Pastel Coke, Bad Hair and Synth Soundtracks: Some Fine 1980's Movies You May Have Forgot
by seanmrcondon | created - 07 Oct 2011 | updated - 07 Oct 2011 | PublicThe 1980 were for film much like they were for music - not generally considered a great decade in the grand sweep of things. There were, however, many wonderful, entertaining errr....entertainments "mounted". Sometimes you just have to get past the Jan Hammer music.
- Instant Watch Options
- Genres
- Movies or TV
- IMDb Rating
- In Theaters
- Release Year
- Keywords
1. Cutter's Way (1981)
R | 109 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
Richard spots a man dumping a body, and decides to expose the man he thinks is the culprit with his friend Alex Cutter.
Director: Ivan Passer | Stars: Jeff Bridges, John Heard, Lisa Eichhorn, Ann Dusenberry
Votes: 7,624 | Gross: $1.73M
2. The Morning After (1986)
R | 103 min | Crime, Mystery, Romance
A washed up, alcoholic actress who is prone to blackouts wakes up next to a murdered man. Did she kill him and, if not, is she in danger?
Director: Sidney Lumet | Stars: Jane Fonda, Jeff Bridges, Raul Julia, Diane Salinger
Votes: 7,423 | Gross: $25.15M
3. The Boost (1988)
R | 95 min | Drama, Romance
A real estate developer who enjoyed short-lived success seeks to regain his edge by using cocaine, but takes himself to new lows as he gets lost in the downward spiral of drug addiction.
Director: Harold Becker | Stars: James Woods, Sean Young, John Kapelos, Steven Hill
Votes: 2,442 | Gross: $0.78M
David Thomson called this one of the best films about ordinary people and money. It's a terrific movie, possibly Harold Becker's best and it contains two great lead performances from James Woods and Sean Young (remember Crazy Sean Young?). My favourite moment is on the commentary track (Woods & Becker) when Woods describes a late-night swim'n sex pool scene with Young as "one of those times an actor lives for."
4. American Gigolo (1980)
R | 117 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
A Los Angeles escort is accused of a murder which he did not commit.
Director: Paul Schrader | Stars: Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton, Hector Elizondo, Nina van Pallandt
Votes: 29,404 | Gross: $23.00M
More celebrated for its style and the emergence of Richard Gere as a bona fide star than for anything to do with the story (can anybody remember the plot?) Gigolo was nonetheless early evidence of super screenwriter Paul Schrader's ability to direct. For me, Schrader has never really blossomed as a director- his films are often too stagy and stiff, as if he were running acting workouts, but he's still one of my favourites and I loved the book Scrader on Schrader.
5. Atlantic City (1980)
R | 104 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster and the estranged wife of a pot dealer find themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs and danger.
Director: Louis Malle | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid, Michel Piccoli
Votes: 18,274
It's Louis Malle and Burt Lancaster - what more do I have to say? Burt was nominated -justly- for this role about a small-time chancer looking for that one big score in an Atlantic City that's eight years more decayed than it was in The King of Marvin Gardens. That being said, this is a movie that reeks of being Canadian. Check that supporting cast of Canucks.
6. Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)
R | 123 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller
A psychiatrist, living in Vienna, enters a torrid relationship with a married woman. When she ends up in the hospital from an overdose, an inspector becomes set on discovering the demise of their affair.
Director: Nicolas Roeg | Stars: Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell, Harvey Keitel, Denholm Elliott
Votes: 9,607
Forget Performance, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Don't Look Now and Walkabout: THIS is Nic Roeg's masterwork. A heartbreaking tale of sexual obsession set in wonderful Venice and containing what should have been an Oscar nominated performance by Theresa Russell.
7. Loulou (1980)
TV-14 | 101 min | Drama, Romance
A bored wife leaves her husband for an unemployed, petty criminal.
Director: Maurice Pialat | Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Depardieu, Guy Marchand, Humbert Balsan
Votes: 3,694
Are you kidding me? Maurice Pialat, Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu in a delicious movie that Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw described as "effortlessly watchable". If you have never seen a Maurice Pialat film, do yourself a favour. They called him the French Cassavetes, but don't believe it - he was much, much better than that.
8. Melvin and Howard (1980)
R | 95 min | Comedy, Drama
The story of hard-luck Melvin E. Dummar, who claimed to have received a will naming him an heir to the fortune of Howard Hughes.
