The Best Films of the ’80s: Todd Field, Bill Hader, Nia DaCosta, Wayne Wang, and More Share Their Picks

Allison Anders, director (“Gas Food Lodging”)

1. “Wings of Desire”
2. “Desperately Seeking Susan”
3. “Repo Man”
4. “28 Up”
5. “Bless Their Little Hearts
6. “Blood Simple”
7. “Down by Law”
8. “Withnail & I”
9. “Drugstore Cowboy”
10. “Paris, Texas”

Joanna Arnow, writer, director (“The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed”)

Moonstruck
Sweetie
Shadows in Paradise
Do the Right Thing
Vagabond
The Dark Crystal
Sex, Lies and Videotape
Dirty Dancing
Brazil
Where is the Friend’s House?

Rebecca Angelo & Lauren Schuker Blum, writers (“Dumb Money”)

[Editor’s note: In solidarity with the WGA strike and accordance with strike rules, Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo shared their list through their personal representative.]

E.T. – We were ’80s babies, growing up in the suburbs. Wanted to be Drew Barrymore. Were probably more like the alien. 
  
Au Revoir Les Enfants – Essential VHS-viewing if you’re a 7-year-old Jew obsessed with the Holocaust. 
  
Clue – The beginning of a lifelong obsession with murder mysteries, with a truly shocking cast. 
  
Baby Boom – The doctor is a vet! Unimprovable. 
  
The King of Comedy – Nothing better prepared us to be adults in the entertainment business. 
  
When Harry Met Sally – It begins and ends with Nora. 
  
The Right Stuff – A technical masterpiece we’ve studied for years and still don’t really understand. One of us is a two-time Space Camp grad, and this really hit the sweet spot. 
  
Big – Would still do anything for that piano. 
  
Do the Right Thing – Should have won best picture.  
  
Tootsie – As perfect as everyone says it is. 

Nag Ashwin, director (“Kalki 2898-AD”)

1. “Top Gun” 
I think it was the soundtrack, the callsigns of the pilots…the ambition of it, something i hadn’t seen before. Love “Maverick,” but still like the original best. 

2. “When Harry Met Sally”
This is something like comfort food…and in a way an inspiration for so many films in India too.  

3. “Brazil”
This was my first Terry Gilliam film and I was totally blown away by the world he took us into. I still feel there are very few like him.  

4. “Rain Man” 
Maybe it was watching Tom Cruise in a non action role. Maybe it was Dustin Hoffman? The movie stayed with me for a while.  

5. “The Empire Strikes Back”
It’s hands down the best “Star Wars.” Meeting Yoda. Exploring the Force. The climax. No words do it justice. It’s just a classic. 

Minhal Baig, director (“We Grown Now”)

“The Empire Strikes Back”
Darker and more mature than its predecessor in every way, this is a perfect film. 

“The Shining”
I caught a 35mm screening this past summer at the Metrograph—and it’s still terrifying and disturbing after all these years. 

“Thief”  
The diner scene is an incredibly tender, beautifully-written exchange with stunning performances by James Caan and Tuesday Weld. 

“Blade Runner”
Ridley Scott’s directorial vision defined the science-fiction genre.  

“The Thing”
The opening sequence is a work of art. Paranoid, terrifying, a fully realized vision by John Carpenter. 

“El Norte”
Culturally significant and devastating. The ending stays with you. 

“The Breakfast Club”
Detention dance is everything.  

“Stand and Deliver” 
I discovered this film with my dad at at Blockbuster when I was 10. Edward James Olmos’ performance is outstanding. This film really had me in tears when every one of the students passes their AP Calc test.  

“Grave of the Fireflies”
Set in the aftermath of the American bombing of Kobe in 1945, Isao Takahata’s film is a harrowing, emotional watch. 

“Do the Right Thing” 
Spike Lee kicked off an American independent movement. There’s nothing else like this film. 

Sean Baker, writer, director (“Red Rocket”)

“Possession”
“Christiane F.”
“The Road Warrior”
“Robocop”
“Used Cars” 
“The Thing”
“River’s Edge”
“Do The Right Thing” 
“Broadway Danny Rose” 
“Scarface”

Dana Barron, actress (“National Lampoon’s Vacation”)

[Editor’s note: The following interview was conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike began on July 14, 2023.]

The first one is “Empire Strikes Back,” of course, for Yoda. “Do or do not there is no try,” how could you not love that line and Yoda? Not “The Mandalorian” Yoda, Baby Yoda. No, this one is the Yoda. 

The next one is “My Life as a Dog,” which is more indie feeling to it. It’s just a lovely story about a boy in love with his dog and issues with his mother and growing up. I loved it. 

And of course, “E.T.” During “Vacation,” I remember seeing that movie and Drew Barrymore was part of it. And [co-star Anthony Michael Hall], he had somehow snuck off to a party where she was there and he was telling me all about her being there. I’m like, “The girl from ‘E.T.’?” It was like a special treat hearing that story from him. 

The next one is “Ghostbusters.” Harold [Ramis] obviously not only helped write that, but was in it, and he named Dana Barrett after me, the lead in “Ghostbusters,” so that character was named after me. He asked me if that’s OK. “Of course you can name a character after me.”  

The next one is “Fame,” when you’re a teen seeing that movie, seeing all the high schoolers dancing and singing, that was so wonderfully inspirational.  

The next one is “Tootsie,” and that’s just an actor’s dream of funniness.  

And, being a teen [at the time], “Spinal Tap.” That whole film, just a classic. You have to be almost older to like it. I tried to show my younger kid it, and he’s like, “I don’t get it.” I’m like, “You wouldn’t. You have to wait for that one.”  

Of course number eight is “Vacation,” of course, my favorite movie. I love showing it to people. 

RJ Cutler, director (“Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry”)

R.J. Cutler 10 Best/Most Influential Films 1980s (chronological)
 
“Dressed to Kill” (1980, Brian De Palma) 
“The King of Comedy” (1982, Martin Scorsese) 
“Fanny and Alexander” (1982, Ingmar Bergman) 
“Stop Making Sense” (1984, Jonathan Demme) 
“Brazil” (1985, Terry Gilliam) 
“Wall Street” (1987, Oliver Stone) 
“Withnail and I” (1987, Bruce Robinson) 
“Thin Blue Line” (1988, Errol Morris) 
“Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story” (1988, Todd Haynes)  
“Sex, Lies, and Videotape” (1989, Steven Soderbergh) 

Also: Road Warrior (1981, George Miller); Repo Man (1984, Alex Cox); The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989, Peter Greenaway); Blood Simple (1984, Joel and Ethan Coen); Sherman’s March (1985, Ross McElwee); Something Wild (1986, Jonathan Demme); The Fly (1986, David Cronenberg); Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989, Woody Allen) 

Ian Cooper, producer (“Nope”)

When considering the impossible task of curating my favorite films of the 1980’s (aka my childhood) it seems insane to even have to consider Reitman’s unparalleled masterpiece in corner-cutting slacker entrepreneurialism vs municipal-malaise (GHOSTBUSTERS, 1984) OR Kubrick’s forever terrifying, master-class adjustment on Steven King’s embossed cover, zillion page snow-pulp, THE SHINING, 1980. Let’s just assume that there is nothing better achievable by mortals than those two artworks, and not even bother to include them. It would almost be insulting. Ok, with that out of the way, and in no particular order, here goes:

RUNNING ON EMPTY (1988) — Don’t get me wrong, many movies of this era galvanized my pre-goth fixation with melancholy, but when I watched this one for the first time on VHS in the summer of 1989 (while on a family trip to South Carolina with my then BFF, Jesse Swinger, in between endless arcade rounds of Altered Beast) my emotional floor was stirred. The hippie idealism gone sideways plot hit me like when the theme song to M*A*S*H comes on TV and you still have so much homework to do. River’s hair. Martha Plimpton’s masterful performance (as always). The leaving of a family dog on the side of the road. River’s hair. I sob just recollecting.

MANHUNTER (1986) — Drippy, glammy, danger. Michael Mann can do no wrong, but when you add Tom Noonan as a new-wave serial killer, I perish. Here’s a hot tip that Jordan and I discovered — if you play the vinyl soundtrack (by Waxwork Records) at the incorrect RPM, the Red 7 song, Heartbeat is no joke 10x better. And in related news: Wow, the contemporary Los Angeles band, Fashion Club — If you haven’t stopped listening to “Goodbye Horses” since the foot massage scene in MARRIED TO THE MOB (1988), then this band is poised to save your soul. Pascal Stevenson’s entrancing baritone woven through her atmospheric art-rock-pop soundscape is perfection incarnate. Demme would have been in the pit with me shoegazing at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery if he was still with us, I can tell you that much.

ONE CRAZY SUMMER (1986) — This one hits close to home in regards to the daunting task of applying to art school. Savage Steve Holland’s angsty, Zap Comix inspired animated sequences; Curtis Armstrong + Bobcat Goldthwait’s abject dynamism, but the coup-de-grace doubles as one of my favorite “ready-made” sculptures: a plush Odie mounted to the mast of “The Boat” who’s Gene Simmons length tongue becomes castrated. This film’s inclusion was neck-and-neck with HOWARD THE DUCK (same year), which I boasted (until BLACK PANTHER, 2018) had been the only Marvel movie I had seen.

ALICE (1988) — My mother took me to see Jan Svankmajer’s macabre adaptation of Lewis Carrol’s edgy fever-dream at Film Forum and it became an instantaneous touchstone for me in the avant garde convergence of coming-of-age trauma and horror. You guys, it’s soooo abject. The White Rabbit eagerly consumes its own sawdust guts. As far as I’m concerned, this is the most cannon-accurate tone of any previous or subsequent adaptations of Carrol’s material.

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984) — Quite possibly a perfect cocktail: instantly discernable, relatable hook (unsurpassed with the possible exception of IT FOLLOWS, 2014) coupled with an iconic (beyond belief!) villain with the highest risk wardrobe decision that impossibly stuck the eternal landing. Pop-Horror perfection with no punches pulled. Tina’s indelible bedroom ceiling murder always hit me as the most terrifying balance of grounded and supernatural, and I can barely conjure a more striking frame in 80’s cinema than when she appears to Nancy during an afternoon desk-doze upright and replete in her shower-curtain-body-bag.

