Best Movies of the 1980s
by The_Listener_Canon | created - 14 Jul 2011 | updated - 8 months ago | Public1980: 9 1981: 2* 1982: 5 1983: 4 1984: 8 1985: 6 1986: 4 1987: 3 1988: 10** 1989: 5
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1. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
PG | 124 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
After the Rebel Alliance are overpowered by the Empire, Luke Skywalker begins his Jedi training with Yoda, while his friends are pursued across the galaxy by Darth Vader and bounty hunter Boba Fett.
Director: Irvin Kershner | Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams
Votes: 1,386,487 | Gross: $290.48M
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
PG | 115 min | Action, Adventure
In 1936, archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, John Rhys-Davies
Votes: 1,042,031 | Gross: $248.16M
3. Raging Bull (1980)
R | 129 min | Biography, Drama, Sport
The life of boxer Jake LaMotta, whose violence and temper that led him to the top in the ring destroyed his life outside of it.
Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci, Frank Vincent
Votes: 382,217 | Gross: $23.38M
4. Blade Runner (1982)
R | 117 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A blade runner must pursue and terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator.
Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
Votes: 827,274 | Gross: $32.87M
5. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
R | 229 min | Crime, Drama
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan 35 years later, where he must once again confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.
Director: Sergio Leone | Stars: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Treat Williams
Votes: 379,640 | Gross: $5.32M
6. Paris, Texas (1984)
R | 145 min | Drama
Travis Henderson, an aimless drifter who has been missing for four years, wanders out of the desert and must reconnect with society, himself, his life, and his family.
Director: Wim Wenders | Stars: Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, Sam Berry
Votes: 119,523 | Gross: $2.18M
7. Back to the Future (1985)
PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown.
Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover
Votes: 1,313,139 | Gross: $210.61M
8. Come and See (1985)
Not Rated | 142 min | Drama, Thriller, War
After finding an old rifle, a young boy joins the Soviet resistance movement against ruthless German forces and experiences the horrors of World War II.
Director: Elem Klimov | Stars: Aleksey Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Liubomiras Laucevicius, Vladas Bagdonas
Votes: 97,690
9. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Not Rated | 89 min | Animation, Drama, War
A young boy and his little sister struggle to survive in Japan during World War II.
Director: Isao Takahata | Stars: Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, Akemi Yamaguchi, Yoshiko Shinohara
Votes: 311,841
10. A City of Sadness (1989)
157 min | Drama, History
The story of a family embroiled in the "White Terror" that was wrought on the Taiwanese people by the Kuomintang government after their arrival from mainland China in the late 1940s.
Director: Hsiao-Hsien Hou | Stars: Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Shu-Fen Hsin, Sung-Young Chen, Jack Kao
Votes: 6,125
11. Airplane! (1980)
PG | 88 min | Comedy
After the crew becomes sick with food poisoning, a neurotic ex-fighter pilot must safely land a commercial airplane full of passengers.
Directors: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker | Stars: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Votes: 262,341 | Gross: $83.40M
12. The Blues Brothers (1980)
R | 133 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy
Jake Blues rejoins with his brother Elwood after being released from prison, but the duo has just days to reunite their old R&B band and save the Catholic home where the two were raised, outrunning the police as they tear through Chicago.
Director: John Landis | Stars: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Cab Calloway, John Candy
Votes: 215,595 | Gross: $57.23M
13. The Elephant Man (1980)
PG | 124 min | Biography, Drama
A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man who is mistreated while scraping a living as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of kindness, intelligence and sophistication.
Director: David Lynch | Stars: Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud
Votes: 259,776
14. Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980)
PG | 162 min | Drama, History, War
A petty thief with an utter resemblance to a samurai warlord is hired as the lord's double. When the warlord later dies the thief is forced to take up arms in his place.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ken'ichi Hagiwara, Jinpachi Nezu
Votes: 38,448
15. The Last Metro (1980)
PG | 131 min | Drama, Romance, War
In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Germans while doing both of their jobs.
