A hip, heart-pounding combination of action, music, and incredible aerial photography helped make Top Gun the blockbuster hit of 1986. Top Gun takes a look at the danger and excitement that awaits every pilot at the Navy's prestigious fighter weapons school. Tom Cruise is superb as Maverick Mitchell, a daring young fighter who's out to become the best. And Kelly McGillis sizzles as the civilian instructor who teaches Maverick a few things you can't learn in a classroom.
One of the touchstone movies of the 1980s, Tootsie stars Dustin Hoffman as an out-of-work actor who disguises himself as a dowdy, middle-aged woman to get a part on a hit soap opera. The scheme works, but while he/she keeps up the charade, Hoffman's character comes to see life through the eyes of the opposite sex. The script by Larry Gelbart (with Murray Schisgal) is a winner, and director Sydney Pollack brings taut proficiency to the comedy and sensitivity to the relationship nuances that emerge from Hoffman's drag act.
In the future, Skynet, a computer system fights a losing war against the humans who built it and who it nearly exterminated. Just before being destroyed, Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah, the mother to be of John Connor, the Leader of the human resistance. The terminator can pass for human, is nearly indestructible, and has only one mission, killing Sarah Connor. One soldier is sent back to protect her from the killing machine. He must find Sarah before the Terminator can carry out it's mission.
When a 17 year old, High-School Student named Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko), is an average young man, who has the worst day of his life, when he accidently touched a Bully named Buddy Revell (Richard Tyson), who doesn't liked to be touched, now he has to deal with Buddy, who wants to fight Jerry at three o'clock, Jerry will do anything to get himself out of the situation.
Director Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner) solemnly alerts us to the glory that was Spinal Tap in his introduction to this "rockumentary" about the legendary British heavy-metal group, featuring lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), lead singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), and a succession of drummers whose careers were cut short by spontaneously combusting on their stool, drowning in somebody else's vomit, or otherwise perishing in untimely fashion.
There's Something About Mary is one of the funniest movies in years, recalling the days of the Zucker-Abraham-Zucker movies, in which (often tasteless) gags were piled on at a fierce rate. The difference is that cowriters and codirectors Bobby and Peter Farrelly have also crafted a credible story line and even tossed in some genuine emotional content. With Mary, the Farrelly brothers have created a consistently hilarious romantic comedy, made all the funnier by the fact that you know that they know that some of their gags go way over the line.
A sleeper hit when released in 1986, Stand by Me is based on Stephen King's novella "The Body" (from the book Different Seasons); but it's more about the joys and pains of boyhood friendship than a morbid fascination with corpses. It's about four boys ages 12 and 13 (Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell) who take an overnight hike through the woods near their Oregon town to find the body of a boy who's been missing for days.
William Steig's delightfully fractured fairy tale is the right stuff for this computer-animated adaptation full of verve and wit. Our title character (voiced by Mike Myers) is an agreeable enough ogre who wants to live his days in peace. When the diminutive Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow) evicts local fairy-tale creatures (including the now-famous Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, and the Gingerbread Man), they settle in the ogre's swamp and Shrek wants answers from Farquaad.
She's living in the gateway to hell. In this gruesome shocker directed by Michael Winner (Death Wish, Lawman), model Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) learns that the Brooklyn Heights house where she rents an apartment guards the gateway to Hell. Base on the bestseller by Jeffrey Konvitz, who wrote and produced the film with Winner, it stars horror legend John Carradine as the blind Father Halliran, who maintains a solitary vigil against the forces of evil.
Sink the Bismarck! recounts one of the most famous battles in the history of naval warfare. Shot in semidocumentary style, the black-and-white film covers all sides in the famous hunt for the powerful German warship that terrorized the sea for eight days. The story and combat are rendered as faithfully as possible to C.S. Forester's novel. There are a few historical errors and some other minor liberties taken for dramatic license, both of which the viewer will easily be able to overlook.
