When Fandango Groovers Movie Blog calls for participants to a blogathlon about a special movie year, the roar reaches all the way to a suburb to Stockholm and to my (not so small) ears.
Though writing in English isn´t neither my cup of tea nor my big gulp of coffee I will do the one thing I can: my best. So, buckle up and I will try to take you back to the year when I was only sixteen and had my whole life ahead of me and a shitload of fantastic movies to see.
The year is 1988. I live in an extreeemly small Swedish town and my parents gets divorced that year. We move from a house to an appartment and my new neighbours don´t have much of a life. They notice everything I do and talk to my mother about my strangeness. My God, black curtains in her room and black Doc Martens on her feet, she must be a terrorist or something!
But no, I wasn´t a criminal of any kind, I was just an ordinary teenage nerd. I loved school, I loved reading books, I loved electronic music and of course, I loved movies just as much then as I do now. I had terrific friends, I had a great mom and I had a nice good looking boyfriend with a white driveable Volvo, but despite all that, movies was the one thing that made me understand life and the crazy rocking world around me.
1. Luc Besson´s The Big Blue made me realize that love isn´t easy, not for anyone. Love can be a lot of things and even if it´s anything but normal – for me – to love a fish more than a human Jacques Mayol proves me wrong. Who decides what´s normal? I decide for me but for others I sure don´t.
The Big Blue is a movie that manage to play on my feelings like I was a big cello. I cry like a starving baby with colic each time I watch it and as a movie it´s pure and simple perfection. But not all awakenings are easy. My new perspective about myself and love made me listen to my heart. I dumped my boyfriend and my neighbours got a new thing to talk about: my ex-boyfriends clogs clapping in the stairwell, angry and sad at the same time, day after day after day.
2. John McClane teached me a lot of things in John McTiernan´s Die Hard but not all of those things focused on how to handle an angry German guy. For example: I had a deodorant that worked! Transpiring like a guinea pig in a sauna and still being totally odorless was a feeling any teenager would die for and I sure was one of them.
I sat there in the little local cinema and couldn´t breathe. I couldn´t blink either. I just sat there and I was so exhausted and my sweater was so soggy and moist I could easily have used it as a wet towel. Die Hard is still one of the greatest actionmovies of all times even though I transpire a lot less nowadays (thank God for that!).
3. Racism was – and still is – a huge topic in many small Swedish cities. I the shitty village of mine there were a great deal of that back in 1988. I was so sad, so frustrated over the fact that people could be so cruel to each other because of something so silly as skin color.
Seeing Alan Parker´s Mississippi Burning didn´t make me glad but it sure gave me a giant bandaid around my heart. I was still angry but I felt a bit wiser, isn´t that the whole purpuse of being a teenager?
4. Perhaps it was then, perhaps it was when Glenn Close cleaned the pale make-up from her face in the movie Dangerous Liaisons that I grew up from being a schoolgirl to a real woman.
The movie is a smörgåsbord for every hormonal, thinking, feeling boy or girl, man or woman. Jealousy, passion and love, subjects that never goes out of style, subjects that fulfill our minds no matter of age. When it comes to love we all have a bit of our reptilebrain left. Intelligence doesn´t count, self confidence can be erased by a minute, all you can do is live your life and try to be kind. Carma, you know.
This movie was my teacher in life-kindness-knowledge. Be kind, be good, be nice. Try, always. Don´t let mean people piss on you but in every other case try to be nice and you´ll get it back – sometime, somewhere, somehow.
5. So many memories from my teenage years holds the strong hand of Sylvester Stallone. Therefore, I can´t do a list like this without a movie with my homie, without the man, the myth, the short Italian killingmachine Sylvester Stallone aka John Rambo.
He travels to Afghanistan this year in Rambo III, of course to be a hero and save Trautman (Richard Crenna) and I love it, I won´t and I can´t explait it, I just do. I cried like I always did (and always do) in the end when the credits roll, the lights turns on and I leave my stonehard Viol-candy on the armchair (the only candy for sale in my cinema back then and it was soft like leftovers from the stoneage).
The first thing I bought when I visited Stockholm just weeks after seeing this film was a movieposter and I hung it on my pink wall right between First Blood and Cobra. I wonder what the neighbours would have said about that. Three times Stallone on a girly wall! Oh my God, she must be craaaazy for real!
There were a lot of movies from 1988 that made me a wiser young girl and it´s difficult picking just five of them but I did, I made it – Jeeeeey! – but there are a few more movies from ”my” year that I would love to at least mention: Dead ringers, The Unbearable Lightness of being, Big, Betrayed, Working girl, Rain Man, A fish called Wanda and The Accused.
There are so many movies and so little time, but if you choose one year to dig yourself deeper into, choose 1988. At least that´s MY favourite movie year of all times.
Not a fan of Rambo III but love your other choices, thanks for taking part
Andy:
And thank you for a great idea! 🙂
LOL, I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay away from Sly Stallone! A great post.
