What happened to Bill Forsyth? Evidently he became disenchanted with moviemaking, though rumors exist about a return. Let us hope. Local Hero, meanwhile, is the best movie of 1983, the year I began reviewing films regularly for a daily newspaper. Had a good debut week: The Right Stuff and Under Fire (a now forgotten, but rather potent movie) opened the same October day. Here are the ten best of 1983:
 2009-10-26
Robert Horton's "1983 Ten Best Movies"
Martha Makes the List!
Recently I was on KUOW radio for one of my (once weekly, now intermittent) appearances, and I talked at some length about Local Hero, Bill Forsyth’s enchanted Scottish fable. (That show is archived here.) About the very earned magic of that film, and how it once led me on a detour in Scotland to find the seaside town where much of the movie was shot. I got a bunch of emails after the show aired, from people whose imaginations had been similarly fired by this beautiful film, a response that should not have surprised me at all. It’s that kind of movie: funny without being cute, sweet without being cloying, in touch with something authentic about (to borrow the title of a subsequent Bill Forsyth movie) being human. Watch it on a double bill with I Know Where I’m Going! and you may find yourself checking the train schedules for the Highlands.
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