20. St. Elmo’s Fire, or maybe I should count What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Either way, a tribute to idols of yore.
Done!

19. Dirty Dancing

18. The Goonies. This one was hard-fought - I fell asleep on my first two attempts (this time - and probably many times before this list existed)

17. A Christmas Story

16. Ghost - this one was way better than I expected

14. Hook
15. Uncle Buck

11. The Outsiders
12. Grease
13. Point Break

I feel like I understand cultural references more, but wasted hours of my life.

9. Footloose - I was thinking I probably had other movies for this list that I didn't enumerate, but checking my viewing histories, I don't seem to have any. Weird.

8. Turner & Hooch, because it popped in my head and I realized I'd never seen it.

7. The Keanu kick continues with Speed

6. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) - debating whether to watch the sequel(s) or not (which would not count toward this goal)

5. Weekend at Bernie's. This is a good moment to amplify I referred to this goal as "iconic," rather than "classic" movies, and one way we've defined iconic is if a scene/plot of a movie has become a major cultural zeitgeist. So I suffered through this godawful film. Glad that's over.

4. Dead Poets Society (1989) - why did I pick something so depressing, ugh!

3. Karate Kid (1984). Technically I saw Karate Kid 1-3, but I'm only counting it once. I'm really making this about 80s/90s movies, aren't I? (Well, having studied in a film adjacent program in college, I've seen my share of the real classics.) We keep thinking about movies from those decades that are part of the cultural zeitgeist for people our age, but that I somehow avoided ever seeing. I'm kind of loving it. (less) (less)

3. Karate Kid (1984). Technically I saw Karate Kid 1-3, but I'm only counting it once. I'm really making this about 80s/90s movies, aren't I? (Well, having studied in a film adjacent program in college, I've seen my share of the real classics.) We keep thinking about movies from those deca (...more)

3. Karate Kid (1984). Technically I saw Karate Kid 1-3, but I'm only counting it once. I'm really making this about 80s/90s movies, aren't I? (Well, having studied in a film adjacent program in college, I've seen my share of the real classics.) We keep thinking about movies from those deca (...more)

2. Hocus Pocus (1993) - several of my friends are obsessed, but I'd never seen it before. Alas, since I didn't grow up with it, I didn't feel like I was missing much.
Apparently I wasn't much for 1993 movies.

1. The Sandlot (1993) - even though this movie had been out for-ev-er, well, since I was a kid, I'd never seen it before ;)