1986

OK, this isn't gonna be pretty. If you look at my prior movie entries (from 1980-1985), you'll see all the fantastic films that I had been lucky enough to grow up with. In 1986, we (or at least I) entered, The Dead Zone. The top 5 money makers of that year were "Top Gun", "Crocodile Dundee", "Platoon", "The Karate Kid Part II", and "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home". Not exactly the kind of Spielbergian entertainment that I had become accustomed to. I didn't go to any of the above movies when they originally came out, not even "Top Gun" (After traveling into the outer reaches of the galaxy with the Star Wars saga, I didn't think traveling a couple miles in the air would be very compelling). I did like "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", but I am only considering movies here that I saw when they were originally released ("Bueller", I caught on video). Taking a look at the top 50 movies released in 1986, the fact is I only went to 1 or 2 of them (I may have gone to "Soul Man", but I'm not positive on that). Either way, I am somewhat ashamed to say that, by default, my favorite movie of 1986 was "Police Academy 3: Back In Training".

My favorite character was Motormouth Jones. Going to these movies actually became an annual tradition for me (In the spring of every year from '85 to '89, I went to the new PA movie). Looking back, they're not the greatest films, but come on, I was a teenager in the late '80s. What else was I gonna do? Learn how to pop and lock? Work at Burger King? Fornicate?