BLOW OUT (1981) — Working with Johnnie Burn on his epic and precise soundscape for NOPE (2022) had me recollecting on my introduction (and subsequent obsession) with movie sound design vis-a-vis De Palma’s folley-forward masterpiece. I watched this film on VHS in early high school and the boots-on-the-ground-artistry depiction of Travolta’s character concretized the marriage of pragmatism and creativity that is the bedrock of the BTS of filmmaking. 

THE WAY THINGS GO (1987) — A staple of art school sculpture class screenings, Peter Fischli and David Weiss’ 30 minute Rube Goldbergian kinetic daisy-chain codified the ubiquitous zeitgeist that dominated the 80’s, (THE GOONIES, PEEWEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, BACK TO THE FUTURE, THE MONEY PIT etc) — the beauty of this artwork is that unlike opening gates or preparing breakfast, here form and function are handcuffed to each other and the bedpost! 😉 The process here is the pleasure principle. Ideally, this film would loop forever like an eternal Truffle-Shuffle flame.

HEATHERS (1988) — I mentioned River Phoenix’s hair earlier, to set myself up for mentioning Christian Slater’s hair here. In fact, forget the castrato Odie, my dream would be to commission a land-art diptych where Phoenix’s hair in Running On Empty is sculpted large-scale using only earth-moving equipment, and you could stand on it to gaze into the distance at a parallel sculpture of Christian Slater’s hair from KUFFS (1992). But I digress…HEATHERS taught me the ways of Dark Comedy as a subgenre as well as the finessed lines between camp and grounded hyperbole. The moral is also critical and should be underscored, no matter how hot and steamy the sociopath adolescent hunk is, he ain’t ultimately worth the juice for the squeeze.

DIVA (1981) — if you’ve seen any of the sculptures I’ve made, the films I’ve produced, or read any of the nonsense I’ve scribed above, you can probably tell that my perennial appetite is for pop-darkness. My parents showed me this film in highschool, and between the synth score, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s post-punk aesthetics and undeniable pleasure-mining of “thriller” genre tropes, I was all, “J’Adore.”

STAND BY ME (1986) — And I’ll bookend with more melancholy as well as one of the most important ingredients of this decade: Corey Feldman. I saw this film in a long-ago shuttered theater in the West Village with my close friend, Anna Schneider Mayerson. This meditative death-drive meets puberty-betrayal quest always hits me like lethal potpourri: sophomoric hijinx plus meta-lost-friendships-to-come plus self-discovery plus leeches as a boy’s proxy-period. And Corey. Glorious, effortless, pained inside and out, Corey.

Clint Bentley, director (“Jockey”)

“Ran” 
This film showcases so many things that are brilliant about Kurosawa and about what makes his films so exciting. He just got better and deeper the older he got. I wish he had lived another hundred years.
 
“Where is the Friend’s House?” 
The start of the “Koker Trilogy” is a beautiful, profound film. Kiarostami could find so much depth and feeling in seemingly simple stories.

“Wings of Desire”
I could have just as easily put “Paris, TX” here (made just three years prior), but this film holds such a sway over me. I felt like I dreamed it as I was watching it and I haven’t shaken the feeling of it since. 

“Down by Law” 
One of my favorite of Jarmusch’s films. Watching the trio of Tom Waits, John Lurie and Robert Benigni navigate a strange land called America is a great journey to go on. Robby Müller’s cinematography is gorgeous here too. 

“Do the Right Thing”
So much has been written about this movie that it’s hard for me to add anything of use other than to say that every time I watch it I feel as if I’m seeing it for the first time, which is the mark of any great film. 
 
“Police Story”
One of my favorite Jackie Chan movies. I watched so many of his films growing up, in awe of what he did as a performer. Now, as a filmmaker, I watch his movies also in awe of what he did as a director too. 
 
“The Land Before Time” / “All Dogs Go to Heaven”
This is cheating a bit, but Don Bluth made such an impact on my childhood with these that it’s hard to separate them in my mind. Both are beautiful, sad-in-the-best-way films. 

“The Thing” / “The Fly” 
And once you start cheating, it’s hard to stop… Despite each being so distinct, these two films are connected in my mind — both using the genre to explore how much we’ll destroy ourselves in our attempts at progress, and both being so brilliant and absolutely terrifying. 
 
Almodovar’s First Decade 
Starting with “Pepi, Luci, Bom” and ending the decade with “Atame” (“Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down”), this decade of films is a brilliant body of work in and of itself. There’s a narrative playfulness and general freedom to this batch of films that make them still so exciting to revisit and would only be deepened in Almodovar’s subsequent work.

“Koyaanisqatsi”
OK. No more cheating. This film (along with all the films it spawned like Baraka and Samsara) changed the way I view the world and my place in it. Pure cinematic brilliance. 
 

Nia DaCosta, director (“The Marvels”)

What a Latchkey Kid Watches (and Rewatches and Rewatches) on Premium Cable After School in the ’90s and Early Aughts — ’80s Edition

“The Empire Strikes Back” (1980)
“The Verdict” (1982)
“The Thing” (1982)
“Amadeus” (1984)
“Purple Rain” (1984)
“This is Spinal Tap” (1984) 
“Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” (1985) 
“She’s Gotta Have It” (1986) 
“The Great Mouse Detective” (1986) 
“Full Metal Jacket” (1987) 
“The Land Before Time” (1988)
“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (1988)
“Die Hard” (1988)
“Coming to America” (1988)
“Do the Right Thing” (1989)

Dustin Guy Defa, director (“The Adults”)

“The Green Ray”
“A Nos Amours”
“Broadcast News”
“Possession”
“Paris, Texas”
“Close-Up”
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”
“Raging Bull”
“Police Story”
“Blue Velvet’

Bishal Dutta, director (“It Lives Inside”)

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)  
 
Pure magic captured on film. Someone I respect once told me this is the most manipulative movie ever made, and it might be… if you consider breaking down every ounce of an audience’s cynicism to be manipulation. Every choice serves to take us back to the epic, unadulterated scope of the emotions we felt when we were children. If that’s manipulative, I don’t think there’s ever been a kinder act of manipulation in cinema’s history.  
 
The Karate Kid (1984)  
 
A pop masterpiece that uses its sports drama framework to elevate the rivalry of two dojos to the level of American myth. When you’re watching this film, Reseda and Encino somehow feel like the only two places that exist on the planet while the outcome of the All Valley Karate Tournament feels like the most important (and maybe only) story that’s ever been told, the universality of its emotion peaking in that triumphant final look between teacher and student.  
 
Christine (1983)  
 
A work of shocking psychological complexity. Unlike earlier suburban nightmares (including Carpenter and Debra Hill’s own Halloween), the horror here isn’t penetrating Reagan’s America, but rather it festers within the soul of a troubled teen boy, as if Arnie willed Christine into consciousness with his loneliness and anger. And has there ever been a shot fueled with more apocalyptic dread than Christine, entirely on fire, rolling through the darkness?  
 
Dust in the Wind (1986)  
 
One of the most nostalgic yet unsentimental films ever made. Patient frames contextualize the characters within an incredibly specific place and time, creating a transportive effect that’s never been paralleled for me. This movie gave me a phantom pain; it made me deeply miss a time and place I’ve never visited. It implanted a memory in me with the objective lushness of its filmmaking.  
 
Opera (1987)  
 
Violence elevated into beautiful and viscerally affecting music. You’ll never look at a door’s peep hole the same way again. What elevates it beyond Argento’s other work is its central conceit: the killer forces the protagonist to watch the violence by taping pins to her eyes. Not since Psycho and Peeping Tom had a film problematized and reflected the very act of consuming horror cinema right back at its audience. It feels wrong only because it’s holding a mirror back to us as we watch horror through open fingers, ourselves unable to look away.  
 
Blow-Out (1981)  
 
A perfect marriage of cinematic sound and image. Has any other film bridged the audiovisual divide better than this one? Split diopter shots, for example, visualize the process of eavesdropping. An eerily spinning shot disorients us while the sound becomes dizzying in its monotony. One of the post-Jazz Singer dreams is finally and gloriously realized: a film that uses sound and visuals interchangeably as brushstrokes on its cinematic canvas.  
 
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)  
 
The late, great William Friedkin’s definitive crime opus. His brutal, no-nonsense documentarian’s style infects the neon-bathed sunset hues of Los Angeles. One of the great “process movies” in the way that it presents an enigmatic and largely non-verbal Willem Dafoe printing fake money in the most cinematic way possible. And let’s not forget what we would all agree is the greatest chase scene of all time if Friedkin and co. didn’t make it look so easy.  
 
The Vanishing (1988)  
 
The scariest film I’ve ever seen in my life. What puts it entirely in its own league is its confident insistence upon presenting evil through the lens of banality instead of any flair or style. It presents horror without fantasy, denying us the opportunity to disconnect from its wavelength. Evil has never felt closer or more ever-present to me than in the moments after this film ended.  
 
They Live (1988)  
 
John Carpenter called this film a “documentary” when it first came out and people didn’t believe him. Watching it today, I’m grateful for the iconic imagery and the fun interludes, like the alley brawl, because without them, the film’s incisive and unforgiving commentary on capitalism, consumerism and America would be unbearably painful.  
 
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)  
 
A towering achievement of the decade. Told on such an epic scale that the teeming masses of humanity become individual bodies transposed against the eons of history etched into the face of the Earth, it recalls Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera in its recontextualization of cinema’s potential. It helps me believe that we discovered cinema so that we could discover ourselves through a lens of perception that transcends our eyes and ears.  

Todd Field, writer-director (“Tár”)

Ten-for-Ten  
 
Decades are fairly arbitrary scaffolding used to size up history. 1979 and 1980 feel a hell of a lot more related than say 1980 and 1983. Looking back over this top-of-the head tour-of-pleasures a few things strike me. For one, my film consumption was steady over this decade (the titles listed were maybe five to ten percent of what I saw at the time), and U.S studios provided the moviegoing public an embarrassment of riches, the full gambit of human experience executed at an exquisite level across all genres without a cape, cowl, or action-figure anywhere in sight. There was no hyper-IP attached to any of these films (more than ninety-percent of which were made from original screenplays). Those riches become less bountiful as the decade progressed. This may be nostalgia on my part, or simply a matter of changing personal tastes (later years contain more foreign titles and independents), but the thing that strikes me most is how going to the movies was never an event, just a part of public life — like eating and breathing and yes, dreaming together. In that regard, those who lived through this era are part of a lost civilization.  
 
