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 March 1, 1985, and we’re off to see The Aviator, Certain Fury, Missing in Action 2, and The Sure Thing.
The Aviator
This had the oddest feeling of someone wanting to make their own version of High Road to China, but make it way more boring.
Edgar Anscombe (Christopher Reeve) starts the film training pilots in World War I, but after a crash that causes him to lose a student, we jump ahead 10 years to him piloting planes for the U.S. Mail. Anscombe is forced into taking a passenger, Tillie Hansen (Rosanna Arquette) along as her father is sending her away to live with an aunt. After engine issues, the two crash in the mountains and slowly find themselves romantically attracted to each other as they try to survive.
We’ll just gloss over the fact his character is 31 and she’s supposed to be 17.
Anyway, boring, boring, boring. The performances are fine. The film looks well shot, but the story is just so mind-numbingly boring that you can’t bring yourself to care. Not one moment of this film is a surprise, it’s just one awful story choice after another.
If you can’t tell, I hated this movie.
Certain Fury
This week is not going well for me when it comes to movies.
Scarlett (Tatum O’Neal) and Tracy Freeman (Irene Cara) find themselves in court for various reasons, but then everything falls apart when two other female prisoners decide to attempt an escape and a fierce gun fight breaks out that the two innocent women get blamed for. They then go on the run and find they aren’t that different along the way and form an unusual bond.
The opening gun fight is brutal and reminds me of a lot of John Woo’s early work in Hong Kong films. Considering the time frame of this film’s release, I’m willing to be that is where some of the influence came from.
Other than the gun fight, this film is completely forgettable and borders on exploration films of the late 70s and early 80s.The odd thing is, you can tell it wants to go there, but it never has the courage to do so, so you’re left with a film that just feels as though it never lived up to its own goals.
Missing in Action 2: The Beginning
Talk about a film that didn’t need to exist.
It’s ten years before the events of Missing in Action, and Col. Braddock (Chuck Norris) is in a Vietnamese POW camp with his men. They’re being forced to grow opium for a French drug runner while also being tortured for their ‘confessions’ of war crimes. Seeing as this is a prequel to the other film, there are absolutely zero stakes to the story, but it plays out anyway.
Interesting trivia I discovered about this film is both were shot back-to-back and this was originally intended to be the first film. After Cannon viewed the two films, they were switched around as it was decided the other film was the stronger film.
Well, I’m here to tell you they are both pretty bad, but they made the right choice as this one was far worse. I’ve never been so bored by an action movie. Probably because so much of the film is set in the prison camp and it just feels as though it’s building and building to what ends up being a fairly lackluster fight.
The Sure Thing
Finally a film this week I didn’t totally hate.
Walter “Gib” Gibson (John Cusack) is finding it difficult to connect with women as he gets older, and it only gets worse in college. He finally sets his sights (briefly) on Alison Bradbury (Daphne Zuniga), but they end up not liking one another on any level. They then find themselves sharing a ride to California by chance with Gib on his way to meet a ‘sure thing,’ and Alison going to visit her boyfriend. They end up on a road trip across the country that tries the patience of both of them, but also finds them finding that perhaps they had misjudged each other.
Nothing surprising happens throughout the course of this film, but it still works based solely on chemistry. The leads are engaging and believable, even if some of the dialog isn’t.
Despite the fact that the film focuses on Gib traveling to California for a ‘sure thing,’ the film doesn’t feel nearly as objectifying as other films we’ve covered in this project.
The film is fun, but not anything that you have to go out of your way to see to be certain.
1985 Movie Reviews will return on March 8, 2025, with The Hit, Mask, and Variety.
