1985. Young Marty McFly lives the ordinary life of an ordinary teenager, going through some mild family and school crisis. Friends with the unusual Professor Emmett Brown, they both experiment with the professor’s new creation: A time traveling DeLorean. But the demonstration is ruined when some arms dealer turn up and shoots the scientist Marty hides in the car and is sent to 1955, where he unwillingly stops his parents to meet: he must repair this or he won’t be able to exist in the future…

The success of Back to the Future ( 24 Oscar nominations and 19 wins!) may be due to the fact that it straddles several genres,  including action, comedy, and romance. It is also classified a sci-fi movie, but I personally think it’s just the traveling through time and the DeLorean part that makes it so. The sci-fi builds the story without actually staying as important as it is in other pure sci-fi movies: the DeLorean could be replaced by another supernatural force and the movie could have worked as well. Though it’s more of a teen-movie than a masterpiece (and the plot is somewhat incoherent if you look hard enough), in my opinion it is a good movie that offers a great amount of entertainment, punctuated with humor.

–Kuhu Vanackere

Back to the Future
1985
dir. Robert Zemeckis
116 min.

Free outdoor screening!