80
 
Altered States (Dir: Ken Russell, Script: Paddy Chayefsky) 
American Gigolo (Dir: Paul Schrader, Script: Paul Schrader) 
Caddyshack (Dir: Harold Ramis, Script: Brian Doyle-Murray) 
Coal Miner’s Daughter (Dir: Michael Apted, Script: Tom Rickman) 
The Elephant man (Dir: David Lynch, Script: David Lynch, Christopher De Vore, Eric Bergren)
Melvin and Howard (Dir: Jonathan Demme, Script: Bo Goldman)
Ordinary People (Dir: Robert Redford, Script: Alvin Sargent) 
Raging Bull (Dir: Martin Scorsese, Script: Paul Schrader, Mardik Martin)
The Shining (Dir: Stanley Kubrick, Script: Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson)
The Stunt Man (Dir: Richard Rush, Script: Richard Rush, Lawrence B. Marcus)  
 
81  
 
Blow Out (Dir: Brian De Palma, Script: Brian De Palma) 
Body Heat (Dir: Lawrence Kasdan, Script: Lawrence Kasdan) 
Excalibur (Dir: John Boorman, Script: John Boorman, Rospo Pallenberg) 
The Evil Dead (Dir: Sam Raimi, Script: Sam Raimi) 
Escape from New York (Dir: John Carpenter, Script: John Carpenter, Nick Castle)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (Dir: Steven Spielberg, Script: Lawrence Kasdan) 
Taps (Dir: Harold Becker, Script: Darryl Ponicsan, Robert Mark Kamen) 
Time Bandits (Dir: Terry Gilliam, Script: Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin) 
The Road Warrior (Dir: George Miller, Script: Terry Hayes, George Miller, Byron Kennedy)
My Dinner With Andre (Dir: Louis Malle, Script: Wallace Shawn, André Gregory)  
 
82  
 
The Dark Crystal (Dir: Jim Henson & Frank Oz, Script: David Odell) 
Diner (Dir: Barry Levinson, Script: Barry Levinson) 
The King of Comedy (Dir: Martin Scorsese, Script: Paul D. Zimmerman) 
An Officer and a Gentleman (Dir: Taylor Hackford, Script: Douglas Day Stewart)
Shoot the Moon (Dir: Alan Parker, Script: Bo Goldman)
Smithereens (Dir: Susan Seidelman, Script: Susan Seidelman, Peter Askin, Ron Nyswaner)
Sophie’s Choice (Dir: Alan J. Pakula, Script: Alan J. Pakula) 
The Verdict (Dir: Sidney Lumet, Script: David Mamet) 
The World According to Garp (Dir: George Roy Hill, Script: Steve Tesich)  
The Year of Living Dangerously (Dir: Peter Weir, Script: Peter Weir, David Williamson, C.J. Koch)  

83  
 
Baby It’s You (Dir: John Sayles, Script: John Sayles)
The Day After (Dir: Nicholas Meyer, Script: Edward Hume)  
Local Hero (Dir: Bill Forsyth, Script: Bill Forsyth)  
The Meaning of Life (Dir: Terry Jones, Script: Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin)  
Nostalghia (Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky, Script: Andrei Tarkovsky, Tonino Guerra)
Risky Business (Dir: Paul Brickman, Script: Paul Brickman) 
Rumble Fish (Dir: Francis Ford Coppola, Script: S. E. Hinton) 
Scarface (Dir: Brian De Palma, Script: Oliver Stone)  
Silkwood (Dir: Mike Nichols, Script: Nora Ephron, Alice Arlen)
Tender Mercies (Dir: Bruce Beresford, Script: Horton Foote)  
 
84  
 
Amadeus (Dir: Miloš Forman, Script: Peter Shaffer) 
Birdy (Dir: Alan Parker, Script: Sandy Kroopf, Jack Behr) 
Blood Simple (Dir: Joel Coen, Script: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen) 
The Brother from Another Planet (Dir: John Sayles, Script: John Sayles) 
A Flash of Green (Dir: Victor Nunez, Script: Victor Nunez) 
The Killing Fields (Dir: Roland Joffé, Script: Bruce Robinson) 
Paris, Texas (Dir: Wim Wenders, Script: Sam Shepard) 
The Pope of Greenwich Village (Dir: Stuart Rosenberg, Script: Vincent Patrick)
Racing with the Moon (Dir: Richard Benjamin, Script: Steve Kloves) 
Stranger Than Paradise (Dir: Jim Jarmusch, Script: Jim Jarmusch, John Lurie)  
 
85  
 
After Hours (Dir: Martin Scorsese, Script: Joseph Minion) 
Back to the Future (Dir: Robert Zemeckis, Script: Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale)
Brazil (Dir: Terry Gilliam, Script: Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown)
Dreamchild (Dir: Gavin Millar, Script: Dennis Potter) 
The Emerald Forest (Dir: John Boorman, Script: Rospo Pallenberg) 
Enemy Mine (Dir: Wolfgang Petersen, Script: Edward Khmara) 
The Falcon and the Snowman (Dir: John Schlesinger, Script: Steven Zaillian)
Ran (Dir: Akira Kurosawa, Script: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide) 
Lost in America (Dir: Albert Brooks, Script: Albert Brooks, Monica Johnson) 
No End (Dir: Krzysztof Kieślowski, Script: Krzysztof Kieślowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz)  
 
86  
 
Aliens (Dir: James Cameron, Script: James Cameron)  
Blue Velvet (Dir: David Lynch, Script: David Lynch)  
Down by Law (Dir: Jim Jarmusch, Script: Jim Jarmusch)  
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Dir: John Hughes, Script: John Hughes)  
The Fly (Dir: David Cronenberg, Script: David Cronenberg, Charles Edward Pogue)  
Highlander (Dir: Russell Mulcahy, Script: Gregory Widen, Peter Bellwood, Larry Ferguson)  
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (Dir: John McNaughton, Script: John McNaughton, Richard Fire)  
River’s Edge (Dir: Tim Hunter, Script: Neal Jimenez) 
Round Midnight (Dir: Bertrand Tavernier, Script: Bertrand Tavernier, David Rayfiel)
The Sacrifice (Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky, Script: Andrei Tarkovsky)  
 
87  
 
Au revoir les enfants (Dir: Louis Malle, Script: Louis Malle)  
Barfly (Dir: Barbet Schroeder, Script: Charles Bukowski)  
Come and See (Dir: Elem Klimovder, Script: Elem Klimov, Ales Adamovich)  
Dominick and Eugene (Dir: Robert M. Young, Script: Alvin Sargent, Corey Blechman)  
Full Metal Jacket (Dir: Stanley Kubrick, Script: Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford)  
My Life As a Dog (Dir: Lasse Hallström, Script: Lasse Hallström, Reidar Jönsson, Brasse Brännström, Per Berglund)  
No Way Out (Dir: Roger Donaldson, Script: Robert Garland) 
The Princess Bride (Dir: Rob Reiner, Script: William Goldman)  
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Dir: Todd Haynes, Script: Todd Haynes, Cynthia Schneider)  
Withnail & I (Dir: Bruce Robinson, Script: Bruce Robinson)  
 
88  

The Bear (Dir: Jean-Jacques Annaud, Script: Gérard Brach)  
Chocolat (Dir: Claire Denis, Script: Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau)  
Damnation (Dir: Béla Tarr, Script: Béla Tarr, László Krasznahorkai)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Dir: Terence Davies, Script: Terence Davies)
Midnight Run (Dir: Martin Brest, Script: George Gallo)  
The Moderns (Dir: Alan Rudolph, Script: Alan Rudolph, Jon Bradshaw)  
Talk Radio (Dir: Oliver Stone, Script: Oliver Stone, Eric Bogosian)  
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Dir: Philip Kaufman, Script: Philip Kaufman, Jean-Claude Carrière)  
Wings of Desire (Dir: Wim Wenders, Script: Wim Wenders, Peter Handke, Richard Reitinger)  
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Dir: Pedro Almodóvar, Script: Pedro Almodóvar)  
 
89  
 
Born on the Fourth of July (Dir: Oliver Stone, Script: Oliver Stone, Ron Kovic)  
The Decalogue (Dir: Krzysztof Kieślowski, Script: Krzysztof Kieślowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz)  
Drugstore Cowboy (Dir: Gus Van Sant, Script: Gus Van Sant, Daniel Yost)
Henry V (Dir: Kenneth Branagh, Script: Kenneth Branagh, William Shakespeare)
High Hopes (Dir: Mike Leigh, Script: Mike Leigh) 
My Left Foot (Dir: Jim Sheridan, Script: Jim Sheridan, Shane Connaughton)
Mystery Train (Dir: Jim Jarmusch, Script: Jim Jarmusch)  
The Seventh Continent (Dir: Michael Haneke, Script: Michael Haneke, Johanna Teicht)
sex, lies, and videotape (Dir: Steven Soderbergh, Script: Steven Soderbergh)
Splendor (Dir: Ettore Scola, Script: Ettore Scola)  
 

Hannah Fidell, writer-director (“A Teacher”)

“The Decline of Western Civilization”
“Scarface”
“Amadeus”
“Full Metal Jacket”
“Fast Times at Ridgemont High”
“The King of Comedy” 
“Die Hard”
“Do the Right Thing”  
“Ghostbusters”
“Platoon”

Ellie Foumbi, writer-director (“Our Father, the Devil”)

1. “The Thing” — Probably my favorite horror film of this era. The simple premise is just brilliant! 

2. “Goodbye, Children” — One of the best WWII films I’ve ever seen that’s actually about friendship. The end has stayed with me since I first saw it in middle school. 

3. “The Shining” — All someone has to do is write REDRUM anywhere and my skin crawls. 

4. “Do The Right Thing” — A one of a kind experience that I shared with my brother. 

5. “Ran” — The first Kurosawa film I watched. I was hooked by the Shakespearian premise and stunning visuals. 

6. “Fatal Attraction,” dir. Adrian Lyne — Glenn Close’s performance still haunts me to this day. 

7. “Coming to America” — This film made my entire family proud to be African even if the African country depicted in it was entirely fictional. 

8. “Amadeus” —  Hits all the right notes. 

9. “Raging Bull” — Hands down my favorite boxing movie. 

10. “Losing Ground” — So clever and original! A complex portrayal of Black love and excellence.   
 

