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.
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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 February 22, 1985, and we’re off to see Into the Night, The Mean Season, Turk 182!, and Vision Quest.
Into the Night
This week is filled with movies that I have zero memory of even seeing advertisements before. You could have easily shocked me by informing me that Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer were once co-leads in a film.
Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum) hasn’t slept in days and is unhappy with his life. When he discovers his wife is having an affair he takes a friend’s advice and heads to the airport for a spontaneous trip to Las Vegas. What he ends up with is Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer) landing on his car as she runs from Iranian secret police who want emeralds she just smuggled into the U.S. What follows is two days of Ed helping Diana try to get away from bad guys while he continues to question his life and his situation.
Directed by John Landis, this film feels like an odd chance for the director to have a bunch of friends – the list of director cameos in this movie are insane – to show support for him. This film was made during his trial over the deaths that occurred on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie, and this just feels as though a whole bunch of friends wanted to rally around him.
The film is just nonsense from beginning to end, but yet Goldblum and Pfeiffer are engaging enough that it’s not a painful watch. If you want to see a film celebrate a lot of directors, check it out. Otherwise feel free to skip it.
The Mean Season
When your film about newspaper reports calls out other great moments in newspaper history they aspire to be, you really should up your game.
Malcolm Anderson (Kurt Russell) is a reporter for a Miami newspaper who finds himself burned out from covering nothing but crime for years. He promises his girlfriend, Christine (Mariel Hemingway), they’re going to leave for another city, but then Malcolm fins himself wrapped up in covering a series of murders, and the killer decides Malcolm will be the only person he will speak to about them.
The film is watchable, but it feels like a pale imitation of many other thrillers throughout the decade. Numerous beats in the film are just far too predictable to be believed that other people would fall for them.
It’s a stale film with middling performances that never really connect with the audience, and the film is utterly forgettable about 10 seconds after it ends.
Turk 182!
I remember someone I knew in high school going on endlessly about how cool this movie was.
I’m also aware now that teenagers make horrible film critics.
Firefighter Terry Lynch (Robert Urich) is injured while off-duty as he raced into a burning building to save a child. Since he had been drinking, the city won’t pay him workman’s comp. His younger brother Jimmy (Timothy Hutton) decides to take it to the mayor (Robert Culp) who is currently involved in a scandal. When Jimmy is sent packing he decides to wage a one-man war against the mayor and embarrass him endlessly and signing everything with “Turk 182,” his brother’s nickname and badge number. As the city grows to support the unknown vandal, the city ratchets up the pressure to find him and stop him.
This movie is just bad. From top to bottom the film feels like it was phoned in by everyone involved, including director Bob Clark who was riding high on the success of Porky’s and A Christmas Story.
Possibly the worst performance comes from Kim Cattrall as social worker Danny Boudreau. Some of the blame could definitely fall at the feet of the script in her case, but her performance wasn’t doing her any favors either.
The script falters at every step and just makes for a miserable viewing experience.
This is a hard pass.
Vision Quest
Just what I needed: A film about the stressful world of high school wrestling.
Louden Swain (Matthew Modine) is a high school wrestling that has just turned 18 and wants one more shot at glory before he graduates. To do it, though, he needs to drop from 190lbs to 168lbs so he can take on the top wrestler in that weight category. Along the way he meets Carla (Linda Fiorentino), a 21-year-old on her way to San Fransisco to be an artist, but when her car breaks down, Louden and his dad give her a place to stay. Louden falls for her, and she eventually falls for him as well, but knows she still has to move on, but not before a weekend of passion.
Once again, the 80s show that the view of women was questionable at best. Despite finding Louden sniffing her underwear, and a very uncomfortable almost-rape earlier in the film, Carla still falls for Louden and sleeps with him. Everything Louden does in this movie is creepy and off-putting.
This movie is just another in a long-string of 80s films where the lead protagonist is just unlikable. There is nothing to like about Louden. He’s just annoying, creepy, and Carla is better off far, far away from him.
1985 Movie Reviews will launch on March 1, 2025, with The Aviator, Certain Fury, Missing in Action 2: The Beginning, and The Sure Thing.
