The 100 Project: The Top 10 Movies of 1988

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Thanks for sticking with The 100 Project, the whole handful of you. 1988 was a bit of a down year for me, quantity wise. Quality wise, it wasn't quite on par with 1987, but a really solid year. Let's see how it shakes out for me.

My Top 10 Movies of 1988

• According to my Letterboxd account, I've seen 51 movies released in 1988.
• I've watched 2 of the 5 Best Picture nominees, both are honorable mentions.
• I only saw 2 movies in theaters this year, both made the list.
• I saw 2 of the movies on this list for the first time in the last 2 years.
• Eddie Murphy makes the list for the 6th time.
• A person of color is the protagonist of 3 movies.
• 1 movie has a female lead.
• A Non-English language film makes the list for only the 2nd time this decade.

10. Beetlejuice

I only caught up with this horror-comedy classic last year, and it instantly became one of my faves of this year. Michael Keaton's performance is iconic, but I knew that going in. What I didn't know was how well everything else works. It's definitely one of Tim Burton's finest.

9. Bull Durham

As a life-long baseball fan, this movie sings to me. The grizzled vet chasing a career record, the young phenom learning to speak in cliches, the sexy groupie, it all works for me. And that meeting on the pitcher's mound is one of the funniest scenes ever.

8. Cinema Paradiso

Here's another movie I saw for the first time recently. It's a lyrical, heartwarming love letter to cinema that is hard to resist even though it stretches out to two and a half hours and moves along at a leisurely pace. While it moseys along, it pulls us in and pulls us along.

7. Heathers

This is another one of those movies where the first viewing left me baffled. I saw what happened, but wasn't sure I understood it. I wasn't even sure what type of movie it was. After a few more watches, I figured out it was a morbid comedy. And I'm still not sure I fully understand it, but dammit I love it.

6. School Daze

Colorism is a worldwide issue, but ground zero appears to be within the African American community. With it comes a certain type of classism. Spike Lee's second movie crystallizes this with style, humor, and inventiveness. When I saw it in the theater all those years ago, it spoke directly to me as a darker skinned individual, and its last-second rallying cry of "Wake up!" touched my soul.

5. Young Guns

My friends and I weren't into westerns, but we watched this one because when we saw it at the video store we saw that it starred Hollywood's cool kids - Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, and Lou Diamond Phillips. We were glad we did because it was a pure blast. I've revisited it many times since and each watch is a joy. And for my money, this is the best Estevez has ever been.

4. Die Hard

There's really nothing I can say about Die Hard that you haven't already heard. It's iconic for very good reason. Action movies were around way before this one but there's no debating they were reborn the day Die Hard was released.

3. I'm Gonna Git You Sucka

If you don't know, I'm a pretty big fan of so-called Blaxploitation movies. I own about 3 dozen of them as proof. One thing I love is movies that spoof my favorite genres. I'm Gonna Git You Sucka does an amazing job of this. It was also an amazing introduction to Chris Rock. His "one rib" scene is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

2. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

Speaking of spoofs, we have yet another. I actually saw the TV series this is based on years earlier. At that age I didn't really get it. By the time the movie came out I had reached the ripe old age of 17 and acquired all the wisdom that went with it. In short, I laughed my ass of then, and I still laugh my ass off every time I rewatch it. It's so smart and simultaneously stupid that it's perfect.

1. Coming to America

So I'm sitting in the theater with my best friend (again), and we're just a few minutes into the movie. Eddie Movie is sitting in a pool, which we're about to find out is an abnormally large bathtub, with a bored look on his face despite the naked women around him. At that moment, another woman surfaces right in front of him and says, "The Royal Penis is clean, Your Highness." I lost it. And I've continued losing it once or twice or year for the full 116 minutes of its runtime.

Honorable Mention (alphabetically): The Accused, Akira, Big, Bird, Bloodsport, Colors, Eight Men Out, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Rain Man, Stand and Deliver, Working Girl