Catching Up: "1985"

It's been seven years since I started "There in the Dark," my blog about movies. I'm grateful for every single person who has read one of my reviews.  I love writing about movies even more than going to see them (and a certain editor would tell you I like writing about movies more than I like writing about other things ... rather too much more!).

That said, I've been wanting to change the approach for a while.  I love writing long essay pieces, and maybe they won't go away completely, but for the next few months, at least, I'm going to try to challenge myself to keep all new reviews to just 250 words maximum.  No cheating.  No exceptions.

We'll see how it goes!  And the first title of the year for this experiment should be a challenge, because I can think of so much more I'd like to say:

"1985"

 ☆☆☆☆ 

Deliberately shot on high-grain 16 mm film stock that visually reaffirms that we're in a different time and place, director Yen Tan takes us somewhere very specific: Into America's heartland, where we see how the AIDS crisis played out in the most human terms. As gay men in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles were figuring out what they needed to do to live, some of them went back home to see if they could make amends with the families that kicked them out.

Cory Michael Smith plays Adrian, returning to suburban Fort Worth to have more time with his family, reconnect with an old girlfriend, and to take it all in before he dies. He knows his fate, but how does a young, vibrant man tell his family he may be dead soon? Adrian's few days at home at Christmas don't seem terribly dramatic on the surface, just pleasantly performed and beautifully realized.

Then it hits you: This was happening in millions of houses all over the country, as the reality of AIDS went mainstream. Life changed, one family, one house, one tear at a time.

1985 is slow and careful, takes its time, but Smith makes it impossible not to stay riveted to his story, Virginia Madsen, Michael Chiklis, Aidan Langford and Jamie Chung are all wonderful. Not one character ends this movie exactly how she or he came into it ... always a sign of a story worth telling, and this one very much is.

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