POLL RESULTS: Top 100 Films of the 1980s

The Hidden (44 points, 3 votes)

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Comments?

28 Up (44 points, 3 votes)

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Comments? (I can't search anything on ILX right now...damn server!)

In any case, the central conceit of the piece is to document the lives of a handful of Brits from very disparate social, economic, and ethnic factors, interviewing them every seven years to see how their lives are unfolding. One of the genius techniques this involves is a consistent amount of intercutting between the current and prior films, oftentimes directly comparing views on a given subject between each seven year period. Occasionally participants drop out, are untraceable, and return; either way, it's fascinating to watch and anticipate what's to happen. I've never seen the first three, but I recommend going through them all in order. You don't need to, since they all back-reference, but as they only take a small amount from the old installments forwards as needed, you will be missing a fair amount. It's also fun to see how the imaging technology has grown along with the group.

Make certain not to miss 49 Up if you have the chance when it lands later this year.

Mystery Train (45 points, 4 votes)

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"Mystery Train" is great. I love the scenes with Joe Strummer and Steve Buschemi. The spiel the local drifter lays on the Brazilian widow is also pretty cool.
"You're not even my brother in law and you shot me."

"Elvis sent me all the way here to give you this comb."

-- earlnash

Beetlejuice (46 points, 3 votes)

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So good you almost forget that one of the characters you're rooting for is played by ALEC BALDWIN.

-- Dee

i should stick up for beetlejuice, the first half of that is near perfect. plus, a great supporting cast, even ryder is okay, and keaton isn't that annoying for the first fifteen minutes of his screentime.

-- ethan

BeetleJuice might be a bit eighties (Yuppies! Bright Colours! Jeffrey Jones!) but it's still a great kids story.

-- Andrew Farrell

Predator (47 points, 5 votes)

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Predator was pretty good as far as 80's action movies go. But of course it leaned a bit towards ci-fi/horror as well.

-- latebloomer

I mean, it's not an emotional blockbuster or anything, but it's a beautifully edited, beautifully conceived action movie. The ending could be improved.

-- amateurist

Cinema Paradiso (48 points, 3 votes)

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I know its airbrushed and sanitised, but I'm a sucker.

-- Will

Fletch (49 points, 2 votes)

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Chase is terrific in Fletch, but my problem with that film is that NOBODY else in the movie is allowed to be funny or react to the absurd stuff coming out of his mouth (except Joe Don Baker, who isn't gonna be cowed around by some fucking smartass comedian NO HOW). Lots of great lines but the film just gets damn repetitive.

-- Anthony Miccio

so many great moments - 'what kind of a name is poon?' 'now, i can't have my wages garnisheed' etc.

-- ron

i rented fletch on friday night and it was great! took me back to when i was 12 years old and it was my favorite film. chevy chase seemed SO COOL in it. and it's before i got into boring pretentious art-films.

-- j fail

My brother and I can spend HOURS quoting "Fletch" and laughing our asses off. "It's me, Mr. Rosenrosen."

-- Jeanne Fury

So if I was to compare say the book of say Fletch with the film of Fletch (a good example as the book is very dialogue heavy) I could certainly compare the narrative pacing - which the film drops for Chevy's basketball mugging. However the film improves on the book in the structure of its own mystery, which in its realization is made all the more plausible from the books relatively hokey premise. And both get tot he same place via a diferent route. I prefer the book because it presents Fletch as more selfish and tricky - and cos it doesn't have Chevy Chase in it. But I can compare and contrast the way they try to do the same thing.

-- Pete

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (49 points, 3 votes)

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i've always loved the human sacrifice part in the temple of doom, especially as a kid. i'd go outside and re-enact thosescenes with my little brother. i'd tear his heart out and hold it in my fist, chanting "Kali-ma! KALI_MA!!!" After the ceromony was over i'd use my magic powers (where i got those from, i've not a clue) to heal him back up. my lil bro looked forward to it every day. eventualy we got bored with it. he didn't like the new game we'd play after that, whcih was based on my new favorite movie, "Deliverance".

-- latebloomer

The part where dude pulls out that heart is pretty dark and unsettling, Ned! (Not quite as unsettling as the face-melting in Raiders but still...)
Aslo, Kate Capshaw sucks but really who else could have done that role (besides Sharon Stone)?

I have unreasoning lURve for Temple.

That restaurant scene in Temple of Doom is MAGIC.

-- The Ghost of Dan Perry

Big (49 points, 4 votes)

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actually, seriously, after seeing the movie BIG in like 4th grade I think I decided I wanted to be a TOY executive like Tom Hanks is in the movie. BECAUSE THEY WERE LIKE COMEDIANS & BUSINESS WOMEN IN ONE.

