1982: My Top Ten Favorite Movies By Year

376   7.5   8.2 

The British Empire, humbled via one man & the power of peaceful resistance.
Nuff said.

The Mighty Celestial's rating:

2299   7.1   7.9 

An extra-terrestial becomes trapped on our planet & befriends an Earthling boy who shares a it's love for Reese's Pieces. From there, these two beings "from different worlds" (one of the rare times that this phrase is meant literally), began to share each other experiences in a bond that can only result from unconditional acceptance.
A moving picture which teaches that when it come to a deep longing for love in the form of kindness & friendship we humans are not alone.
And all we have to do to get it, even on a universally galactic level, is to just "be.... good".
This movie has gotten such a stigma attached to it, that I easily forget how much I enjoy watching it. After several years of this movie collecting dust on my video collection, I watched it with my 6 yr. old niece a couple of months ago, & I'll be honest with you: I don't know which one of us was left sitting there with more childlike awe & wonder on our faces.
She, b'cuz she thought that E.T., was one amazing tale.
Or me, b'cuz I thought that Elliot's mom was one amazing tail

The Mighty Celestial's rating:

63   7.4   7.7 

Probably my favorite court drama of all time. With almost a seasoned ease, Paul portrays a disheveled, aging, never-has-been, malpractice lawyer who finds within himself the humanity which never really had a chance to surface due to the layered weight of his chronic alcoholism. The movie & Newman's performance sets up very well the desolation & loneliness that the main character moves his life thru as he goes up against the legal system that giganticly favors the "big guys" over the "little guys". One can really get the sense that Newman knows that he stands no chance of winning the case, but continues moving on forward because he is, for the 1st. time in his barely neglible career, fueled by the honesty & goodness of what is right. A feeling that is so new to this character, that, combined with the realizaton that a human life is totally dependent him for justice, it becomes emotion exhilirating enough to keep an almost broken old man to keep fighting on, no matter how high the price.
One of those rare times when the performance comes thru real enough to make us (oh, what am I'm talkin' about this "us" bullsh#t? What I really mean is "me" ) almost believe that even under the most insurmountable odds, there is always some kind of hope.

The Mighty Celestial's rating:

498   7.6   8.2 

I remember watching this as a kid & my young mind thinking to myself what a weird & yet kick-ass life-form the Thing was in this movie.

The Mighty Celestial's rating:

378   7   7.4 

I remember watching this as a kid & my young mind thinking to myself what a weird & yet kick-ass life-form Sylvester Stallone was in this movie.

The Mighty Celestial's rating:

394   6.7   7.4 

Outside of When Harry Met Sally, this movie ranks as one that could easily represent the epitomy of the modern romantic comedy.
A good script, with each of the central actors approaching their roles with quality efforts, despite the lightness of the subject matter. This movie has the heart, laughs, chemistry & even a touch of satiric social commetary that matches the rest of the film's themes in the same way that a nice pair of high heels would match an elegant dress-gown.
Tootsie's end-result is that it satisfies in the manner which was always meant to be of the rom-com when the genre was first conceived.

The Mighty Celestial's rating:

186   6   6.9 

This film is often credited as the one that started the trend for the modern "buddy cop" movie that took over theatres thru-out the 80's & early 90's. And as the one that set the standard for the story of how two completely different cops from different backgrounds must learn to work together to solve a crime.
And even though Eddie Murphy's character isn't a cop in this movie, it's still okay, since this film's director, Walter Hill, isn't really a hill.

The Mighty Celestial's rating:

1278   8   8.3 

Almost a decade & a half earlier before Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey was one the first films to successfully marry the big budget sci-fi with a genre of a different theme (that of psychological thriller) so that all the high tech flashiness of science fiction acted as a contrasting backdrop to a darker side that resided underneath all the complicated buttons & wires of futuristic technology.
Then came Ridley Scott's Alien, which did the same for the darkside of sci-film, but now more in the method of the straight-up horror genre.
He followed that up with another marriage to sci-fi, but this time in the cinematic category of film noir. Now, with this story of replicant-hunter Rick Deckard, Scott depicts what lays beneath all the flashy neon lights that decorately symbolize the endless possiblities of the future, to tell a tale of the grit & grime layers of lost & forgotten cybo-souls that could only act as a foundation of those towering spires of technological brilliance that would allow the mortal men living in 'em to percieve themselves as gods.
Blade Runner is just as equally a visual stunner as the other famous sci-fi classic that Harrison Ford is known for, but now, instead of a distant galaxy far far away, it's in a distant future that more down to Earth.

The Mighty Celestial's rating:

328   6.5   6.6 

Before there was the Matrix,
there was TRON.
Okay,
so maybe there really isn't all that much as far as compelling storyline goes in this cyber-epic-fantasy. But, boy, those visuals were unlike anything we had seen before. The science of computer graphic effects were fully upon us & in a land not too far away, the force known as CGI was gestating to become the meat that would make the eyes of sci-fan's drool from here to the eternity of this genre's future.
Maybe I look upon this film with the nostaglcic affection that held my young visual senses in a unblinking attention at the time, but it also represented of what was possible when man & modem meet.
I won't try to convince anyone out there that this is a great film on any level (especially since this was the same year the superior sci-fi world of Blade Runner was also released), but I do feel that it's a step in science fiction that was inevitable.
You are now entering the infinite possibilities of cyber-space. Not to mention the matrix of my own personal guilty pleasures.

The Mighty Celestial's rating:

60   6.7   7.1 

I tried that one trick with the popcorn once.
Turns out, just like in the movie, it doesn't work.
Especially if the girl who you tried it on, while she may be on a date, it isn't with you.

The Mighty Celestial's rating: