded him and his crew on the wrong planet. Instead of being left in the Garden of Eden, he was stranded on an inhospitable, and barely survivable desert planet.

Chekov, who is now the first officer of another ship, finds Khan. They immediately recognize each other. True Trek fans see the problem here since Space Seed was a season one episode and Chekov didn’t become a member of the crew until season two.

Khan hijacks their ship and sets out to get his revenge on Kirk for his fifteen years of exile. He is also determined to steal the terraforming Genesis technology.

This movie is miles above The Motion Picture as far as quality. The characters feel more genuine, and the whole thing feels more like the original series. And it hearkens back to old naval military films…you know the ones that I’m talking about that have submarines stealthily making moves to hide from one another before one of them blows the other out of the ocean. This had that same kind of thing going on…but with starships.

In Space Seed, William Shatner had one of his famous fistfights with Montalban. In Star Trek II, Kirk and Kahn are never in the same place. All of their communication comes from view screens and comm channels. And yet, the chemistry and suspense are still there. This movie made us realize that Star Trek might be able to pull off a film series after all.

The biggest thing that happened in Star Trek II is inarguably the death of Spock. Watching the film now that many years have passed, I can see where it was telegraphed from the beginning. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one” were uttered early on. Someone was going to sacrifice themselves for the safety of the crew. It turns out it was Spock.

We know now that Spock's destiny was to return to life a couple of years later when Star Trek III hit theaters. But when that scene occurred, the audience didn’t know that. Leonard Nimoy even said that he didn’t know he’d be back. Everyone thought that this was it for the character.

I even remember the first time that I saw it, which would have been sometime around 1987 or 1988. Star Trek was still new to me, especially the original series. But I was glued to that screen. And when Spock weakly placed his hand on the glass to say goodbye to his friend…I had tears in my young eyes.

“It’s no big deal,” my dad had said. “They bring him back in the next one.”

Relief washed over me, mixed with the anger. I had my first spoiler experience.

A few years ago, the film Star Trek Into Darkness tried to emotionally manipulate us by recreating the famous death scene. This time it was Kirk that sacrificed himself, and Spock was trapped on the outside. It didn’t work. At least not for me. The main reason was that the reboot movies take place early in the careers of the Enterprise crew. That movie was set at the beginning of their original five-year mission. In that universe, Kirk and Spock had only really known each other for a couple of years. And they didn’t like each other very much. In the original (Prime) universe, the death scene took place about 15 years after the series. These two men had spent over a decade exploring the galaxy side-by-side. They were brothers.

Star Trek II is not only my favorite movie released in 1982…it is my favorite Star Trek film out of the 13 released to date.

“Of my friend, I can only say this: Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most.... [voice breaks] human.” --James T. Kirk

45 Movies For 45 Years: 1981

I started kindergarten in 1981. That’s the biggest accomplishment that I can think of. I started going to a place where I had a regular diet of cookies, Kool-Aid, and crayons.

Yes, I ate crayons.

Chariots Of Fire got the Academy Award for best picture. Mommie Dearest got the Razzie for worst picture. Christopher Reeve was back in the tights in Superman II, 007 was drinking another shaken martini in For Your Eyes Only, and Terry Gilliam directed the cult classic Time Bandits.

I am a huge Superman fan, and I have the tattoo to prove it. And Superman II is superior in many ways. But this list is about more than just nostalgia. I have to determine what my favorites are. And if I’m being honest, there is one movie that came out in 1981 that would get more rewatchability. I’m, of course, talking about Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

After The Empire Strikes Back came out, Harrison Ford was officially a big star. The ending of Empire had left his character’s fate up in the air. He wanted to have Han killed off so he could move on to something else. He got together with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to make a movie that was something completely different than Star Wars.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark has Ford playing an archeologist by the name of Indiana Jones. He travels the world collecting artifacts that have been lost and taking them to the university where he teaches. He is allowed to search for the lost ark of the covenant, a biblical object said to contain the original stone tablets on which were written the Ten Commandments. The film also stars Paul Freeman, Karen Allen, and John Rhys-Davies.

Most Star Wars fans know that when Lucas made that movie he was trying to make a modern-day version of the old Flash Gordon serials he had watched as a kid. Raiders was no different. There used to be a lot of serials that contained adventurers looking for lost artifacts and getting into fights with smugglers and pirates and things like that. The famous character Alan Quartermaine had several stories and films with comparable adventures.