-- mandee

big was the peak, everything after was pitiful dross.

-- Geoff

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (50 points, 2 votes)

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Ever since "Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown", Almodóvar hasn't done a film that wasn't good in one way or another (and most of his films before "Women..." are worth the watch as well, though they're often less focused than his more recent work). "Tie Me Up!" is somewhat underrated, but personally I think it's maybe his best.

-- Tuomas

My Life As a Dog (50 points, 2 votes)

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Comments?

Real Genius (50 points, 4 votes)

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Portrays the geeks as the Good Guys, professors as either good or bad, and a whole lot of Cold War-era paranoia. And popcorn. Lots and lots of popcorn.

-- Dee

Ah, 1985, how I love thee. Val Kilmer has a classic downward career arc -- after Top Secret and Real Genius, he couldn't do anything else better.

-- Ned Raggett

Nick and I watched Real Genius this past weekend so we could better understand this thread. I liked it when the woman asked him if he could hammer a 6 inch nail through a board with his penis.

-- Sarah McLusky

Manhunter (51 points, 3 votes, 1 first-place vote)

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The only reason I voted this underrated and underwatched film first is because it will need as many votes as it can get to even chart, which it won’t anyway, thus consigning the small paean I am about to compose to its utter, utter genius to the vortex of oblivion and rendering my thoughtful construction of it an exercise in futility. Nevertheless, I intend to
go a bit about this one.

Off the bat, I should confess straight up that I am mildly obsessed with this picture. Like all Michael Mann films, the closer you look at the construction of the movie, the more you have to wonder at the attention to detail and sheer love that goes into making each of his pieces a unique cinematic experience. But more than any other of his films, I think Manhunter retains a curious unresolved disturbance at its heart, perhaps it executes an unpalatable exposure of a truth that is better left unspoken. As a means to open us up to the uncomfortable questions the film poses, I think Mann deliberately sets out to systematically destabilise the viewer throughout the unfolding of this film, perhaps echoing William Petersen’s character Detective Graham’s gradual descent into the serial killer mindset.

For example, the much-maligned score veers spectacularly from pisspoor
80’s power balladry to the monumental bad taste drug fuelled 60’s anthem In-A-Gada-Da-Vidda (incidentally, a favourite tune of an incarcerated serial killer Mann studied while researching the picture), and I think this tasteless unevenness is a device to prise the viewer from their comfort zone. You couldn’t say that this film is good fun, and nor is it easy on the eye. While the music is making you squirm, what’s happening on the screen is making you strain your eyes to catch the details. Mr. Spinotti puts in some fine work here, particularly using iridescent greens and pale lights set against deep shadows to heighten the ireality and take us into the lunar-like world that the killer Dollarhyde inhabits (after all, Dollarhyde himself kills in accordance with lunar cycles). It really is a beautiful film to look at, in a dingy understated way – very unlike the later Harris adaptations, which are all flash and predictable slash, Manhunter is much more edgy, thoughtful, understated, claustrophobic and for all this, disturbing.

In some ways, I think Manhunter’s ‘success’ is due to what is happening off the screen. Mann succeeds in drawing our thoughts towards dark possibilities while keeping us in the loop via glimpses into the fucked up reality that is unfolding. Brian Cox’s Dr. Lecktor for example, is hardly in the picture at all, but his presence and terrible intent, the force of his destructive will, looms over the story like a brooding puppet master. It’s almost as if he is orchestrating the entire piece. While I’m on the subject, ahhhhh, Dr. Lecktor. Fuck Hopkins’s cartoonish rendering – seriously, if you haven’t seen this picture, let me tell you, it’s all about Cox. Watching the man work in this film is truly fascinating, he is by turns charming, affable, repellent, engagingly intelligent and all the while, clearly insane. The dialogues between Graham and Lecktor are some of my favourite in any movie of any decade. Just as the movie is steadily stripping away the viewer’s defences and putting them in the same space as the killer, Lecktor sets about rigorously stripping Graham’s painstakingly constructed barriers against the rampant animal he keeps caged inside. Cox’s Lecktor really is a delight, one of those forgotten characters who litter overlooked movies but once stumbled across, is certainly one any viewer will cherish.

