Best 80s Movies
Settle it: two at a time →The best 80s movies collected here run from 1980 to 1989 and stick to theatrical features that shaped the decade rather than curiosities that merely date from it. Entries qualify on some mix of box office scale, craft that changed how films got made, and images still quoted forty years later. The top of the list leans toward titles that managed both at once, from Spielberg's adventure blockbusters to Cameron's science fiction and the Hughes teen pictures that set the studio template.
Ranked by 1 person · 15 items
How the opening order was chosen
The opening order is the order I added the items in. Every ballot moves the ranking from there.
A sensible order starts with films that were enormous on release and are still legible now, which is why Spielberg and Zemeckis crowd the top. The argument begins just underneath. The Empire Strikes Back and Blade Runner carry the deeper influence on everything that followed, while Ghostbusters and Ferris Bueller carry the wider reach, so ranking by influence lifts the science fiction and ranking by reach lifts the comedies.
Back to the Future is first on the one ballot cast so far.
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Eric Stoltz shot for weeks as Marty McFly before Michael J. Fox replaced him and started working nights and weekends around his Family Ties schedule. Robert Zemeckis' time-travel comedy still finished as 1985's biggest domestic earner and won the Academy Award for Best Sound Effects Editing.
Irvin Kershner directed the 1980 sequel from a screenplay by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, and it took the Academy Award for Best Sound plus a Special Achievement Award for visual effects. It closes with Han in carbonite and Luke maimed, the bleakest ending in the original trilogy.
A Dan Aykroyd script so elaborate that Harold Ramis rewrote it into something producible became Ivan Reitman's 1984 hit, grounding the hauntings in a shabby Manhattan startup. Ray Parker Jr.'s theme topped the Billboard Hot 100, and Oscar nominations followed for visual effects and original song.
Released in 1986, John Hughes' comedy runs on Chicago location work: the Art Institute, Wrigley Field, and the Von Steuben Day parade where Ferris takes a float for 'Twist and Shout.' Matthew Broderick narrates straight to camera, while Alan Ruck's Cameron carries the actual anxiety.
Steven Spielberg's 1982 film won four Academy Awards from nine nominations, John Williams' score among them. It overtook Star Wars as the highest-grossing release ever and held that record until Jurassic Park in 1993. The bicycle flight across the moon later became Amblin's logo.
Trading Ridley Scott's haunted-house dread for Colonial Marines and heavy ordnance, James Cameron's 1986 sequel won Academy Awards for visual effects and sound effects editing. Sigourney Weaver's Best Actress nomination was a rarity for the genre, and the finale pits Ripley's power loader against the Queen.
Adapted from Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the 1982 Ridley Scott film opened weakly against E.T. and returned as the 1992 Director's Cut and the 2007 Final Cut. Its Oscar nominations came in art direction and visual effects, with Syd Mead's design work doing much of the heavy lifting.
Roderick Thorp's novel Nothing Lasts Forever became John McTiernan's 1988 thriller, which drew four Academy Award nominations, all technical. Fox Plaza in Century City played Nakatomi Plaza, and Alan Rickman made his film debut as Hans Gruber opposite a television actor nobody expected to carry an action picture.
The 1981 Spielberg and Lucas adventure led the year's box office and won four Academy Awards plus a Special Achievement Award for sound effects editing. Harrison Ford took the part after Magnum, P.I. held Tom Selleck, and Ford's illness on the Tunisia location cut the Cairo swordsman gag short.
Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon drew an Academy Award nomination for adapting Stephen King's novella The Body, collected in Different Seasons in 1982. Rob Reiner directed, and River Phoenix's Chris Chambers gives the walk along the tracks its weight.
Shot largely on a library set built inside a shuttered Illinois high school, John Hughes' 1985 film confines five students to one Saturday detention. Simple Minds' 'Don't You (Forget About Me)' topped the Billboard Hot 100, and the raised fist on the football field closed it out.
Modest theatrical returns in 1987 gave way to a long second life on video and cable, with William Goldman adapting his own 1973 novel for director Rob Reiner. Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin trained to perform most of the cliffside duel themselves, and Peter Falk's bedside framing keeps the irony affectionate.
Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation departed from Stephen King's 1977 novel enough that King objected for decades, replacing the topiary animals with a hedge maze. Garrett Brown's Steadicam work down the Overlook corridors set a template, and the staircase scene is reported to have run 127 takes.
Made cheaply in 1984, James Cameron's thriller entered the National Film Registry in 2008, and prints carry an acknowledgment to the works of Harlan Ellison after a settlement. Arnold Schwarzenegger was first weighed for Kyle Reese before Cameron cast him as the machine instead.
Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer built the Tony Scott picture on Navy cooperation and aerial photography, and it finished as 1986's top box office earner. Berlin's 'Take My Breath Away' won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, while Val Kilmer's Iceman supplies the friction Maverick needs.