I saw this movie many times when I was a kid, but the images are not as spectacular and flashy as Star Wars, so a lot of it washed over me. I remember that it came on television a lot. I would get sent out of the room before the “face-melting” scene at the end. I didn’t have a context for the whole thing. But I knew that Indiana Jones had a whip and ran from a boulder.

I was in my late teens when The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles came on TV. I enjoyed that show, and it made me want to go and watch the trilogy all over again. So, I went to the video store and got a couple of strange looks because I rented all three movies. I went home and had a movie marathon. For a short while, I became obsessed with Indiana Jones. I read some novels and devoured the TV show when I could.

Until then, most of my movie watching was science fiction and superhero stuff. When I saw this, I realized that there were all kinds of adventure stories out there that were a lot of fun. It led me to the classic movies channel to watch some of the movies that had inspired it. Thanks to Raiders, I was introduced to Erol Flynn. And I watched Bogart in Treasure Of The Sierra Madre for the first time.

Raiders is my favorite of the original three. I’m not a huge fan of Temple Of Doom, but I enjoyed The Last Crusade. But over and above all that, the first will always be the best.

I’m not even going to talk about Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

45 Movies For 45 Years: 1980

The year that I turned three years old because I have a picture of myself with tears in my eyes sitting next to a birthday cake that said “Happy Birthday, You Big Dummy”.

That seems like a cruel thing to say to a small child. But there was a little context to it. One of my favorite things to do when I was little was to sit on my grandfather’s lap and watch television. “Paw-Paw” watched all kinds of things, and I’d watch with him no matter what it was. Sometimes it would be Sesame Street to please me. Other times it would be The Andy Griffith Show or All In The Family. His favorite was Sanford And Son. The slogan on the cake was from that show, but my three-year-old mind didn’t get the joke. So my feelings got hurt.

1980 was a good year for film releases. Dolly Parton was working 9 to 5, Clint Eastwood was back in Any Which Way You Can, and Dan Akroyd and John Belushi were on a mission from God in The Blues Brothers.

I didn’t have to think about this one very much at all. My very favorite movie from 1980 was most definitely The Empire Strikes Back.

After the success of Star Wars in 1977, it was pretty evident that there would be a sequel. George Lucas laid the groundwork for a series in that first film. This time he was able to build on it. He handed the directing reigns over to Irvin Kershner, and he focused more on the special effects required for this installment.

Empire picks up about three years after the Death Star destruction we witnessed in A New Hope. The Rebel Alliance has gained strength, but the Empire is beginning to regain some footing. Luke goes to Dagobah to train with Yoda, the last remaining of the old Jedi, in the ways of The Force. He leaves to go and rescue Han and Leia after they are taken captive by Darth Vader. In the ensuing fight, Luke learns a secret about who he is.

Empire is the very definition of the second part of a trilogy. It dives right into the action. We don’t have to spend time introducing characters because they were established the first time around. As a result, we get a huge battle scene in the first 20 minutes. We see AT-ATs for the first time. And once the battle is over and the story slows down for a while.

Yoda explains The Force to us in more detail than Obi-Wan was ever allowed to do. We also get to see so many different environments in one film. The ice planet of Hoth, the jungle planet of Dagobah, and the heavenly views of Cloud City were the main ones.

It’s hard to name one thing that I love about Empire. It is my favorite Star Wars movie. I love that it’s almost like an episode. It picks up where the last one left off. And at the end, we’re left completely hanging.

As I said in my review of Star Wars, George Lucas is not a very good writer or director. That’s what makes Empire so great. He wrote the story for the film. But the script was written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan. Kershner directed it and took it to a whole other level. Lucas focused on the stuff that he is good at…world-building.

Out of the original trilogy of films, this is the most quotable, has the best battle scene, and lays the foundation for everything else that came after it. The original Star Wars had the ships and aliens and creatures and all of that good stuff…but Empire introduced all the giant mechanical weapons, more ships, more droids, and just made that universe so much bigger.

I looked through the list of films that came out in 1980 and tried to be sure that I wasn’t looking at that year with a bias. But having gone through the list three times, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that no other film from the year that I turned three has had more of an impact on who I am than The Empire Strikes Back.

45 Movies For 45 Years: 1979

1979 was the year that I turned two years old. My dad transferred from Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, to Columbus, Mississippi. And less than a week before Christmas, my little brother was born.

The box office was pretty active as well. 007 was back again with Moonraker, Francis Ford Coppola had another hit on his hands with Apocalypse Now, and Sigourney Weaver was running from Xenomorphs in Alien.

