We’ve done the Best Albums of the 80s. We’ve done Best Singles. It’s a natural sequel to go on and discus the most memorable films and TV programmes of that remarkable decade.
When we did the previous threads, I needed to constantly check when each record was actually released. Which was an enjoyable part of the whole experience. The same research was needed here.
My memory banks are a great wobbly jelly of inaccurately recalled information.
Many among us can probably remember, for example: which year Gregory’s Girl ,Fanny and Alexander or Nightmare on Elm Street etc was released; which cinema they saw it in; who their date was for the evening; and did they have a snog before, after or during the movie. (The Netflix and Chill Generation just won’t understand all this!)
Anyway, once I started browsing through all the films that were released, it seems like a golden age. So many movies which left their mark and are still enjoyed today
(However it will be interesting to see who won prizes at Cannes (or the other film festivals) or who won Oscars . All these years later, does it feel that they made the wrong choices?)
Cinema. Here are some of the films that were released.
Blue Velvet. Cinema Paradiso. Blade Runner. Ran. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Jean de Florette. ET – The Extra-Terrestial. Fitzgarraldo. Fanny and Alexander. Local Hero. Au revoir les enfants. Ghostbusters. Diva. Nightmare on Elm Street. Wings of Desire. Mona Lisa. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Withnail and I. Hope and Glory. Die Hard. Subway, Gregory’s Girl. The French Lieutenant’s Woman. A Fish called Wanda. Round Midnight,
TV
You’re going to have to help a lot with Tv programmes. Living outside of the UK, most of the good ones I saw were on DVDs.
Blackadder. The Young Ones (which I saw in Helsinki with Finnish subtitles – a very bizarre experience.
I’m looking forward to hearing about the films you enjoyed at the time. And the ones you’ve discovered since.
In the last few years I’ve had the great pleasure of watching and greatly enjoying The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Cinema Paradiso at Filmhuset (Stockholm’s answer to the NFT). I hadn’t a clue which year either of them were released. Another example of masterpieces revisited. Recently our film club at Bio Reflexen showed Wong Kar Wai’s magnificent In the Mood for Love (2000). It’s magnificently overwhelming. But you could summarise the plot in one sentence.
What’s the purpose of this thread? To remind us all of some of the masterpieces of the 1980s, And to encourage us to watch or re-watch them, preferably in a cinema with a big screen. Or failing that on your private cinema at home.
In our hurry to see the very latest releases, let’s not forget the gems from the past!
Just before Xmas I treated myself to a visit to Filmstaden to see Remember the Night, a 1939 romcom starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, which I’d never heard of. It sounded like fun. And it was!
The new Nosferatu has meant that some UK (and Swedish) cinemas are screening Murnau’s silent film masterpiece from 1922. I suspect that director, Robert Eggers, who Is a real cinephile, is rather pleased about that.
Dai Hard ?? Yes indeed, matey! We’re going back to the 80s!
Please share your 1980’s favourites with us. And indeed your 80s flops!
History may have forgotten those dreadful flops! We haven’t!
If you haven’t seen it, you should!
Cinema Paradiso is a magnificent and shamelessly sentimental hommage to the the glory days of the cinema
And Blue Velvet also deserves to be seen on a big screen.
I saw Blue Velvet on the biggest screen I ever saw, in Zürich. It’s not there any more.
As a tribute l, a local arthouse cinema is showing virtually all his movies over the next few months. Will try to get to a few
I saw it at the Everyman in Hampstead and found it to look amazing and be largely incomprehensible.
1983 gave us the last great Star Wars movie:
The trailer was ’82, the movie came out in ’83
I agree with you @Doctor_whom.
But nonetheless have to concede that some of the recent reboots have been very watchable. Not least the most recent trilogy,
Not to mention the Clone Wars TV series which was excellent.
q
The Clone Wars series was really good, in fact most of the spin off projects have been very high quality – Rebels, Obi-Wan, The Mandalorian, Ashoka, all good stuff, I can even find good things to say about The Acolyte but I have to disagree about the last trilogy. Rise Of Skywalker was OK but was hobbled by The Last Jedi which was seemingly thrown together by a commitee who had once had a Star Wars film described to them. (Snoke?) I can imagine Dave Filoni watching it with his head in his hands thinking “What the F*ck!” The Force Awakens was basically a New Hope remake more concerned with fan service than telling a coherent story. Really looking forward to the new season of Andor though, best Star Wars product for a long time.
Here’s the trailer for Murnau’s Nosferatu.
I don’t really understand what this is doing on a thread about 80s film and television.
Mentioned in @Kaisfatdad ‘s OP.
How can we have got this far etc with no mention of Spinal Tap?
It didn’t make sense there either.
“Where we’re going, we don’t need sense”
This is the Afterword afterall.
Here’s the ‘This is’ missing from Spinal Tap.
I know it’s impossible to tame KFD, but sometimes it’s okay to tease him
Talking about David Lynch, this is well worth watching.
Stay to the end to listen to Kermode’s wonderful story about the Lost Highway screening in Paris.
