my favorite movie of 1987:

(1) Au Revoir les Enfants

(2) No Way Out

favorite of 1987:

Au Revoir les Enfants

[French, meaning “Goodbye, Children”]

(Gaspard Manesse, Raphaël Fejtő, Francine Racette, Philippe Morier-Genoud, François Berléand, Irène Jacob. Directed by Louis Malle.)

The director and writer, Louis Malle, based this movie on his own childhood experience attending a Catholic boys’ boarding school in Nazi-occupied France. As a movie about the Holocaust, Au Revoir les Enfants is all the more poignant for never showing a concentration camp.

My children, we live in a time of discord and hatred. Lies are all-powerful. … Those who should guide us betray us instead. More than ever, we must beware of selfishness and indifference. You’re all from wealthy families. … Because you’ve been given much, much will be asked of you.

Wikipedia tells us:

According to Quentin Tarantino, the title for the film Reservoir Dogs (1992) came about after a patron at a Video Archives rental store, where Tarantino used to work, misheard his film suggestion of Au Revoir les Enfants as “Reservoir Dogs.”

Stream Au Revoir les Enfants on the Criterion Channel (with extras) or Max. If you don’t subscribe to the Criterion Channel, try a free trial.

2nd favorite of 1987:

No Way Out

(Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young, Will Patton. Directed by Roger Donaldson.)

This neo-noir is based on the same novel as The Big Clock, one of my favorite movies of 1948. But while the older movie revolved around a media conglomerate and was largely set in its imposing headquarters, No Way Out revolves around the federal government and has many scenes in the Pentagon.

Rotten Tomatoes says the critics’ consensus is that this “modern spin on the dense, stylish suspense films of the 1940s features fine work from Gene Hackman and Sean Young, as well as the career-making performance that made Kevin Costner a star.”

There are also some notable players in the supporting cast. The director of the CIA is played by Fred Thompson … a future Senator in real life. A fictional Senator in the movie is played by Howard Duff … who 40 years earlier was a prisoner in Brute Force, my favorite movie of 1947. A woman who’s targeted because she knows too much is played by Iman … the future wife of David Bowie. And if you look closely, you can see a shot of Kevin Costner at a party next to a guest, an unknown extra … named Brad Pitt.

Ebert appreciated this movie:

“No Way Out” is one of those thrillers … where the plot gives us a great deal of information, but the more we know, the less we understand. It’s like a terrifying jigsaw puzzle. And because the story is so tightly wound and the performances are so good, I found myself really caring about the characters. That’s the test of a good thriller: when you stop thinking about the mechanics of the plot and start caring about the people. … 

“No Way Out” is a superior example of the genre, a film in which a simple situation grows more and more complex until it turns into a nightmare not only for the hero but also for everyone associated with him. At the same time, it respects the audience’s intelligence, gives us a great deal of information, trusts us to put it together and makes the intellectual analysis of the situation one of the movie’s great pleasures.

Stream No Way Out on Amazon Prime, Tubi (free with ads), or these sites.

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