The last year of the 1980s would see the decade go out strong. In a year of transition for Hollywood and America, as the presidency got passed down to George H. W. Bush, the closing years of the Cold War as the Berlin Wall got knocked down, the films of 1989 would not necessarily reflect those sentiments, but they did present a Hollywood ready to think back on what it had become. Films like Do The Right Thing and Sex, Lies, and Videotape would look at different microcosms of America with intense scrutiny.
Furthermore, filmmakers like Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma were not done with Vietnam, using their authorship behind the camera to indict the military actions of the time and raise the voices of true American heroes. Massive hits like Batman and Indiana Jones flooded the box office, while iconic genre films such as Field of Dreams and When Harry Met Sally became instant classics. An incredibly strong year for the film industry.
12 Batman
12 years after the smash success of director Richard Donner’s Superman, another DC stalwart got his due on the big screen. Tim Burton’s Batman is as iconic as it pushed the boundary for a major studio. Long before the superhero industrial complex took over Hollywood, there were Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. Keaton was tapped to play Bruce Wayne, playing with his darkly comic persona and his playboy status as Bruce Wayne, ultimately becoming a household name. With Nicholson bringing his devilish Hollywood persona to the long-sought-after Joker character, the two were a perfect match. With Burton bringing his gothic and goofy sensibilities to the production design of Gotham, Batman stands the test of time.
11 Field of Dreams
A film that dads across America will pour their hearts into as well as sons raised to love the game, Field of Dreams builds a fantastical mythos to why the history of the game matters and how it can bridge a generation. With American baseball avatar Kevin Costner at the center and James Earl Jones assisting his hand in building a baseball field to bring back the ghosts, “If you build it, they will come,” became the instantly iconic line that will be tied to the film forever. The film was also recently immortalized by the MLB’s field of dreams game, showing how relevant the film still is today.
10 Roadhouse
One of those films that feels like it could only come out at the exact moment in time it was released, Roadhouse is one of the great hand-to-hand action films from the 1980s and acts as a perfect capstone to the decade. With Patrick Swayze dawning his perfect 80s mullet, flannels, and stonewashed jeans, he and Sam Elliot (dawning the most handsome mustache) kick ass through one rough and rowdy bar. With a random, shock-and-awe moment of neck ripping becoming part of the Swayze legacy, Roadhouse is one of the great vestiges of cheese and machismo from an era long gone — but is also undergoing a remake by director Doug Liman.
9 Drugstore Cowboy
With a filmography as off-kilter, strange, but poetic as his style, Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy encapsulates all the tools in the filmmaker's tool bag while touching on themes that would run through the rest of his career. Starring Matt Dillon in the sleazy redemptive role he was born to play, catching the actor at the right time. Dillon narrates the story of drug-induced strife, riddled with addiction that he leads his gang on a crime spree to support her habits. The arc is nihilistic, infused with deadpan humor about life on the margins; Van Sant tunes his lucid frequency to crime and the street poetry that makes his best work so rich and rewarding.
8 Born on the Fourth of July
Oliver Stone’s American epic. Born on the Fourth of July is a heartbreaking, endearing tale of the Vietnam War and its brutal effect on the men sent to fight there. It is based on the memoir of Ron Kovic, who was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot in battle. Played in a towering performance by Tom Cruise as the veteran-turned-activist, he is better than he's ever been. Stone shows the war and the American military as propagandists, seeing young men in war and how that destroys their livelihood. It would win another Oscar for Stone as a director for what is rightly one of his strongest indictments of the Military-Industrial Complex.
7 The Abyss
Before he had the technology to pull off his mad vision of Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron, and his unbridled ambition, took on the depths of the sea in 1989 with The Abyss. A famed shoot for the dangers Cameron posed on his cast and crew, the shots he created with the technology at the time are nothing short of remarkable. Taking his long-time collaborator Michael Biehn and letting him play the villain to Ed Harris’ blue-collar heroism, The Abyss takes a rough-and-tumble team of average people to the depths of their will. Creating stupefying shots of undersea battles and ships testing the limits of human capacity, Cameron’s vision took people to hell but bought back with them a one-of-a-kind experience.
6 Casualties of War
One of Brian De Palma’s most humane and devastating films, Casualties of War did not receive much acclaim upon release. Upsetting the director at the time because he had felt he had given so much of himself to the film, but, as time has passed, it is clear to see that is evident. Based on a true story that shows the barbarism of US soldiers during the Vietnam War. The troop, led by a bulldog Sean Penn performance who goes toe-to-toe with the film's moral compass, Michael J. Fox, De Palma's one Vietnam film will say with you long after the credits roll.
5 Crimes and Misdemeanors
As close to a film premise in terms of thematics and style that Woody Allen has ever made in the vein of Swedish master filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Crimes and Misdemeanors is an epic existential exercise in murder. Following in the footsteps of European filmmakers before him, Allen sets the stage — with himself in one of the lead roles — as couples infatuate and flirt with extramarital affairs and murder. Following the ethics of stating his themes plainly, Allen studies carefully the existential milieu of being trapped in a loveless marriage. With great performances around the bend from Martin Landau, Alan Alda and Angelica Huston — Crimes and Misdemeanors is one of Allen’s best.
4 When Harry Met Sally
One of the great romantic comedies and one of the great New York City romances, When Harry Met Sally made perfect use of its precarious and hectic backdrop. Throwing Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan together in the middle of Manhattan’s famous Katz Deli for the famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene or Crystal's marathon miracle through Washington Square Park, the film was designed to become a New York classic. Especially with Crystal's known love for the Knicks and Yankees. The film set the tentpole for romantic comedies to come and is always a fall stalwart when the autumnal seasonal mood sets in.
3 Dead Poets Society
The warmth, humanity, and love felt by a comedic presence like Robin Williams are just what a film like Dead Poets Society needed. Playing the father-figure, the enlightened one, the sage teacher to guide young men through the tumult of their inner lives as they come of age, attempting to dry the expectations set by their parents was a prison Williams' teacher character tried to free them from with the power of poetry. With a great ensemble of young actors who would age into great work years after — Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, and Josh Charles — Dead Poets Society is an uplifting film inside the confines of the rigidity of private school life. Peter Weir’s faithful and poetic direction led the film to receive a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars as well as nominations for Weir himself and Williams’ performance.
2 Sex, Lies, and Videotape
A debut from a filmmaker (Steven Soderbergh), who continues to push boundaries some 30 years into his career with experimentation via production, technical aspects, and how the parameters of the medium he works in can be stretched or amplified. His debut was an intellectual tour-de-force in the sexual ennui that exists within suburbia. But als:, how people isolated to their careers in their mid-30s can become alien. Sex, Lies, and Videotape premiered at Sundance that same year and starred an effervescent Andie McDowell, a psychosexual James Spader, and an aloof Peter Gallagher. Soderbergh sets the course to create a film so detached these characters become singular forces of gravity. As good a debut as there has ever been.
1 Do the Right Thing
A seminal cinematic text on the intricacies and complexities of racial dynamics in America, Do the Right Thing served as a warning and firestorm of what could happen when people are confronted with their racial biases. Brooklyn doubling as the perfect microcosm of America’s multiculturalism, Spike Lee’s film was a fury of specific character portrayals, uncomfortable dialogue, and urban cultural cornerstones. Do the Right Thing is one of the great American films ever made, and it came from no other than one of New York’s great storytellers: Spike Lee. A film that set any audience ablaze upon initial release.