5 Off My Head - Siri Says 1988

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This week my phone had it in for me - see, the first time that I asked it to "Pick a number between 1 and 100" it gave me 12 and neither of the two choices possible in this scenario, 1912 or 2012, were any good. 1912's no good because come on, who's seen enough silent film from 1912 to make a list of five favorites? Hell, to make a list of five, period? And 2012 is no good because here on the blog I did a great big Year End Celebration for 2012 (remember when I was doing those?) and looking back not enough has changed in my perceptions of the year's best to mess with what I said then.

So I gave up and I asked Siri a second time to pick a number between 1 and 100 and she said 88, and The Movies of 1988 present an entirely different set of difficulties - namely that I was 12-13 years old in 1988 and just falling in love with the movies (the first choice of my five below is the very first movie I went to see by myself!) and nostalgia trumps reason when it comes to this period of time. 

That said this would be more obvious if we expanded my Top 5 to a Top 10, where things like the Bette Midler two-fer of Big Business & Beaches might find an inexplicable-to-some foothold - I think my Top 5, nostalgia-blindness aside, can and do totally stand the test of time. Judge for yourselves, for here are...

My Five Favorite Movies of 1988

Beetlejuice

(dir. Tim Burton)

-- released March 30th, 1988 --

Dead Ringers

(dir. David Cronenberg)

-- released September 23rd, 1988 --

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? 

(dir. Robert Zemeckis)

-- released June 22nd, 1988 --

 Heathers 

(dir. Michael Lehmann)

-- released March 31st, 1988 --

Paperhouse 

(dir. Bernard Rose)

-- released September 10th, 1988 --

Runners-up: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels by Frank Oz, Brain Damage by Frank Henenlotter, Lair of the White Worm by Ken Russell, Working Girl by Mike Nichols, They Live by John Carpenter, Hairspray by John Waters, Alice by Jan Svankmajer.

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What are your favorite movies of 1988?

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