For me the 80s are all about Woody Allen. Hannah and her Sisters, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors and several other great ones.
Otherwise Ferris Bueller’s Day off, Back to the Future, Peggy Sue Got Married ….
I’m definitely a fan of Woody Allen, have seen every film. So many very good films, but no truly, exceptionally great masterpieces imho. I think Crimes and Misdemeanours is his best, though I don’t really associate him with the 80’s as he went on to make so many good films in the following decades.
For me his peak, most consistent period was in the 80s
A quick scan of the 80s throws up these – not necessarily great, but stuck in my mind:
Bad Timing (Roeg)
The Last Metro (Truffaut)
Dressed to Kill (de Palma)
Atlantic City (Malle)
Body Heat (Kasdan)
Cutter’s Way (Passer)
Das Boot (Petersen)
Escape to Victory (Huston)
One from the Heart (Coppola)
Eye of the Needle (Marquand)
Britannia Hospital (Anderson)
Fitzcarraldo (Herzog)
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (Reiner)
The Hunger (Scott)
Videodrome (Cronenberg)
The Right Stuff (Kaufman)
Blood Simple (Coens)
Under the Volcano (Huston)
Repo Man (Cox)
That’s just the first half of the decade…
One From the Heart was a huge disappointment for me
I quite liked it. Only seen it the once though, many decades ago. I still adore the soundtrack. Has anyone here (or elsewhere) seen Megalopolis, I wonder? The reviews have frightened me away.
Cutter’s Way seems to have disappeared altogether.
I recall I enjoyed it immensely. but that was the only time I saw it.
It might appear embarrassingly bad now.
Part 2:
Brazil (Gilliam)
To Live and Die in LA (Friedkin)
Menage (Blier)
Street of Crocodiles (Key Bros)
Barfly (Schroeder)
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Oz)
Without a Clue (Eberhardt)
Wild Orchid (King)
Dead Calm (Noyce)
Sea of Love (Becker)
Babette’s Feast (Axel)
The Moderns (Rudolph)
My top 10 for US-released films:
1980 – The Blues Brothers
1981 – Gallipoli
1982 – Frances
1983 – Rumblefish
1984 – Paris, Texas
1985 – The Breakfast Club
1986 – The Name of The Rose
1987 – Planes, Trains, & Automobiles
1988 – Midnight Run
1989 – Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
My top 10 UK films
1980 – Flash Gordon
1981 – An American Werewolf in London
1982 – The Draughtsman’s Contract
1983 – Educating Rita
1984 – Another Country
1985 – Insignificance
1986 – Gothic
1987 – Withnail & I
1988 – Drowning By Numbers
1989 – The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
Difficult sometimes to separate US and UK films, with so many made here using US money and lead actors. Then there’s all the specialist and technical stuff that we excel at over this ⇒ side of the big pond.
I just went with the Wikipedia lists. I started doing just find of the year, but they were so dominated by US films, that I started a separate list for what I thought of as UK films. Greenaway, Roeg and Russell really bestrode the 80s UK market – fantastic, imaginative productions. Drowning By Numbers isn’t my favourite by Greenaway, but there was so little else coming out of the UK in 1988, that it was that or A Fish Called Wanda, which I don’t think has aged very well. I suspect Distant Voices, Still Lives is very good, but I have never seen it.
Thanks @mikethep and @salwarpe for these very inspiring lists.
Can’t believe I forgot Paris, Texas.
I went to university in 1988 and joined the cinema society, which would show films in one of the lecture theatres. The ones which spring to mind are.
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (Pedro Almodóvar) which was a bit psycho and gave me weird dreams.
Big (Penny Marshall) which I thought was utter shit from the moment it started. Stuck in the middle of an aisle, I willed myself to fall asleep. I woke up an hour later and I could still follow the one-idea plot.
Just outside the timeline came 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, which gave me the willies. I had to immediately go to the nearest pub for a swift double brandy before going home.
I thought Big was great, some scenes these days appear a bit questionable though. Different times
A subjective list, reflecting films that effected me in the decade as I grew up (whatever their enduring merit) , and excluding great 80’s films I discovered later (like Bill Douglas’s Comrades or Inamura’s Black Rain)
The Empire Strikes Back
Time Bandits
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Gregory’s Girl
Back to the Future
Local Hero
Withnail and I
Brazil
Excalibur (not the best movie to watch on TV with your parents, bur what’s done is done)
The Draughtsman’s Contract
Blue Velvet
Betty Blue (37.2 le Matin, if you must)
Au Revoir Les Enfants
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
A Short Film About Killing
Sweetie (by Jane Campion)
Another very interesting list. Thanks @Pessoa. If you think of any more 80s films that you discovered after the event, please share them with us.
Thanks @Kaisfatdad
Should really have previously mentioned:
The Long Good Friday (1980) ; that one with Bob Hoskins.
