Every so often a list crosses my desk that makes me want to cancel my evening plans and raid my movie shelf. Far Out Magazine just ranked the ten greatest opening scenes of the 1980s, and it took me right back to a decade that understood something we've partly lost: how to walk into a story swinging.

I was in my late teens and twenties during the '80s, sitting in theaters with a tub of popcorn bigger than my head, and I still remember the electricity in those rooms when a film opened right. No phone screens glowing in the dark, nobody checking a second screen. Just you and whatever the director decided to hit you with in the first few minutes.

Far Out's list leans on the decade's giants, and rightfully so. I won't spoil which films made the cut, because half the pleasure of a list like this is clicking through and arguing with it. My own personal shorthand for a perfect '80s opener will always be that famous boulder chase, though I'll leave it to you to see whether the list agrees with me. What I will say is that the openings from that era taught an entire generation habits we never shook. I've never fully recovered from some of them, and I mean that as a compliment.

Reading through picks like these, what strikes me is how patient so many '80s openings feel by today's standards. A lot of them take their sweet time getting to anything you'd call a plot. Studios now get nervous if the inciting incident doesn't arrive in the first few minutes, as if audiences are goldfish. And those slower openings built trust, in a way we don't always give credit for now. They said, sit down, we're going somewhere, and when we get there it'll be worth it.

It's the same argument I make about technology, actually. A great opening scene, like a great gadget, has to earn your attention by doing its job beautifully, not by shouting the loudest. Technology should work for you, not perform for you, and the same goes for a movie's first five minutes. Some of my favorite '80s openers are quiet ones. A slow pan, a piece of music doing the heavy lifting, a single image that plants a seed the whole film grows from. My granddaughter Jess writes about movies and shows for a living, and she and I have this running debate about whether modern films still know how to do a proper cold open. She's coming around to my side, mostly.

If I have one quibble with lists like this, it's that ten slots always feel too few for a decade that rich. Somebody's favorite is going to be left off, and the comment sections of the internet will let everyone know about it. That's half the fun, though. These lists aren't really about crowning winners, they're about sending you back to the movies themselves.

So consider this your assignment for the long weekend. Pick two or three from Far Out's list, the ones that genuinely pull at you, and don't try to marathon all ten out of obligation. Make the popcorn, turn the lights down, and let the opening scene do what the best ones have always done: grab you by the collar and say, you're ours for the next two hours.

And if you get through these openings and your heart doesn't speed up even a little? Well, I don't know what to tell you. Some things just work, decade after decade.