Actually, that’s another great thing about this film: characters. We see enough of each of the key players, Graham and his prey Dollarhyde, to have a strong grasp of who they are and where they come from. We like Graham but we don’t love the guy, he’s too cold and too distant, and we see enough of him to wonder what he’s really got coiled up inside of him. And although Noonan’s Dollarhyde is one of the scariest killers you’ll see on celluloid, like Graham himself says, “as a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster.” Francis D. may well look like a monster (and believe me, when he appears on screen for the first time with a stocking over his head and a spindly light shade dangling behind him like a pagan halo, saying, “well, here I… am” it really is a case of “Jesus fucking Christ…”), but he also carries a heavy sense of sadness across the screen with him, almost like he knows that he can never be anything other than
the beast that he is: this film is not a clear cut case of good guy/bad guy, indeed, I think Mann successfully sets out to make the point that we each of us carry that line inside of us, as well as the inherent potential to watch helplessly as circumstance blurs the definition.

Noonan’s work in this picture is deserving of extra note. His killer is a study in car-crash complexity, with convincing flashes of light and dark shades of character, twisting Dollarhyde’s drives from delicate poignancy (taking Reba to see the tiger) to terrifyingly calm psychopathy (ruthlessly shooting down the guy who walks Reba home or setting fire to the journalist Freddy Lounds and skating him down the slope to a multi-storey carpark tied to a wheelchair). All the while, there is a certain hideous plausibility to Dollarhyde, unlike Hopkins’s Lector or Fiennes’s shockingly tame and leaden incarnation of the same ‘Tooth Fairy’ (for which he should be ashamed). Apparently, during filming, Noonan asked to be kept apart from Petersen throughout, to heighten the tension between the characters and perpetuate the realism of the hunt. The picture was thus painstakingly filmed to ensure that the first time the two actors met was the climactic raid on Dollarhyde’s house: when Graham crashes through the plate glass window into Dollarhyde’s embrace – that’s the first time the two actors saw each other.

An excellent support cast too, helps us buy the plausibility and motives of the leads, and the journalist Lounds in particular, is another gem of well-essayed characterisation. A first class cock-sure wanker, we see him one minute jagging off to his own ego and bringing the shit down on Graham, the next, breaking into small pieces and choking on his own tears as he realises he ain’t gonna survive the night. It’s all done in a way far removed from the usual shocks and screams you would associate with Hollywood killer thrillers. While Dollarhyde has him tied to a chair, Lounds talks quietly, like a man who has just pissed himself might do, and Francis himself is completely calm while in the apex of his delusions: “Mr. Lounds, you're a reporter,” he whispers matter-of-factly, “you're here to
titillate your readers. If you don't open your eyes, I'll staple your eyelids to your forehead.” OK. Right. I mean you could laugh, but somehow, it’s a bit too dark for that.

The calmness I’m talking about here, that Lecktor, Dollarhyde and Graham all possess, goes to the heart of perhaps this movies greatest success, it’s humanity. Rather than playing up to the camera and giving us theatre, as Hopkins does in the later Hannibal movies, Mann is at pains to show us people who seem to recognise their darker inner workings, and set about compartmentalising them, just as most of us do. Obviously, the film deals with the philosophy of violence, the physiognomy of killing, so the urges and thought processes on show are extremes, but in the same way that we all try to quantify our lusts and imaginations, the characters in this film, fight a similar battle, each in a different way. Watching the two central protagonists struggle against themselves in many senses, is absorbing and chilling, and above all, believable.

Dr Lecktor: “We don't invent our natures, They're issued to us. Along with our lungs and pancreas and everything else. Why fight it?”

-- Five Eight

One great pleasure that those who know Atlanta well enough will discover upon watching this movie - Hannibal apparently is incarcerated in the High Museum of Art.

-- Girolamo Savonarola

An Asian-American guy I was dating recently did a mean Short Round impression. ("Anything Goes" and the jitterbug from "1941" show why I'd rather see Spielberg directing musicals than Baz fuckin' Luhrmann and that "Chicago" hack.)

Diva (52 points, 3 votes)

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Zelig (52 points, 4 votes)

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i also think zelig is massively underrated, that the early stuff was a lot like the more recent stuff, sporadically good but a real sense of desperation at work.

-- arthur woodlouse

I finally saw it a few months ago, and the answer is: some of it. During the opening scene at the science fair, the talk about excimer lasers is factually correct. Everything after that is basically garbage.

Now you know.

To Live and Die in L.A. (53 points, 2 votes)

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Prince of the City (53 points, 2 votes)

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I haven't seen it in years, but I remember really enjoying 'Prince of the City' as well - a twisting crime thriller stuffed with great character actors

-- Andrew L

Excalibur (53 points, 3 votes)

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If you absolutely love your Arthurian legends as I do, then you can’t really go wrong with this film. If it helps, I’m prepared engage anybody who says that Nicol Williamson’s superbly surrealist Merlin is the weak link, in a fist-fight to the death.