Michael Giacchino, composer (“The Batman”)

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER 

“Raiders of the Lost Ark”
“Three Amigos”
“Witness”
“Silverado”
“Stand By Me”
“The Outsiders”
“Little Shop of Horrors”
“Back to the Future”
“Gremlins”
“Big Trouble in Little China”
“Poltergeist”
“American Werewolf in London”
“Naked Gun” 
“Big”
“Airplane!”
“ET”
“The Goonies”
“Heathers”
“The Mosquito Coast”
“Three O’clock High”

BenDavid Grabinski, writer-director (“Happily”)

1. BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA 
2. STOP MAKING SENSE 
3. MIDNIGHT RUN 
4. ALIENS 
5. STREETS OF FIRE 
6. ROBOCOP 
7. BULL DURHAM 
8. REPO MAN 
9. THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN 
10. THE BLUES BROTHERS 

Robert Greene, writer, director, editor (“Procession”)

“Shoah”
“Love Streams”
“Come and See”
“L’Argent”
“Do the Right Thing”
“Images of the World and The Inscription of War”
“The Store”
“Vagabond”
“Bull Durham”
“Demon Lover Diary”

HONORABLE MENTIONS

“Pixote”
“The King of Comedy”
“One from the Heart”
“Burden of Dreams”
“Boy Meets Girl”
“Matewan”
“Prefab People”
“Hail Mary”
“Stranger than Paradise”
“The Thin Blue Line”
“Blue Velvet”
“The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On”
“Blow Out”
“Where Is the Friend’s House?”
“Sans Soleil”
“Streetwise”

Sarah Greenwood, production designer (“Barbie”)

“Blood Simple”
“Blue Velvet”
“The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover”
“Dangerous Liasons”
“Desperately Seeking Susan”
“Fitzcarraldo”
“The French Lieutenant’s Woman”
“The Long Good Friday”
“Paris, Texas”

HONORABLE MENTIONS

“An American Werewolf in London”
“Blade Runner”
“The Elephant Man”
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”
“Gregory’s Girl”
“The Long Good Friday”
“My Beautiful Laundrette”
“Reds”
“Repo Man”
“The Shining”

Bill Hader, writer, director (“Barry”)

I’m sorry, but the 80s were a formative decade, so I couldn’t pick just 10
 
Thin Blue Line 
Road Warrior 
Blood Simple 
Evil Dead 1&2 
Raging Bull 
Naked Gun 
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On 
The Hit 
Raising Arizona 
Crimes and Misdemeanors 
Blue Velvet 
Where is the Friends House 
Pee Wees Big Adventure 
Midnight Run 
Come and See 
Do the Right Thing 
My Neighbor Totoro 
Die Hard 
Paris, Texas 
Streetwise 
Robocop 
Stand By Me 
Spinal Tap 

Annie Hamilton, actress, writer (“The Wolf of Snow Hollow”)

1) A Nos Amours  
2.) Working girl  
3.) Falling in love 
4.) My dinner with Andre  
5.) The king of comedy 
6.) Brideshead revisted 
7.) Reds  
8.) When Harry Met Sally  
9.) Modern Romance 
10.) Agnes of god (I haven’t seen this one yet but … I’m thinking I’m gonna LOVE it) 

Julia Hart, writer-director (“Hollywood Stargirl”)

“Do The Right Thing” 
“Thief”
“My Neighbor Totoro”
“Running on Empty”
“Back to the Future”
“Working Girl”
“Heartburn”
“Reds”
“The Terminator”
“The Shining”

Chad Hartigan, writer, director (“Little Fish”)

Too hard to pick just 10 films so I decided to rank 10 directors with the most impressive 80s outputs. 

10. JOEL COEN (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona) 

Only two films but an off-kilter one two punch that heralded a boldly idiosyncratic new talent. 

9. JOHN McTIERNAN (Nomads, Predator, Die Hard) 

Is there anything more 80s than action films and Arnold Schwarzenegger. McTiernan pulled the best out of both.
 
8. AKI KAURISMAKI (Crime and Punishment, Calimari Union, Shadows in Paradise, Hamlet Goes Business, Ariel, Leningrad Cowboys Go America) 

Aki was cranking them out in Finland and quickly developing one of Europe’s most original voices. Some misses in there but the highs are God tier and you simply can’t beat his runtimes. 

7. ROBERT ZEMECKIS (Used Cars, Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Back to the Future Part II) 
Spent the decade slowly but surely perfecting his brand of populist, energetic, visually expressive filmmaking. 

6. STANLEY KUBRICK (The Shining, Full Metal Jacket) 

One of the few who takes nearly a decade to make something and when you see it you know exactly why. 

5. AGNES VARDA (Mur Murs, Documenteur, Vagabond, Kung-Fu Master!, Jane B. by Agnes V.) 
Dipping in and out of documentary and narrative filmmaking and blessing us with some of the most personal filmmaking of all-time in both. 

4. STEVEN SPIELBERG (Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Always) 

Arguably should be higher because there’s at least three iconic pieces of cinema here but also some of his worst work so a spotty transitional period overall for Sir Stevie. 

3. SPIKE LEE (She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze, Do the Right Thing) 

The gold standard template of singularly fresh debut, overambitious muddled follow up and then era-defining masterpiece. 

2. ROB REINER (This is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…) 

Most unjustly overlooked director of all-time? Sure, he’s made mostly disposable work in the last decade or two but look at this run! Made arguably the defining film of four different genres (mockumentary, coming-of-age, fantasy and rom/com) 

1. WOODY ALLEN (Stardust Memories, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Zelig, 
Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, September, Another Woman, Crimes and Misdemeanors) 

He’s been bad even longer than he’s been canceled, but this run is truly insane. Broadway, Cairo and Hannah in three consecutive years is some kind of deal with the devil sorcery, but honestly these are all good films. A hall-of-fame purple patch if ever there was one. 

Nicole Holofcener, writer, director (“You Hurt My Feelings”)

“sex lies, and videotape”
“Modern Romance”
“Broadcast News”
“Diner”
“Stranger than Paradise”
“The King of Comedy”
“After Hours”
“Reds”
“El Norte”
“Diner”

Jordan Horowitz, writer, producer (“Hollywood Stargirl”)

“Back to the Future”
“Videodrome”
“My Neighbor Totoro”
“The Thing”
“The King of Comedy”
“Wings of Desire”
“Thief”
“The Princess Bride”
“Running on Empty”
“Beetlejuice”
 
10 more he loves: 
 
“When Harry Met Sally 
“Broadcast News 
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial”
“Big”
“Do the Right Thing”
“Modern Romance”
“Working Girl”
“Reds”
“Terms of Endearment”
“Raising Arizona”

Babak Jalali, director (“Fremont”)

In no particular order:

Ariel (Aki Kaurismaki)- A film that would make my list of any decade’s top films.

Blue Velvet (David Lynch)- Completely insane and wild. However many times I watch it, it still feels like the first time. 

National Lampoon’s European Vacation (Amy Heckerling)- Because it would be uncivilized not to include a film with Chevy Chase in it.
 
Damnation (Bela Tarr)- The framing, the pacing, the setting. Hypnotic.   

The Breakfast Club (John Hughes)- ‘When you grow up, your heart dies…’ 

Homework (Abbas Kiarostami)- My favourite Kiarostami film. With one of my all-time favourite final scenes in cinema.  

Stranger than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch)- Because making something simple can be beautiful. 

A Time to Live, a Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)- Unsentimental nostalgia about home, loss and childhood. 

When Father was Away on Business (Emir Kusturica)- Part satire, part family drama looking at the absurdities of a particular time in a particular place. 

Elephant (Alan Clarke)- Alan Clarke, England’s treasure. I wish he had stuck around longer to make more films. 

Phil Joanou, director (“Three O’Olock High”)

Raging Bull — Scorsese’s “Citizen Kane.”  THE masterpiece of the ‘80s.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior — Can that opening where the screen goes from 1:33 to 2:35 ever be beat?  I don’t think so.  George Miller showed Hollywood how to shoot action like no one had ever done before.
 
The Shining — Yes, “Full Metal” was in the 80s too… but for me, “The Shining” is the one.  And the fact that it is still a part of the zeitgeist?  Incredible.  (Also, Jack Nicholson in his prime… “Give me the bat, Wendy!” — cannot be beat.) 

E.T. — I know… it’s an easy one.  But watch it again (like I did with my kids recently) and it holds up as the classic that it is. Absolutely timeless. 

Blade Runner — The groundbreaker.  Movies are still trying to outdo this one (to no avail). 
 
Tootsie — Dustin Hoffman pulls off what is, without a doubt, the comedic performance of the decade.  Also, Jessica Lang?  Bill Murray?  Terri Garr?  Dabney Coleman?  Charles Durning?  Sydney Pollack? Are you kidding me???  

Brazil — I’d never seen anything like it… and I’m not sure I have since. It had such a huge influence on me — just so original in every way.  Plus, the fact that Gilliam had to literally rip the film out of Universal’s hands to get it released?  Amazing. 
 
Raiders of the Lost Ark — Do I even need to add anything for this one?  But what amazes me is, that even with the “advances” made by CG — this sucker still kicks ass on all the action/adventure films that followed. 
 
Scarface — A cultural phenomenon as much as it was a film.  I remember seeing it opening night and thinking Pacino’s accent was so over-the-top.  But then, as the film progressed, he just owned the screen in a performance that is so one-of-a-kind, it’s still jaw-dropping.  Plus, Oliver Stone and Brian DePalma together?  Insane. 

Crimes and Misdemeanors — It is so freakin’ good it’s crazy.  And the message at the end?  That last scene between Woody Allen and Martin Landau?  It doesn’t get better than that. 
 

Ken Kwapis, director (“Vibes”)

Reds – It still boggles the mind that Warren Beatty convinced a major studio to finance a film celebrating revolutionary Communists. A perfect balance of epic and intimate.  
 
Used Cars – This gleefully cynical comedy played to mostly empty seats, but I occupied one of them and was knocked out by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s anarchic spirit.  
 
Local Hero – Bill Forsyth’s third feature was that rare specimen: a gentle, whimsical comedy. The species quickly became extinct as the 80s thundered forward.  
 
The King of Comedy – Perhaps the most prescient film of the past forty years. In our attention-craving times, replete with live-streamed mayhem, Rupert Pupkin’s kidnapping stunt feels positively quaint.  
 
My Neighbor Totoro – Did I watch this film or dream it? I’m not sure. Who wouldn’t want Totoro for a friend? Who wouldn’t want to take a nocturnal ride on the Catbus?  
 
