CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989), DRVING MISS DAISY (1989)

What were the top five box office movies for each year of the 80's? Which ones were my favorites? Which were my least favorites? I'm not sure...I'll have to think about it. And without any further ado...

80's Top Box Office Month: (1989)

And the top 5 box office movies for 1989 were...

1. Batman
2. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
3. Lethal Weapon 2
4. Look Who's Talking
5. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

Favorite from the top 5: Batman. Clearly between Batman and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. If I had to pick from these two ten years ago, I would have gone with Indiana. On second viewing, I didn't like Indiana quite as much as I did previously and I like the Michael Keaton/Tim Burton Batman more the second time around. But you should still see both at least once.

Batman

Least favorite from the top 5: Look Who's Talking. Not that it isn't without some laughs, but the silly talking baby movie in the top five? Really?

Look Who's Talking

The only 1001 entry in the top five here is Batman, so I'm going to have to dig deeper down the box office list once again.

Crimes and Misdemeanors

Crimes and Misdemeanors (only 61 for the year at the box office) is the final film from Woody Allen's 80's decade where he put together quite a string of quality work: Zelig, Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters and Radio Days to name a few.

Crimes and Misdemeanor has two intersecting stories. The first has Martin Landau as Jubal, a successful doctor and family man who has a mistress who has gone off the deep end and threatens to expose their affair to his wife. (Didn't Jubal see and learn from Fatal Attraction?). The second part of the story has Allen as Cliff, a struggling documentary filmmaker who vies for the affection of a pretty associate producer (Mia Farrow) against his obnoxious but successful brother-in-law played by Alan Alda.

The movie hits on a lot of Allen themes, chief of which is expressed by the rabbi who is slowly going blind, "I couldn't go on living if I didn't feel it with all my heart a moral structure, with real meaning, and forgiveness, and a higher power, otherwise there's no basis to live." Cliff and Jubal don't actually meet until the end of the film and I find the resolution to be appropriately unsatisfying. (I mean that in a good way).

Driving Miss Daisy

Driving Miss Daisy, based on Alfred Uhry's play about the friendship between an older white southern widow and her black driver was most successful at the box office (Number 6 for the year) and also won the Best Picture Oscar and Best Actress for Jessica Tandy. It didn't make the 1001 book, maybe because one might see it as an overly sugarcoated exploration of race, especially compared to the other major race movie of 1989, Do the Right Thing. That being said, when looked at as a story about the relationship between the two people, it's a nice character study, though giving it the Best Picture Oscar was probably going a bit too far. I also saw a lot of this movie being filmed in my hometown of Decatur, Georgia, for what it's worth. 

Well, I've run out of years for the 80's. Guess it's time to move forward (or maybe backward?)