Top 25 Films of 1984

by dde5 | created - 24 Jul 2014 | updated - 28 Nov 2015 | Public
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1. Paris, Texas (1984)

R | 145 min | Drama

81 Metascore

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: 119,199 | Gross: $2.18M

2. Boy Meets Girl (1984)

Not Rated | 100 min | Drama, Romance

Paris by night. Alex, 22, wants to become a filmmaker. He is fascinated by first times and his girlfriend, Florence, has just left him for his best friend, Thomas. First break-up, first ... See full summary »

Director: Leos Carax | Stars: Denis Lavant, Mireille Perrier, Carroll Brooks, Maïté Nahyr

Votes: 4,010

3. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

R | 82 min | Comedy, Music

92 Metascore

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: 147,429 | Gross: $4.74M

4. The Terminator (1984)

R | 107 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

84 Metascore

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: 924,892 | Gross: $38.40M

5. Amadeus (1984)

R | 160 min | Biography, Drama, Music

87 Metascore

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: 428,387 | Gross: $51.97M

6. 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: 6,641

7. Ghostbusters (1984)

PG | 105 min | Action, Comedy, Fantasy

71 Metascore

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: 450,720 | Gross: $238.63M

8. Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

R | 105 min | Action, Comedy, Crime

66 Metascore

A freewheeling Detroit cop pursuing a murder investigation finds himself dealing with the very different culture of Beverly Hills.

Director: Martin Brest | Stars: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Lisa Eilbacher

Votes: 203,545 | Gross: $234.76M

9. Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

R | 89 min | Comedy, Drama

86 Metascore

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: 40,684 | Gross: $2.44M

10. The Brother from Another Planet (1984)

R | 108 min | Comedy, Sci-Fi

70 Metascore

A mute alien with the appearance of a black human is chased by outer-space bounty hunters through the streets of Harlem.

Director: John Sayles | Stars: Joe Morton, Daryl Edwards, Rosanna Carter, Ray Ramirez

Votes: 6,571 | Gross: $3.70M

11. Broadway Danny Rose (1984)

PG | 84 min | Comedy

82 Metascore

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: 26,956 | Gross: $10.60M

12. Top Secret! (1984)

PG | 90 min | Comedy, Crime, Music

68 Metascore

An American rock and roll singer is invited to a cultural festival in East Germany in order to distract from a plot to destroy NATO submarines, but he accidentally becomes involved in a resistance plot to rescue an imprisoned scientist.

Directors: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker | Stars: Val Kilmer, Omar Sharif, Jeremy Kemp, Warren Clarke

Votes: 73,117 | Gross: $20.50M

13. Moscow on the Hudson (1984)

R | 115 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

67 Metascore

A Russian saxophonist visiting New York City with a USSR circus troupe suddenly decides to defect in Bloomingdale's.

Director: Paul Mazursky | Stars: Robin Williams, Maria Conchita Alonso, Cleavant Derricks, Alejandro Rey

Votes: 13,133 | Gross: $25.10M

14. Swing Shift (1984)

PG | 100 min | Drama, Romance, War

60 Metascore

A woman finds romance when she takes a job at an aircraft plant to help make ends meet after her husband goes off to war.

Director: Jonathan Demme | Stars: Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Christine Lahti, Fred Ward

Votes: 5,408 | Gross: $6.65M

15. Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

R | 90 min | Comedy

44 Metascore

At Adams College, a group of bullied outcasts and misfits resolve to fight back for their peace and self-respect.

Director: Jeff Kanew | Stars: Robert Carradine, Anthony Edwards, Timothy Busfield, Andrew Cassese

Votes: 58,398 | Gross: $40.90M

16. Repo Man (1984)

R | 92 min | Action, Comedy, Crime

82 Metascore

A young punk, recruited by a car repo agency, finds himself in pursuit of a Chevrolet Malibu with a huge, $20,000 bounty--and something otherworldly stashed in its trunk.

Director: Alex Cox | Stars: Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, Tracey Walter, Olivia Barash

Votes: 41,169 | Gross: $3.57M

17. Starman (1984)

PG | 115 min | Romance, Sci-Fi

70 Metascore

An alien takes the form of a young Wisconsin widow's husband and makes her drive him to his departure point in Arizona. Distrustful government agents, along with a more ambivalent scientist, give pursuit in hopes of intercepting them.

Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckel

Votes: 52,263 | Gross: $28.70M

18. The Cotton Club (1984)

R | 129 min | Crime, Drama, Music

68 Metascore

Meet the jazz musicians, dancers, owner, and guests (like gangster Dutch Schultz) of The Cotton Club in 1928-1930s Harlem.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, Diane Lane, Lonette McKee

Votes: 19,562 | Gross: $25.93M

19. Romancing the Stone (1984)

PG | 106 min | Action, Adventure, Comedy

63 Metascore

A mousy romance novelist sets off for Colombia to ransom her kidnapped sister, and soon finds herself in the middle of a dangerous adventure hunting for treasure with a mercenary rogue.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Danny DeVito, Zack Norman

Votes: 103,397 | Gross: $76.57M

20. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

R | 229 min | Crime, Drama

75 Metascore

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: 378,009 | Gross: $5.32M

Need to rewatch

21. The Element of Crime (1984)

Not Rated | 104 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller

66 Metascore

A cop in a dystopian Europe investigates a serial killings suspect using controversial methods written by his now disgraced former mentor.

Director: Lars von Trier | Stars: Michael Elphick, Esmond Knight, Me Me Lai, Jerold Wells

Votes: 11,296

need to rewatch

22. The Killing Fields (1984)

R | 141 min | Biography, Drama, History

76 Metascore

A journalist is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody 'Year Zero' cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million 'undesirable' civilians.

Director: Roland Joffé | Stars: Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, John Malkovich, Julian Sands

Votes: 59,269 | Gross: $34.70M

23. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

R | 91 min | Horror

76 Metascore

Teenager Nancy Thompson must uncover the dark truth concealed by her parents after she and her friends become targets of the spirit of a serial killer with a bladed glove in their dreams, in which if they die, it kills them in real life.

Director: Wes Craven | Stars: Heather Langenkamp, Johnny Depp, Robert Englund, John Saxon

Votes: 262,724 | Gross: $25.50M

24. Body Double (1984)

R | 114 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery

69 Metascore

A young actor's obsession with spying on a beautiful woman who lives nearby leads to a baffling series of events with drastic consequences.

Director: Brian De Palma | Stars: Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry, Deborah Shelton

Votes: 38,271 | Gross: $8.80M

25. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984)

PG | 103 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

70 Metascore

Adventurer, brain surgeon, rock musician Buckaroo Banzai and his crime-fighting team, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, must stop evil alien invaders from the eighth dimension who are planning to conquer Earth.

Director: W.D. Richter | Stars: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum

Votes: 29,381 | Gross: $6.25M

Need to rewatch



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