Winona Ryder and Christian Slater in Heathers

1989 – the year that gave us the superhero blockbuster with Tim Burton’s Batman (alas too flawed a film to quite make my final list) and a slew of Amerindie classics by future top line directors like Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant and Steven Soderberg. Here, then, are the best 15 films of 1989:

1. Say Anything

If the 80s were the golden age of the teen movie (and trust me, they were) two of the absolute genre peaks occurred in 1989 with this film and Heathers. The two are diametrically opposed – despite some very funny moments this is a film that treats three-dimensional characters with a great deal of dignity and invests depth into the classic boy meets girl formula. Heathers on the other hand disembowels the entire cycle through satire. Cameron Crowe, who wrote the outstanding Fast Times at Ridgemont High, writes and directs here and shows a sharp eye for character and detail.

John Cusack plays the sweet, straightforward guy who is animal instinct to Ione Skye’s brainy Diane, a girl who looks to have a bright future thanks in part to her loving supportive father and his desire to see her succeed. John Mahoney is excellent as well in a tricky role, allowing Diane to see that as much as he loves her, he may not always know what the right thing to do is. The supporting cast is rounded out ably by John’s sister Joan and Lili Taylor in a hilarious turn. Then there’s the iconic scene when Cusack as Lloyd tries to win Diane over with nothing but a boombox over his head and a Peter Gabriel tape.

2. Heathers

Up until the very end Heathers is a take-no-prisoners satire of Reagan/Bush I America as embodied by the John Hughes film cycle, a deranged roller coaster that is full of sardonic humor and killer riffs. Winona Ryder was the dream girlfriend in this – sarcastic, sexy, and decidedly dark-edged like a film noir femme fatale. Yet the real tempter is her new boyfriend played by Christian Slater in full Nicholson mode, eyebrows arched and face twisted into a smirk.

From the chillingly flip conversations these kids have with their parents to the false grieving for dead students who were either picked on or despised the film seemed to welcome two fresh new voices, director Michael Lehmann and writer Daniel Waters. Their follow-up teaming on Hudson Hawk pretty much sums up what happened to them afterwards, not unlike the tacked on feel-good ending of Heathers in contrast to the “prom in heaven” that was originally written.

Still, this is a brilliantly caustic film about what happens when people subsume their identity too long to run with the herd and more to the point, how the same herd will always regroup despite outside danger.

3. Henry V

It’s hard to recall now but Kenneth Branagh was hotly tipped as the next Laurence Olivier, a young British actor/director who was finding a new slant on Shakespeare onstage and then onscreen. It was Olivier’s wartime version of this same play that catapulted him to worldwide stardom in 1944, and Branagh finds a different way into the same material, appropriate for  1989. A tour de force for actors like Judi Dench, Ian Holm and real-life Branagh squeeze Emma Thompson, this Henry V is suitably cinematic yet always focused on the nuances of the acting. Less triumphal than the 1944 version, it’s imbued with the spirit of sacrifice.

4. My Left Foot

Another talented actor from across the pond made a splash with American audiences in 1989 in Jim Sheridan’s retelling of Christy Brown’s life story. Though the temptation is to chalk this up as another Oscar-bating performance as critiqued in Robert Downey Jr.’s Tropic Thunder monologue (“Never go full retard!”)  Daniel Day Lewis gives a brilliant turn as an artist with cerebral palsy who is thought at first to be simpleminded and helpless. The portrait is rounded out by his working class family who both help him and hold him back, and his own substantial ego and doubts. His family and neighbors have to then adjust him as a successful artist, which is almost more alienating than the cerebral palsy. Lewis and Sheridan never succumb to easy sentimentalizing, making the portrait that emerges that much more moving.

5. The Killer

Before bringing his talent for balletic bullet slinging and operatic plotting to America John Woo was at the vanguard of Hong Kong’s action flick renaissance, and this re-imagining of Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic Le Samurai is probably the peak of Woo’s pre-American (and probably post-American career).  Woo’s favorite star, Chow Yun-Fat, anchors all the heightened tension and the relentless slo-mo acts of violence.

6. Do the Right Thing

Spike Lee’s masterpiece takes place on the hottest day of the summer in Brooklyn. While The Cosby Show existed in one fictional universe in the same New York borough Lee’s Bed-Stuy existed in another, one where racial tensions simmering just below the surface are ready to ignite at any provocation. Lee seems to say that though the fullscale riots and radical politics of the 60s and 70s appear to be over, the underlying issues remain and fester. In fact, New York would see outbreaks like the Crown Heights riot during this time of supposed quiescence and the Rodney King beating was a few scant years away. The controversial finale steal leaves audiences talking and has the power to divide opinion, just as Lee intended. The sweltering cinematography by longtime collaborator Ernest Dickerson should also be noted.