-- Five Eight

The John Boorman film, starring Nigel terry, Cherie Lunghi, Nicol Williamson.
Fuck this Bruckheimer shit, I already hate it.

This is a weird, strange thing of beauty and ugliness.

Also best Merlin ever.

What do you say?

-- Masked Gazza

Classic: sex scene in full armor! Camelot's knights had COCK WINDOWS in their armor! How can that be anything but classic? It can't be. Lock the thread.

-- Tep

this movie is great because it's two hours of SCREAMING DIALOGUE nonstop.

-- cutty

Apparently Boorman made this in lieu of an LOTR film, which he was trying to get backing for
Which obv. would have been considerably more interesting than the trilogy we've ended up with

Just imagine Nicol Williamson as Gandalf

Excalibur is classic. Things I love about it: the use of 'Seigfreid's Rhine Journey', and of the Parsifal prelude just as Percival sheds his armour underwater and then enters the Grail castle, Guinevere dancing at the beginning, the whole Uther Pendragon prelude which shows how Arthur was concieved with the power of the Dragon, the whole 'you and the land are one' theme, which like Merlin and Morgana sets the atmosphere of paganism and christianity existing alongside eachother, a bearded repentant Launcelot at the battle of Camlann which also features nicely bloody fight between father and son, and of course Merlin.

-- de

I haven't seen Prince of the City (#14) in years or it might be higher -- badly needs a DVD release; Serpico without the sentimentality and bland romances. Jerry Orbach kicks ass as the fiercest of corrupt cops. An argument for Lumet's best, with Dog Day Afternoon.

Gregory's Girl (54 points, 2 votes)

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the moment the camera pulls back as they're lying down dancing, and it's just giggling and waving arms and sunset.

-- lauren

awww the sense of joy and innocence in Gregory's girl, as seen on saturday night in my snotty state, it was the perfect thing.

-- chris

A Chinese Ghost Story (55 points, 2 votes)

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A kung-fu fantasy flick featuring a rapping Buddhist monk and Satan himself! Great fun.

-- Tuomas

The two that kicked off the Hong Kong horror genre are Mr Vampire and A Chinese Ghost Story so search them out, alongside Japan's Battle Royale and Audition which have been surprise Western hits (the former is overrated IMO while Audition is well worth catching).

-- C-Man

When Harry Met Sally (55 points, 4 votes)

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Sweet, funny, touching. A shining example of how good romantic comedies can be without all the usual funny cloying sweetness.

-- Dee

If you can look at those shots of the two of them strolling through Central Park in Autumn and not be moved, you're a fucking replicant.

-- Alex in NYC

Meg Ryan's faking orgasm in the restaurant (When Harry Met Sally) is one of my favorite moments on film. As a projectionist, I enjoyed observing audiences reactions. This was one of the best moments. I played this film for a seniors group once and they damn near died laughing too, which only goes to show ya...

-- jim wentworth

Labyrinth (56 points, 4 votes)

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A rare example of a great children's film from the '80s.

-- Dee

I can't believe I've loved this film for so long and only this week noticed that it was written-for-the-screen by Terry Jones. It all makes sense now.

-- nickalicious

Also, I've found I don't watch Labyrinth thinking how 80s it is, which is weird, cause it ... is.

It's also a very different thing watching it with kids, cause they laugh at different stuff.

-- Tep

Poltergeist (57 points, 4 votes)

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one of my earliest viewing experience was Poltergeist and I still am haunted by the shot of JoBeth Williams barrelling down a hallway as it stretches out in front of her.

-- Eric H.

I was thinking about it the other day actually, how it really appealed to kids because of the girl getting pulled into the TV (is that what happened?), I remember seeing that scene and the attraction of her being unreachable by her parents, something else was commanding her attention/taking her away

-- cuspidorian

Yeah, Poltergeist is really an amazing movie for me because I loved it so much as a kid, and got so much out of it -- without being able to use these words, I thought it had more substance than, you know, The Amazing Randy And Mickey The Monkey or whatever -- and now it's still one of my favorite movies but for completely different reasons. It's like two different movies.

-- Tep

I saw Poltergeist when I wasn't supposed to when I was like 6. I remember being terrified of my closet and making my mother keep the doors open "so I could see my clothes". I also would start crying if my parents left me alone in the bathtub. To this day I loathe the smell of Mr. Bubbles.

-- Carey

Poltergeist was the only film to scare the shit out of me when I was a teenager. I don't know if it still would.

-- N.

