2014 is almost at an end, and I still haven’t gotten around to writing anything about the 30th anniversary of the greatest year of movies in the history of the medium. (That I was around 10 years old in 1984, and that it was therefore perhaps one of the first years for which I might have clear and relatively unfiltered memories, is surely coincidental.) It’s not like I can’t finally get around to posing about certain 1984 movies in 2015, when they’ll be 31 years old, but I do feel like I should at least say something about the excellent, historic, iconic, or just plain memorable films of 1984, as I see them.

The Genuinely Great:

• Ghostbusters

• The Terminator

• The Karate Kid

• Beverly Hills Cop

• The NeverEnding Story

• This Is Spinal Tap

• Romancing the Stone
• Places in the Heart

• The Killing Fields

The Iconic:

• Gremlins (see also its role in giving us the PG-13 rating)

• Sixteen Candles

• Top Secret!

• Repo Man

• Footloose

• A Nightmare on Elm Street

• Revenge of the Nerds

• Red Dawn (also historic, as the first movie released with a PG-13 rating, and the holder of the world record for most violent film for a time) (also just pretty great)

• Purple Rain

• Police Academy (the standard on which most crappy screwball comedies are based)

• Bachelor Party (see above)

• Starman (a John Carpenter movie with Oscar nominations!)

• Electric Dreams (it let a wide audience know that computers can do more than just start World War III)

The Historic:

• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (the weakest of the trilogy—there was no fourth movie—but largely responsible for the PG-13 rating)

• The Last Starfighter (CGI, yo)

• Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (they captured the zeitgeist like no other contemporary films)

• 1984 (because of course they’d make this movie in 1984)

• Blood Simple (not a great movie, but it introduced the Coen Brothers to the world)

• Against All Odds (it gave us a good Phil Collins song) (also, I couldn’t find a good GIF of this one)

The Notable for Whatever Other Reason:

• Dune (because W. T. F????)

• The Ewok Adventure (it was our first indication that more Star Wars movies is not necessarily a good thing)

• Cloak & Dagger (set in my hometown!!!)

• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

• 2010 (this occupies a very high spot in the annals of decent movies that cannot hold a candle to the original)

• The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (I have never understood WTF is going on in this movie)

• Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (an even-more-dishonest title than The NeverEnding Story)

• Conan the Destroyer (starring Wilt Chamberlain!!! And Grace Jones!!!)

• Missing in Action (preceded Rambo’s trip to Vietnam by a whole year)

• Splash

• Sheena (late-era Charlie’s Angel in Africa)
• Supergirl (WTF was Peter O’Toole doing there????)

• Children of the Corn (OUTLAAAANDEEERRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!)

• Night of the Comet

• Runaway (Tom Selleck + Gene Simmons + killer robots!!!)
• Hardbodies (perhaps the apotheosis of ’80s sex “comedies”)
• The Toxic Avenger (I’d rather not talk about it)

1984. It was a very good year.