Jim Jarmusch, “Down by Law” (1986) and “Mystery Train” (1989)( Jarmusch was really “in” in the 80s)
Films I found later:
Michael Cimino, Heaven’s Gate (I can understand why audiences in 1980 hated an over-long, left-wing western, but I like it)
Alomodóvar, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Tie Me Up and Tie Me Down (as Fentonsteve mentioned above)
Shohei Inamura, Black Rain (the great Japanese film from 1989 about the Hiroshima bomb–not the racist American film from the same year)
Bill Douglas: Comrades (ignored in 1986, about the Tolpuddle Martyrs, but by no means a Ken Loach style social realist drama)
Yoshimitsu Morita: The Family Game (1980 Japanese comedy about high school kids, once shown on BBC 2)
Kazuo Hara: The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (disturbing 1987 Japanese documentary initially about an ex- soldier accusing his contemporaries of war crimes, but is he in fact deranged?)
Hayao Miyazaki, Kiki’s Delivery Service (I did not follow anime in 1989)
Lindsay Anderson, Britannia Hospital (his critically-mauled 1982 satire, but the follow up to “O Lucky Man”)
Michael Mann, Manhunter (the first Hannibal Lector movie, with Brian Cox, from 1986. Alex Cox (no relation) hated it when he showed it for his BBC 2 film slot, but it has real merit)
Elem Klimov, Come and See (terrifying late-Soviet film about WW2. 1985)
Jan Švankmajer, Alice (1988 Czech animation based on Alice in Wonderland)
Claude Lanzmann, Shoah ( an obviously important but extremely harrowing documentary)
And also the films of Terence Davies and “Another country”: I was just tardy.
Comrades! Oh yes! Great to see another admirer. Before t’internet, whenever I picked up any film anthology book (I have a friend who has one the size and weight of a small planet) I always used to check first if Comrades was included. If not, book dismissed and dissed.
Oh my goodness, yes, another vote for Come And See. Truly horrifying and visceral but amazingly well made. I watched it fairly recently for the first time. Astonishing stuff.
After Hours is an interesting departure for Scorcese. A bit overlooked compared to the usual classics but really interesting.
Also King of Comedy – one of my favourite Scorcese films.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles – Steve Martin and John Candy in one of the best comedies you could wish to see.
When we were in the south of France we saw those wooden beach houses on legs that they are painting in the film Betty Blue. A beautiful spot, lots of kite surfers on the beach, monks were playing football.
Another Luc Besson movie from this time is The Big Blue. Some of it was filmed on the beautiful Greek island of Amorgos where we have also been a couple of times. People visit there because of the film. The blue is very big. This is quite a boring movie though, in love with filming the sea.
I wondered when The Big Blue would show up. I didn’t find it boring at all. It also lead to a lovely Greek island hopping holiday which included Armogos of course. We walked up to the white Monestry on the cliff. I bought a small cotton bracelet there for a couple of euros which has incredibly still remained on my wrist since 2013.
Others that come to mind –
Jean de Florette
Stop making Sense
The Brother from another Planet
A lot of good things already mentioned. Rather than repeat, I’ll try to add.
P’tang, Yang, Kipperbang
A Month in the Country
Hope and Glory
Restless Natives
Whoops Apocalypse
The Wrath of Khan
The Comic Strip Presents…
Good to see other people enjoyed some of my all time faves. Round Minight, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Jean de Florette, The Hunger, Another Country etc.
Not one mention of Terence Davies’s Distant Voices, Still Lives? Criminal! My favourite film of all time, if one can have such a thing. In 2002, Sight & Sound ranked it in the top ten films of the previous 25 years, and in 2011, Time Out named it the third greatest British film of all time. Why is it my favourite? I think it’s the most poetic film I’ve ever seen. “Poetic” as opposed to the straightforward narrative approach of most films. Davies’s approach reminds me very much of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. Fractured, unconnected images that combine to make a satisfyingly complete whole. It’s not that surprising that Davies’s two biopics were both about poets (Emily Dickinson and Siegfried Sassoon- both very good films). There have been other very “poetic” films and filmmakers (Terence Malick springs to mind) but Distant Voices, Still Lives is the pinnacle.
I mentioned it about 50 minutes before you, but only to say I hadn’t seen it. Something to remedy, clearly, given your hearty recommendation.
I hope you like. it If I could remember which country you live in I’d be round like a shot to watch it for the ?-th time (lost count). I love the follow up too, ‘The Long Day Closes’. Both are about Davies’s youth (though he doesn’t feature as a character in DV,SL. Distant Voices is about the household while his father was alive (a typically superb Peter Postlethwaite performance), Still Lives about the family after his father’s death. In The Long Day Closes, Davies is the main character. His cinematic poetry, like The Wasteland, doesn’t follow a linear narrative because memories don’t.
Here’s an interesting story I’ve probably bored some of my more diligent readers with in the past: I was introduced to DV,SL by an Italian friend who always used to want to chat about cinema. Obsessed he was. He’d been cast in Caravaggio, after Derek Jarman spotted him in Bar Italia in Soho. Like so many of the cast, (Sean Bean, Tilda Swinton, Dexter Fletcher, Robbie Coltrane) he went on to greater things, becoming a successful filmmaker in his own right (we lost touch, alas.)
