Stranger Things, Maverick and Prey.

With Kate Bush's "Running up That Hill" and Metallica's "Master of Puppets" both back in the charts courtesy of "Stranger Things" and the news full of worries about inflation and war with Russia, it's easy to think it's 1986 all over again.

Current cinema isn't doing much to dispel that, since the last two movies I've seen were "Top Gun - Maverick" (sequel to the 1986 Top Gun) and Prey (next instalment in the franchise kicked off by the original Predator movie in 1987).

Apart from the chronological synchronicity, all three have more than just nostalgia going for them.

I admit, I'm exactly the target demographic for Stranger Things, but even so I'm genuinely impressed by the fourth season - the performances are excellent, the characters may get things wrong but rarely do things that are gratuitously dumb in the way that teens in horror movies usually do, and the story throws a couple of truly excellent shocks at you. I was especially impressed with Ep 4, when what you are expecting to be the pizza boy turns out to be an armed intruder.

In terms of "Top Gun - Maverick", well, if you liked the original, you'll like this, for pretty much the same reasons, ie top-notch air combat sequences with a strong soundtrack.

It does hit a few off notes (notably the beach volleyball game, which is just too shameless a throwback to the original), but makes up by giving Tom Cruise' character a reasonably age-appropriate (ie 51) love interest, rather than pairing him off with the much younger female pilot on the team.

"Prey" is also notably better than the last couple of lacklustre outings, and feels much fresher because they've decided to set it in the precolonial (1719) west, so the story centres around a young commanche girl, her tribe and some French trappers rather than the usual modern mercenaries and spec ops troops.

It's nicely shot, and the French trappers are a nice sub-plot, as they are just as hostile and inhumane (if not inhuman) as the predator itself.

Both movie also have female characters centre stage - the lead in Prey is a commanche girl struggling to be accepted as a hunter despite her gender, while it's always clear that the one female pilot among Maverick's trainees is going to be one of those who make the grade. Both are capable, and neither of them are just there as romantic interest for male characters.

Both also depend heavily on assumed familiarity with their original movies - you could watch TG:M on its own merits without having seen the original, and it wouldn't be actually bad, but the entire dynamic between Maverick and Rooster (son of Maverick's RIO from the original) would be outright confusing.

Similarly, much of the foreboding from Prey would be lost if you weren't familiar with previous predator movies, as would the tension when you see the iconic three red dots of the predator's laser sight appear on a character's body.

Of course, trying to use this to predict what the next decent movie will be based on what came out in 1986 is probably a bad plan - I'd really like a new Labyrinth movie (even without Davie Bowie), but what we might get is a new version of "Howard the Duck", and frankly I don't even understand why we got the first one of those :-)