I’ve had to do a lot of thinking over this year. I had to dig down deep and be honest with myself over a couple of films to find what makes this spot on my list. It was the year that Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released. If you know anything about me, it is that I am a Star Trek fan. I don’t mean that I "kind of" like the show a little bit. I mean I had a couple of years in high school that the only literature that I read was Star Trek novels. I watched The Next Generation every evening at 9:00 pm even if I had seen the episode 12 times.

So, I sat down today to write this blog entry with every intention of writing about that film. But, to be sure, I pulled up the Wikipedia page that showed all of the movies that came out that year. Remember that when I started this project, I was going to talk about my favorite films from every year I’ve been alive. I don’t want to write about the movies that made the most money. I don’t even want to write about the movies that I think are the most well made. Some things may end up on my list that may not be as good as others that came out that year…but this is about the movies that impacted me the most. And for 1979…Star Trek: The Motion Picture is not my favorite.

My favorite film of 1979 is Rocky II.

I’m not a sports guy. I never played a sport in high school. I was the last one picked to play anything in gym. I don’t even understand football enough to carry on a conversation with a true fan. For me to say that I love a franchise of sports movies is saying something. But I am a huge fan of all the Rocky films. The original isn’t on my list only because it came out a year before I was born. And I was a grown man before I finally sat down and watched it. But after I did, I felt the need to consume the entire series. I love each one of those films, even though the fourth one was mostly montages. And in the fifth one, he didn’t even get in the ring. And I was more excited when Creed came out a couple of years ago than most of my friends thought was necessary.

Rocky II is an example of a perfect sequel. It brought all of the players back to the stage. It stars Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa, Talia Shire as Adrian, Burt Young as Paulie, Burgess Meredith as Mickey, and Carl Weathers as Apollo Creed. They felt genuine. They felt like they were the same people as before. Sequels can be irritating when they wink at the audience with in-jokes and references to the original piece. Rocky II felt like a true continuation of the first film.

Apollo Creed beat Rocky in the original by a split decision. Rocky II finds him obsessed with the thought that America thinks Rocky could have won. He challenges him to a rematch. Meanwhile, Rocky is dealing with the new fame that has found him and tries to build a life with Adrian.

What I like about the Rocky series is not so much the boxing…it’s the heart. The character that Stallone plays feels like a real man. He is not the brightest bulb on the tree, but he has so much courage and integrity that it is hard not to feel as if he’s someone that you know. In a way, he is someone that you know. He’s the guy that we all secretly want to be. He’s a guy that started with nothing; living in a hole-in-the-wall apartment and making ends meet by boxing for a few bucks in a church basement. He’s such a nice guy that he can’t even do his job as an enforcer for a loan shark correctly because he doesn’t like to hurt people.

The second time around Rocky is finished with boxing. He has money to burn after his famous near-win in a championship fight. But Creed wants a rematch so bad that he launches a smear campaign to force Rocky back into the ring. Rocky obliges to clear his name. I won’t spoil the ending in case some haven’t seen it.

I can’t say enough good things about this whole series, but this one, in particular, is probably one of my top ten movies of all time. And it is my favorite sports movie ever. The first movie is about a guy that had nothing in the world and created a name for himself. This one is about a man who didn’t let fame and fortune stand in the way of his principles and created an empire.

So, yes, my favorite TV franchise of all time launched a film in 1979. And while Star Trek had the special effects and the starships and the phasers and all of that…I don’t feel that it can beat Rocky in the story department. There are only a few movies that have characters with as much heart and depth as the Rocky films. It's lucky for me that the second of the series was good enough to make my list.

45 Movies For 45 Years: 1978

I had my first birthday in 1978. It was a big day for my family because it meant that my mom and dad had gotten through their first year of parenthood without killing me. I have no idea what cartoon character was on my cake. I don’t know what decorations my mom put up for my party. I’m not even entirely sure that I had a birthday party. My dad was in the Air Force when I was a baby, and I believe we still lived in Ft. Walton Beach, FL, which is the same place where I was born. It was a good four-hour drive from most of my extended family. I doubt they all made the trip just for some cake and ice cream.

1978 was also a big year for movies. John Travolta had another hit in theaters when he donned his leather jacket in Grease. Clint Eastwood was taking care of business in Every Which Way But Loose. And Michael Myers was chasing down Jamie Lee Curtis for the first time in Halloween.

It wasn’t until December that one movie, in particular, came out that has since found its way into the list of films that have had a profound impact on my life. On December 15th, we learned that a man could fly when Superman hit the screen.

Superman stars Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Marlon Brando, and Gene Hackman. And it was directed by Richard Donner.