Caravaggio is another good 80’s film.Nigel Terry was perfect casting as Caravaggio. Every time I used to look at an old Italian Somethingthousandlire banknote I saw Nigel Terry.
Hairspray – “Even racists like it. They’re too stupid to know it was making fun of them.” John Waters
In the wake of A Complete Unknown (which I still haven’t seen) I have read a few people putting the boot into music biopics as a genre but I love them. There’s probably a whole thread there.
The 80s produced several – Great Balls of Fire, La Bamba, Round Midnight, and two of my favourites, Sweet Dreams with Jessica Lange as Patsy Cline and A Coal Miner’s Daughter with Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn and Levon Helm as her dad. Glorious stuff.
Objection! I reject ‘Round Midnight from the “biopic” category. Loosely based on a composite of Young and Powell (I’m not using their first names in order to appear cool).
In 1987 they should have given Paul Newman the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement and thereby been able to give Dexter Gordon his deserved Oscar for ‘Round Midnight. I shouted “objection!” back then too.
Yes, fair enough. How about Clint’s Bird about Charlie Parker – that also came out in the 80s? As indeed did Amadeus but I reject that on the basis of the whole nonsensical plot about Salieri claiming to have poisoned him…
Having a major crush on Winona Ryder back in the day, i thoroughly enjoyed Heathers and Beetlejuice. In the 80`s we also had the move from Roger Moores safaris suited 007 to Daltons for gritty version.
As for TV, I eagerly awaited the show 20 Minutes into the Future – Max Headroom because it had music by Midge Ure & Chris Cross. AI presenter anyone?
I like most of the mentioned above. I’d add “When Harry met Sally” and “A room with a view” because I’m a softy.
Couple of films made a big impression on me when I was 15 or 16 or so, River’s Edge and Trouble in Mind. Along with Blue Velvet they were the first films I saw outside of stuff that was in the top 10. Saw both again recently and sadly neither of them made the same impression on a 50 year old.
And now for the cathode ray tube:
UK tv comedy
1980 – Yes Minister
1981 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
1982 – The Young Ones
1983 – Blackadder
1984 – The New Statesman
1985 – Victoria Wood – As Seen On TV
1986 – Naked Video
1987 – French & Saunders
1988 – Red Dwarf
1989 – A Bit of Fry & Laurie
UK tv drama
1980 – Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
1981 – Brideshead Revisited
1982 – An Inspector Calls
1983 – Auf Wiedersehen, Pet
1984 – Miss Marple (Joan Hickson)
1985 – Edge of Darkness
1986 – The Singing Detective
1987 – Inspector Morse
1988 – Talking Heads
1989 – Blackeyes
The New Statesman was first broadcast at the very height of dire… 1987… a few months after Thatcher’s third election win. Triffic, happy days.
You’re right of course. I was confused into thinking that there was only one programme of that name – in fact there were two. The one launched in 1984 was a Windsor Davies sitcom. Never heard of it before.
I’ll replace it in 1984 comedies with Alas Smith & Jones, though Spitting Image comes a close second.
I note in passing that 1984 also saw the debut of The Sea of Faith, starring, if that’s the right word, Don Cupitt, whose death at the age of 90 has just been announced. Probably of little interest round these parts, but he was an interesting and controversial theologian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/26/the-rev-don-cupitt-obituary
I cannot honestly get a grasp on 80s TV as I watched too much (my bad), so I will just throw in some things for the sake of argument:
Deadhead: Dennis Lawson in an odd murder mystery with allegorical undertones written by playwright of the moment Howard Brenton.
The Adventure Game: the BBC live action version of a Dungeons and Dragons style role playing game with BBC personalities as contestants.
Knightmare: the ITV equivalent of the above for kids.
The One Game: weird conspiracy thriller about a computer gamer with mystical subtext starring Stephen Dillaine and Patrick Malahide (I remembered this and rediscovered it online recently)
Capital City. Load of cobblers really from ITV about young, thrusting investment bankers in the City, but a belated attempt to do a drama that flattered the Thatcherite yuppy classes rather than criticised them. A period piece.
Capital City was hilarious. it was a comedy, right?
It was very funny. I enjoyed it. Also Thirtysomething which took itself very seriously.
80s TV? Not a golden age I think Corrie was good, Boys from the Blackstuff brilliant. M*A*S*H, Cheers from this side of the pond.
I don’t think anyone mentioned Jean-Jacques Bieneix’s Diva, nor Betty Blue from the same director.
While in France let’s not forget Luc Besson’s Subway.
There were also a few from Eric Rohmer – Pauline At The Beach; The Green Ray; Full Moon In Paris.
There are couple of Australian films I have remembered as well.
Phillip Noyce’s Heatwave
Paul Cox’s Man Of Flowers
I’ll just mention Neighbours. Loved it in the 80s. Charlene, Bonnie, Plain Jane Superbrain? Hinry? Come on. Bonza!
Bronnie FFS.
It was apparently a 1970s film, but Phillip Noyce’s Newsfront was shown on the BBC once, and I remember it as being very good.
