my favorite movies of 1988:

(1) Talk Radio

(2) Heathers

(3) The Unbearable Lightness of Being

favorite of 1988:

Talk Radio

(Eric Bogosian, Ellen Greene, Alec Baldwin. Directed by Oliver Stone.)

This Oliver Stone movie was inspired by the true story of a brash, Jewish radio host (played by Eric Bogosian) who might have become another Howard Stern — if only …

The movie finishes that sentence.

Talk Radio gets classified as a “drama,” but it often feels like a comedy — a very dark comedy. Ebert’s 4-star review is dead on:

the movie doesn’t feel as boxed-in as many filmed plays do, perhaps because radio itself is such an intimate, claustrophobic medium. It’s not over there in the TV set; it’s inside your head. In a sense we become listeners of “The Barry Champlain Show,” and as he pushes his listeners more and more insistently, egging them on, we begin to feel how some of the people out there in the night could go over the edge. …

This is Barry Champlain, reminding you that sticks and stones can break your bones, but words cause permanent damage.

(How to stream Talk Radio.)

2nd favorite of 1988:

Heathers

(Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty. Directed by Michael Lehmann.)

If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn’t be a human being. You’d be a game show host.

Heathers, a colorful yet dark teenage comedy, has sadly grown more resonant over the years.

Stream Heathers on Amazon Prime, Tubi (free with ads), the Roku Channel (also free with ads), and these sites.

3rd favorite of 1988:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

(Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin. Directed by Philip Kaufman.)

Before watching this nearly 3-hour epic, I recommend reading up on the historical event at its center: the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Everyone seems to agree that this movie fails to capture a lot of the philosophical substance in the novel of the same name by Milan Kundera. (This blog post talks about some of those problems.) The Unbearable Lightness of Being is still worth watching even if it’s incomplete. Ebert recounted how he warmed up to this movie:

I had begun to appreciate some of the life rhythms of the characters. Most films move so quickly and are so dependent on plot that they are about events, not lives. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” carries the feeling of deep nostalgia, of a time no longer present, when these people did these things and hoped for happiness, and were caught up in events beyond their control. …

Daniel Day-Lewis plays Tomas with a sort of detachment that is supposed to come from the character’s distaste for commitment. … For him, sex seems like a form of physical meditation, rather than an activity with another person. … Juliette Binoche, as Tereza, is almost ethereal in her beauty and innocence, and her attempt to reconcile her love with her lover’s detachment is probably the heart of the movie. …

The film will be noticed primarily for its eroticism. … Catering to audiences of adolescents, who are comfortable with sex only when it is seen in cartoon form, Hollywood has also not been comfortable with the complications of adult sexuality — the good and the bad. What is remarkable about “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” however, is not the sexual content itself, but the way [director Philip Kaufman] has been able to use it as an avenue for a complex story, one of nostalgia, loss, idealism and romance.

Lena Olin and Daniel Day-Lewis

If I had two lives, in one life I could invite her to stay at my place, and in the second life I could kick her out. Then I could compare and see which had been the best thing to do. But we only live once. Life’s so light — like an outline we can’t ever fill in or correct.

Juliette Binoche

(How to stream The Unbearable Lightness of Being.)

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