Director: François Truffaut | Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Poiret, Andréa Ferréol
Votes: 15,932
16. My American Uncle (1980)
PG | 125 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
The intersecting stories of three people who face difficult choices in life-changing situations are used to illustrate the theories espoused by Henri Laborit about human behavior and the relationship between the self and society.
Director: Alain Resnais | Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Nicole Garcia, Roger Pierre, Nelly Borgeaud
Votes: 6,898
17. The Shining (1980)
R | 146 min | Drama, Horror
A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers
Votes: 1,112,117 | Gross: $44.02M
18. Das Boot (1981)
R | 149 min | Drama, War
A German U-boat stalks the frigid waters of the North Atlantic as its young crew experience the sheer terror and claustrophobic life of a submariner in World War II.
Director: Wolfgang Petersen | Stars: Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, Klaus Wennemann, Hubertus Bengsch
Votes: 265,637 | Gross: $11.49M
19. E.T. (1982)
PG | 115 min | Adventure, Family, Sci-Fi
A troubled child summons the courage to help a friendly alien escape from Earth and return to his home planet.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Peter Coyote, Dee Wallace
Votes: 439,776 | Gross: $435.11M
20. Fanny and Alexander (1982)
R | 188 min | Drama
Two young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies and tragedies of their lively and affectionate theatrical family, the Ekdahls.
Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Bertil Guve, Pernilla Allwin, Kristina Adolphson, Börje Ahlstedt
Votes: 67,870 | Gross: $4.97M
21. Fitzcarraldo (1982)
PG | 158 min | Adventure, Drama
The story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an extremely determined man who intends to build an opera house in the middle of a jungle.
Director: Werner Herzog | Stars: Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale, José Lewgoy, Miguel Ángel Fuentes
Votes: 38,782
22. The King of Comedy (1982)
PG | 109 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
A passionate yet unsuccessful comedian stalks and kidnaps his idol to take the spotlight for himself.
Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Diahnne Abbott, Sandra Bernhard
Votes: 119,812 | Gross: $2.50M
23. L'Argent (1983)
Not Rated | 85 min | Crime, Drama
A counterfeit bill that starts off as a schoolboy prank leads to incarceration and violence.
Director: Robert Bresson | Stars: Christian Patey, Sylvie Van den Elsen, Michel Briguet, Vincent Risterucci
Votes: 11,869
24. Local Hero (1983)
PG | 111 min | Comedy, Drama
An American oil company has plans for a new refinery and sends someone to Scotland to buy up an entire village, but things don't go as expected.
Director: Bill Forsyth | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Peter Riegert, Fulton Mackay, Denis Lawson
Votes: 26,846 | Gross: $5.90M
25. Nostalghia (1983)
Not Rated | 125 min | Drama
A Russian poet and his interpreter travel to Italy researching the life of an 18th-century composer, and instead meet a ruminative madman who tells the poet how the world may be saved.
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Oleg Yankovskiy, Erland Josephson, Domiziana Giordano, Patrizia Terreno
Votes: 30,212 | Gross: $0.01M
26. Videodrome (1983)
R | 87 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A programmer at a Toronto TV station that specializes in adult entertainment searches for the producers of a dangerous and bizarre broadcast.
Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: James Woods, Debbie Harry, Sonja Smits, Peter Dvorsky
Votes: 103,580 | Gross: $2.12M
27. Amadeus (1984)
R | 160 min | Biography, Drama, Music
The life, success and troubles of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as told by Antonio Salieri, the contemporaneous composer who was deeply jealous of Mozart's talent and claimed to have murdered him.
Director: Milos Forman | Stars: F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Roy Dotrice
Votes: 430,173 | Gross: $51.97M
28. Ghostbusters (1984)
PG | 105 min | Action, Comedy, Fantasy
Three parapsychologists forced out of their university funding set up shop as a unique ghost removal service in New York City, attracting frightened yet skeptical customers.
Director: Ivan Reitman | Stars: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis
Votes: 452,233 | Gross: $238.63M
29. Love Streams (1984)
PG-13 | 141 min | Drama
Two closely bound, emotionally wounded souls reunite after years apart.
