Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1984 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. Imagine a world where This is Spinal Tap and Repo Man hit theaters on the same day. That is the world of 1984.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly three dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1984 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out on the same day the films hit theaters in 1984 so that it is their true 35th anniversaries. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory.
This time around it’s July 6, 1984, and we’re off to see Another Country.
Another Country
Somewhere in this movie, there is a complete movie and perhaps 10% of another movie. And the 10% is going to color everything you think about this film.
The movie begins with an older British gentleman who has defected to Russia. You get some information here, but not much before he goes into telling the story of his youth at boarding school. At the end of the film, we finally jump back to the older gentleman, none the wiser as to how or why he got to this position in life.
It wasn’t until after I watched the film I learned this was loosely based on the life of Guy Burgess, someone I had only ever heard of in passing. This film does nothing to enlighten you as to why he committed the crimes he did. They just seem to expect you to come into this film with that knowledge.
The boarding school portion of the film is interesting, and I quite enjoyed the drama and pettiness of this microcosm of British society, but the bookend scenes are so out of place that you wonder why they even bothered to film them. They serve no real purpose to the main thrust of the story and only serve to make you go, “why?”
The film, without question, is about as pretentious as a British period piece can get, but still a bit of fun if you have absolutely nothing else to watch.
1984 Movie Reviews will return on July 13 with The Last Starfighter and The Muppets Take Manhattan!
