Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1985 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
Advertisement
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1985 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1984 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s May 17, 1985, and we’re off to see Goodbye, New York, Ordeal by Innocence, Streetwalkin’.
Goodbye, New York
The 1980s: Where every husband was cheating and it always involved cocaine as well.
Nancy Callaghan (Julie Hagerty) quits her job looking to set off an adventure of a lifetime with her husband. When she finds him cheating, she sets off on her own, and ends up sleeping through her stop in Paris and ending up in Israel. Due to her lack of money she jumps around from person-to-person that will take her in, and, of course, falls for someone along the way.
It would seem that Julie Hagerty was really finding her groove playing women quitting their jobs to set off an adventure as she already done that in Lost in America earlier this year. The odd thing is, I think she works better in this role. The story is certainly simpler, but even with the weight of the sole lead she made it work well in this case.
As to the story, it’s a bog standard rom-com, but it’s interesting from its playing into the ongoing tropes of the decade.
Ordeal by Innocence
You know what I think of when I think of Agatha Christie? Setting it to a freeform jazz soundtrack.
Ordeal by Innocence sees Paleontologist Dr. Arthur Calgary (Donald Sutherland) returning an address book of Jack Argyle to only learn that Jack is dead. Not only is he dead, but he was executed for a murder he supposedly committed when the two men were together. Dr. Calgary immediately takes it upon himself to try to figure out who the real killer was.
As Agatha Christie stories go, this one was most definitely one of her weaker attempts. It was still entertaining, but it felt very forced.
And then there is the endless jazz soundtrack that is so wildly out of place that it becomes distracting every time it starts back up.
The movie is fine, but there are far better Christie mysteries to fill your time with.
Streetwalkin’
Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo… Rappin’… Streetwalkin’… 1985 was a big year for the humble apostrophe.
Cookie (Melissa Leo) and her brother get kicked out of their house by their mother and step-father, and end up on the streets of 1980s New York City. In other words, a city that was ready to chew them up and spit them out. Cookie immediately gets taken in the prostitution game by Duke (Dale Midkiff), and ht is the epitome of what you expect from a pimp. Over the course of one night, however, everyone’s lives are about to change.
I really didn’t know what to expect from this one. I assumed it was going to be another cheap sexplotation film of the time period, and I ended up with a tense, well-acted thriller. Sure, it’s not the most polished film – your sense of time and space is never the best, and at one point you can see sunrise is coming but you then spend the back half of the film in the dark – but there is a certain honesty to the entire production.
It seems as though every year I stumble on a film that takes me by surprise such as The Island or Ms. 45 have in the past, and this one is a definite contender for the title this year.
1985 Movie Reviews will return on May 24, 2025, with Brewster’s Millions, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Steaming, and A View to a Kill.
