Every year, I like to celebrate my birthday by doing something special for this blog. Last year’s celebration was particularly special: A seven-part tour/love letter to my home city of Portland, Oregon. My pride for that series is matched only by the amount of work that went into it: Two and a half months doing research, conducting interviews, and taking photographs, all before I had even typed a word. After all of that, what could I possibly do to follow it up this year?

It was my mom who suggested looking back at the movies released during my birth year. I’d rejected the idea previously, since it seemed like the most cliched, obvious, lazy thing to do. But then I actually saw the list of films released that year.

1987 was the year of Robocop. It was the year of Predator. The year of Wall Street. Of Evil Dead II. Full Metal Jacket. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Spaceballs. Dear God, this year rocked!

Choosing movies to highlight from ’87 wasn’t easy. Even discounting the films that I’d already seen and the films that weren’t significant in some way, I could’ve chosen twenty films to write about and I’d still have to make some painful cuts. After all, even the film’s most notable stinkers turned out to be worthy of mention twenty-five years later.

In the end, I decided to make this year’s birthday series ten entries long, instead of my usual seven. These are the films that were granted the highest honors, given the worst derision, and made the greatest impact on their respective genres out of any film released that year.

Here’s hoping you’ll join me for this little trip back to the past. Let’s take a look at some films from 1987 and see how they changed cinema 25 years ago.