Director: John Cassavetes | Stars: Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, Diahnne Abbott, Seymour Cassel
Votes: 6,676
30. Stranger Than Paradise (1984)
R | 89 min | Comedy, Drama
A New Yorker's life is thrown into a tailspin when his younger cousin surprise-visits him, starting a strange, unpredictable adventure.
Director: Jim Jarmusch | Stars: John Lurie, Eszter Balint, Richard Edson, Cecillia Stark
Votes: 40,865 | Gross: $2.44M
31. The Terminator (1984)
R | 107 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A human soldier is sent from 2029 to 1984 to stop an almost indestructible cyborg killing machine, sent from the same year, which has been programmed to execute a young woman whose unborn son is the key to humanity's future salvation.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Paul Winfield
Votes: 928,692 | Gross: $38.40M
32. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
R | 82 min | Comedy, Music
Spinal Tap, one of England's loudest bands, is chronicled by film director Marty DiBergi on what proves to be a fateful tour.
Director: Rob Reiner | Stars: Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Kimberly Stringer
Votes: 148,096 | Gross: $4.74M
33. After Hours (I) (1985)
R | 97 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
An ordinary word processor has the worst night of his life after he agrees to visit a girl in Soho he met that evening at a coffee shop.
Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom, Tommy Chong
Votes: 81,713 | Gross: $10.60M
34. Brazil (1985)
R | 132 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A bureaucrat in a dystopic society becomes an enemy of the state as he pursues the woman of his dreams.
Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond
Votes: 212,312 | Gross: $9.93M
35. My Life as a Dog (1985)
Unrated | 101 min | Drama, Comedy
In the late '50s, young Ingemar learns a lot about life and himself when he is sent away from his sick mother to live with his aunt and uncle in a town full of eccentrics.
Director: Lasse Hallström | Stars: Anton Glanzelius, Tomas von Brömssen, Anki Lidén, Melinda Kinnaman
Votes: 22,671 | Gross: $8.35M
36. Ran (1985)
R | 160 min | Action, Drama, War
In Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other...and him.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryû
Votes: 137,031 | Gross: $4.14M
37. Aliens (1986)
R | 137 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Decades after surviving the Nostromo incident, Ellen Ripley is sent out to re-establish contact with a terraforming colony but finds herself battling the Alien Queen and her offspring.
Director: James Cameron | Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser
Votes: 766,952 | Gross: $85.16M
38. Blue Velvet (1986)
R | 120 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child.
Director: David Lynch | Stars: Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern
Votes: 216,819 | Gross: $8.55M
39. The Fly (1986)
R | 96 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
A brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong.
Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel
Votes: 202,905 | Gross: $40.46M
40. The Sacrifice (1986)
PG | 149 min | Drama
At the dawn of World War III, a man searches for a way to restore peace to the world and finds he must give something in return.
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Allan Edwall, Guðrún Gísladóttir
Votes: 31,140 | Gross: $0.30M
41. Where Is the Friend's House? (1987)
Not Rated | 83 min | Drama, Family
Eight-year-old Ahmed has mistakenly taken his friend Mohammad's notebook. He wants to return it, or else his friend will be expelled from school. The boy determinedly sets out to find Mohammad's home in the neighbouring village.
Director: Abbas Kiarostami | Stars: Babek Ahmed Poor, Ahmed Ahmed Poor, Khodabakhsh Defaei, Iran Outari
Votes: 18,787
42. Wings of Desire (1987)
PG-13 | 128 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance
An angel tires of his purely ethereal life of merely overseeing the human activity of Berlin's residents, and longs for the tangible joys of physical existence when he falls in love with a mortal.
Director: Wim Wenders | Stars: Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander, Curt Bois
Votes: 77,400 | Gross: $3.33M
43. Withnail & I (1987)
R | 107 min | Comedy, Drama
In 1969, two substance-abusing, unemployed actors retreat to the countryside for a holiday that proves disastrous.
