Best Films of The 80s (V2) [Poll][Dead]

[Applerill]

Darn, this is the first time in all my years of doing this that some of y'all have more than 50 films listed. Maybe I should extend mine? I feel like, even with my one-film-per-auteur rule, I can bring it up to at least 75 while still only including stuff I love.

(I also included a question about Anne Charlotte Robertson's 5 Year Diary, Hayden)

[EyeKanFly]

I took a crack at it: https://letterboxd.com/eyekanfly/list/e...f-the-80s/

50 films + a few since there's a couple in there I wasn't sure qualify (I've decided not to include concert films with the exception of Stop Making Sense which is brilliant). The 80s are the earliest decade for which I've seen over 50 films that I actually like.

For best scores:
1. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Top Gun
4. Akira
5. Chariots of Fire
6. Predator
7. My Neighbor Totoro
9. Footloose
9. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
10. The Princess Bride

A little John Williams-heavy, but I opted to only include one Star Wars film. Top Gun and Footloose are both iffy but I believe that most of both soundtracks are original for the movies.
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51 Washington, D.C. albums!

[Hayden]

[Hayden]

Letterboxd

1. Come and See
2. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
3. Paris, Texas
4. Santa Sangre
5. Nostalgia
6. Landscape in the Mist
7. Possession
8. Grave of the Fireflies
9. Down by Law
10. The Sacrifice

11. Taipei Story
12. The Princess Bride
13. Withnail & I
14. Blade Runner
15. Do the Right Thing
16. À Nos Amours
17. That Day, on the Beach
18. Pixote
19. Terrorizers
20. After Hours

21. Mauvais Sang
22. Wings of Desire
23. On the Silver Globe
24. Kiki’s Delivery Service
25. Das Boot
26. My Neighbour Totoro
27. Hovering Over the Water
28. Cinema Paradiso
29. Kin-dza-dza!
30. Blue Velvet

31. Heathers
32. To Sleep So as to Dream
33. Interrogation
34. Alice
35. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
36. Dead Man's Letters
37. City of Pirates
38. Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle
39. Brazil
40. Tampopo

41. Sans Soleil
42. Lola
43. Mad Love
44. Angst
45. Toute une nuit
46. Streetwise
47. The Public Woman
48. A City of Sadness
49. A Short Film About Love
50. El Sur

51. The Little Girl Who Conquered Time
52. When the Wind Blows
53. Angel's Egg
54. Damnation
55. Mystery Train
56. Betty Blue
57. The Funeral
58. Muddy River
59. The Shining
60. Tetsuo: The Iron Man

61. Stranger Than Paradise
62. The Elephant Man
63. Die Hard
64. Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?
65. The King of Comedy
66. Veronika Voss
67. Vagabond
68. The Green Ray
69. Thief
70. A Zed & Two Noughts

71. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
72. Rouge
73. A Short Film About Killing
74. The Time to Live and the Time to Die
75. Raging Bull
76. Fitzcarraldo
77. Boat People
78. Ashik Kerib
79. El Norte
80. Camp de Thiaroye

81. Full Metal Jacket
82. Blood Simple
83. The Aviator's Wife
84. Shadows in Paradise
85. First Name: Carmen
86. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
87. Insignificance
88. As Tears Go By
89. Tongue Untied
90. Who's Singin' Over There?

91. King of the Children
92. Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears
93. The Legend of the Holy Drinker
94. Chan Is Missing
95. Calamity
96. Time of the Gypsies
97. A Room with a View
98. Simone Barbès or Virtue
99. City of Women
100. Missing

I'll whip up the music list in a bit.

(I know I have Berlin Alexanderplatz on the LB list, just skip over it).
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[CA Dreamin]

It's cool that cestuneblague and Applerill are enthusiasts for 80s cinema. I have to agree with Applerill that the 30s were dull and way too stagey. While I think the 80s were lacking, no denying they were interesting times. So with reconsideration, I'd say 30s are my least favorite decade, 80s are my second-least favorite. And maybe I'll have more fondness by the time this poll ends.