My top five from 1988 might be The accidental tourist (w/ William Hurt, Kathleen Turner), Working girl (w/ Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford), Midnight run (w/ Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin), Die Hard (w/ Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman) and my number one: Dirty rotten scoundrels (w/ Steve Martin, Michael Caine).
1988 a great year!
Henke:
Of course I have to mention the most important guy in my whole upbringing, what else can I do? 😉
There are lots and lots of great films from this year and Working girl should definately have been on my ”extra-list”.
Hey, great post! With one exception, I like your choice of films very much, especially Die Hard and The Big Blue (which I’ve only caught up with recently). Die Hard had a huge impact on the 20 year-old me back in 1988 (and as we’ve seen, a huge impact on the Hollywood action blockbuster).
You’re a brave man, putting Rambo III on your list!
Jeff:
Thanks! 🙂 I wonder if it´s Stallone himself that you don´t like or the movie I mentioned?
And I hope I´m brave even as a woman by putting Rambo on the list 😉
D’oh! I’m very sorry to have mistaken your gender, Fiffi! It’s just that, until now, I’ve never met a woman who admits to enjoying Rambo III! 😉
I like Stallone. Rocky is one of my favorite films, and the last Rambo is one of the best no-frills action films of recent years. I remeber not caring for Rambo III much at all, but admittedly I haven’t seen it in a looong time. Maybe it’s due a reappraisal.
Jeff:
You haven´t? Ohooooo. Then somebody should be the first (but I don´t think I´ll be the last) 😉
Rambo III and almost everyone of Stallone´s movies (The Specialist excluded) is perfect to choose when you want to see brainless action but with a twist of heart. In the end you KNOW that at least ONE person in genuine and kind and that´s my darling Sly 😉
I agree totally with you regarding the last Rambo.
Well, 1988 wouldn’t have occurred to me, but considering I’ve only seen Die Hard (which is great) out of the five you feature, maybe it’s from not having watched enough. Big and Rain Man are certainly commendable but the big ones for me would be My Neighbor Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies, and Greenaway’s Drowning By Numbers.
Bondo:
Then you´ll have a lot of great films to see! 🙂 You really can´t be disappointed with the movieyear of 1988.
Good year. I don’t think you can ever go wrong with Glenn Close, she’s one of the strongest women in the business.
Ardeth Blood:
Oh yes, she sure is a tough woman in many ways.
Very good choice Fiffi, I could easily have included your top 3 on my own top 5 of 1988.
Joel:
I guess Rambo III would have been your number one choice? Haha 😉
How curious, this was one of my top contender years as well! And I think you did very well on transforming your unique style into another language which is not the easiest thing to do. Personal and interesting as ususal.
I considered everything from Willow, Cinema Paradiso, Rain Man and Beetlejuice but would probably have ended up with almost the same list as yours. Apart from Sly, I imagine 😉
Sofia:
Can it be because it IS a great year? 😉
I´m glad to hear that you think ”my” way of writing works in another language. Personally I think it feels at lot like ”svenglish”, like The Muppets 😉
I might have been too hard on the 80’s in my list, you’ve picked a bunch of good movies. Except number 5, of course. 😉 I was just too young for the first Die Hard when it came out, but I saw them on VHS a little later and was blown away. =)
My favorites from ’88 today: Dead Ringers by Cronenberg and Ariel by Kaurismäki. And The Naked Gun! And Totoro! And Time of the Gypsies! And of course, all parts of the Dekalog – even though I’m not christian (at least not a believer).
Gustav:
Dead ringers should have been number two on my list if I haven´t written like I did, like it was my favourites from back then, the age I was the year of 1988.
A list with all the great movies from this year would be like a mile long 😉
Yep, Roger Rabbit is one I enjoyed then and do now too. 🙂
I LOVE Die Hard! Probably too much for my own good 😛 And I like Rambo III, when I’m in an action-y mood it’s so campy, exaggerated and perfect!
Monica:
Rambo III IS perfect when you want to se something both entertaining and totally braindead. And with Sly in the cast…. I say no more 😉
1988 was a pretty great year. I also love, love love Dangerous Liaisons!
Alyson:
Great! Then we are two! 😉
For someone concerned with how well your English would be, had you not put that I’d have never known.
I love it that you included Rambo III in your top 5. No, it’s not one of the best movies of that year…but it was an action filled film that was easy to enjoy, and that’s why what we want when we watch a movie, right?
Thanks for sharing!!
Joe:
Thank you 🙂
Movies can be good – and bad – in so many ways but when you have fine memories of a movie it´s easy to love it (no matter what the intelligent part of your brain says) 😉 Rambo III is shallow action and the story quite stupid but hey, I don´t care. I love it!
Good list of films. Still have not seen The Big Blue 😉
iluvcinema:
Then you have an extraordinary movie-experience ahead of you. I´m a bit envy 😉