The Last Emperor – I once read Bertolucci’s film described as the story of one man’s free-fall through history. Perfect.  
 
Sweetie – Cringe-worthy characters became commonplace in the aughts and beyond, but Jane Campion got there first with the squirm-inducing heroine of her first feature. And I can’t resist a shout-out to Campion’s 1984 short A Girl’s Own Story, a haunting coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of Beatlemania.  
 
Mon oncle d’Amérique – Three random lives collide with heartbreaking results. For my money, this is Alain Renais’ most user-friendly film, intellectually challenging but utterly human.  
 
A Grand Day Out – With CGI poised to obliterate traditional animation, Nick Park kept the faith with his stop-motion wizardry. A teaser of greatness to come, this 23- minute gem introduced the funniest comic duo since Laurel and Hardy.  
 
10.Do The Right Thing – A game-changer of the highest order. In the role of Mookie, Spike Lee cuts a cool figure, but as a director he couldn’t be more passionate, closing out the decade with an incendiary call to action. 

Savanah Leaf, writer, director (“Earth Mama”)

***to note this is in no particular order – and i wrote these films all for very different reasons 

Paris, Texas – Wim Wenders  
My Neighbor Totoro – Hayao Miyazaki 
Do the Right Thing – Spike Lee 
Come and See – Elam Klimov 
Vagabond – Agnes Varda 
Tongues Untied – Marlon Riggs  
Taipei Story – Edward Yang 
Love Streams – John Cassavetes 
Streetwise  – Martin Bell 
Out of the Blue – Dennis Hopper 

David Lowery, writer, director (“Peter Pan & Wendy”)

10 Double Features from the 1980s
 
DO THE RIGHT THING / THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST 
 
Both of these masterpieces exist in different spheres of cultural relevance, and ought not necessarily be compared but for the exuberance with which they declare themselves Movies with a giant, bold-faced capital M. Lee and Scorsese each embrace the maximalist potential of cinema, using color and camera movement as exclamation points where other filmmakers might have been content with a simple period or ellipsis. That this punctuation is in service of some of the most complex, nuanced essays on individual integrity ever put to film makes them all the more extraordinary. 
 
RAISING ARIZONA / MIDNIGHT RUN 
 
The Dream Of The Future passage at the end of Raising Arizona is one of my favorite sequences in any movie, and it comes at the end of a statement of intent from the Coen Brothers that remains unmatched across their legendary ouvre. It’s an immensely moving looney tunes cartoon with some of the best dialogue ever delivered. Likewise, Martin Brest’s Midnight Run is a caper with the sort of epic spectacle that would nowadays never be underwritten by a major studio without Tom Cruise’s name above the title – a phenomenon that makes the deep affection we feel for Charles Grodin and Robert DeNiro all the more affecting.  
 
INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM  / ISHTAR 
 
Neither of these spectacles are particularly well regarded, which makes them all the more vital. Raiders Of The Lost Ark is perhaps the better Indiana Jones movie, but its goodness is of a pure and timeless sort, whereas The Temple Of Doom could only have been made in 1984, before it made PG-13 a thing, and in this particular moment of Spielberg’s career, when he was still willing to inject some of the best filmmaking he’s ever done with a mean and sometimes tasteless streak that is somehow as thrilling as any of the incredible set pieces he keeps one-upping himself with. As for Ishtar, I didn’t see Elaine May’s film until long after its cemented legacy had started to show some cracks, and I found it to be…pretty good! And maybe even really good? I’m not calling it a masterpiece just yet, but that it was once-and-sometimes-still-is regarded as the worst film ever made makes its inclusion mandatory, as does the fact that any list of anything could use more Elaine May on it. 
 
FANNY & ALEXANDER / COME & SEE 
 
It took me a long time to realize that Fanny & Alexander is Bergman’s greatest film. Maybe at some point it’ll slip back down below some of his other landmarks in my esteem, but at this moment it’s the only one I look forward to watching, in its entirety, every single year. So thoroughly does he slip into the perspective of a child that the film cannot help but feel like a reflection of my own memories, to the point that even though I was never imprisoned in a tower by a Lutheran stepfather, when I’m watching this movie I might as well have been. It’s a joyous parable. If Home Alone had come out a year earlier, I’d have made that my double feature pick; alas, we’re all out of luck, as I’m selecting instead Elem Klimov’s Come & See, a very different portrait of childhood, with nary a pair rose-colored glasses in sight, and which I to this day remain too frightened to see a second time. 

ROBOCOP / THE FLY 
 
Robocop was the first R-rated movie I ever saw, shortly after my dad got a job in Dallas. I had been loath to move to Texas until I realized I was basically living around the corner from where the film was shot, at which point my new hometown became a point of legitimate pride. Its satire remains as sharp as it was nearly thirty years ago, and Verehoven’s blunt, tactile filmmaking represents an apex of 80s action, but I want to take a moment to praise how it ends. There’s no denouement. No grace note. No epic crane shot or musical swell. It just stops. Medium closeup, one line of dialogue, hard cut to black. Similarly, David Cronenberg’s The Fly just begins – and then almost instantly transmographies from a piece of gooey pulp into something so operatic that when Cronenberg later made a film about a literal opera a decade later, it couldn’t reach the heights of this one. If I’d been allowed to see it when it opened, I’d have simply been scared and grossed out. Looking at it – and Robocop, aka American Jesus – now, I understand a whole lot more about the decade I was born into. 

LOCAL HERO / THE PRINCESS BRIDE 

Two fairy tales with big hearts and incredible Mark Knopfler scores, one of which is universally beloved, the other which absolutely should be. Hopefully the recent Criterion release of Local Hero brings more attention to it, along with Bill Forsythe’s other films.  
 
THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER / MISHIMA 
 
I revisited The Cook, The Thief, HIs Wife & Her Lover  last summer, at a Peter Greenaway retrospective, and at the end the entire audience burst into ecstatic applause, leading me to mistakenly believe that it was in fact a crowd pleaser. When I showed it to a group of unsuspecting friends earlier this year, the response was probably far closer to what I read about back in 1989; shock and disgust, outright anger, very little applause. All these reactions are valid and well-earned, as is awe that I generally find myself feeling in the face of film’s staging. This movie represents the apotheosis of Greenaway’s cinematic concerns; I think he’s made better films, but none have intercoursed with the culture as this one did. Greenaway should really only be paired with more Greenaway, and if not, then Blue Velvet would seem its natural bedfellow, as it’s another landmark film from the 80s featuring the darkest manifestation of sexual bile; but instead of a thematic pairing, I’d suggest instead an aesthetic one. Paul Schrader followed up a quintessential 1980s movie, American Gigolo, with a film that explodes the medium just as Greenaway does, albeit to very different ends. Greenaway had Gaultier, Schrader had Eiko Ishioka; few movies have ever looked better, or used the extreme end of aesthetics to pack such punches. 
 
AN AMERICAN TAIL / E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL 
 
These are two of the very few films I saw in the cinema in the 80s. They also represent Spielberg’s second and third appearance on this list, which is fine by me. I personally take umbrage with Don Bluth’s  perspective on cats, but otherwise, An American Tail it still strikes me as a bold and valuable piece of family entertainment, with a scope, scale and emotional wisdom that I suspect did me a world of good. Basically, it made me cry a lot. So did E.T, which was on my Sight & Sound list, along with Do The Right Thing, and had to make an appearance here by default.  
 
SEVENTEEN / FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH 
 
80s teen movies are one of my blindspots. I’ve never seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Pretty In Pink. I think I’ve seen Sixteen Candles. I’ve definitely seen Fast Times At Ridgemont High, which is incredible, and deserves a spot on this list. But it must be paired with Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines documentary Seventeen, which remains one of the most affecting – and sadly quotable – portraits of adolescents in America that I’ve ever seen.  
 
THE SHINING / BEETLEJUICE / POSSESSION  
 
80s Horror is such a genre unto itself that I’m somewhat perplexed to find myself veering away from VHS classics like Halloween 4, Return Of The Living Dead, Motel Hell or even something classier like the original Nightmare On Elm Street, and picking instead a film as ubiquitous as The Shining. But! I just finished reading Lee Unkrich and J.W. Rinzler’s exhaustive and essential new book on that film’s production, and, redolent in the ephemeral details that somehow cohered into such an uncanny piece of genre filmmaking, I have no choice but to include it. It’s simply too good. That being said, let me propose two more to make a triple feature, each a different version of the  same story: Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice and Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession. All three represent a portrait of the nuclear family in crisis; sadly, only one of them inspired an action figure line. 

Rebecca Miller, director (“She Came to Me”)

Raging Bull – MS  
Fanny and Alexander – Ingmar Bergman  
Terms of Endearment – James Brooks  
Hannah and Her Sisters – Woody Allen  
She’s Gotta Have it- Spike  
Blue Velvet-David Lynch 
The Sacrifice –Tarkovsky  
Drugstore Cowboy-Gus Van Sant  
My Left Foot- Jim Sheriden 
Sweetie- Jane Campion  

Jordana Mollick, producer (“Spoiler Alert”)

Sorta in particular order.
 
When Harry Met Sally 
The Breakfast Club  
Dead Poets Society  
Pretty in Pink  
Some Kind of Wonderful  
Say Anything  
Splash  
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off  
Parenthood  
St. Elmo’s Fire 

Randall Park, director (“Shortcomings”)

The Shining  
Raging Bull  
Chan Is Missing  
Scarface  
This is Spinal Tap  
The Untouchables   
Hollywood Shuffle   
Coming to America   
Do The Right Thing   
When Harry Met Sally   

Alex Ross Perry, writer, director (“Her Smell”)

As a child of the ’80s, I reject the notion that it was ‘the worst decade’ for cinema, or even a bad decade. It was, perhaps, the best decade for nearly everything I love, from art to design to architecture and public spaces (malls, interiors, furniture…) and so forth. It is where VHS thrived and Appetite for Destruction was released. 
  
Of course there was “The 80s!” (neon styling, everything aerobics-ish) and “the nineteen-eighties” (brown paneling, 13” CRT TV’s, brown carpet). This dichotomy is crucial, because when it comes to movies, there is “The 80s!” and “the nineteen-eighties.” 
  
To honor this beautiful collision, and also because this proved an impossible list to cull, I found it fun to present double features of some of my favorite films from this decade that showcase this divide as a means of understanding why I feel that the 80s are most likely the finest decade of all. These aren’t in any specific order. 
  
