The Hitfix guys have been tossing around notions about which was the greatest film year of the past half-century. They’ve apparently decided, in short, that all the significant film years before 1965 are…what, not click-baity enough? Because most online film buffs regard the ’80s as fairly musty and before that it’s pretty much the Dead Sea Scrolls. Conventional wisdom says three of the greatest years were 1999, 1962 (here’s my list of 36 films released that year that enjoy classic status) and 1939, but only ’99 cuts ice with the Hitfixers, at least for the time being. And what about that piece I ran a while back about 1971, in which I singled out 28 films released that year that live in eternity? In any case the combination of having jetlag problems this afternoon and Drew McWeeny having somehow gotten it in his head that 1988 was some kind of landmark year has stalled my brain activity. You know what 1988 was? Three films — The Last Temptation of Christ, Mississippi Burning (despite the absurd and arguably racist attitudes inherent in the film’s jaundiced re-imagining of the FBI’s role in breaking the case of the three murdered civil-rights workers) and Bull Durham. I’m more of a 1989 type of guy — sex, lies and videotape, The Abyss, Batman, Born on the Fourth of July, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Dead Poets Society, Do the Right Thing, Drugstore Cowboy, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot, Roger & Me, Say Anything, When Harry Met Sally, etc. I don’t know. I guess I don’t care all that much. I’m not much of a list queen.