Amadeus (59 points, 4 votes)

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It's really not supposed to be a historical film, to begin with. It's about Salieri, as pointed out above, or more accurately, the feelings that Salieri represents in all of us (not necessarily re artistic jealousy, per se - I think we all have at least one overachiever in our past whom we felt didn't deserve their successes). So whether or not this is the real Mozart, a historically fictionalized Mozart, or just someone who has the same name and is really similar in odd ways to the real Mozart...none of this matters - it's not really a Mozart film or even a Salieri film - it's about resentment and mediocrity in the face of genius. Just happens that they chose real people to fit to the characters.

The most interesting thing, I think, about the film is that it really seems to posit the thesis that Mozart's place in the canon of the time was akin to the shock of punk music on the then-contemporary popular music scene, and the lifestyle, sensibility, rebelliousness, and outrageous fashion choices (wigs, especially) of Mozart seem to reflect this. Punk Mozart, hmm.

-- Girolamo Savonarola

And I think nearly half of the points were mine. It's still probably the single film from the top 50 or so domestic grossing films from the decade that I would save from a studio vault fire.

It's like two different movies.

Exactly. It's the most efficient rendering of Spielberg's Jeckyll and Hyde impulses.

Anyway, yay Pretty in Pink! Yay When Harry Met Sally! Yay Beetlejuice! Yay Real Genius! Yay Labyrinth! Yay -- odd comments? Well, at least the Real Genius and Beetlejuice ones make sense. Anyway -- I can't wait to see what else makes this list that also made my list. :)

(BTW, When Harry Met Sally is currently airing on Oxygen. Yay for that!)

Sandra Bernhard's only approached that level again in parts of her solo shows.

What's amazing in my repeat viewings is that Pupkin's act is no worse than some pro stand-ups.

The script was by a Newsweek film critic. (and Scorsese subsequently worked with Jay Cocks, a onetime Time critic)

But think about it: Both movies throw the plot out the window in their last third. Both are an anti-hero's journey.

Maybe Repo Man is closer to Grease. Any movie that ends with a car flying off into the sky is classic. And greatest opening theme/sequence since Goldfinger.

The Empire Strikes Back (238 points, 12 votes, 1 first-place vote)

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The only Star Wars film the world really needs. Oh, except for the original. Wouldn’t make much sense without that huh. Anyway, if only Lucas realised what it was that made this movie the fan’s favourite, the look, the feel, the tone – we wouldn’t have had to sit through the merchandising advert that was Jedi, then watch powerlessly as the man single-handedly sabotaged his own legacy with Episodes I and II, not to mention suffer the futile anticipation for what is certain to be the forthcoming colossal disappointment of Episode III. La la la, we’ve all heard it all before – this is the ‘dark’ one etc etc. But it’s a great story, well told, great to look at still, and it features THE best trad bad guy in movie history, the one and only Lord Vader, a man who risks his entire fleet of star destroyers for the sake of one poxy ship and doesn’t flinch when one of them blows up even while he’s talking to its commander. A man who murders his leading Admiral for bringing the fleet out of lightspeed too close to the Hoth system, because he felt surprise… uhrggghhh… A man whose favoured method of graciously accepting an apology is to asphyxiate. And he comes out on top (if you don’t count the fact that he believes he’s murdered his own son). How often does that happen?

-- Five Eight

due to having it on vhs i'm sure i saw 10 times as much as any other movie before i was 14 or so. actually, that ratio is probably still intact.

-- andrew s

The heart of Star Wars is still "Empire Strikes Back." I'd watch that again right now. I'm not made of stone.

-- slightly more subdued

The new Star Wars are more or less 4-wave nostalgia for me by now cos of all the repackaging, so my childhood is not being stolen at all. I'm old enough to know how marketing works, so it doesn't really phase me. I can still look back to that time when I was 7 or so and mom was making lentil soup while I begged her to let me watch Empire on tv during dinner. It was raining outside and I still hadn't gotten into videogames yet nor He-Man toys, so this was my entire world.

Watching THX and American Graffiti, it seems to me that Lucas isn't all that bad a director, in fact he has the opportunity to be an awesome one, but I think he waited far too long to make the new ones.

One of the main problems with the new ones (besides the obvious acting and writing) is that nothing is given any room to breathe; we see a really complicated landscape filled with new creatures and vehicles and all that, but it wizzes by faster than a toy commercial.

My favorite scenes from the originals (and they are the scenes that will always impress me and spark my imagination) were not shots of spaceships flying busily and all that, they were the artsy bits. Luke standing outside his house in the desert with the twinkling lights from robots around him, looking at the distant twin suns, the shot saturated with purples and oranges and dark browns. When William's majestic score swoops in i think "holy shit, farm boys with robots wanting to be magic knights in outer space" and its just so damn cool to think about.