I have to confess. I was a huge Superman fan when I was a kid. I read Superman comics, watched Superfriends every Saturday morning, and even watched a lot of reruns of the old black and white series starring George Reeves on Nickelodeon. I had a ceramic lamp of the Man of Steel my mother made for me. It sat on my desk in my bedroom. And even after the lamp part broke, I still kept the statue part as a decoration. I wish that I had that statue now.

My obsession with the Last Son of Krypton didn’t die out as I grew up as most things tend to. I didn’t read comic books as much in my late teens and early twenties, but I still consumed as much as possible. The day that the animated series hit the airwaves was a happy day for me.

And when I was 19, I had the “S” shield tattooed on my right shoulder. Yes, you read that correctly. I have a Superman tattoo.

So, as soon as I was old enough to watch this movie, I was placed in front of it as often as it was on television. That must have been fairly frequent because I remember seeing it many times as a kid. My first few viewings washed over me. I didn’t understand a lot of what was happening with the Marlon Brando scenes. I remember being amazed when Reeve showed up in that costume and commenced saving the day. Looking back now, I realize that it was almost a full hour into the film before we see that famous costume, but I didn’t know that back then.

Getting Superman to the screen was a pretty big endeavor. There had been a lot of issues involving the film rights to the character that dated back a good five years before the movie finally came out. Finding the right people to make the film had been daunting as well. Mario Puzo, the man who wrote The Godfather, penned a 400-page script. That is an obscene length, much less for a simple story based on a comic book.

The production had its share of directors attached to it as well. Steven Spielberg was Puzo’s choice. He turned it down but said that George Lucas would be a good candidate. Lucas was tied up making Star Wars at the time. Finally, after a few location changes and script alterations, Richard Donner was hired. He wanted to start from scratch. The script had grown to 550 pages. He had it rewritten, which probably didn’t make Puzo very happy.

Burt Reynolds, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Charles Bronson were just a few actors considered for the role of Superman. Ultimately, Donner decided he wanted someone unknown to fill the red boots. He wanted the audience to look at the character and see…the character. If it had been someone huge like Schwarzenegger, no one would be able to see anything but Arnie in tights.

Reeve got the part. Even though he didn’t show up to the audition in a muscle suit as requested. He was in great shape, and his posture and look just resonated on the screen. He truly looks like Superman. And I always thought that making some beefcake play the part would have been a big mistake anyway. Superman isn’t strong because he’s big…he’s strong because he has superpowers. He doesn’t have to be big to have that.

The rest of the cast plays out pretty well. I’ve always thought that Margot Kidder may not have been the best choice to play Lois Lane because she’s too loud and off-putting. I find it hard to believe that this Kansas farm boy would fall for her. She fits the part of a 1970s newspaper reporter, so I guess it does work in that respect.

Gene Hackman is a fantastic actor. He is one of Hollywood’s living legends, and he has earned that distinction. But I’m not that big of a fan of his portrayal of Lex Luthor. In the comics, Luthor has evolved over the decades. While he was simply a mad scientist of some sort in the early days, he has since become a powerful and threatening foe for Superman. Hackman portrayed him as a conniving and smarmy crook bent on gaining real estate to make himself rich. It’s not representative of the character. But, in the late 70s, they were going for laughs instead of depth. The sad thing is that we have never gotten a true transfer of Luthor from page to screen. The closest we’ve ever come to the real thing was Michael Rosenbaum’s portrayal of a young Lex Luthor on Smallville.

Comic book movies are more popular than ever. Marvel releases several films and TV series every year. DC is doing its best to keep up. And there are all sorts of other comic book properties making their way to our theaters and living rooms every year. From The Avengers to The Walking Dead, adaptations of comics have proven to be a huge industry. And more importantly, we have proven that superheroes are something that we aren’t going to get tired of any time soon.

And all of that can point to 1978 as its origin. When Kal-El’s tiny ship crashed into that Kansas field, it changed a lot about movies. Superheroes have regularly found their way to us since then. And it all started when Christopher Reeve sailed over the Earth, smiled, and drifted into our hearts.

45 Movies For 45 Days: 1977

On July 4 of this year, I will be turning 45 years old. That is a big day for any person. It seems bigger to the person actually making the milestone than to the people around them since everyone has a 45^th birthday eventually…unless they die before they get there. And barring any unforeseen circumstances over the next three months I will probably be blowing out those candles on Independence Day.

But I want to conduct a little experiment with myself. I am a movie guy. I love movies and I love television. I have been this way since I was a child. To me, there has never been a more pleasant and satisfying pastime as sitting and letting a story wash over you the way that a movie can do. The two or three hours that you spend watching a film are the culmination of hundreds of hours of work by many individuals that poured their heart and soul into that project. The actors, the director, the camera guys…all the way down to the guy that sweeps up after everyone has left...have all built their careers on making stories for us to consume as entertainment.

