my favorite movies of 1985:

(1) Back to the Future

(2) After Hours

favorite of 1985:

Back to the Future

(Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson. Directed by Robert Zemeckis.)

Tell me, future boy, who’s President of the United States in 1985?

Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan? The actor?! Ha! Then who’s Vice President — Jerry Lewis?

This sci-fi movie has everything: laughs, thrills, love, angst, joy, music. Back to the Future does it all with commitment, with intensity, with passion — as if life depends on it.

You can find new details and meaning in this movie every time you watch it, like the board game “Life” in the background when we see the family around the dinner table early on, as if to say this depressing scene sums up their life. Soon after that, Doc (Christopher Lloyd) introduces Marty (Michael J. Fox) to “the flux capacitor,” the device that “makes time travel possible,” and you might think about how the words “flux capacitor” literally mean: what makes change possible. The movie tells us we need to find ways to change our lives by overcoming fear.

Stream Back to the Future on YouTube (free with ads) or these sites.

Update: I chose the sequels as some of my favorite movies from 1989 and 1990.

2nd favorite of 1985:

After Hours

(Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Teri Garr, Catherine O’Hara, John Heard, Linda Fiorentino, Cheech Marin, Thomas Chong. Directed by Martin Scorsese.)

I wrote up some in-depth notes on this movie (with videos and photos) here: “17 thoughts on After Hours.”

Just as West Side Story (my top choice of 1961) brings Romeo and Juliet to modern-day Manhattan on the Upper West Side, After Hours seems to take The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland as inspirations for a dystopian adventure through the Soho area of Manhattan in the ’80s.

Ebert had a strong reaction:

Scorsese’s “After Hours” is a comedy, according to the strict definition of that word. … It is, however, the tensest comedy I can remember, building its nightmare situation step by insidious step until our laughter is hollow, or defensive. This is the work of a master filmmaker who controls his effects so skillfully that I was drained by this film — so emotionally depleted that there was a moment, two-thirds of the way through, when I wondered if maybe I should leave the theater and gather my thoughts and come back later for the rest of the “comedy.”

Again, here are more thoughts on After Hours, with videos and photos.

Stream After Hours on Amazon Prime, Tubi (free with ads), the Roku Channel, or these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.