Not according to IMDB, Heatwave was an 80s film.
I knew for sure it was because I can remember the girlfriend at the time, with whom I saw it.
Newsfront was also an excellent film. I too saw it on TV during a season of Australian films.
Has Blade Runner been mentioned yet or Aliens? Two of the best science fiction films ever and both bear up well when watched now.
Classic comedies Airplane and The Naked Gun. Trading Places was another.
While Gregory’s Girl and Local Hero are regulars on TV and are always worth another watch, Housekeeping a very different Bill Forsyth film deserves to be seen by more people. The only film guaranteed to get my optical waterworks going. I haven’t dared to watch it since I’ve had children of my own.
I’m sure I’ll think of many more.
Trading Places is wonderful. I recorded the premiere (I think) off the telly in 1988 aged 10 – I certainly learned a few things. Think it’s still one of my favourite films.
It’s interesting to look through the Bafta Awards for Best Film.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAFTA_Award_for_Best_Film
1980 The Elephant Man
1981 Chariots of Fire
1982 Gandhi
1983 Educating Rita
1984 The Killing Fields
1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo
1986 A room with a view
1987 Jean de Florette
1988 The Last Emperor
1989 Dead Poets Society
1990 Goodfellas
Worth taking a look at the also-rans.
I recall there being a degree of acclaim for Dead Poets Society at the time, but I get the impression it’s not so fondly remembered (even mocked) now… or a meringue?
At the time I thought it was a near masterpiece but I was in my impressionable 20s. Looking back it is somewhat contrived.
Goodfellas is a clear masterpiece one of the greatest films I have ever seen but 1990 isn’t in the 80s.
That’s true @Dai. But surely the Oscars what were awarded in 1990 were for films released in the USA in 1989?
I was not 100% certain for the exact criteria for inclusion so I Googled.
https://www.oscars.org/sites/oscars/files/96_general_entry_rules.pdf
It’s complicated!
Goodfellas was released in September 1990. Joe Pesci won an Oscar, that was presented at the academy awards that took place in 1991, honouring releases that were in the calendar year 1990
Dead Poets Society is very, very fondly remembered in my house, whereas I have to admit I have no love at all for Goodfellas.
Dead Poets Society is also extremely well remembered in our house – I was probably at an impressionable age when I saw it, but I bloody love it to this day.
I go back and forth on it.
One the one hand, it has all the Peter Weir tropes -the outsider in the claustrophobic community notably. And the acting performances are great.
But…on a bad day, it is archly manipulative.
Brazil
I listened to a podcast on Brazil recently which perhaps I shouldn’t have having not seen it. It’s on my list!
If we consider films that I think are great ones and that I’d be glad to see again and again and never get tired of them, then Brazil, Blade Runner (Director’s Cut) and Fargo work for me.
There are probably others if I took the time to explore, but they’ll do for now.
Fargo was 1996
Took the “AfterEighties” part of the OP’s title literally without paying due attention to the text of it.
All 3 of those movies are from the ’90s.
Late to the thread, so just rounding up a bunch of great 80s movies that I don’t think have been mentioned above (or at least not positively):
Near Dark
The Great Outdoors
Akira
Working Girl
Coming To America
Rain Man
Baby Boom
Desperately Seeking Susan
Beverly Hills Cop
Empire of the Sun
Lost Boys
Wall Street
Stand By Me
Drugstore Cowboy
Broadcast News (one of the great scripts of 80s Hollywood)
The Killer
Big Trouble In Little China
Mad Max 2
Grave Of The Fireflies
Risky Business
Sixteen Candles
The Goonies
Say Anything
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Baron Munchausen
Thief
Terminator
Raising Arizona
Evil Dead 2
The Thing
Princess Bride
Do The Right Thing
Black Rain
The Abyss
Romancing The Stone
The 80s were a brilliant period for cinema, particularly if you enjoy genre movies (which I do). Hollywood was awash with cash and retained some of the artistic sensibilities of the 70s while figuring out how to do all the crowd pleasing stuff too. A nice balance.
For those who haven’t seen it before, there’s a wonderful photo that Paramount took to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the studio in 1987:
https://sfae.com/Artists/Terry-O-Neill/Paramount-Pictures-75th-Anniversary-Stars-I-1987
There’s a real sense of past, present and future; Walter Matthau, Jimmy Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor and Olivia DeHavilland in the same picture as Danny Devito, Tom Cruise, Ted Danson and Molly Ringwald. That’s the photo I think of when I think of 80s Hollywood.
Many many good films in that list. Stand By Me and, Raising Arizona are two of my absolute favourites of all time, just because I was just out of school and free and living independent in 80s Brussels, and they are such amazing grabs at life, and so sunny.
I mentioned Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I would have mentioned Raising Arizona if I’d remembered it. Great movie.
Romancing the Stone is terrific. It’s amazing how much shorter films were (or at least felt they were) in the 1980s, but how much they packed into them. It’s relentless!
A steady run of generally fun gonzo films from Arnie.