The Elephant Man/ The Fly – The greatest movies of all about the loneliest “monsters.”  
  
Out of the Blue/ Christianne F. – The girls aren’t alright.  
  
Shoah/Come and See – A new way of talking about WWII emerges. Turns out it was worse than previously thought. 
  
The Empire Strikes Back/Full Metal Jacket – War is hell. Even Star Wars. 
  
They All Laughed/ Star 80 –Joy and misery, connected by tragedy. 
  
Friday the 13th / Hellraiser – What was the 80s without VHS and what was VHS without horror? 
  
This is Spinal Tap/ The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years –Decades later, there is still no way to put stories on film about the greatest musical contribution of the 1980s (metal) because these two left no money on the table. 
  
Ran/ Excalibur – Ancient spectacle of the highest order. Kurosawa making his final masterpiece after decades of making masterpieces.  
  
The Sacrifice/ The Thing – Isolated at the end of the world. Tarkovsky making his final masterpiece after decades of making masterpieces.  
  
Love Streams/Mauvais Sang – Love in a lonely world. Cassavettes making his final masterpiece after decades of making masterpieces.  
  
Runaway Train/ The Road Warrior – Hot and cold, forward and unrelenting. 
  
The Store/Blind/Near Death/Central Park – This is the big cheat, apologies. On any given day, I’d say Frederick Wiseman is the greatest living filmmaker. His films of the 70s were brilliant, but modest. His 80s run is staggering by any metric of filmmaking, and these 4 rank among his all-time greatest. The Store captures 80s opulence that we see differently in retrospect. Central Park is my favorite New York documentary, specifically because of the 80s-ness of it. There is a sequence in Blind which I consider perhaps the greatest in all of non-fiction cinema. And Near Death is a magnum opus from a director who would go on to make a dozen more.  
  
Blow Out/ Brazil – All systems rigged against the individual. 
  
American Gigolo/ Breathless – High brow/low brow, Armani and comic books.  
  
Rocky IV/Police Story – The man for the job, East and West. 
  
Withnail and I/Housekeeping – A gentle note to end on. 

James Ponsoldt, director (“Daisy Jones & the Six”)

In no particular order… 

Blue Velvet 
Withnail and I 
Repo Man 
Do the Right Thing 
Tampopo 
Dekalog (yeah, I know it was made for TV. I’m still including it.) 
Evil Dead II 
Vagabond 
Athens, GA: Inside/Out 
Batman 
 
Full disclosure: this was painfully hard. I found myself caught in a “best” vs. “favorite” tug-of-war, then decided there maybe shouldn’t be a difference, then I changed my mind and went into a mental death spiral as I remembered watching so many of these films when I was young with friends and family who aren’t alive anymore, and I felt like I was affirming or denying childhood memories and relationships by not including those films, and then I got very, very, very sad.  
 
I rewrote this list every day for the past week, and I finally settled on the films that, for whatever reason, I’ve probably watched the most.  
 
But other films that were on/off the list include: Matewan, Sweetie, The Cramps – Live at Napa State Mental Hospital, Mona Lisa, Ariel, Something Wild, Grave of the Fireflies, Stop Making Sense, Hollywood Shuffle, The Decline of Western Civilization I & II, After Hours, Back to the Future, Where Is the Friend’s House?, The Bear, Violent Cop, Akira, The Terminator, High Hopes, Possession, They Live, Love Streams, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, First Blood, River’s Edge, The Fly, Big, Mike’s Murder, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Wings of Desire, Come and See, Robocop, Vernon, Florida, My Dinner With Andre, Babette’s Feast, Heathers, Fanny and Alexander, Fatal Attraction, Meantime, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Shoah, Raging Bull, The Lost Boys, Elephant, Cutter’s Way, The Shining, The Road Warrior, Drugstore Cowboy, Say Anything, Police Story,  The Thin Blue Line, Made in Britain, This is Spinal Tap, Modern Romance, Stranger than Paradise, The Elephant Man, Koyaanisqatsi, Aliens, My Neighbor Totoro, Raising Arizona, Thief, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Roger and Me, The Outsiders, Desperately Seeking Susan, Stand By Me, Ghostbusters, Full Metal Jacket, Fitzcarraldo, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Beetlejuice, Manhunter, Purple Rain, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Paris, Texas, True Stories, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Sex, Lies, and Videotape. 

So my top ten films are, I guess, a feeble best-attempt to reconcile a heart/heart snag of the films I’ve loved and the people (both living and dead) I’ve loved watching those films with.  

And the films I included give me  
 
So.  
 
Much.  
 
Joy. 

Side note: there were a shitload of amazing movies made in the 1980s!

A.V. Rockwell, writer, director (“A Thousand and One”)

1. Do The Right Thing 
2. She’s Gotta Have It  
3. The Shining  
4. Who Framed Roger Rabbit  
5. Scarface  
6. Pixote  
7. The Last Emperor  
8. The Color Purple 
9. Zelig 
10. Empire of the Sun

Honorable Mentions: Coming to America, Lean on Me 

Rod Roddenberry, executive producer (“Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”)

The Terminator 
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi 
Top Gun 
Goonies 
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 
Time Bandits 
Enemy Mine 
The Lost Boys 
Back to the Future 
ET

Oz Rodriguez, director (“Miguel Wants to Fight”)

I indulged in an excessive number of action movies while prepping for “Miguel Wants to Fight,” and I have yet to leave that brain space. So here’s a list of some great action movies from the 80s. 

“Diva” – As quintessentially 80s as it gets, the quest for an essential cassette tape drives the whole plot. This French film is dripping with style, atmosphere, and très coolness. It also has a great motorcycle chase in Le Métro de Paris. 

“The Terminator” – Already bending my rules as I consider this a full-blown horror movie. The sight of the endoskeleton emerging from flames haunted my childhood dreams. James Cameron’s budget-friendly creation of a dark, and gritty LA remains impressive to this day. 

“Die Hard” – John McTiernan and Jan DeBont (cinematographer) gave us a master class on how to shoot action, tension, and star-making shots. Be a nerd like me and watch it on mute! “Duro de Matar,” as I knew it in the Dominican Republic, is flawlessly executed. 

“RoboCop” – Viewing this in a theater, at an age not quite suitable, left the brutal attack on Murphy etched in my mind for days. Watching it years later and finding another layer within the film’s dark humor and unsettling commentary puts this high on my list of best movies of the decade. 

“Police Story” – Jackie Chan’s wholehearted dedication to entertainment deserves admiration, broken bones and all. Amidst numerous astonishing stunts, the image of Jackie Chan hanging off a bus with an umbrella felt like the perfect distillation of action comedy. 
“Duel to the Death” – Two swordsmen are pitted against each other to determine the superior fighter between China and Japan. The film builds to the duel with inventive battles and cinematic violence of the highest order. If you like ninjas, this is the movie for you – it has flying ninjas, exploding ninjas, and even a big ol’ giant ninja. 

“The Killer” – At the video store, I stopped in my tracks when I saw the cover for this movie – two gun-wielding dudes in an intense standoff. Rented it, told my uncle it’s all good for my age, and we both ended up blown away by the craziest shootouts we had ever witnessed. 

“They Live” – Choosing a Carpenter film was a challenge, but this perceptive movie resonates more profoundly with each passing year. If you’re going to cast a wrestler, then you must have a ten-minute brawl. It’s just science. 

“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” – Since this list is about favorites, not the best, I opt for this Indy installment due to its frequent television broadcasts etching every scene into my memory. Oz chose wisely. 

“Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios” – Diverging from the action movie rule once again, but hey, this has a really fun car chase at the end! The rapid-fire humor, vibrant colors, and bold compositions keep you on the edge of your seat as much as an action film. 

Gary Ross, director (“Ocean’s 8”)

1. Full Metal Jacket. 
The best Vietnam movie. Maybe the best Kubrick movie. I’d list it twice if I could.  Watch the film and realize the four-minute tracking shot of the drill sergeant “welcoming” his men to basic training is an improv. 
  
2. Goodfellas  
(Made in 1990 but I couldn’t help it.)  Nick Pilleggi’s narrative is the heartbeat of the movie.  Scorsese obviously loved Nick’s book and took the audacious step of setting those paragraphs to film. The images cascade at you—some a sentence long–sometimes only a clause. The result is like nothing we have ever seen—a torrent of sound and picture. 
  
3. Breakfast Club 
How can something so simple be so incredibly complex and so wonderfully satisfying?  Six perfect character arcs that evolve over a single day of storytelling.  Oh yeah, he wrote it in two days. 
  
4. Mask 
The movie breaks my heart.  Bogdanovich (a man who directed in a bow tie) created such a hard-edged, real biker world, that Cher’s fierce maternity and love for her son moves us even more.  Beautiful movie. 
  
5. She’s Gotta Have It 
When this came out, I saw it twice on the same day.  It makes you wish that Spike would act more. 
  
6. Bull Durham 
The movie tells us that all of sport is about struggle, not winning.  Shelton was actually a minor league baseball player and it shows.  It’s a sports movie about finding peace and balance not victory.  Only a real athlete would spring from that premise.   
  
7. Diva 
I haven’t seen it in ages, but it had such a profound effect on me when I was young: the relationship of track to picture–the astounding use of music.  It’s a dream and it transports you. 
  
8. Moonstruck 
Nick cage’s monologue to Cher on the street is something so sublime, you have the feeling you may never see a better moment in any other love story.  Incredible movie.  Olympia Dukakis is transcendent.  
  
9. Who Framed Roger Rabbit 
For starters, it’s a cartoon where the bad guys are oil companies, so they kind of “had me at hello.”  But the seamless creation of these animated characters in a live action world–all done without digital effects–is absolutely stunning.  It’s light, smart, buoyant and a little left wing.  I was their target audience.  
  
10. Sex Lies and Videotape 
Steven has astounded me for so long that it’s not even shocking to look back at his first movie and realize it won the Palm d’Or and started the American indie movement.  Not since The Conversation had anyone made a movie about voyeurism that so successfully turned the audience into the voyeur.  
  
11. Sherman’s March 
It began its own genre: the confessional documentary. Ross McElwee starts by retracing Sherman’s military campaign across The South, but ends up revisiting a series of lost loves—battlefields in their own right.  It’s amazing. 
  
