Airplane!

My Top Ten Films of 1980:

The Shining
Melvin and Howard
Airplane!
9 to 5
The Elephant Man
Raging Bull
Grown-Ups
Atlantic City
Babylon
Pixote

Honorable Mentions: Altered States. American Gigolo, Dressed to Kill, The Empire Strikes Back, The Fog, Ordinary People, Popeye, Private Benjamin, Times Square

For My Watchlist: Bad Timing, Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Long Good Friday, Permanent Vacation, Used Cars

I’ve previously written about 1980 as an exceptional year for some fascinatingly bad movies (and television); in that context, the good stuff from this era feels almost miraculous. Even during such a confused, in-between period, studios were still capable of great art amongst dreck like Neil Diamond’s ill-advised remake of The Jazz Singer.

My top three titles above are all worthy of the number one slot. I ultimately went with my favorite Stanley Kubrick film, an idiosyncratic adaptation of Stephen King’s novel that at least seems completely devoid of studio tampering (save for the deleted coda/ending.) For this reason, perhaps, it’s one of the most inexplicable films ever made (although the subjects of documentary Room 237 will argue otherwise.) It courses with baffling choices (um. the painting in Scatman Crothers’ bedroom!); one certainly notices but inevitably accepts them since this entire world is wired so weirdly.

Although I haven’t seen Melvin and Howard in some time, this parable of average Americana altered by an extraordinary crossing of paths remains my favorite non-concert Jonathan Demme film for its warm, generous humor (not to mention Mary Steenburgen’s deserved, Oscar-winning breakthrough.) I also have no qualms putting Airplane! at top—it’s fiercely committed to the point where it locates the sublime within the silly at a hit rate that puts nearly all of its imitators to shame.

9 to 5 is nearly as hilarious a comedy even if little in it touches the let’s-off-the-boss dream sequences (though Lily Tomlin’s reading of the line, “That’s right, I’m a doctor… so why the hell am I talking to you? Piss off!” is of the same caliber.) On the other end of the tonal spectrum, The Elephant Man, which I hated after a high school class viewing, was revelatory on a rewatch a little over a decade later. Anyone who dismisses David Lynch as incapable of tenderness or sincerity should watch it (along with Mulholland Drive and the first season of Twin Peaks.)

The rest of my top ten is quite the assortment from Scorsese’s anti-hero biopic (decades before that actually became a thing) and Pixote’s astonishingly candid study of child criminals to Atlantic City’s intimate character study and Grown-Ups’ acidic take on young marrieds (see the latter for a delightfully, incomparably unhinged Brenda Blethyn.) A first-time watch last year, Babylon is a vital time capsule of an ultra-specific culture (Jamaican immigrants in London) that remains ever-relevant in how it examines racism from various angles.

My honorable mentions contain what is likely to be the only Star Wars film on these lists as well as one of the few John Carpenter flicks. Roberrt Altman’s looney Popeye remains a sentimental fave, its inclusion justified by its weirdness (rivaling that of The Shining, only as an intentional comedy). Once generally regarded as a written-off bomb, Times Square is increasingly ripe for rediscovery for serving as both another time capsule and slightly ahead of its time (I’d like to think young Madonna was watching and taking notes) and also for the amazing Robin Johnson, a proto-Natasha Lyonne.

For me, Used Cars is something of a great white whale. As an admirer of other early Zemeckis films, it’s been on my watchlist forever. It also rarely seems to be streaming anywhere but I’ll try to see it, soon. Bad Timing is currently on Criterion, but I may have to get over my slight aversion to Art Garfunkel-as-actor (picked up since not being fully convinced by Carnal Knowledge.) Bob Hoskins and Sissy Spacek are primary reasons for wanting to check out the films they star in; as for Jim Jarmusch’s first feature, is it worth seeing or juvenilia like Sean Baker’s first feature Four Letter Words?

In 2007, I posted a list of my 25 favorite funniest films; since we need humor more than ever, here’s an updated version with a few new entries.

1. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (director: Mel Brooks, 1974): As if anything else could be on top. A gifted cast (from Gene Wilder’s virtuoso, operatic comic performance to Madeline Kahn’s divine, sordid brilliance) and a hilarious, stoopid-cerebral screenplay (from “walk this way… no, this way” to “He… vas… my… BOYFRIEND!”) come together in a service of an irreverent but sympathetic genre tribute.

2. BRINGING UP BABY (Howard Hawks, 1938): Anyone crafting a romantic comedy today should study this smart, breezy one and take note of Cary Grant’s and Katharine Hepburn’s giddy, contagious chemistry, which arguably no pair has topped since.

3. MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1974): I loved it for the laughs as a teenager. Now, I just can’t get over how conceptually weird and formally absurd it is–a crowd pleasing, sublimely silly avant-garde comedy.

4. A CHRISTMAS STORY (Bob Clark, 1983): This pitch-perfect adaptation of various essays from master humorist Jean Shepherd endures because of how easily recognizable he made his childhood without diluting its sting.

5. THIS IS SPINAL TAP (Rob Reiner, 1984): Although ALL YOU NEED IS CASH preceded it, this is the grandaddy of most mockumentaries. It works because it gets inside its targets’ skins all too well, and you’ll never see more finely tuned deadpan delivery elsewhere. So good I’m actually hesitant to watch this year’s long-belated sequel.