Director: Jonathan Demme | Stars: Paul Le Mat, Jason Robards, Elizabeth Cheshire, Mary Steenburgen
Votes: 5,296 | Gross: $4.31M
A charming slice of what Jonathan Demme was capable of eleven years before he helmed arguably the greatest thriller ever made. Deserved Oscars were copped by Mrs.Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, and screenwriter Bo Goldman, but the real thrill for me was seeing the "Can't Say No Girl", the great, GREAT Gloria Grahame (Bogey's near saviour in In A Lonely Place and an Oscar winner herself) in one of her last roles.
9. The Stunt Man (1980)
R | 131 min | Action, Comedy, Drama
A fugitive stumbles onto a movie set just when they need a new stunt man, takes the job as a way to hide out and falls for the leading lady while facing off with his manipulative director.
Director: Richard Rush | Stars: Peter O'Toole, Steve Railsback, Barbara Hershey, Allen Garfield
Votes: 10,441 | Gross: $7.06M
Just good fun with the dude who played Charles Manson on tv and the dude who played Lawrence of Arabia....on the big screen.
10. Heaven's Gate (1980)
R | 219 min | Adventure, Drama, Western
During the Johnson County War in 1890 Wyoming, a sheriff born into wealth does his best to protect immigrant farmers from rich cattle interests.
Director: Michael Cimino | Stars: Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston
Votes: 17,127 | Gross: $3.48M
Please give this another chance. Grab the director's cut dvd (cheap, and the only version you are likely to find) and marvel at the epic sweep of Crazy Michael Cimino's vision. The cinematography and music are *beep* epic.......you could watch a thousand films and not come across such a perfect marriage of the two. Kristofferson, Chris Walken and Isabelle Huppert form the central triangle. Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Joseph Cotten, Richard Masur and Mickey Rourke, among others, round out a stellar cast. The book, Final Cut, and the documentary (available on youtube, but not dvd) both make significant additions to the story, a little bit like a homemade Criterion release.....what we'll have to do with until the CC actually gets around to releasing this neglected MASTERPIECE.
11. Mephisto (1981)
Unrated | 146 min | Drama
In early-1930s Germany, a passionate stage actor faces a dilemma: renounce his apolitical stance and comply with the Reich's doctrine, or face oblivion. But, Faustian bargains never end well. What is the price of success?
Director: István Szabó | Stars: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Ildikó Bánsági, Krystyna Janda, Rolf Hoppe
Votes: 11,581
A killer performance from Klaus Maria Brandauer in a very Faustian tale involving the Nazi's and the theater.
12. Prince of the City (1981)
R | 167 min | Crime, Drama
A New York City narcotics detective reluctantly agrees to cooperate with a special commission investigating police corruption, and soon realises he's in over his head, and nobody can be trusted.
Director: Sidney Lumet | Stars: Treat Williams, Jerry Orbach, Richard Foronjy, Don Billett
Votes: 9,508 | Gross: $8.12M
It's one of Sidney Lumet's triumphs: epic in length, finely detailed and featuring a strong central performance from Treat Williams. It's pretty tough slogging at times, though, as Super Sidney never tired of piling dialogue on top of conversation. If only they had used a few more extras and fleshed out NYC a bit. The only other time I've seen a big city so underpopulated in (a non sci-fi) film was in David Mamet's overrated Homicide where the ten-buck acting budget was split between William H. Macy and Joe Mantegna.
13. Reds (1981)
PG | 195 min | Biography, Drama, History
A radical American journalist becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia, and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.
Director: Warren Beatty | Stars: Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Edward Herrmann, Jerzy Kosinski
Votes: 24,699 | Gross: $40.38M
Ok, you probably haven't forgotten this one. After Warren Beatty had screened his Bolshie epic for a select Hollywood audience one of his waterboys noticed that Paul Schrader had slept through much of the picture. Upon informing the lisping Calvinist that Beatty would be none too pleased with this, reminding PS that Warren had put something like fifty years of his life into the project Schrader retorted by saying that "Yeah, but he's just taken away over three hours of my life and my time is infinitely more important to me than Warren's is." Haha.
14. True Confessions (1981)
R | 108 min | Crime, Drama
A worldly ambitious monsignor clashes with his older brother, a cynical Los Angeles homicide detective who is investigating the brutal murder of a young prostitute.
