25 Years Ago This Month: October 1986

25 Years Ago I was probably just beginning to learn my multiplication table in Mrs. Hansen's third grade class. I don't remember much else about what I learned that year. I remember studying European geography, learning the countries and possibly their capitals. Yugoslavia was still a unified country and I remember, even at age 8, that my classmates were immature in laughing at the name because it was like, "You go slav." The things that stick in our memories.

I certainly wasn't going to the movies so much, but I've seen a half dozen or so of the films that opened in October of 1986. There's little that's particularly notable. The list of releases contains the usual mix of prestige projects aiming for the awards season and popular fluff (action and comedy, mainly) to keep the investors happy.

25 Years Ago This Month: March 1986

As usual, let's start with the movies that opened this month.

The first in a series of very well made and popular Merchant-Ivory productions, A Room With a View, starring young Daniel Day-Lewis and young Helena Bonham Carter.

Although it wasn't his film debut, Lucas launched the late Corey Haim's career as a young Hollywood star. Haim plays the title character, a geeky and lovesick high school student. The film also stars Charlie Sheen (post Red Dawn but pre Platoon), Kerri Green (The Goonies), pre "Melrose Place" Courtney Thorne-Smith, pre "Entourage" Jeremy Piven (his film debut) and Winona Ryder (her film debut).

"There can be only one." Highlander, that cult classic starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery.

Classic Movie Review: Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th'inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

--“Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard” by Thomas Gray (1716 – 1771)

I can think of three significant cinematic uses of “La Marseillaise,” the French National Anthem. Its appearance in Casablanca is defiantly patriotic, induced by Victor Laszlo in Rick’s Café to drown out the singing Germans. It’s sung by the French crowd supporting the Allied prisoner football team at the end of John Huston’s Victory. But Stanley Kubrick is the only film maker to take what might be the most patriotic national hymn and turn it into an ironic statement about patriotic duty.