Best Films of the 1980s

[womzilla]

Some time ago, for a reason I never found out, Matt Yglesias asked what were the ten best films of the 1980s. I spent a lot of time watching movies that decade, and it had a huge impression on me. I couldn't keep it to ten and instead posted a dozen:

• Blade Runner


• Brazil


• Dangerous Liasons


• Day of the Dead


• Do the Right Thing


• Full Metal Jacket


• Gallipoli


• Manhunter


• The Road Warrior


• Sherman's March


• This Is Spinal Tap


• Videodrome

There are many other superb films from that decade that might have made the list if I'd happened to think of them. Among them are:

• Amadeus


• Brother from Another Planet


• Dead Ringers


• Hollywood Shuffle


• Man Facing Southwest


• Ran


• Repo Man

One other that I'm going to have to add tentatively:

• A Long Day's Journey into Night (dir. Jonathan Miller)

This is tentative because it's a TV-film of a stage production which I saw live in its initial run at Duke University before it went to Broadway, but I've never actually seen the film. However, it's just come out on DVD, so I hope to see it soon.

That brings the list to twenty, which is a nice note on which to stop.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've seen 11 of those films, and while I enjoyed most of them (Gallipoli, which I found overblown and affected, was the exception), most either had mammoth flaws equalling their mammoth achievement (Blade Runner's voiceover, Brazil's character motivation, Full Metal Jacket's construction, and Amadeus's falsity to history), or were "small" films without pretension (Brother from Another Planet, Man Facing Southeast). I suppose Dangerous Liaisons, Road Warrior, and Spinal Tap - an odd trio - were the best-balanced. That leaves Do the Right Thing, a film about which I don't know what to say.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

The voice-over in Blade Runner was removed for the Director's Cut, I believe. (Additionally, a scene that I thought was critical was added back in.)