Back to the Future

Marty McFly exists in this perfect pocket where nothing about the movie feels dated—not because it’s timeless in the way people say that about good work, but because the whole thing is so clearly from its moment that it became its own world. Michael J. Fox had this hyperkinetic energy, all twitching restlessness and smart-aleck timing, that made Marty feel like an actual person rather than a teenager in a movie. The performance works because Fox never played it cool; he let Marty be anxious and funny and out of his depth, scrambling to fix things instead of knowing what he was doing. There’s something about that uncertainty—the way his face changes when he realizes something’s gone wrong, the little physical comedy that never feels calculated—that’s stayed with me longer than the plot itself. It’s one of those films that works for so many reasons that you can watch it at any age and find something different to hold onto. When you’re a kid it’s adventure, when you’re older it’s about your parents being actual people, and somewhere along the way it becomes about time itself and how you can’t fix anything no matter how fast you run.