Another scene I always liked was when Luke and Yoda say their goodbyes in Empire, Obi-Wan as a wizened glowing blue ghost in an alien swamp talking to a wizard that is so old his ears are wider than his head is tall. He mysteriously says "no...there is another" as the ship takes off and we see him light up from blue to red while looking up at the sky. I don't know, maybe it was all this sense of wonder; I think it was something the characters experienced at the same time the audience did and this is why it meant so much to alot of people. The CGI in the new ones is so busy and backdropy, it's like the characters take this universe for granted, and naturally so do we.

I was watching Empire today and had to go to work so i only caught the first half-hour, but i totally loved it and it just makes the new films seem so much worse. Han Solo is hilarious and i had forgotten how handy the references to malfunctioning equipment were - the Falcon was screwing up all the time, making plenty of room for Han and Chewie to do comedy routines about trying to fix it. There's a lot of this in the original series (ie. R2 falling over, etc.) and not only does it add some humor, it makes the world actually seem relatable. I always thought "geez, even in Star Wars shit doesn't work right". Seems just like home.

-- Adam Bruneau

Blade Runner (256 points, 10 votes, 1 first-place vote)

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For me, Blade Runner is the most important and accomplished film of the decade. Not that I’ve seen over half the films on the nominations list mind, but oh my God what a piece of work this film is. Seductively beautiful to look at, richly layered in gravitas, loosely based on a brilliant book by a brilliant author, stunning in its accomplishments, wildly imaginative, fluidly and unselfconsciously inventive, decadent, flawed, and like the films I love best, absolutely rooted in dirty humanity and thereby subtly confronting the conditions of being human.

Some of the dialogue in this film contains lines that wouldn’t be out of place in a book of Nietzschean aphorisms: “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave,” “if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes” I mean this stuff, taken against the context of the melodrama, chimes right the way through literary and philosophical history. This is a film that stands up to hard critical analysis and throws up more interesting questions than it answers – in my eyes, the mark of a true classic. Yet throughout the film, you never get the feeling you’re being asked turgid fundamental questions or are expected to engage with weighty subtexts. They are there if you want to look, but otherwise, just enjoy the stunning trip into Scott’s dystopian imagination. What the fuck will we do if our world ever ends up looking and feeling like that? Who knows. Whatever. But this is a beautifully executed story that manages to investigate what it means to be human, what it is that might make us ‘human’, without ever being boring or pretentious.

As for the characters Scott runs in front of the lens, well, we get treated to some absolute classics: Decker, Leon, Tyrell, Rachel, Gaff, each of the players brings some quality that helps the film sparkle, but top of the goddamn Christmas tree is Roy. I think Rutger Hauer’s creation in this film is my all time favourite anti-hero, the guy is just fucking unbelievable, off the fucking head. He’s like some post-cyborg vision of brutal Aryan perfection, bubbling with psychotic rage though tempered with childlike sensitivities, a way out sense of humour and beautiful grasp of pathos, and ultimately, he proves to truly possess the grace and empathy of the philosopher. His performance rips of the screen and straight into my brain – the celebrated end sequence in the rain, with the short monologue and the dove – fuck me, to see that kind of thing plausibly visualised with a straight face, it’s pretty fucking special. Prior to that iconoclastic moment, Roy’s slow descent into trauma as his time ebbs away and his explosive anger at his fate, a prescribed fate that neither his advanced cognisance nor iron will nor perfect physique can evade, reaches a
terrifying apex with the murdering of his surrogate ‘father’ (a positively Shakespearean turn; Hamlet, parallels anyone?) and the hunting down of Decker, the man responsible for the deaths of his closest friends, his ‘family’ even. When Roy stalks Decker through the empty building he is reduced to a howling wolf, set naked against the dark, yet even at the
moment of his righteous revenge, Roy transcends his fate, destiny and all expectation, choosing to save the life of the man (is he a man?) whose own studious choices and preoccupations are suddenly exposed not as morality and fortitude but as prejudices and even cowardice. “Ah, kinship” Roy whispers as he grasps Decker’s wrist one handed, leaving the ‘human’ dangling over the abyss. And I guess that’s what this movie is ultimately about.

-- Five Eight

I just saw Blade Runner a couple of months ago, and adored it. I'd recommend the director's cut. That's a movie I could watch repeatedly, and there aren't too many of those.

-- JuliaA

Please do yourself a favor and watch Blade Runner. It's great!! Then you'll finally understand where all those other movies that you have seen that aren't as good ripped everything off from.

-- scott seward

Ridley Scott will probably never surpass Blade Runner again.

