Aliens
Directed by James Cameron
1986
Almost no sequel changes genre and survives it: Cameron turned Scott's haunted house into a war picture, and an action performance drew a rare Academy Award nomination.
★ 8.6
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1986
Showing 13 films from 1986
Blue Velvet
Directed by David Lynch
1986
Lynch invented his own genre here and the word Lynchian dates from it: a severed ear in a field leads into the underside of an ordinary American town.
★ 8.0
Platoon
Directed by Oliver Stone
1986
Oliver Stone served in Vietnam and made this to correct everyone else's version: no glamour, no clarity, and a platoon that splits between two sergeants and stays split.
★ 7.3
Stand By Me
Directed by Rob Reiner
1986
Nothing else captures being twelve years old this exactly: four boys walk along a railway line for two days, and the narration knows precisely how much it mattered.
★ 7.0
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Directed by John Hughes
1986
Truancy has never looked this appealing: Ferris talks straight to the audience, takes a Ferrari and a parade, and the whole film is completely on his side.
★ 6.8
A Better Tomorrow
Directed by John Woo
1986 · Hong Kong
It made Chow Yun-fat a superstar and started an entire Hong Kong genre: two brothers on opposite sides of the law, and a gunman in a trenchcoat lighting a cigarette with money.
★ 5.7
Top Gun
Directed by Tony Scott
1986
Theaters in Los Angeles and Detroit let Navy recruiters set up tables in the lobby: Tony Scott shot fighter jets in golden light and sold an entire decade on aviator sunglasses.
★ 4.6
Hoosiers
Directed by David Anspaugh
1986
Indiana still argues about how close it is to what actually happened in 1954: Gene Hackman coaches a town of a few hundred people who care about nothing else at all.
★ 4.5
The Color of Money
Directed by Martin Scorsese
1986
Paul Newman got his Oscar twenty-five years late, for playing the same character a second time: Scorsese films pool halls like boxing rings, and Tom Cruise is the new hustler.
★ 4.1
The Mission
Directed by Roland Joffe
1986 · United Kingdom
Ennio Morricone said he recognized himself in this score technically and spiritually: Jesuits build a mission above the Iguazu falls in the 1750s, and Europe decides its fate from several thousand miles away.
★ 4.0
Big Trouble in Little China
Directed by John Carpenter
1986
It flopped completely and then found everybody on video: Kurt Russell's swaggering trucker is really the useless sidekick, and nothing in it is ever explained to anyone.
★ 3.6
Pretty in Pink
Directed by Howard Deutch
1986
Molly Ringwald's prom dress is stitched together from two others, an image the whole film runs on: Howard Deutch directs a John Hughes script about who gets to sit where.
★ 3.2
Three Amigos
Directed by John Landis
1986
Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short play silent film stars mistaken for real gunfighters: a Mexican village hires them in earnest, and the singing bush is exactly as stupid as it sounds.
★ 3.0