Set the controls for 1985

It's 25 years since Back to the Future, and it's being re-released in cinemas, which doesn't happen very often with mainstream films. I actually can't remember whether I saw it on the big screen the first time (my parents didn't take us very often: my ET experience was queuing for two hours before my dad got bored and we went home - not an uncommon event).

It is, though, one of my favourite films, and I rate the sequels too - I'll be going to see it. Under the nostalgia and brash 80s exterior is a cunning blend of wit and social satire. The suburban 80s are sterile and soul-destroying. Marty's parents are exhausted office drones, later transformed into smug loud yuppies - neither position is good. The dystopian town of the near future is a hellhole of Reaganite free-market immorality and selfishness, in which the cinema shows only porn, litter strews the central park, the courts don't function, schools are derelict, workers abused and women objectified: the 1950s version is repressed, racially segregated and sexless - only Marty's love of metal and his sense of fair play can save the day. I've loved Johnny B. Goode ever since. And I also appreciate the presence of a DeLorean - in case you missed it, DeLorean was given a massive amount of British taxpayers' cash by Thatcher to produce cars in Northern Ireland, as a bribe to stop fighting. Little did Thatcher know that John DeLorean was a coke-snorting fantasist mixed up in drug-dealing and conman - the company didn't last very long (and despite looking great, the cars were apparently rubbish). Though you can now buy a brand-new, upgraded version. If only I could drive.

There's a debate in cultural studies about the worth of mass culture: this film demonstrates that even the machine can produce rounded, interesting art. I could go on, but this writer makes the case far better.