-- Tuomas

When I 'did' film studies 'Blade Runner' was the standard 'postmodern' film text, and I think a great deal of its (critical) popularity stems from the fact that you can read into/onto it any old wiffle you like abt pastiche, blankness, simulation and simulacra etc. But of course PKD got there first, and did it sooo much better.

-- Andrew L

Raiders of the Lost Ark (270 points, 12 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0792157648.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Ah, it’s always gonna be a classic when you got the Nazi’s on board. Especially that chap with the wee round specs who gets the medallion pattern branded on to his palm. Great fun, all the way through.

-- Five Eight

It's got not a lick of sense, indulges in lazy racism and upped the Star Wars ante of movies as amusement-park rides. But as rides go, it's a doozy. It marked Harrison Ford's full emergence as Movie Star in a quasi-classic vein, but its secret weapon is Karen Allen. The sequels are both terrible, and her absence is at least part of the reason. I like Spielberg's fake movies more than his "real" movies, and this is his best fake movie. I think it's the last time he really let himself have fun.

-- gypsy mothra

Raiders of the Lost Ark was always my favorite Spielberg film, because of the more haunting qualities that hinted at, well, God being displeased with his gold box being fucked with. I'm not talking about the Nazi meltdown, just some other touches here and there throughout the film.

-- Gear!

Also, upon watching the Raiders DVD for the first time, it struck me that Lucas really DID owe much of his career to the talents of Ben Burtt. the sound design of the Raiders flick is one of its best aspects: Indy's .357 booming like a huge-ass cannon, the breathing effect when they finally crack open the vault holding the Ark, the God-spirit-lightning of the ending with the Nazi gear frying, the meaty punch of indy getting slugged in the stomach, the distant howl of Indy getting smacked inna chin with a mirror

also, i think Raiders began the habit of Harrison Ford getting the total shite kicked out of him onscreen for the next 20 years, even with them changing the ending to Clear & Present Danger so he could get his ass whupped in person instead of just gunning folks down from a chopper.

-- kingfish van vlasic pickles

Karen Allen is great in Raiders!! so much better than Mrs. Spielberg in the second. Every time I see Temple of Doom I wish someone would shoot her.

-- Shakey Mo Collier

Raiders of the Lost Ark is sincerely like one of the best movies that has ever been made.

-- Ally

That said, seeing it again was both a kick for realizing how much I had forgotten in the films -- I didn't even immediately remember the plane fight sequence until it actually started! -- and just a touch disappointing. More than once I was thinking about how some of the action scenes really could be better (like for instance when Indy and Marion get into the fight in the Cairo streets -- I was noticing how Karen Allen had been directed to apparently only slightly pound a bad guy on the head in the side of the shot, where these days I'd be expecting a little more in the way of Michelle Yeoh style asskicking). Also, John Williams' gift and limitations as a composer were pretty obvious; aside from the Raiders march and the Ark theme nearly everything musically just made me think of Star Wars.

Minor complaints, though, it's still a romp and a half, nothing about the film feels wasted, it uses economy to excellent effect, and even more successfully really pulls off suspension of disbelief well (when I first saw it in 1981 I wouldn't have known that the idea of 1936 Nazis having an openly armed force in British-controlled Egypt or a secret base on a Greek island was utterly ridiculous, but even though I do know it's not a worry because that's what Nazis do in the popular mind, have openly armed strike forces everywhere and plenty of secret bases).

Fun geek revelations -- the midget servant (who up until last night I just thought was meant to be a kid) who brings the poisoned dates to Indy and Sallah while they're waiting for the translation of the amulet is played by Kiran Shah, who was Elijah Wood's stand-in in Lord of the Rings which of course also starred John Rhys-Davies who played Sallah etc. Also, the guide who helps Indy into the temple at the start of film ("Throw me the idol, I give you the whip!" etc.) is Alfred Molina! As soon as I saw him on-screen I thought 'wait a minute...' and then his name popped up in the opening credits a couple of seconds later.

Oh and for all that they've changed the name on the packaging (to Indiana Jones and the Raiders etc.) the actual title of the film remained the same in the opening credits. Good thing too.

-- Ned Raggett

http://www.dvdzap.ca/dvd-imgs/3871d0/mac-and-me-pochette-avant.jpg

Do the Right Thing (277 points, 11 votes, 3 first-place votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004XQMV.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

It's hard to remember now how incendiary this felt at the time. Spike Lee's liveliest, most colorful, most electric movie. It simmers on screen. And Danny Aiello confounds any attempt (including Spike's) to unmuddy the waters. Plus, of course, it has "Fight the Power."

