AUGUST: Do the Eighties Hold Up?

When you’re a kid, you like everything, don’t you? I mean, at least as far as TV and movies are concerned. You don’t really have any concept of good and bad, you just watch whatever’s on. I know I was like that, and some of the stuff I loved when I was little, like Hee Haw or the Adam West Batman, was really appalling.
But then in my teens I started to mature, and to realize that movies can be more than just something to pass the time; they can actually be well-made, moving, thought-provoking. I still didn’t have tremendous taste, but I started to recognize that there was a world of difference between Casablanca and Motel Hell. I started to get into the classics, and I started judging current releases more stringently. Really, what I was doing was falling in love with film itself, I guess.
Anyway, there were many true works of art released in the eighties (the time we’re speaking of), and I latched onto most of them. Many I now have on DVD (or even VHS) and still watch on a semi-regular basis, from Chariots of Fire to The Unbelievable Truth. But I couldn’t afford to buy them all, and there are some movies that I was blown away by, movies that shaped my growing perception of the art of filmmaking, that I haven’t seen since they were new.
A few days ago I was thinking about Mickey Rourke, as I often do (he’s a personal favorite), and I remembered that the first time I ever saw him was in Barry Levinson’s Diner. My friend Mills refers to his character, Boogie, as the blueprint for cool for eighties teenagers. I’m sure I felt the same way at the time, but I can’t remember a single scene from that film. I vaguely recall someone making his fiancée pass a Colts trivia quiz before he’d marry her, and something about Rourke putting a wig on Ellen Barkin, and that’s it. I know that I adored the film twenty-five years ago, but now it’s a blank. That’s a shame. So I’m doing something about it. I’m inaugurating the first Theme Month on Remembrance of Films Past: August will be “Do the Eighties Hold Up?” Month. I’ve selected a half-dozen old favorites that I haven’t seen since 1990 or before, and I’ll be getting them all from Netflix and writing about them here. The films selected are:

The Elephant Man (1980)
Diner (1982)
Educating Rita (1983)
Amadeus (1984)
Witness (1985)
Prick Up Your Ears (1987)

I’ll still be watching newer films as well, of course, and going through my DVD collection writing about films I know better, but I think this will be a rewarding experience. The first two should be here the middle of next week. Fingers crossed that I’ll love them as much as the first time.