For the simple reason that the first half of Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam War film contains some of the most powerful images ever shot (no pun intended)(really). The rawness of the fear and hate and pain between R. Lee Ermey's Gunnery Sergeant Hartman and Vincent D'Onofrio's Private Pyle left an incredible impression on me when I saw this at a too young age. (I was into war movies at the time and had my grandpa take me to see this. Poor guy. If only there were informative movie blogs back then to help guide him.)
Films of Note:
Angel Heart / Barfly: Double-barreled Mickey Rourke. Was he as good as anyone in his prime?
Can't Buy Me Love / Some Kind of Wonderful: Two of the last great 80s teen movies. Some might argue SKoW may be the best. (Here's another: Adventures in Babysitting. Elizabeth Shue...sigh...and I still regret going to see Jaws IV instead of this.)
Evil Dead II: Not much more to be said about this. Its cult classic status is platinum, as is its place as the prototype slapstick horror film. Its everything that's great about Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell. And that's a lot of everything.
Lethal Weapon: Back when Mel Gibson was just playing crazy. Still the best buddy-cop movie, though points deducted for giving us 25 years and counting of...more buddy-cop movies.
The Lost Boys / Near Dark: Great year for vampires.And Coreys.
The Princess Bride: What's your favorite quote from this? If you don't have one, you probably have two. "Why won't my arms move? You've been mostly-dead all day."
Raising Arizona: The Coen Bros. second film and first comedy. Amazing how well they understood the types of movies they wanted to make right from the start...and were able to pull them off so masterfully.
RoboCop: Nihilistic, right wing vigilante fantasy? Satiric skewering of the decline of western civilization? Badass robot violence? Yep, yep, and hell yep.
Summer School: All hail the great Dean Cameron! Very underrated movie.
The Untouchables: Say what you want about director Brian De Palma (buy Vin a drink and he'll say plenty), but this is a terrific film. Screenplay by David Mamet. Music by Ennio Morricone. Ok, maybe it's not so much De Palma.
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