Director: Bruce Robinson | Stars: Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths, Ralph Brown
Votes: 48,232 | Gross: $1.54M
44. Akira (1988)
R | 124 min | Animation, Action, Drama
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath who can only be stopped by a teenager, his gang of biker friends and a group of psychics.
Director: Katsuhiro Ôtomo | Stars: Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama, Tesshô Genda
Votes: 206,101 | Gross: $0.55M
45. Cinema Paradiso (1988)
R | 174 min | Drama, Romance
A filmmaker recalls his childhood when falling in love with the pictures at the cinema of his home village and forms a deep friendship with the cinema's projectionist.
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore | Stars: Philippe Noiret, Enzo Cannavale, Antonella Attili, Isa Danieli
Votes: 284,386 | Gross: $11.99M
46. Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
R | 119 min | Drama, Romance
A scheming widow and her manipulative ex-lover make a bet regarding the corruption of a recently married woman.
Director: Stephen Frears | Stars: Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer, Swoosie Kurtz
Votes: 75,494 | Gross: $34.70M
47. Die Hard (1988)
R | 132 min | Action, Thriller
A New York City police officer tries to save his estranged wife and several others taken hostage by terrorists during a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles.
Director: John McTiernan | Stars: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald VelJohnson
Votes: 950,194 | Gross: $83.01M
48. My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
G | 86 min | Animation, Comedy, Family
When two girls move to the country to be near their ailing mother, they have adventures with the wondrous forest spirits who live nearby.
Director: Hayao Miyazaki | Stars: Hitoshi Takagi, Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, Shigesato Itoi
Votes: 382,087 | Gross: $1.11M
49. A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Not Rated | 84 min | Crime, Drama
A soon-to-be lawyer crosses his path with a taxi driver and a young sinister man.
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski | Stars: Miroslaw Baka, Krzysztof Globisz, Jan Tesarz, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz
Votes: 22,529
50. Time of the Gypsies (1988)
R | 142 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
In this luminous tale set in the area around Sarajevo and in Italy, Perhan, an engaging young Romany (gypsy) with telekinetic powers, is seduced by the quick-cash world of petty crime, which threatens to destroy him and those he loves.
Director: Emir Kusturica | Stars: Davor Dujmovic, Bora Todorovic, Ljubica Adzovic, Husnija Hasimovic
Votes: 32,871 | Gross: $0.28M
51. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
PG | 104 min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy
When a cartoon rabbit is accused of murder, he enlists the help of a burnt out private investigator to prove his innocence.
Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Bob Hoskins, Christopher Lloyd, Joanna Cassidy, Charles Fleischer
Votes: 217,898 | Gross: $156.45M
52. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)
R | 88 min | Comedy, Drama
A television actress encounters a variety of eccentric characters after embarking on a journey to discover why her lover abruptly left her.
Director: Pedro Almodóvar | Stars: Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Julieta Serrano, Rossy de Palma
Votes: 46,684 | Gross: $7.18M
53. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
PG-13 | 104 min | Comedy, Drama
An ophthalmologist's mistress threatens to reveal their affair to his wife while a married documentary filmmaker is infatuated with another woman.
Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Martin Landau, Woody Allen, Bill Bernstein, Claire Bloom
Votes: 61,100 | Gross: $18.25M
54. Do the Right Thing (1989)
R | 120 min | Comedy, Drama
On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.
Director: Spike Lee | Stars: Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson
Votes: 112,964 | Gross: $27.55M
55. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
PG-13 | 127 min | Action, Adventure
In 1938, after his father goes missing while pursuing the Holy Grail, Indiana Jones finds himself up against the Nazis again to stop them from obtaining its powers.
Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Alison Doody, Denholm Elliott
Votes: 815,182 | Gross: $197.17M
56. My Left Foot (1989)
R | 103 min | Biography, Drama
Christy Brown, born with cerebral palsy, learns to paint and write with his only controllable limb - his left foot.
Director: Jim Sheridan | Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Alison Whelan, Kirsten Sheridan
Votes: 80,236 | Gross: $14.74M
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