Back to the Future
A teenager is accidentally sent back in time to 1955 in a DeLorean time machine built by an eccentric scientist.
The platonic ideal of the 80s blockbuster: perfectly constructed plot, universal appeal, endless rewatchability.
Reagan nostalgia for 1950s America — the film asks whether the past was actually better, and answers: sort of.
The bomb, the Red Menace, and the space race turbocharged science fiction. Giant ants, alien invasions, and body-snatchers were all metaphors for communist infiltration or nuclear dread.
The women's movement slowly opened cinema to female perspectives. Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman (1975), the rise of the 'strong female lead' in the 80s, and the gradual dismantling of the male gaze.
As the AIDS epidemic destroyed creative communities in New York and Los Angeles, it changed how cinema depicted death, the body, and queer life — from Philadelphia to Longtime Companion.