For this week's Ranked!, we compiled the twenty-five greatest movies from twenty-five years ago, 1987. Tell us what you think when you get down to #1. And let us know if you would've ordered them differently.
Here are numbers 1-5:
5. Planes, Trains And Automobiles
How appropriate that this hilarious film makes the Top 5 for 1987. You've got a formula for awesomeness here: two comedic geniuses in John Candy and Steve Martin, an Odyssey of an adventure, and John Hughes at the helm. Neal Page (Steve Martin) plays a straight-laced businessman trying to get from New York to Chicago, and get home for Thanksgiving dinner. Del Griffith (John Candy) is a goofy, accident prone screw-up who is also a bit of an innocent. It's a three day harrowing adventure filled with flight delays, muggings, and supernatural failures with every mode of transport these two guys use in their vain attempt to return to Chicago. At the center of this movie is lots of bro-bonding, and how Neal discovers a very sad truth about his "friend" Del. And in the end, he reaches out to the man he blames for his misfortunes, and becomes a member of his family for Thanksgiving and beyond.--Jay Noel
4. Raising Arizona
My mom always says I have a twisted sense of humor. I'm pretty sure it's her fault since she let me watch movies like Raising Arizona over and over and over as a kid. The second film by the fantastic Coen brothers, Raising Arizona is the precursor to their genius film, Fargo. A repeat criminal marries the policewoman who takes his mugshots. They can't have kids so they steal one from a local furniture magnate who recently had quintuplets. They're pursued by a semi-demonic bounty hunter and wacky hijinks ensue. Years later it still makes me giggle.--Archphoenix
3. Lethal Weapon
I remember going to the theater with my parents to see Lethal Weapon. Thirty seconds into the movie there was nudity. I think it lost my mom from that point on, but my dad and I totally dug it. Lethal Weapon set the gold bar standard for buddy cop movies. It was slick and had a good story. But it was the characters that made it really work. It might seem cliché now, but the pairing of grizzled cop close to retirement and the loose cannon was revolutionary. Die Hard may be the most inventive action movie of the '80s, but Lethal Weapon was the coolest.--Daddy Geek Boy
2. The Lost Boys
Has there ever been a cooler scary movie than The Lost Boys? The style, the grittiness, Jami Gertz, the seaside location, maggot rice, the clothes, the music, the Coreys... it had it all. But the biggest badass of them all was David, played to iced-cold perfection by Kiefer Sutherland. "You'll never grow old, Michael. And you'll never die." Who didn't want to be a vampire after seeing this flick? They made it look sexy as hell.--Chris
1. The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride snuck up on me. When I saw it back in '87 I thought it was a pleasant diversion, a quaint fairy tale but little more. As the neurons of my brain have evolved and matured over the years, however, its timeless charms have only grown more and more joyful. My 17-year-old mind didn't recognize it at the time, but The Princess Bride is that rarest of gems: a universally appealing, utterly endearing film which neither ages nor grows stale from repeat watchings. It's the perfect date movie, having equal appeal to the romantics and swashbucklers among us, and even its most throwaway lines are eminently quotable. There's no time of day or mood I'm in that isn't appropriate for it; if it's on, I'll watch it. And not out of obligation, boredom, or nostalgia. No, I watch it out of the sheer happiness it provides every single time. Inconceivable!Anybody want a peanut?--CroutonBoy