Director: Ulu Grosbard | Stars: Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall, Charles Durning, Kenneth McMillan
Votes: 8,851 | Gross: $10.20M
One of my favourites from the decade. An unjustly neglected film that has absolutely everything going for it. It plays like a precursor to LA Confidential and contains quite possibly the finest Robert Duvall performance on record. A quagmire of corruption in El Lay.....cops, crooks, contractors, hookers......and priests. Charles Durning is menacing, Burgess Meredith is Burgess Meredith and De Niro, well...he's a bit tough to buy as a Catholic priest, but what the hell, it's a great movie.
15. Lola (1981)
R | 115 min | Drama, Romance
A seductive cabaret singer-prostitute pits a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, launching an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything-and everyone-is for sale.
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder | Stars: Barbara Sukowa, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Mario Adorf, Matthias Fuchs
Votes: 6,819
16. To Our Loves (1983)
R | 99 min | Drama, Romance
An erratic young woman's family desperately tries to prevent her increasingly erotic ways.
Director: Maurice Pialat | Stars: Sandrine Bonnaire, Maurice Pialat, Christophe Odent, Dominique Besnehard
Votes: 7,258
I'm at a loss for words. Maurice Pialat, again, and a fifteen year old colt named Sandrine Bonnaire. That's all you really need to know.
17. The Right Stuff (1983)
PG | 193 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
The U.S. space program's development from the breaking of the sound barrier to selection of the Mercury 7 astronauts, from a group of test pilots with a more seat-of-the-pants approach than the program's more cautious engineers preferred.
Director: Philip Kaufman | Stars: Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid
Votes: 65,311 | Gross: $21.50M
Phil Kaufman's adaptation of Tom Wolfe's terrific book about the space guys was a box office disappointment that remains one of THE very best American films made in the 1980's. Or any other decade for that matter. I don't think that PK made the flyboys heroic enough for the milky-bland tastes of middle America, but I, for one, am glad he didn't.
18. Silkwood (1983)
R | 131 min | Biography, Drama, History
A worker at a plutonium processing plant is purposefully contaminated, psychologically tortured and possibly murdered to prevent her from exposing worker safety violations at the plant.
Director: Mike Nichols | Stars: Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher, Craig T. Nelson
Votes: 22,181 | Gross: $35.62M
19. Dance with a Stranger (1985)
R | 96 min | Biography, Crime, Drama
A stormy relationship, complicated by the strictures of 1950s social class and gender roles, ends in death. Based on the life of Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain.
Director: Mike Newell | Stars: Miranda Richardson, Rupert Everett, Ian Holm, Matthew Carroll
Votes: 2,970 | Gross: $2.17M
The cinematic debut of a force of nature known as Miranda Richardson, in the tragic tale of Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain.
20. Plenty (1985)
R | 121 min | Drama
A young Englishwoman spends twenty years to make whatever kind of life for herself, at the expense of others around her, in post-World War II England.
Director: Fred Schepisi | Stars: Meryl Streep, Sam Neill, André Maranne, Charles Dance
Votes: 3,388 | Gross: $6.15M
21. Something Wild (1986)
R | 114 min | Comedy, Crime, Romance
A free-spirited woman "kidnaps" a yuppie for a weekend of adventure. But the fun quickly takes a dangerous turn when her ex-convict husband shows up.
Director: Jonathan Demme | Stars: Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith, George 'Red' Schwartz, Leib Lensky
Votes: 21,053 | Gross: $8.36M
22.
Screen Two (1985–1998)
Episode:
The Firm
(1989)
TV-14 | 70 min | Drama
This is the story of rival "Firms" of football supporters, and how one man has a wish to team them up for the European Championships of 1988. However, when this is discussed, the opposing ... See full summary »
Director: Alan Clarke | Stars: Gary Oldman, Lesley Manville, Phil Davis, Andrew Wilde
Votes: 3,600
I'm not sure what is going on with that Diana Rigg thumbnail, but The Firm is an Alan Clarke (he of Scum fame) film about middle class football hooligans featuring a young and nasty Gary Oldman.
23. 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: 60,752 | Gross: $18.25M
Hardly a forgotten movie; indeed, it's frequently celebrated for being one of the Woodman's mid-period artistic triumphs. The man himself must love it because he virtually re-made it a few years ago with the entertaining, if less well-acted, Match Point. The Alan Alda sequences still make me howl.
