We ranked the 100 best movies of the ‘80s, and listed our favorite performances, scores, and anime of the decade. We interviewed Charles Burnett about his compromised masterpiece “My Brother’s Wedding,” Susan Seidelman about bringing a new kind of woman to the big screen, “Buddies” actor David Schachter about the first movie to tackle AIDS head-on, and went deep with Hal Hartley on the making of “The Unbelievable Truth.” Michael Giacchino waxing poetic on “Raiders of the Lost Ark?” Griffin Dunne reflecting on “After Hours?” The story of the Sundance Institute from the people who brought it to life? A true Day One exclusive.
We ran essays about the synth invasion of Hollywood scores, the uncomfortably comedic role that consent played in ’80s comedies, the birth of the steadicam, the ending of “Fatal Attraction,” and — of course — why “Streets of Fire” should’ve been the biggest rock musical of our lifetimes.
So now, as IndieWire’s ’80s Week begins to wind down, we thought we’d close things out by asking some of our favorite filmmakers to weigh in on the era that was and offer their picks for the best movies of the decade. The remit was simple: Send us a list of your 10 favorite films of the decade, ranked or unranked, annotated or not. The responses we got in return varied widely in both form and content, and we have, for the most part, presented them to you here exactly in the style in which we received them. Some people decided to play a bit fast and loose with the whole “top 10” of it all, and we honestly can’t blame them; our list had 100 movies on it, and it was a brutal process to even cut it down to that. Let it never be said again that the ’80s wasn’t a glorious time for cinema.
This article was published as part of IndieWire’s ‘80s Week. Visit our ‘80s Week hub page for more.
EXCERPT:
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 MAS*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.