Best movies of 1989
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Heathers (1988)
U.S. Release date: March 31, 1989
Arriving at the end of the ’80s, the deliciously nasty black comedy Heathers works as a critique of Hughes’ brand of high-school movie: It inflates these same stereotypes until they explode. The caste system present in all of these films, with popular kids at the top and nerds on the bottom, here becomes an endless, ruthless, Darwinian struggle that not even murder after murder after murder can resolve. And the types aren’t just present, they’re interchangeable: The ruling clique are all pretty girls named Heather, and the jocks skulk around in varsity jackets, calling people fags. Heathers also has real characters, who rebel in a dark way against the status quo, but it’s smart about recognizing the clichés of high-school movies and satirizing them to the hilt, all while tapping into the genuine frustration of students who are pressured to conform at all costs. Its Westerburg High School looks like no high school and every high school, like The Breakfast Club with even more grotesquely cartoonish dimensions.
-from The A.V. Club's The New Cult Canon
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Batman (1989)
Burton gives Bats his first Dark Knight makeover, one that was long overdue. Keaton was perfect as Bruce Wayne AND Batman, something that couldn't be said for Kilmer (who made a great Bruce Wayne but a merely OK Batman) or Clooney (who from what I hear sucked as both...can't honestly say for sure since I avoided that film) when they tried to fill his shoes. Nicholson was great as being the Nicholson version of Joker, but has been outshined by both Mark Hamill's animated Joker and Heath Ledger's Joker/Tyler Durden hybrid (hell, I even prefer Sid Caesar's Joker over Jack's).
The biggest strike against this film is the ending, because you just don't kill the Joker.
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U.S. release date: March 10, 1989
This is when I first fell in love with Uma Thurman...
Baron Munchausen: Go away! I'm trying to die!
Sally: Why?
Baron Munchausen: Because I'm tired of the world and the world is evidently tired of me.
Sally: But why? Why?
Baron Munchausen: Why, why, why! Because it's all logic and reason now. Science, progress, laws of hydraulics, laws of social dynamics, laws of this, that, and the other. No place for three-legged cyclops in the South Seas. No place for cucumber trees and oceans of wine. No place for me.
This is when I first fell in love with Uma Thurman...
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Top films listed in the order I like them, though repeat viewings could potentially rearrange said order.
Runners-up listed alphabetically.
Runners-up listed alphabetically.
Had you asked my 1989 self...
1. Batman
2. UHF
3. Pet Sematary
4. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
5. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
6. Parenthood
7. Dead Poets Society
8. Back to the Future II
9. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
10. Major League
11. Lethal Weapon 2
12. Ghostbusters 2
13. Christmas Vacation
14. Look Who's Talking
15. No Holds Barred
16. The Wizard
17. Weekend at Bernie's
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