24. Dead Calm (1989)
R | 96 min | Horror, Thriller
After a tragedy, John Ingram and his wife Rae are spending some time isolated at sea, when they come across a stranger who has abandoned a sinking ship.
Director: Phillip Noyce | Stars: Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, Billy Zane, Rod Mullinar
Votes: 43,647 | Gross: $7.83M
25. The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)
R | 114 min | Comedy, Drama, Music
The lives of two struggling musicians, who happen to be brothers, inevitably change when they team up with a beautiful, up-and-coming singer.
Director: Steve Kloves | Stars: Jeff Bridges, Michelle Pfeiffer, Beau Bridges, Ellie Raab
Votes: 25,818 | Gross: $18.10M
26. Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)
R | 100 min | Drama
A sexually repressed woman's husband is having an affair with her sister. The arrival of a visitor with a rather unusual fetish changes everything.
Director: Steven Soderbergh | Stars: James Spader, Andie MacDowell, Peter Gallagher, Laura San Giacomo
Votes: 59,395 | Gross: $24.74M
Steven Soderbergh's masterful, and legendary debut.
27. Four Friends (1981)
R | 114 min | Comedy, Drama
A group of four friends form strong bonds while in high school in the early 1960s, then desperately cling to that love during the turbulent counterculture movement and social upheavals that marked the end of the decade.
Director: Arthur Penn | Stars: Craig Wasson, Jodi Thelen, Michael Huddleston, Jim Metzler
Votes: 2,013
Arthur Penn's last good film.
28. 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: 38,530
29. Smash Palace (1981)
Not Rated | 108 min | Drama, Thriller
After the break-up of his marriage, a racing driver sets out to get back his daughter - at any cost.
Director: Roger Donaldson | Stars: Bruno Lawrence, Anna Maria Monticelli, Greer Robson-Kirk, Keith Aberdein
Votes: 1,165
30. Missing (1982)
PG | 122 min | Biography, Drama, History
When an idealistic American writer disappears during the Chilean coup d'état in September 1973, his wife and father try to find him.
Director: Costa-Gavras | Stars: Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea
Votes: 23,333 | Gross: $14.00M
31. Broadway Danny Rose (1984)
PG | 84 min | Comedy
In his attempts to reconcile a lounge singer with his mistress, a hapless talent agent is mistaken as her lover by a jealous gangster.
Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte, Sandy Baron
Votes: 26,930 | Gross: $10.60M
32. Tin Men (1987)
R | 112 min | Comedy, Drama
A minor car accident drives two rival aluminum-siding salesmen to the ridiculous extremes of man versus man in 1963 Baltimore.
Director: Barry Levinson | Stars: Richard Dreyfuss, Danny DeVito, Barbara Hershey, John Mahoney
Votes: 9,780 | Gross: $25.41M
33. Patty Hearst (1988)
R | 108 min | Biography, Drama
In the 1970s, Patricia Hearst is abducted by American revolutionaries, but eventually joins their cause instead.
Director: Paul Schrader | Stars: Natasha Richardson, William Forsythe, Ving Rhames, Frances Fisher
Votes: 2,343 | Gross: $1.22M
34. Chocolat (1988)
PG-13 | 105 min | Drama
A French woman returns to her childhood home in Cameroon - formerly a colonial outpost - where she's flooded by memories, particularly of Protée, her servant.
Director: Claire Denis | Stars: Isaach De Bankolé, Giulia Boschi, François Cluzet, Jean-Claude Adelin
Votes: 4,462 | Gross: $2.32M
35. Enemies, A Love Story (1989)
R | 119 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
A ghostwriter finds himself romantically involved with his current wife, a married woman and his long-vanished wife.
Director: Paul Mazursky | Stars: Ron Silver, Anjelica Huston, Lena Olin, Malgorzata Zajaczkowska
Votes: 2,570 | Gross: $7.75M
36. High Hopes (1988)
PG | 108 min | Comedy, Drama
The life of a working class couple living in London and their complicated relationships with other members of the family.
Director: Mike Leigh | Stars: Phil Davis, Ruth Sheen, Edna Doré, Philip Jackson
Votes: 5,779 | Gross: $1.19M
Tell Your Friends