6. AIRPLANE! (Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker, 1980): This beats anything else on the list for laughs-per-second: no other film comes close. A fine balance of playing it straight and total anarchy, it throws every gag it can possibly think of up on the screen, and it’s remarkable how many of ’em stick.

7. THE LADY EVE (Preston Sturges, 1941): Essential classic slapstick-heavy screwball romantic comedy written and directed by the perfector of it. Fonda and Stanwyck were never funnier and the scenes at the Pike family home are as inspired as anything by the Marx Brothers (see #19 below).

8. NINE TO FIVE (Colin Higgins, 1980): A deliciously dark feminist office comedy, it briefly revived screwball in the irony deficient 80’s, showed that Dolly Parton could hold her own as a comedienne with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, and makes the top ten chiefly for its gleefully wicked fantasy sequences.

9. BEST IN SHOW (Christopher Guest, 2000): I’ve wavered between this and WAITING FOR GUFFMAN as Guest’s quintessential mock-doc (the latter was on this list’s first iteration) but as far as funny goes, for me, his dog show satire now eclipses his community theater one because you expect weirdoes in the latter, not so much here. Lynch, Coolidge, Willard, Levy, Posey—all of them doing hall-of-fame level work.

10. ELECTION (Alexander Payne, 1999): This sharp, nasty, Preston Sturges-worthy comic fable has aged extremely well, wringing laughs from the very painful realization that high school isn’t all that different from adulthood. Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon have never been better.

11. SLEEPER (Woody Allen, 1973): Not his “best” film but certainly the craziest and quickest-paced. Only Allen could get away with a throwaway line about getting beaten up by Quakers or something as wonderfully insane as the climatic cloning (croning?) sequence (and Diane Keaton proves his equal in the funny department.)

12. HAIRSPRAY (John Waters, 1988): Leave it to the risqué Waters to nearly achieve household name status with this PG-rated satire, which features a star turn from a pre-tabloid talk show Ricki Lake, an odd, odd cast (Debbie Harry and Jerry Stiller!), and a sweet, if slightly warped sensibility.

13. THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (Wes Anderson, 2001): Perhaps more moving a “comedy” than any other film on this list, the comic stuff tempers but never obscures the tragic stuff in Anderson’s endearingly quirky family portrait.

14. FLIRTING WITH DISASTER (David O. Russell, 1996): The closest the 90’s came to a true screwball comedy, it’s a riot packed with armpit licking, baby naming, last name-mispronunciation, and a surprisingly, successfully acidic Mary Tyler Moore.

15. HAROLD AND MAUDE (Hal Ashby, 1971): “Has all the fun and gaiety of a burning orphanage” went one of the original reviews and while not always a laugh riot, the film’s shaggy, disarming (and at times exceedingly black) humor never fails to make me smile.

16. A SERIOUS MAN (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009): From RAISING ARIZONA to THE BIG LEBOWSKI, the Coens earned their comedy stripes but this is their funniest effort, not to mention their most personal and possibly darkest film. It takes chutzpah to present a fully-formed philosophy summed up as “YOU CAN’T WIN” and find the hilarity in that.

17. OFFICE SPACE (Mike Judge, 1999): Taping into the slacker-cum-office drone zeitgeist, this cult classic would be only a wish fulfillment fantasy if it didn’t hit so uncomfortably close to home for so many.

18. TOOTSIE (Sydney Pollack, 1982): An insightful comedy that transcends its concept (and inevitable datedness), since it evokes a world of issues and ideas that encompasses more than the words, “Dustin Hoffman does drag.”

19. DUCK SOUP (Leo McCarey, 1933): For an act that came from the vaudeville tradition, The Marx Brothers must have seemed incredibly subversive in their cinematic heyday, and they still do today.

20. A NEW LEAF (Elaine May, 1971): Brilliant, not only for casting Walter Matthau as a priggish, trust fund cad or Elaine May directing herself as a proto-Shelley Duvall character, but also for May convincing Matthau to get so thoroughly soaked in the film’s outrageous finale.

21. ALL ABOUT EVE (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950): Packed with at least four iconic characters/performances and endlessly quotable, it’s possibly the funniest Best Picture Academy Award winner ever (and also one of the best, period.)

22. ALL OF ME (Carl Reiner, 1984): Lily Tomlin always brings her A-Game (see #8, #14, THE LATE SHOW, etc.) but here even she’s nearly outshined by Steve Martin whose graceful and deliriously silly physical dexterity practically invents Jim Carrey’s entire shtick on the spot.

23. THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (Sylvain Chomet, 2003): This very French animated feature is heavily indebted to silent silver screen clowns from Chaplin and Keaton to Tati, yet it’s one-of-a-kind: rarely has humor derived from the surreal or the grotesque seemed so charming.

24. THE IN-LAWS (Arthur Hiller, 1979): You wouldn’t think so on paper, but Peter Falk and Alan Arkin are an ideal mismatched duo to the point where they could’ve easily starred on a reboot of THE ODD COUPLE. Also, the Richard Libertini sequence makes me laugh harder than anything else I’ve ever seen (even AIRPLANE!)

25. HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (Mike Cheslik, 2022): I’ve used the trope “like a live-action Warner Bros cartoon” many, many times, but no film has so fully lived up to such a description as this demented effort that, to quote and old tourism campaign, is truly Something Special from Wisconsin.