12. Burden Of Dreams 
A documentary about Werner Herzog trying to make Fitzcaraldo in the Amazon jungle.  It shows us, unflinchingly, how artistic obsession can occasionally go too far.  Watch this along with Hearts of Darkness (about the making of Apocalypse Now) and you may want to become a pharmacist or notary public.  
  

Bill and Turner Ross, directors (“Gasoline Rainbow”)

Some we discovered in real time sunk in old seats at the Sidney Theater, some we brought home on VHS from Dave’s Video, others were contraband viewed at Ms. McMellon’s house on pirated HBO. Some of the best, though, waited for their time to arrive. There were so many great films made in the 80’s, and so many shared social memories in the era of the blockbuster – but these are the ones that meant the most to us personally, that have stayed with us all these years, and that continue to resonate through our work: 
 
1 Seventeen (1983 – Joel DeMott, Jeff Kreines) 
2 Stand By Me (1986 – Rob Reiner) 
3 Over the Edge (1989 VHS – Jonathan Kaplan) 
4 Streetwise (1984 – Martin Bell, Cheryl McCall) 
5 Down By Law (1986 – Jim Jarmusch) 
6 Paris Texas (1984 – Wim Wenders) 
7 Stop Making Sense (1984 – Jonathan Demme) 
8 Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987 – John Hughes) 
9 The Goonies (1985 – Richard Donner) 
10 Ghostbusters (1984 – Ivan Reitman) 
11 Batman (1989 – Tim Burton) 
12 The Great Muppet Caper (1981 – Jim Henson) 
13 Tender Mercies (1983 – Bruce Beresford) 
14 Last Night at the Alamo (1983 – Eagle Pennell) 
15 Sherman’s March – (1985 – Ross McElwee) 
16 Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986 – John Heyn, Jeff Krulik) 
17 Dekalog (1989 – Krzysztof Kieslowski)  
18 The Brat Patrol (1986 – Mollie Miller) 
19 See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989 – Arthur Hiller) 
20 After the Dream Comes True (1982 – Craig Leake, Charles Kuralt) 
* SPECIAL MENTION: The Fog (1980 – John Carpenter) 

Eli Roth, writer, director (“Thanksgiving”)

My Awesome list of Awesome 80s movies 
by Eli Roth  
 
If there’s one word to define the 80s, it’s awesome. Totally awesome.  Be it big special effects, bawdy sex comedies or bloody horror films, the 80’s went BIG.  I don’t want to write about the usual great films (E.T, Ghostbusters, Aliens, Blues Brothers, Diva, Revenge of the Nerds, Beverly Hills Cop), I’ll leave that to everyone else.  I also didn’t want to write about films I have previously praised extensively in the press (Cannibal Holocaust, Mother’s Day, Zapped, Evil Dead, The Thing). So  here are ten totally awesome 80’s movies I will never turn off if I come across them watching late night cable. 
 
Porky’s  1982. Bob Clarke  
 
When I was a kid, cable TV wasn’t mainstream yet, so seeing an R rated movie in the theater was a big deal. Not only did you get to see things you never saw on television, you got bragging rights at school as you’d graphically describe (and often embellish) all the things that you now had knowledge of that other kids could only dream about.  Every year, on my birthday, my parents let me choose an R rated movie to see. Any film I wanted.  1981 was “Excalibur,” which was pretty hard to top.  So the following year, I chose “Quest for Fire” because the cavemen looked cool.  Well, about ten minutes into it I realized not much was going to happen, so I looked at my parents and said “Can we go sneak into Porky’s?”  That they acquiesced and slipped into the theater next door was probably the most fun I ever had on a birthday. Actually sneaking into Porky’s with my parents.  I actually felt like one of the kids from Angel Beach sneaking into the girls locker room.  Bob Clarke was an under appreciated genius.  He started three subgenera: the holiday slasher film with “Black Christmas,” the sex comedy with “Porky’s”, and the holiday Christmas comedy with “A Christmas Story.”  The film really holds up, too, with a brilliant performance by Scott Columby, who is so unrecognizable as the sensitive yet tough Brian Schwartz that it took years before I realized he played DeNunzio in “Caddyshack.”  Speaking of… 

Caddyshack  1980. Harold Ramis   
 
I have seen this movie too many times to count.  I don’t even watch it as a comedy anymore, to me it’s a record of all the times I had fun with friends watching this movie.  Further proof of the genius of National Lampoon co-founder Doug Kenney, who sadly died after the film’s poor reception. Chevy Chase was rumored to have said “He fell looking for a place to jump.”  I cannot wait for the jokes made about me upon my death.  
 
Fast Times at Ridgemont High 1982. Amy Heckerling  
 
Awesome. Totally awesome.  What else can I say.  I saw that movie in Massachusetts and said I was born in the wrong town.  I should have grown up at the Sherman Oaks galleria.  Back then California might as well have been outer space.  One of the most brilliant teen dramas of all time, sold as a sex comedy, but really a masterpiece coming of age film with one of the greatest casts ever assembled.  It’s so fun, so real, so pure, so honest, and never has the parents interfering and lecturing the kids. And yeah, the Phoebe Cates scene by the sprinkler. Masterpiece.  
 
Last American Virgin 1982  Boaz Davidson 
 
Along with Porky’s and Fast Times, this is the best teen sex comedy of the 80s.  A remake of the best gags of the “Lemon Popsicles” films (specifically “Lemon Popsicles 2: Hot Bubblegum”), director Boaz Davidson’s wild movie has 80 minutes of hilarious teen antics, punctuated by one of the greatest soundtracks ever put together by Billy Gerber, with one of the strangest most unexpected endings ever put in a mainstream film. Not since Fernando DiLeo’s “Avere Vent’anni” twist did an audience so expect they were getting one thing and up until the last scene they got another.  But it’s the dark ending that makes it stand the test of time as a masterpiece, because it’s honest and real. It’s what really happens in teen relationships.  The ending is the reason the film wasn’t a blockbuster, but the ending is what makes the film so unforgettable.  I am a huge fan of Davidson’s Israeli “Lemon Popsicles” series, and this was his attempt at an American remake.  I hosted a screening at the New Beverly and reunited the cast and got some amazing stories about them.   
 
Friday the 13th Part III in 3D  1982. Steve Miner 
 
Man, 1982 was an incredible year for movies. But of all the horror films I could write about, Friday the 13th Part III stands out for one big reason. Not only was it in headache-inducing blue/red 3-D, it was a part 3. When the hell had that ever happened before? How could you make part 3, didn’t the killer die?  Well, no.  I mean, he did, but he came back. And not only did he come back, he went to the horror movie gym in the off season and came back as a 6 foot 8 inch monster who’s absolutely unkillable. And guess what? Audiences didn’t care. It was the first time you were rooting for the killer. No one wanted the kids to survive, they wanted to see them get hacked to pieces. And there’s one key invention to this script written by Martin Kitrosser and Carol Watson – that forever changed horror.  The hockey mask.  Jason didn’t have the mask until this film when he kills someone and puts it on. And thus, an icon was born. Friday the 13th part 3 is the day he truly became Jason, and after that slasher films were just different.  People didn’t worry about killing the bad guy, you could always bring him back. We just wanted the blood.  Plus it was in 3D. What more could a budding horror director ask for?  
 
Pieces 1982 Juan Piquér Simon  
Basket Case 1982  Frank Henenlotter  
 
The tagline?  “It’s exactly what you think it is.” And “You Don’t have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre.”  I rented this movie on a double bill with “Basket Case” in my mind the two are forever linked, so I’m counting the double bill as one film.  It was probably the best night I’ve ever had renting VHS tapes.  “Pieces” is an absolutely batshit crazy slasher film where the chainsaw killings are finally ON CAMERA. As much as I loved “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, when I was a kid there just wasn’t enough chainsaw massacring.  Well, “Pieces” solved that problem, and created what is probably my favorite slasher film of all time.  From the random kung-fu scenes to the absurd tennis match, to the recycled Stelvio Cipriani score from “Un’ombra Nell’ombra”, “Pieces” stands the test of the of the most fun you will have watching a horror movie with a group of friends.  
 
“Basket Case” seems like a harmless movie about a man with his deformed side appendage brother who was severed in experimental surgery so he carries him around in a basket seeking revenge on the doctors who separated them.  It’s also a document of the pre-Disney sleazy  era Times Square, which as a kid was scarier than the monster in any movie.  But what makes the film special is the last ten minutes. It goes to a place that few films I have ever seen go to. It’s so uncomfortable it just makes you want to take a shower. You think you can’t get disturbed by a film this ridiculous and then the last ten minutes happen and you find yourself picking your jaw up off the floor.  That to me is the greatest achievement in cinema and few films pull it off the way this one does.  
 
Sleepaway Camp 1983  Robert Hiltzik  
 
The final shot of this film was so shocking and insane that my friends screamed at the top of our lungs so loud and sustained my parents thought someone had lost a limb in our basement.  Well, in this case someone grew one.  You know what I mean if you see it. Just… see it.  Don’t ask anyone about it.   
 
Hamburger: The Motion Picture 1986 Mike Marvin 
 
This for me is the ultimate 80s cable movie.  You rented a few movies, some were good, some weren’t, and you’re gonna go to sleep.  I remember so clearly, Jeff Rendell my “Thanksgiving” writer and best friends was at my house for a sleepover, and “Hamburger” came on cable TV at like 1:15 in the morning. I was too tired and went to sleep, but Jeff and my brother Adam stayed up watching it.  Well, the next morning the joke was on me because suddenly they were speaking another language.  They could not stop quoting it and I felt completely left out of the joke. So, we recorded it the next time it came on.  I couldn’t believe adults had actually made this movie. We were so obsessed with it, I hooked up a boombox with RCA cables to our VCR and audio recorded the film, subjecting anyone who got in a car with my brothers and I to listen to the entire movie at all times until we knew it by heart.  We would take four, five hour car trips listening to the audio of “Hamburger: The Motion Picture.” Many will argue that my dialogue feels like it’s out of “Hamburger: The Motion Picture” and they would not be wrong.  I don’t even know if it’s a good movie, but I love it with all my bloody heart.  
 
Robocop 1987  Paul Verhoeven 
 
I had never seen violence like this in a big budget action movie before.  I think it changed cinema.  It was so funny, so cool, so futuristic, and so gory it just defined everything I loved about movies.  I could measure movies before and after Robocop.  
 