7. Sex, Lies and Videotape

Along with Spike Lee, Steven Soderberg helped tp define the new era of indie films in the late 80s starting with this Sundance award winning debut. James Spader is at his quirkiest, Peter Gallagher shows that he and his eyebrows have range and Andie MacDowell actually comes off as a fine actress in this story of a drifter who’s interest in talking about sex rather than doing the act gets women to open up on tape about their own sex lives and fantasies. Though it sounds like the plot of a Skinemax special the finely drawn relationships, particularly between sisters Laura San Giacomo and MacDowell, elevate this to the level of fascinating viewing. Spawned a legion of bad imitations.

8 .  Parenthood

Edging ever-so-close to sitcommery but still landing right side up this was the movie that helped tame Steve Martin, for better or worse. Once audiences accepted  the wacky funnyman as a normal suburban dad roles like Cheaper By The Dozen came calling and the template was set for others like Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy to become suitably defanged for general consumption. Which isn’t to say this film isn’t charming, because it is. While today this Ron Howard directed vehicle would slot in nicely on TV next to something like Malcolm in the Middle, at the time it was a sweetly poignant take on modern American family life. A great cast goes a long way here with Dianne Wiest, Rick Moranis and Jason Robards in particular standing out.

9. Parents

The flip side of Parenthood was this similarly-titled pitch dark satire directed by actor Bob Balaban. In a stylized suburban 50s a child starts to suspect that his parents are rather monstrous, and what’s with the cuts of meat dad Randy Quaid keeps bringing home to work? It’s a wicked dissection of the horrors which lurked beneath the gleaming commercial surface of atomic-age America – a time period further sanitized and pre-packaged as happy times by the outgoing Reagan administration.

10. Crimes and Misdemeanors

One of Woody Allen’s underrated best films, this superficially bears some structural resemblance to his great 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters in it’s blending of comedy and drama and would later find it’s themes recycled in the less compelling Match Point many years later. The intertwined stories concern Martin Landau, a successful married man whose mistress begins to get out of hand. He turns to his brother, played by Jerry Ohrbach, who arranges to have her killed. But Landau is racked with guilt and suddenly begins to look for some divine presence in the Universe – in part out of fear and in part out of longing for the punishment he feels the crime warrants. This is contrasted with Allen who is hired to make a documentary on his smugly successful TV star brother in law, played by Alan Alda in one of  his best performances. Allen uses the role of filmmaker to exact a creator’s revenge on Alda, yet it’s a Pyrrhic victory. Similarly Landau begins to realize that the punishment he fears is simply never going to happen. To the contrary his life is better than ever. It’s an alternately very funny and deeply felt film.

11. When Harry Met Sally…

Little did Rob Reiner know that he would set off an entire revival of romantic comedies with this gem of a film. More to the point, very few of them hold the faintest of candles to this clever, funny, and touching film that asks the question, “Can men and women ever just be friends?” The cast is at it’s best – in fact all of the actors here have yet to surpass their warm, funny work in this film toplined by Billy Crystal and a career making performance by Meg Ryan. Ample support is given by the wonderful late Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher, both of whom transcend the dregs of the best friend roles that were cloned out in the thousands of knockoffs that followed.

12. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Steven Spielberg has some set of balls. The third Indiana Jones flick makes up for the overstuffed second film with crackerjack pacing and introducing brilliantly the father/son relationship between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery. The interplay and timing between the stars gives the film an extra lift and the story a welcome level of tension that propels it neatly until a typically Spielbergian ending that’s one part mysticism to two parts sentimentality. The cojones come in with the Monty Python-esque object of pursuit, the cup of Christ, which for Spielberg is no more a real or religious relic than a spaceship or an Indian cult. It all gets subsumed as the latest magical mumbo-jumbo Indy has to come across at the adventure’s end.

13. Mystery Train

Jim Jarmusch was one of the directors that helped  nurture the American indie film movement during the 1980s with gems like Down By Law.  Mystery Train is a love letter to Memphis as seen through the eyes of characters who inhabit three separate but overlapping story arcs. As is his wont, Jarmusch peppers his cast with actors and amateurs and gets standout performances from two guys better known for the contributions to the world of music – a hilarious Screaming Jay Hawkins and The Clash’s Joe Strummer.  Don’t miss the moody evocative cinematography by Jarmusch fave Robby Muller.

14. Meet the Feebles

Before there was Avenue Q and before Peter Jackson  became the go-to director for big Hollywood epics he cut his teeth on delightfully subversive fare like this send-up of the Muppets. This could fairly be said to be the Bad Lieutenant of puppet flicks chocked as it is with sex, violence and gore galore. Darkly funny it is, but it’s also surprisingly human for a film populated by puppets.

15. Drugstore Cowboy

This may still be Gus Van Sant’s best film, despite helping to kick off the heroin chic trend that blighted early 90s pop culture. Matt Dillon showed he had star material as the head of a band of junkie thieves which included Kelly Preston and Heather Graham. Evocatively shot and imaginatively edited, you’ll never throw a hat on a bed again after seeing this.