01
The Goonies
Why this pick
Shares the buoyant 1980s wish-fulfilment spirit: ordinary kids from a modest community are swept into a bigger, tactile adventure with genuine peril, camaraderie, and playful spectacle.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1984 1h 41m USA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
The Last Starfighter
AdventureScience FictionAction
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved The Last Starfighter, try these.
01
02
Explorers
Why this pick
Another imaginative suburban-kid fantasy where youthful curiosity opens a route to outer space. Its homemade ingenuity, comic alien contact, and sincere sense of possibility closely fit The Last Starfighter.
03
Flight of the Navigator
Why this pick
Matches its accessible sci-fi adventure and fish-out-of-water wonder, following an ordinary boy pulled into a startling extraterrestrial world while keeping the tone warm and family-friendly.
04
Enemy Mine
Why this pick
Offers the same earnest, effects-driven mid-1980s space-adventure sensibility, but trades arcade-energy for an intimate survival story and an unexpectedly moving interspecies partnership.
05
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Why this pick
For its similarly exuberant 1984 blend of alien threat, eccentric allies, pulpy cosmic mythology, and practical-effects charm—though with a faster, knowingly oddball comic style.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
Alex Rogan is a teenager living in a trailer park with his mother and younger brother, Louis. After being rejected for a scholarship application, Alex becomes angry at his go-nowhere existence. The only entertainment in the trailer park comes from an arcade game, called "Starfighter", in which the player defends "the Frontier" from Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada in a space battle. After Alex becomes the game's highest-scoring player, he is approached by the game's inventor, Centauri, who invites him to take a ride in his fancy car as a prize for winning the game. Centauri is actually an alien and his car a spacecraft; Alex is essentially abducted, and a doppelganger android (robot) named Beta is used to cover Alex's absence.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Barbara Bosson
Jane Rogan
John O'Leary
Rylan Bursar
Dan O'Herlihy
Grig
Kay E. Kuter
Enduran
Norman Snow
Xur
Dan Mason
Lord Kril
Chris Hebert
Louis Rogan
George McDaniel
Kodan Officer