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn 1987 Sam Raimi  
 
It was my 15th birthday and, again, I could see any  movie I wanted. But by now R rated movies weren’t such a big deal. There was VHS. I had seen pretty much everything, including X rated films “Caligula.” But there was one I still needed my parents help getting into – Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn. It was only playing in one cinema near us, and it said no on under 17 will be admitted. We had never seen this. It wasn’t X rated, it was un-rated, it just said no one under 17.  We went to a nice dinner before, one that required a jacket and tie, and then drove to some grindhouse cinema in Allston, Massachusetts, where the guy said “Is this kid 18?” and my father looked him in the eye and said “Yes.”  The theater manager said “Where’s his I.D?” to which I replied “I don’t have my license yet.”  The guy looked at us skeptically. Why were these 3 people way way way overdressed there to see a 10Pm show of “Evil Dead 2?” It didn’t make sense.  Finally my father reached into his walled, and do something I had never seen him do before. He pulled out his Harvard University faculty I.D. and said “I’m a professor at Harvard. I’m not lying.  My son is 18.” The guy just looked at the I.D. and shrugged and said “Enjoy the show.” And enjoy it we did.  

Ira Sachs, writer, director (“Passages”)

Taxi Zum Klo 
A Nos Amours  
Do the Right Thing 
Veronika Voss 
Vagabond  
Ms. 45  
Parting Glaces 
The Times of Harvey Milk 
L’Homme Blessée   
Tongues Untied 

Jake Schreier, director (“Beef”)

Do The Right Thing 

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces – An oddly moving doc about public space in NY that helped re-write the zoning laws. 

Amadeus – The deathbed composition scene is some of the best music editing ever. 

Ran 

Blood Simple – the hopping-over-the-drunk-guy-at-the-bar dolly was a sign. 

The Color of Money – I made a very embarrassing billiards short in film school inspired by this. 

Stop Making Sense – “He knew what not to do is what he did do.” The best concert I’ve ever seen and I wasn’t there.  

Time of the Gypsies 

Akira 

Batteries Not Included – I haven’t actually re-watched, but was a favorite at the time. Cool that there was a kid’s movie about tenant’s rights. (And no, it isn’t better than The Shining, E.T., or Raging Bull, but I imagine those will be well-represented) 

Michael Showalter, director (“The Big Sick”)

In no particular order!  
  
Something Wild 
Say Anything 
Paris, Texas 
Airplane! 
After Hours 
Blue Velvet 
48 Hours 
Bagdad Cafe 
A Room With A View 
Blood Simple 
The Unbelievable Truth 
Pretty In Pink 
Hollywood Shuffle 
The Big Picture 
To Die For 
Amadeus 

Sebastián Silva, writer, director (“Rotting in the Sun”)

Stand by Me 
 
The Shining 
 
Fanny and Alexander 
 
Akira 
 
Who Framed Roger rabbit 
 
The Little Mermaid  
 
Blood Simple 
 
Hanna and her sisters 
 
My life as a dog 
 
The Abbys 

Ed Solomon, writer (“No Sudden Move”)

EVIL DEAD 2: Utterly inventive, ingenious, madcap brilliance at its best – and on a shoestring. Pure talent made by people just trying to entertain themselves and each other. Ash sawing his own hand off: “Who’s laughing now???” Come on. I still laugh when I think of that. 
  
THIS IS SPINAL TAP: One of the best comedies not just of the decade but of the century in terms of (again) inventiveness (it was one of – if not *the* – first “mockumentaries” to make a profound cultural splash. It’s constantly referred to – often without even referencing context. “It’s like that thing in Spinal Tap..” “This goes to 11.” Pitch perfect. 
  
DO THE RIGHT THING: The fusion of the personal and the political played out against the background of temporal and cultural clashes : races, ages, ethnicities, territories. The first movie (for me) to paint a visceral portrait of gentrification in a way that made me *feel* it (rather than just *understand* it).  
  
BLUE VELVET: Lynch at his most digestible (accessible?), and most pure (to me). That tracking shot into the grass? Dennis Hopper. Un chained. An incredible cross between pent up ugliness underscoring absolute beauty. A film full of rage and darkness but completely in control of itself. 
  
STRANGER THAN PARADISE: This was my introduction to a style of doing things that was of a singular voice while being visually astoundingly poetic (sorry, I never went to film school so I was late to discover the things that preceded this). 
  
SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE: Crisp and efficient and utterly in control of its craft while also being lurid and dark and always involving. I loved the tension of the combination of being invited deep in while also being held at arm’s length.  
  
E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL. Sorry, but.. yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever gasped as loudly  as I did when the bikes went up in the air for the first time. I mean, you gotta hand it to the guy.. 
  
FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH: I don’t think Bill & Ted would have existed had Jeff Spicoli not existed first – though in truth, Bill & Ted would’ve gotten the shit kicked out of them by Jeff Spicoli. Also, it was the first high school movie that seemed, at the time, to me, like it represented actual high school (as opposed to all those other risible teen sex farces of the 80’s).  
  
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: I don’t know if this qualifies as a good reason for being on this list, but I wanted in line from 5 am to see the 2:20 AM performance at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood only to have, as we were just walking into the theater, someone drive by on Sunset Boulevard and scream at the top of his lungs “DARTH VADER IS LUKE’S FATHER.” 
  
10. HONORABLE MENTION (determined by the fact that these are the films that I stayed in the theater and watched a second time immediately after): GREGORY’S GIRL, AIRPLANE!, MIDNIGHT RUN, RIVER’S EDGE, FULL METAL JACKET, HEATHERS, BLOOD SIMPLE, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, BROADCAST NEWS,MODERN ROMANCE, THE ROAD WARRIOR, PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, WINGS OF DESIRE, BRAZIL, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK 

Celine Song, writer, director (“Past Lives”)

Amadeus 
Broadcast News 
Dead Poets Society 
Grave of the Fireflies 
Come and See 
Ordinary People 
Who Framed Roger Rabbit 
My Dinner with Andre 
When Harry Met Sally 
Cinema Paradiso 

Katie Spencer, production designer (“Barbie”)

Dangerous Liaisons 
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
The Elephant Man
Fanny and Alexander
Airplane!
Aliens
An American Werewolf in London
Cinema Paradiso
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Blue Velvet

Goran Stolevski, writer, director (“Of an Age”)

1. Ran 
2. Mon oncle d’Amerique 
3. The Purple Rose of Cairo 
4. Who Framed Roger Rabbit 
5. Fanny and Alexander 
6. Hannah and Her Sisters 
7. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial 
8. Wings of Desire 
9. Raging Bull  
10. A Fish Called Wanda 
  
With super, super-honorable mentions: Dekalog, Do the Right Thing, Chocolat, The Aviator’s Wife, Another Woman, A City of Sadness, Law of Desire, Dangerous Liaisons, Stranger Than Paradise 

Sophia Takal, writer, director (“Black Christmas”)

When Harry Met Sally 
They All Laughed 
A Nos Amours 
Down & Out in Beverly Hills 
Do the Right Thing 
Stakeout 
The World According to Garp 
Hannah and Her Sisters 
The Scorsese &  Coppolla films in New York Stories 
Beverly Hills Cop 

Sandi Tan, director (“Shirkers”)

Blue Velvet 
Crimes and Misdemeanors 
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure 
Stand By Me 
Rouge (Stanley Kwan) 
Days of Being Wild (WKW)  
A Time to Live, A Time to Die (HHH)  
Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars (Sammo Hung) 
Blood Simple 
Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee) 

Clement Virgo, writer, director (“Brother”)

1-Raging Bull – Martin Scorsese (1981) 
2-Ran – Akira Kurosawa (1985) 
3-Do The Right Thing – Spike Lee (1989) 
4-Come And See – Elem Klimov (1985) 
5-Blue Velvet – David Lynch (1986) 
6-Die Hard – John McTiernan (1988) 
7-E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Steven Spielberg – (1982) 
8-Rumble Fish – Francis Ford Coppola (1983)  
9-Salaam Bombay – Mira Nair (1988) 
10-The Shining – Stanley Kubrick (1980) 

Molly Manning Walker, writer, director (“How to Have Sex”)

E.T 
Paris, Texas  
The Warriors (know it’s 1979)  
Dead Poet Society  
The Thin Blue Line  
Flashdance 
Airplane  
Big  
Back To The Future  
Raising Arizona 

Wayne Wang, writer, director (“Chan Is Missing”)

(in no particular order) 

Tampopo
The Elephant Man
The Shining
Blue Velvet
Wings of Desire
Ran
Reds
Blade Runner

Lana Wilson, director (“Miss Americana”)

“Ariel” 
“Broadcast News” 
“A City of Sadness” 
“Journeys from Berlin/1971” 
“Lost in America” 
“The Sacrifice” 
“Tongues Untied” 
“Veronika Voss” 
“Where is the Friend’s House?” 
“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” 

Edgar Wright, writer, director (“Last Night in Soho”)

Making any objective list of ‘best’ films is foolish. I couldn’t even begin to do a top 10 of the 1980’s, so I copped out with a list of 40 films that are favourites to me. I also didn’t include some films I’ve seen more recently that I’ve loved or been astounded by, (Shoah, Ran, Come And See, Where Is The Friend’s House, Fanny & Alexander, and many more). Forgive me. 

Here, instead, is my list of formative favourites in chronological order, that I still return to for inspiration and enjoyment. Pick any 10 you want.

AIRPLANE! 
THE BLUES BROTHERS 
DRESSED TO KILL 
THE ELEPHANT MAN 
THE FOG 
RAGING BULL 
AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON 
BLOW OUT 
MAD MAX 2 (THE ROAD WARRIOR) 
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK 
BLADE RUNNER 
E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL 
THE KING OF COMEDY  
THE THING 
RISKY BUSINESS 
GREMLINS 
STOP MAKING SENSE 
THE TERMINATOR 
THIS IS SPINAL TAP 
AFTER HOURS 
BACK TO THE FUTURE 
BRAZIL 
PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE 
POLICE STORY 
THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO 
ALIENS 
BLUE VELVET 
FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF 
THE FLY  
SOMETHING WILD  
EVIL DEAD 2  
RAISING ARIZONA 
ROBOCOP 
WITHNAIL & I 
AKIRA  
DIE HARD 
MIDNIGHT RUN 
THE VANISHING  
THE KILLER  
DO THE RIGHT THING 
 
BONUS 10 MASTERPIECE TV FILMS AS A CHEAT:

DEKALOG