This Open Letter to DVD Commentaries

Dear DVD Commentaries,

Look, I know I bought the deluxe edition DVD because you were on it. In fact, I made sure to get the edition with two different tracks, one with the cast and the other with the writers and producers. I was so excited to have you in my media library because I knew it would just expand my movie enjoyment to have you with me.

And yet, here we are, over a year or more later and I still haven't listened to you. Oh, I've watched the movie half-a-dozen times or more, and the next time I keep telling myself I'll actually get to you. I don't even read the trivia section on the IMDB page because I don't want to spoil anything. It's going to be great, I tell myself, when I can finally learn all the secrets of the film, the stuff I never noticed. It's going to make watching the movie a completely different experience.

8 Great 80's Movies

As a child of the 80's, I had many people in my life trying to expand my horizons, particularly regarding the merits of media from the 1950's. Sometimes it was the music (referred to as "real music") or the television shows (thank you Nick at Night) but, most of the time my elders wanted me to watch the great movies of the 1950's. To me, all these things were in the stone age. We're talking 3 decades and 6 presidents ago. That's forever for a child. It didn't help matters that when I watched Back to the Future, I was amazed at the primitive world of the 1950's and wondered how anyone could live in that decade. Why on earth would I want to watch a movie made in the 50's?

I was ignorant, and thankfully I was relieved of said ignorance about that decade and have now grown to appreciate those influences: the television, music, and of course the movies. Well, now many of my fellow children of the 80's have children of their own, children who hold a similarly ignorant view of the time period three decades prior, with the strange music, odd television shows, and of course, movies that they readily dismiss. They, too, need to have their ignorance eliminated so they can fully appreciate the contribution that this decade's movies made to our culture.

Today I will profile 8 essential movies of the 80's. It is imperative that this current generation see these movies. If I happen to converse with your child one day, and they don't get a single reference from Airplane, Ghostbusters, or Back to the Future, then I'm blaming you. Because that's just bad parenting.