Movies: Flashback - The Best Movies of 1988 Part 2

Here is part two of the best movies of 1988. You can see Part One here.

6) Cinema Paradiso
A nostalgic entwining of film and history, this gem spans the tough post-war period in Italy and the way memories get tied up in imagery. Deftly handled movement through time helps ground the characters and sets up a superbly emotional ending set in the (then) present day. Avoid the much-longer bloated directors cut if you can.


7) Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Like Cinema Paradiso an ode to the power of film but here it's to the classic characters of animation. Director Robert Zemeckis stages a cartoon noir with Bob Hoskins as the down and out private dick and a Roger Rabbit as his client. Amazingly the stars of Warner Brothers, MGM, and Disney all interact and an alternate reality where "toons" are an oppressed minority living in their "Toontown" ghetto is created. The plot is a weak spoof of Chinatown but there are cleverly queasy nods to race relations and to the holocaust. A must for any noir or animation fan.


8) Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Pedro Almodovar's first big international hit, this packs in the crazy transgressiveness of his early films with a classic farce backbone to reach hilariously dizzy heights. Terrorists, fires, laced gazpacho, and young and hunky Antonio Banderas add up to a great ride indeed.


9) Die Hard
The movie that made Bruce Willis a star and one of the greatest action movies ever. There's not an ounce of flab on a story that finds humble NYC cop Willis in L.A. to visit his estranged wife just as her workplace is taken over by mysterious terrorists. Did I mention that Willis is afraid of heights and wife Bonnie Bedelia happens to work high up in a skyscraper? Sheer fun.


10) Dead Ringers
In its own way as fun as Die Hard but the laughs are way queasier. David Cronenberg directed this fact-based tale about twin gynecologists and the woman they share (unbeknown to her). Their twin kinship gets deeper and more twisted as the two brothers, wonderfully delineated by Jeremy Irons, begin to pull each other down into madness and addiction. Not recommended as a date movie.