-- gypsy mothra

his tremendous skills and his glaring weakness are generally all tied up in the same knot i think — he is good at really unexpected things which he then completely distracts you from by some shouty bit of business (that said, rosie perez shouting in do the right thing is just some of the funniest, sexiest acting in cinema)

-- mark s

i watched do the right thing about six months ago because nancy had never seen it and i must say it holds up remarkably better than i expected it to from the last time i saw it as a freshman film student.

-- mohammed abba

Spike vs. Spielberg is a tough call for me, Lee's such a sloppy filmmaker. He's almost the antithesis of Spielberg - the pedantry without the style. He really only has one great, perfect film and that's "Do the Right Thing". There's good stuff scattered in his other movies (I haven't seen 25th Hour) but by and large its one trainwreck after another... Girl 6, Get on the Bus, Bamboozled, Summer of Sam, etc. Has there ever been a Spike Lee movie that *doesn't* end with someone getting murdered...?

-- Shakey Mo Collier

just this past Sunday I was randomly flipping channels, and I found Do The Right Thing somewhere, about a third of the way into it. I decided to watch because I hadn't seen the thing in ... heck, maybe a decade. It totally made me weep. I'm not really even sure why. I didn't cry when I first saw it as a 17 year old in 1989, even though I knew it was of the most intense things I'd ever witnessed. I'm not prone to crying at all. I guess I never joined in on those crying threads that were active recently, but honestly I can count the number of times I've cried in my adult life on one hand.

-- Mr. Diamond

Blue Velvet (409 points, 15 votes, 4 first-place votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000063JDE.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

It's an obvious choice, but it's obvious for a reason. Blue Velvet (made by a Reagan fan, don't forget) is all the bullshit of '80s Americana, not just exposed (that's easy) but celebrated. Wallowed in. Lynch wants it both ways, the robins AND the beetles, Laura Dern's simpering blondie by day AND Isabella's fuck-me-hit-me brunette by night. And it lets its hero have both. It is a stupendously fucked-up movie, hypocritical and callow, like a Disneyland S&M weekend tour package. And like America, its hypocrisy is what makes it work. It's what makes it honest. I like to imagine Frank Capra emerging from a screening of Blue Velvet, horrified and blinking into the Hollywood sun, and Lynch hollering in his ear, "It's great, isn't it? Just like one of yours!" (Also, on a technical level, the colors and sound and blah blah blah, Lynch is a genius but you already knew that.)

-- gypsy mothra

This film is all about one man. Frank. Indeed, what Hopper and Lynch achieve with this film is something rather spectacular. It is this: To bring to the screen the most utterly fucked up, distressingly disturbed, genuinely terrifying plane-crash of a mash-up man. Frank is unlike any screen character I can think of in that he operates beyond the more recognisable parameters and conventions of fucked up. For a start he’s alarmingly unpredictable, veering dangerously between pussy-cat mewling to screaming psychotic rage in the space of a few seconds. He’s loaded up with more weird idiosyncrasies than a troupe of necrophiliacs, and he’s not afraid of a spot of sudden sickening violence, which he administers with charismatic, almost charming, surreal enthusiasm. He’s an out of control missile, a cataclysm, and every time he lopes onto the screen you actually fear for what he might do. Hopper’s Frank is a fascinating view into the surely tortured imagination of his authors. And though he might be one of cinema’s greatest time-bombs, he is never less than convincing.

-- Five Eight

"Girolamo Savonarola will return for the 60's poll."

(xpost) No idea - that's how the email identified him.

Hahaha, that joke justifies the thread.

I can see how it might have seem as though I was attacking Dee when the controversy all started.

Since I've bumped this thread, here's as good as any to talk about the AFI 100 Years ... 100 Movies list redux.

http://connect.afi.com/site/DocServer/Movies_ballot_06.pdf?docID=141

Which is to say, I was exactly what blount said I was: a troll.

You people are not the same kind of people as I.

Thank god critics can now vote for Ray and Shrek!

David Bordwell celebrates '80s cinema:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=3036

Quite a bit of overlap between ILX100 and Bordwell.

I think Andrew Sarris's (RIP) list is a decent one

01. Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
02. Boyfriends and Girlfriends (Eric Rohmer)
03. The Singing Detective (Jon Amiel)
04. After the Rehearsal (Ingmar Bergman)
05. A Nos Amours (Maurice Pialat)
06. Therese (Alain Cavalier)
07. L'Argent (Robert Bresson)
08. Empire of the Sun (Steven Spielberg)
09. Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth)
10. Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick)

https://www.austinfilm.org/2019/09/watch-this-richard-linklaters-2019-jewels-in-the-wasteland-qas/