This year, as I approach the big Four-Five, I have decided that I want to go on a journey. I want to find out what the 45 most important movies are to me. What are the 45 movies that I love more than anything in the world? And to do that I am going to start in the year that I was born and do a review of my favorite film from that year. I will post an entry for my favorite movie out of every year that I’ve been alive. These are not the top movies of those years. These are not the classics that are on the “movies you should see before you die” list. These are my favorite movies and the ones that have had an impact on my life.

A lot of the earlier ones I obviously didn’t see until later in life. And by no means have I seen every film that has come out in the last 45 years, so my list may change in the future.

The year that I was born was 1977 and a lot of things happened on the silver screen that year. John Travolta had Saturday Night Fever, Woody Allen was back with Annie Hall, 007 was taking us on another thrilling adventure with The Spy Who Loved Me, and Burt Reynolds was eastbound and down in Smokey And The Bandit. But there was one movie that was released that year that has been more of a part of my life than almost any other movie that will be on my list. Of course, I’m talking about Star Wars.

When it originally came out it was known as Star Wars, though fans today refer to it either as Episode IV or A New Hope. I can’t imagine that there would be anyone reading this blog that has never heard of this film, but it is a fantasy story that takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It’s the story of Luke Skywalker, a farm boy who lives on the planet Tatooine. He intercepts a message from Princess Leia, one of the leaders of a rebellion against the evil Empire, on its way to a former Jedi knight by the name of Obi Wan Kenobi. The message contains the plans for the Empire’s newest weapon, a planet-destroying space station known as the Death Star. Now Luke finds himself embroiled in a battle that will decide the fate of the galaxy, and a road that will lead him to become the last Jedi warrior.

When George Lucas dreamed up this movie he came up with so many concepts that have been borrowed and reused hundreds of times in the decades since. But a lot of the storytelling elements that make this movie so great were themselves borrowed from things that have come before. This is more than just a science fiction story. Those kinds of stories are a dime a dozen. This movie is a perfect storm that occurs when you take a story that we’ve heard before and throw in a few dashes of things that we’ve never dreamed of.

This movie had a princess, a wizard, a pirate, starships, swordfights, a couple of monsters, some soldiers, and everything in between. It introduced us to Storm Troopers, TIE Fighters, X-Wings, and lightsabers. We hear sounds that resonate even today. There is no other sound in cinematic history like the sound of a lightsaber being turned on.

And then there is Darth Vader. In this first film, he is terrifying. Dressed all in black and wearing a mask that completely hides his face…I can remember the way my little heart thumped in my chest the first time that I saw him. The sound of his breathing sent a chill down my spine. Vader was a dark lord of the Sith, the evil mirror image of the Jedi. Lucas took the scary away from him in later films, but in this one he was perfect. I remember watching his first step into the frame in those opening scenes and having horrible thoughts about what was under that mask, and being convinced that he was going to pull it off and scare me.

This movie also did things with special effects that had never been done. Not only that, they had never even been thought about. You’ll find in future blogs that I don’t really think much of George Lucas as a writer. But I stand in awe at his ability to create an environment and to figure out how to show us on the screen what he’s seeing in his mind. When I watch this movie now it is usually some sort of remastered version that has doctored all of the effects shots to make them look more modern. Back then I was watching a VHS that had been recorded off of television. You could see the blank squares around the X-Wings and the TIE Fighters during that famous dog fight and in the battle around the Death Star. We notice all of that when we go back to it now. All we saw then was that this world was unveiled before us. We were being transported to this galaxy and it was amazing.

The movie that we got wouldn’t have been the same without the cast. Mark Hamill was the only one that could play Luke. Sir Alec Guinness was a veteran actor that brought credence to the project, even though he thought that it was all rather silly. Harrison Ford went on from here to become one of Hollywood’s A-List actors and he’s still working today. James Earl Jones was the perfect resonating voice of Vader. And the late Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia…

When I heard of her passing I mourned as though she were family.

Many, many filmmakers have tried to do their own version of Star Wars. Even Lucas tried to catch lightning in a bottle a second time when he made his prequel trilogy 20 years later. But nothing has equaled what we got in the summer of 1977.

There are a few movies throughout the history of cinema that are true game-changers. Star Wars changed the way science fiction and fantasy unfolded before us. There is no question that it takes the prize as my favorite movie from 1977.