On that note, some thoughts on what I've watched so far:

Friday the 13th Part 2 and Part 3 - Out of all the major slasher series that were popular in the 80s, Ft13 is among the weakest. I didn't care much for the first one, and these sequels are even worse. Hardly any character development, bad acting, terrible dialogue, nonsensical plot...these movies are nothing more than their murder-and-repeat formula, which gets old and predictable very quickly. Although I liked the last 20ish minutes of Part 3 because it had some good suspense. But for the most part, these movies suck. I'll take Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Slumber Party Massacre, plus their sequels, any day over this Ft13 crap.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - It may not be as widely-known as Miyazaki's later works, but it's a solid movie it its own right, featuring his family-friendly approach to deeper societal issues. It might make my list.

From the Life of the Marionettes - Bergman, as he did in several prior films, addressed the hardships of marriage in this film. Some scenes worked, others fell flat.

Pixote - A tough film about children in an abusive juvenile prison, their escape, and their subsequent trail of crime. Good film. Good rec from Hayden. I don't think it'll match or beat Hayden's #18 spot on my own list, but it should be represented.

Prom Night - Another early 80s slasher misfire. Although unlike the Ft13 movies, Prom Night had a few compelling elements...grief, revenge, a false conviction, etc. However, after a promising opening scene, this movie was so boring for the next 45ish minutes. Things didn't start getting interesting again until there were >30 minutes left, which were somewhat salvaging. But then the movie had a terrible ending.

Last Night at the Alamo - A poor man's Linklater would be an apt description. And when I say poor, I read afterward the movie had a $30K budget. The story is very indie-like. A group of regulars at a Texas dive bar are spending their last evening together, as the bar has been sold to a realtor who is tearing it down. I can see how some would like it, but personally I was middling. The low production value and non-actors hampered my engagement.

Boat People - Another good Hayden rec. It's kind of like The Killing Fields. They're both early-80s. And they're both about foreign journalists in a war-torn Southeast Asian country.
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on such a winter's day

[cestuneblague]

Yeah caught Last Night at the Alamo for the first time the other night, really strong early-sundance vibes even if I don't know if it actually played at the festival.

Yeah on retrospect it's kind of fascinating how huge the cultural shit (both at large and in movie-making circles) from the early 80s to the rest of the decade was, obviously some costly flops meant more executive control from there on in and the home video revolution really changed the game in terms of film distribution especially creating the new market for former grindhouse/drive in releases, but also both factor in how both the edgier and more prestige-minded films were being tossed off into the smaller studios and film-festival discoveries. I mean besides the Speilberg and Star Wars and films like Tron there was a certain angsti-ness and dirty feel to a lot of early 80s cinema, I think that's especially telling in films about the damn kids where you had all the punk classics, horny camp slashers and delinquent-realism early on soon changed to the brighter and more chaste high-school melodrama of Hughes and the like later in the decade, which I think mirrored how the blockbusters of the era got much wilder and more flamboyant during the same time span. In many ways I think 80s cinema is underrated in the same way 80s music often is in retrospect, especially in how a lot of the movements that were brewing in the underground (be it the post-modern genre hybrids, the evolution of documentary film-making and the more downbeat bits of social realism) really burst out to a wider audience the following decade. Surprisingly the counter-political-culture wasn't quite as loud as it was elsewhere ESPECIALLY in the UK, though that may be to to the broader cinematic landscape in the US.

Anyways do try to get some of the old regulars in here who always had great lists/takes, be it norman, divides (kitchensink) or lethalnezzle.

Also for a new idea could there be a seperate category for short films, ie those under an hour?

[Hayden]

[cestuneblague]

Streetwise, sea-town and martin bell represent' Also interesting how by the late 80s the pacific northwest was becoming so attractive to hollywood and independent filmmakers, though by a decade later that became way too expensive.

[CA Dreamin]

Great post, cestuneblague, although I think you meant write "cultural shift" and amusingly left out a letter . But yeah, great post.

[Hayden]