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Conan the Destroyer (1984)
The Terminator (1984)
Red Sonja (1985)
Commando (1985)
Raw Deal (1986)
Predator (1987)
The Running Man (1987)
You can’t leave out Red Heat and Twins!
I don’t think I’ve seen either of them.
To be honest (as with a couple of the above) you probably had to watch them nearer the time. Either that or really love Jim Belushi and/or Danny Devito.
I’ve rewatched a few recently. Conan and Terminator are still excellent. Commando is still fun but Predator looks pretty poor now.
Blimey
A good film viewing decade.
Don’t think these have been mentioned.
Witness.
Three Brothers – Francesco Rosi. He made some great films, but still love this one above all the other ones.
Love the Eric Rohmer films – Pauline at the Beach and The Aviator’s Wife.
The Girl from Lorraine as well which I think was Nathalie Baye’s first role ? Whatever, have held a flame for her ever since which she’s never reciprocated.
Cinema Paradiso is a magnificent film but it has to be the directors cut version.
Big up to @carl for remembering Man of the Flowers – rather odd but very compelling, would like to see it again.
I always think of the 80s as a great viewing decade for European cinema. Not so much for American. There were exceptions, of course, but generally I found American cinema in the eighties tended to be mostly formulaic and aimed at teenage boys (I suspect influenced massively by the success of Rocky in ’76). I’d say it wasn’t really until the success of non-formulaic independents Sex, Lies & Videotape and Do The Right Thing in ’89 (and especially Pulp Fiction in ’94) that commercial American cinema in general began to really abandon formula films.
Both superb, I’m biased towards PATB by the presence of Arielle Dombasle. Judge me.
I have just discovered that the complete film of Man Of Flowers is available on YouTube.
The Throwback TV Australia link looks like it might well be worth exploring too.
Good work, @Carl!
I was a huge Peter Greenaway fan in my youth. I saw the premier of Drowning by numbers and he did a q and a … I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more interesting person. It was an absolute delight.
The early 80s was for me a time for skipping school (a lot, but if you ask me; not enough) and once a week or so I’d check the cinema ads and choose a program for myself to spend the day watching three or four films, depending on what was playing.
There were two big cinemas close to each other in the city center of Stockholm back then (only one of them is still there, the other one moved and the building was recently torn down), so I could plan in which order to run between them to catch as many films as possible and have lunch at McDonalds at some point in between.
This meant that I often saw the first ever showing of new films (the ones that weren’t hyped) in the smallest salons of these multiplex cinemas alongside newspaper critics with pens that had a light so they could see what they were writing. I’d be the only “civilian” in the place and they’d glance at me to see my reaction to what was going on at the screen…
I remember seeing the first Terminator that way, thinking that it was pretty bad actually and smirking my way through the silly dialogue, eye removing, and the much too long final robot skeleton-that-just-won’t-die-nope-not-now-either scene.
It also meant that I always got the printed promotional material for the new films, and I still have some saved somewhere in the clutter. Perhaps they thought I was a critic, since a teenager should be in school at that time of day… 😉
The latter half of the decade we still went to the cinema, but we also rented favourites on VHS in the weekends. Three or four friends would split the cost for two or three films, we’d bring two VHS recorders to the place we were spending the weekend together and everyone brought blank tapes so we could make copies of those films for everyone.
Those copies were watched so many times that we all knew every line by heart.
If I could only choose two films to represent the 80s – not necessarily the two best films (although I do love them and rate them high), but the ones that represent my 80s the most, then I’d probably say Desperately Seeking Susan and Girls Just Want To Have Fun.
Desperately Seeking Susan would be one of my movies of the 80s, without a doubt.
80s cinema gave good New York. Working Girl’s helicopter shot low over the East river, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man rampaging through Downtown, Wall Street’s high rise Manhattan offices, Do The Right Thing’s sweltering Bed-Stuy, When Harry Met Sally’s leafy, autumnal Central Park. The city was a character all of its own in so many of these movies, picking up where the Woody Allen movies of the late 70s had left off.
New York was a place where dreams and nightmares came true; where you could scale the heights of the boardrooms and plumb the depths of the dive bars, find love in an elevator and get stabbed on the subway. The city never looked better, never looked more alive and pregnant with possibility than in the movies of this decade.
Desperately Seeking Susan is the greatest 80s New York movie of them all, because it documents an older, weirder New York that was soon to be washed away, and then links it to the present. A New York populated by authentic local oddballs such as Richard Hell, Shirley Stoler, Arto Lindsay and Rockets Redglare. A city of loft spaces and dancefloors, that tempts the titular Susan like a freshly fallen Eden. A city embodied by Madonna.
Madonna gives perfect 80s New York in Desperately Seeking Susan, because the real life Madonna epitomised the town and its direction of travel. Arty but ambitious, self confident but needy. There are few periods in the history of Pop music I enjoy learning more about than Madonna’s first five years in the city, before she made it big. Living dirt poor, taking dance classes, dating Basquiat, playing in bands and tearing up nightclubs. Hungry and exploratory.
