At the outset of the 1986 pairings, I thought; 'If a good movie gets left behind this is the year they'll get left behind from.' One of those I know I'll hear arguments about, requires a confession; I just don't like Ferris Bueller's Day Off as much as you. It's a fun movie, it's good, it's memorable, it's quotable, and it's made for every person who's ever been content with a C+ on a report card, who 'just enough' was acceptable for. There's nothing wrong with that; it can keep the lights on and beer in the fridge, but I don't drink beer either, or less relevantly eat any ethnic food that I can think of. But, I analyzed Bueller on his own merits, and ignored that the cast contains Ben Stein, who is human tea tree oil to this lowly ant.
One of the hardest calls to make in the entire history of making these lists: Star Trek IV vs Project A-Ko. I couldn't let it go to a tie. Really the entire lineup of the top 4 were difficult pairings to decide, and I'd looked for poster images for each of them, I almost ruled against Transformers because it was on the blog wallpaper, but because I had no real internal debate that Transformers should top A-Ko, then logically I must like Transformers more than Star Trek IV... but their positions may change in the decade race. I can see now 1986 will be going with a major contingent into the finals, probably everything from Big Trouble in Little China up.
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For most of the pairings, a movie was on the list and competing that, when near completion, I had to eliminate, Captain EO. A long time ago, when compiling the titles, Looney Tunes presented a problem of length, and I'd decided not to include them. I haven't been including Pixar shorts, but EO at 17 minutes is a bit longer than most of these, it's far from long enough to be a "movie". I've included TV movies, direct to video movies, OVA, I've had the broadest consideration of what is a movie, but I can't go that short.
We can imagine that Captain EO was a glimpse of what we didn't get in 1986; Episode VII or I. Though a bit of it's look is less sophisticated than even Return of the Jedi, It's kinda doing a Ginger Rogers 'backwards and in heels' trick by looking like a Star Wars movie, in 3D. On top of that, the sci-fi update on the Thriller zombies were the prototypes of the Borg and their Queen. If Captain EO had been a feature, it would have been easily top-10 for the year. Even as it was, a shallow, brief, half music video, it was in the 70th percentile, but EPCOT is still my favorite of the parks. I wish the crap were taken off spaceship earth, and I wish the... I wish EPCOT would return to its nerdier, closer to original state.
It's a bit funny the way giving a tie to two movies works out; in last place, The Money Pit had a tie with Armed and Dangerous. Armed and Dangerous shared a tie vote with Club Paradise, which had a tie with Hoosiers, (Okay, I know what you just thought, but Club Paradise had Peter O'Toole in it!) which had a tie with SpaceCamp, which had a tie with The Great Mouse Detective, which had a tie with The Karate Kid, Part II, which had a tie with Big Trouble in Little China, which had a tie with Labyrinth.
Well here's the list with the most rewatchable top 5 probably of all the lists so far.
- The Transformers: The Movie
- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
- Project A-ko
- Highlander
- Aliens
- Labyrinth
- Top Gun
- Invaders from Mars
- Laputa: Castle in the Sky
- Big Trouble in Little China
- Flight of the Navigator
- The Karate Kid, Part II
- Howard the Duck
- Short Circuit
- King Kong Lives
- Crocodile Dundee
- The Great Mouse Detective
- SpaceCamp
- Little Shop of Horrors
- Ferris Bueller's Day Off
- Heartbreak Ridge
- Iron Eagle
- The Fly
- Black Moon Rising
- An American Tail
- The Big Easy
- Lucas
- The Golden Child
- Raw Deal
- Platoon
- Hoosiers
- Manhunter
- The Delta Force
- Ruthless People
- Solarbabies
- Gung Ho!
- GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords
- F/X
- Castaway
- Critters
- Pirates
- Peggy Sue Got Married
- ¡Three Amigos!
- Firewalker
- Stand by Me
- Club Paradise
- The Manhattan Project
- The Color of Money
- 9½ Weeks
- Pretty in Pink
- Cobra
- The Mosquito Coast
- Poltergeist II: The Other Side
- Troll 2
- The Morning After
- Jumpin' Jack Flash
- House
- Armed and Dangerous
- Murphhy's Law
- Down and Out in Beverly Hills
- No Mercy
- Shanghai Surprise
- The Money Pit
Legend: Onto the next Round! ( >/= .8) In the middle. I do NOT enjoy. (< / = .2)
