The Best Year at the Movies

If you’re born within the same few years, there are certain things you’re likely to have in common. Like the movies that hit you the hardest. Maybe they weren’t films for the ages, or maybe they were. Maybe you didn’t even like them, or maybe you did. But they were pretty important to most everybody in your bracket. So I started thinking about which ones would be on that list for people around my age (34).

But in my sleuthing, I discovered something. Something very important.

1986 was the best year in moviemaking.

I mean, look what happened that year:

• The Christmas Toy
• Flight of the Navigator
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
• An American Tail
• Highlander
• SpaceCamp
• Short Circuit
• Top Gun
• Labyrinth
• The Great Mouse Detective

(Yes, yes, Aliens, Platoon, Stand by Me, etc. Whatevs. AMERICAN TAIL, PEOPLE.)

You might argue that I was eight and impressionable in 1986 and these are perhaps not the finest films in cinematic history. I care not. Find me a better year.

FWIW, the other movies on my list of “touchstones” included The Princess Bride (1987), The NeverEnding Story (1987), Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), Hook (1991), Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991), Empire Records (1995).