zwolanerd

Before I even get to the list I’ll just go ahead and tell you that E. T. isn’t on it. It’s not that I dislike it, I just don’t like it well enough to include it on the list, even if that means not having a full ten entries. I know this makes me a horrible person and a terrible American, but that’s just how it is. It will be even worse when you see what did make the list when that one didn’t. Sorry not sorry.

8. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid – It didn’t make my Steve Martin list, but it does have a certain charm It’s hard to believe a movie like this ever got made, what with the mixing of old footage and new.

7. Blade Runner – I feel like I’m supposed to like this one better than I do. It’s moody sci-fi at its best, certainly, but my biggest memory of it is the “like tears in rain” line.

6. Conan the Barbarian – Kind of the perfect Arnold movie. The two main memories I have stored from this one are James Earl Jones’ chill-you-to-the-bone stare and Conan knowing what is best in life. (“Crush the enemy, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women,” in case you didn’t know.)

5. Rocky III – The first Rocky movie I ever saw and one of the first rented-on-VHS movies I ever saw. It has Mr. T, Hulk Hogan, and The Muppets in it, and if that doesn’t put it in your top ten from this year, too, then I don’t know what else you want.

4. Airplane II: The Sequel – I know, I know, the ZAZ team disowns this one and it rehashes most of the jokes from the first one, but it still makes me laugh a ton, even as it’s the main reason I’ll never go on a space cruise when they get offered.

3. Tron – I barely knew anything about computers at the time, so I was pretty sure this is how they worked.

2. First Blood – Rambo only kills one guy in this one, and it was sorta accidental and the guy was a major jerk anyway. Most people hear Rambo’s name and immediately think of cartoonish action and huge body counts, but in many ways this was a thought-provoking look at the plight of Vietnam vets trying to fit into a society that was foreign to them.

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan – “It was a [heck] of a thing when Spock died,” Jerry and George agreed on Seinfeld. Indeed it was.

 

Tags: Tuesday10, Yearly

Written by: Mark