Madonna is effervescent in that movie, and the perfect foil for Rosanna Arquette. She looks a million bucks, her outfits are iconic and her who gives a fuck attitude makes the entire thing fairly sing. She, like the city itself, is so clearly going places, but she’s also a symbol of some of the maverick sensibility that’s maybe being left behind, because she so clearly revelled in the place and found virtue in both its highs and lows. Oddly, given it came so near the start of her acting career, it was probably the only time she was ever able to fully bring to bear on celluloid her full offscreen magic.
I watch Desperately Seeking Susan frequently, because I love Madonna in that film, but also because I love that echo of Manhattan, its bus terminals and parks, its bridges and thrift stores. Its down at heel and eccentric inhabitants, not yet priced out and ushered away. It’s the New York of just before my youth, and the New York I still have in my head every time I visit the place, even though it’s long gone.
Wow. Nice you like it so much, but I thought it was very average. Maybe I should give it another go
I’ve really enjoyed browsing through the comments and creating an IMDB list. It was a remarkable decade.
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls597612542/?ref_=uspf_ttl_1
We are up to almost 150 films so far. And we’re not finished yet!
It is interesting reading about the the films that you really enjoyed at the time but don’t quite cut it any more. So please keep racking your brains!
In 1980 (I think!), I travelled to the USA for the first time and visited a friend in California.
One of many memorable moments was going to a drive -in movie and seeing Walter Hill’s The Warriors. A perfect drive-in movie.
He produced several very watchable films during the 80s.
48 Hours with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in top form.
Streets of Fire. A fairly ridiculous plot but it had a great soundtrack by Ry Cooder.
Another director who has not been mentioned is John Carpenter. I’m a big fan.
The Fog, Escape from New York, and The Thing, all delivered a generous helping of nail-biting thrills.
I think The Thing was mentioned somewhere above (in addition to Big Trouble In Little China).
Assault On Precinct 13 and They Live both also great.
Love The Warriors but 1979
Completely agree @Bingo-little.
Assault is one of my all-time favourite films. But there’s no way I can argue it’s an 80s film. Unless of course it was released in Papua New Guinea or Tibet later than the rest of the world.
There are many wonderful 80s films that you tipped me off about, not least of which are Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Goonies!
Why has that not been mentioned? Another solid gold classic!
Hollywood was really delivering the goods in the 80s!
Gah – I had it in my head as 1980!
Goonies was on my long list above. It’s being remade at the moment, by my employer no less. I can’t imagine it will match the chaotic splendour of the original.
Ferris Bueller remains my favourite movie of all time.
And quite rightly so! One of those films that just hits the spot.
On Sunday evening I saw Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain and loved it- A completely different genre of course but a film that I really took to my heart.
I also saw A Real Pain last week and really enjoyed it.
I thought it did an excellent job of conveying a character who we’ve probably all met plenty of in real life but who has perhaps never been represented on screen in quite this way. I enjoyed how non judgmental it was, leaving the audience to decide for itself which of the two main characters is the least unhappy. I also really liked that it was 90 minutes. We need more 90 minute movies.
A film I only saw recently as I discovered the work of the great Aki Kaurismaki, the wonderful and very odd Leningrad Cowboys go America. Sadly the even odder I Hired a Contract Killer doesn’t qualify for this thread as it’s 1990 though feels very 80s.
So many interesting films that haven’t been mentioned yet.
David Byrne’s True Stories. Scarface. My Neighbour Totoro. The Never-Ending Story. Evil Dead. Dirty Dancing. Absolute Beginners…..
One that hasn’t been mentioned above is Full Metal Jacket. It’s not quite so good (but still excellent) once the action gets to Vietnam, but the first half, the training, is astonishing. Everyone’s good in it, but my word, R Lee Ermey…
Filmed in Docklands I believe. Yes I remember it as being pretty good.
In an impressionable moment in my late teens I got on the DLR out to Beckton to see if I could find where it was filmed. No luck – I think it had been levelled by then (about 10 years later).
I don’t think anyone has mentioned Body Heat, written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan.
It starred Kathleen Turner and William Hurt.
It contains that immortal line “You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.”, delivered by KT’s character.
…which reminds me of The Man With Two Brains. Classic!
The 1980s – when Steve Martin was funny! See also Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, the Three Amigos, Roxanne, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, All of Me.
Return to Oz, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, For Your Eyes Only & Octopussy (the two best Bond movies by the best Bond, and a treat to watch in the cinema).
The A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise began, Terror Train was a favourite of mine too.
But I preferred to watch horror on VHS, because in the 80s the Swedish film censorship was still alive and very active – I can recall horror films seen in the cinema where big chunks had been cut so that a scene could begin with a guy standing next to his car as the killer approached, then in the next second he was lying on the ground five metres away, all bloody – what happened? All of the gory stuff had been removed…not much point in watching horror then! 😀
Yes, The Outsiders and Rumble Fish – released as companion movies in quick succession as I recall.
On the soundtrack thread I recalled John Sayles’s work.
I’ve checked IMDB and Lianna, Matewan and Eight Men Out all qualify as being released in the decade. Matewan especially was absolutely brilliant.
Sayles also released The Brother From Another Planet, which was well thought of critically, though it’s one of Sayles’s movies that I have never seen.
Another that’s come back to me is House Of Games, David Mamet’s exploration of gambling. Like The Sting (which gambling aside it has no resemblance to) it has a great twist.
I was out with some pals at the pub last night and asked if they could suggest some 80s films for me. I showed them the IMDB list with all the films mentioned so far.
They certainly could!
Sweden
Mitt liv som hund
Pelle the Conqueror
The Man from Mallorca
Barnens ö
Germany
Baghdad Café (Percy Adlon)
Yugoslavia
When father was away on business (Emir Kusturica)
Time of the gipsies (Emir Kusturica)
Italy
The Family (Ettore Scola)
Kaos (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani)
1900 (Bertolucci)
Fellini
City of Women (1980)
And the ship sails on (1983)
Ginger and Fred (1986)
Intervista (198)
Iceland
When the raven flies
Georgia
The Legend of Surami Fortress
USA
Missing (Costa-Gavras)
UK
Another time, another place
Letter to Brezhnev
A room with a view
The Dressmaker
My beautiful laundrette
Basque Country
La fuga de Segovia (Imanol Uribe)
Spain
The crime of Cuenca
Almodovar
Pepi, Luci, Bom
Labyrinth of passion
Dark habits
What have I done to deserve this?
Matador
The Law of Desire
Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown
As it was, the list was rather Anglophone. This lot will certainly help to put that right.
Oops! Correction.
1900 (Bertolucci) was released in 1976. I now vividly remember seeing it at the NFT.
Baghdad Cafe – no, no no! And again NO.
One of the worst films I have ever seen.
A couple more that have come back to me (I don’t think anyone has mentioned them above);
A Danish film – Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast and a Finnish film – Nils Gaup’s Pathfinder.
Two excellent choices. @Carl. Both nominated for Oscars.
I re-watched Babette’s Feast at our film club a few years back and thoroughly enjoyed it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babette%27s_Feast
The first Danish film to win an Oscar. (1988). Well deserved!
I have to confess that when compiling our list of 80s films, I’m quite keen to include movies that were very popular at the time but are in fact rather naff.
I remember very little of Baghdad Cafe other than that very haunting theme tune and that the central character was a rather large German lady who got dumped by her husband at the start of the film.
The odd thing @Kaisfatdad about the Swedish films of the 80s is that nobody watches the good ones anymore (I’d add Den enfaldige mördaren, Falsk som vatten, the first animated Pelle Svanslös film and Miraklet i Valby to your friends’ list) but all of the really naff comedies are “classics” that people rewatch again and again, and they make sequels to them or remakes.
Like these ones:
Göta Kanal
Sällskapsresan 1-3
Repmånad
Vi hade i alla fall tur med vädret
Jönssonligan (5 of them in the 80s alone!)
Tuppen
Strul
Morrhår och ärtor
(As unbelievable as the Carry On films being seen as classic films is to me…)
And then there’s the cheesy teen drama…(cringe):
G som i Gemenskap
Thanks a lot @Locust. Once again you’ve filled in a few gaps in my knowledge of Swedish culture.
Interesting to see a few names I know involved in those films, notably directors Hans Alfredsson and Lasse Hallström. I looked then up on IMDB.
Alfredsson seems to have worked as an actor more than as a director. I know him best as half of the remarkable Hasse & Tage.
Interesting to see that before he went to Hollywood and made Gilbert Grape in 1993, Hallström did a lot of work for Abba and two films and a TV series about those noisy kids in Bullerby.
I share your bafflement at the enormous success of all those naff Swedish comedies which are strictly for the domestic audience.
Five Jönsson League films in the 80s! And they are still going strong in 2025!
Here’s a very funny Hallström film for TV from the 70s called Ska vi hem till dej eller hem till mej eller var och en hem till sej? available to watch at Öppet Arkiv.
A personal favourite of mine, about three male friends going out to a club and what happens then. Brilliant!
https://www.svtplay.se/video/KkVzDdj/ska-vi-hem-till-dej-eller-hem-till-mej-eller-var-och-en-till?video=visa
(If the link doesn’t work for you, go to Öppet Arkiv on the SvT app, look at the categories under the Explore view (can’t remember what they call it in Swedish, but it’s the view that comes up as default, then scroll down until you find the Lasse Hallström category – lots of shows he was involved in on TV, but this one is first in line)
Wow! Thanks a lot. Look forward to watching that later.
I will report back tomorrow.
The link works perfectly. I’ve watched a few minutes and it looks very promising. I’m going to ask Mrs KFD if she remembers it.
Suddenly remembered this hilarious gem from 1982: My favourite Year. Peter O’Toole is hilarious as the matinee idol who has seen better days.
Cross-cutting threads, here’s BAD sampling that very movie
I am impressed @salwarpe! Those lads from BAD were enthusiastic cinephiles.
That certainly wasn’t an obvious, painfully cool film to sample from.