Top 10 Films of the 80's
1. Fanny and Alexander
2, Ran
3. Raging Bull
4. Man of Iron
5. Blue Velvet
6. A Nos Amors
7. Radio Days
8. The Dekalog
9. Kagemusha
10. Identification of a Woman
1. Crimes and Misdemeanors
2. Raging Bull
3. Ran
4. Fanny & Alexander
5. Blue Velvet
My favorites:
- Hannah and Her Sisters
- Raging Bull
- The Shining
- Paris, Texas
- Crimes and Misdemeanors
- Fanny and Alexander
- The Empire Strikes Back
- Blue Velvet
- Blade Runner
- Full Metal Jacket
01 Sans soleil (Chris Marker)
02 Grabbe’s Last Summer (Sohrab Shahid Saless)
03 In Search of Famine (Mrinal Sen)
04 When the Tenth Month Comes (Đặng Nhật Minh)
05 Alexander the Great (Theodoros Angelopoulos)
06 A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
07 Shoah (Claude Lanzmann)
08 A Japanese Village (Shinsuke Ogawa)
09 Narcíssus and Psyche (Gábor Bódy)
10 Route One/USA (Robert Kramer)
how about 11
My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988)
The Boys From Fengkuei (Hou, 1983)
Out of the Blue (Hopper, 1980)
The Unbelievable Truth (Hartley, 1989)
Streetwise (Bell, 1984)
Possession (Zulawski, 1981)
Police (Pialat, 1985)
Mauvais Sang (Carax, 1986)
Thief (Mann, 1981)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar, 1988)
+
Prenom Carmen (Godard, 1983)
Bladerunner
The Last of England
The Three Crowns of the Sailor
Akira
Tetsuo the Iron Man
The Draughtsman’s Contract
Stalker
Violent Cop
The State of Things
Veronika Voss
Ran
Blade runner
Platoon
The Color Purple
Raging bull
E T
My dinner with Andre
Tender mercies
Brazil
Ordinary people
1. Wings of Desire
2. Love Streams
3. Mauvais Sang
4. Out of the Blue
5. Possession
Stop Making Sense
Streetwise
Hail Mary
The Last of England
My Neighbor Totoro
Last five aren’t in any order.
À nos amours / Maurice Pialat
Arising from the Surface / Mani Kaul
The Big Red One / Samuel Fuller
Blue Velvet / David Lynch
Elephant / Alan Clarke
Hovering Over the Water / João César Monteiro
Kuei-mei, a Woman / Chang Yi
Near Death / Frederick Wiseman
A Summer at Grandpa’s / Hou Hsiao-hsien
Utopia / Sohrab Shahid Saless
1. POSSESSION/ Andrzej Zulawski
2. THE TERRORIZERS/ Edward Yang
3. DUST IN THE WIND/ Hou Hsiao Hsien
4. THE AGE OF THE EARTH/ Glauber Rocha
5. CITY OF PIRATES/ Raul Ruiz
6. COME AND SEE/ Elem Klimov
7. SILVESTRE/ Joao Cesar Monteiro
8. CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS/ Woody Allen
9. ON THE SILVER GLOBE/ Andrzej Zulawski
10. LETTERS FROM A DEAD MAN/ Konstantin Lopushansky
Colonel Redl — I. Szabó
Crimes and Misdemeanors — W. Allen
Down by Law — J. Jarmusch
The Empire Strikes Back — I. Kershner
Fanny and Alexander — I. Bergman
Midnight Run — M. Brest
Sans Soleil — C. Marker
Sur — Fernando Solanas
A Time to Live and a Time to Die — H.H. Hou
Tree of Knowledge — N. Malmros
Big Trouble in Little China
Blade Runner
Blow Out
Blue Velvet
The Killer
Die Hard
Raging Bull
Repo Man
Robocop
They Live
Another view-
They Live
Repo Man
RoboCop
Fitzcarraldo
Roas Warrior
Blue Velvet
Videodrome
Le Dernier Combat
Hombre Mirando Al Sudeste
The Decline of Western Civilization
I don’t know why this topic was suddenly resurrected but here’s my list (accurate as of about a year ago):
10. Brazil
9. Paris, Texas
8. Raising Arizona
7. Predator
6. Blue Velvet
5. The Shining
4. The Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi (yeah I’m cheating)
3. Raging Bull
2. Ordinary People
1. Berlin Alexanderplatz
Glad somebody has Big Trouble in Little China on their list, really should be on mine.
1. Night of the Shooting Stars (Taviani Brothers)
2. Legend of the Citadel Souram (Sergei Paradjanov)
3. Repentance (Tenghiz Abuladze)
4. The Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky)
5. L’Argent (Robert Bresson)
6. Matewan (John Sayles)
7. Bouge Pas, Meure, Resuscite! (Vitali Kanevski)
8. Ginger and Fred (Federico Fellini)
9. Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders)
10. Mon Oncle d’Amerique (Alain Resnais)
mentions:
Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick)
A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
The Terrorizers (Ed Yang)
City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
The Pointsman (Jos Stelling)
Moonlighting (Jerzy Skolimowski)
Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
Do The Right Thing (Spike Lee)
Brazil (Terry Gilliam)
Himatsuri (Mitsuo Yanagimachi)
Falcon and the Snowman (John Schlesinger)
Zelig (Woody Allen)
Blood Simple (Coen Brothers)
Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov)
Alice (Jan Svankmajer)
À nos amours
The Aviator’s Wife
L’argent
Poto and Cabengo
They All Laughed
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Comrades
Cutter’s Way
The Right Stuff
Under the Volcano
Berlin Alexanderplatz (Fassbinder)
Possession (Zulawski)
Cutter’s Way (Passer)
The Thing (Carpenter)
Bad Timing (Roeg)
Eureka (Roeg)
Veronika Voss (Fassbinder)
Prenom Carmen (Godard)
La Femme Publique (Zulawski)
Crazy Love (Derrudere)
Caddyshack (Ramis)
*I’m pretty poorly versed in 80’s films, but here’s my list as it stands today.
1. Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies)
2. The Shining (Kubrick)
3. Blade Runner (Scott)
4. The Gold Diggers (Potter)
5. The Last Emperor (Bertolucci)
6. Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick)
7. Damnation (Tarr)
8. E.T: The Extra Terrestrial (Spielberg)
9. Down By Law (Jarmusch)
10. My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki)
Five definitive classics of the 80s
1. Brazil (Gilliam)
2. 2084 (Marker)
3. The Killer (Woo)
4. Blade Runner (Scott)
5. 1984 (Scott)
and some other favorites.
6. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg)
7. The Untouchables (De Palma)
8. Return of the Jedi (Marquand)
9. Das Boot (Petersen)
10. Back to the Future (Zemeckis)
You can tell I’m obsessed with Orwell, right?
1. Nostalghia-Tarkovsky (1983)
2. Brazil-Gilliam (1985) [The Final Cut]
3. Possession-Zulawski (1981)
4. Landscape in the Mist-Angelopoulos (1988)
5. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover-Greenaway (1989)
6. Blade Runner-Scott (1982) [The Final Cut]
7. Blue Velvet-Lynch (1986)
8. Aliens-Cameron (1986) [Original Theatrical Cut]
9. Come & See-Klimov (1985)
10. Wings of Desire-Wenders (1987)
1. Fanny and Alexander (Bergman)
2. Blood Simple (Coens)
3. My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki)
4. The Shining (Kubrick)
5. Blue Velvet (Lynch)
6. The Big Blue (Besson)
7. The Fly (Cronenberg)
8. Nausicaá of the Valley of the Wind (Miyazaki)
9. Brazil (Gilliam)
10. Raising Arizona (Coens)
Not really happy with 8-10, the rest I feel good about. Gonna check out this “Possession” if it ever becomes available due to how many top 10s it’s showing up on!
Film began its terminal decline back in the 1960s. Still, the 1980s had a few goodies, I suppose:
Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)
Clockwise (1986)
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)
History of the World: Part I (1981)
The Man with Two Brains (1983)
The Missionary (1982)
Smiley’s People (1982)
The Stunt Man (1980)
The Woman in Red (1984)
Zorro, the Gay Blade (1981)
If I can’t have Alexanderplatz or Smiley (TV series’), then I’ll choose The Meaning of Life (1983), Breaker Morant (1980) or a Woody instead (A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Broadway Danny Rose, Radio Days, Hannah and Her Sisters and Stardust Memories are all contenders – anything except the terrible Zelig really.)
The best I could do, alphabetically:
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Blue Velvet
Do the Right Thing
Fanny and Alexander
Hannah and Her Sisters
My Dinner with Andre
Raging Bull
Stranger Than Paradise
Wings of Desire
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
@Edna
What you got against Zelig?! 
Zelig was, in fact, unwatchable ;)
@LoverofLeCinema
I was genuinely surprised to discover here that some people actually like Zelig. Until I saw Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona recently, I always thought it was Woody’s one true dog → irritating acting, leaden humour, boring screenplay, lazy filmmaking…Here’s Edna’s Woody ranked list.
Wow, replying to this thread makes me realize that I need to reassess some of my IMDB ratings. Evidently I think that Batman (Burton) deserves a 9, and In A Lonely Place only deserves an 8. There are probably even more ridiculous comparisons to be made, but I am too lazy to check, and probably too embarrassed to tell. OK, one more. I gave Night of the Hunter an 8, but Rudy a 9. head hung in shame
Anyways, here are the 80’s films I gave 9’s or 10’s to on IMDB, even though I am now doubting how accurate those ratings currently are:
Do The Right Thing (cheers to the other people who mentioned this one. I thought that DTRT/Spike Lee was a MUBI taboo)
Room With A View
Fitzcarraldo/Burden of Dreams
My Dinner With Andre
Mona Lisa
Paris, Texas
Chariots of Fire
Repo Man
The Vanishing
The Shining
Beetlejuice
Batman
This Is Spinal Tap
Ghostbusters
Airplane!
ET
Brazil
Cinema Paradiso
The Elephant Man
Blue Velvet
My Neighbor Totoro
Akira
BTW, does anybody know how IMDB organizes films when you choose to sort your list as “my ratings”? It used to be alphabetical within each number ranking, but now it seems completely arbitrary.
@Edna
Thanks for explaining, but I must admit it hurts to see Sleeper at the top of your list. I think it is Allen’s worst (that I have seen).
@LoverofLeCinema
Allow me to add salt to that wound. Sleeper squeaks into my all-time Top 20.
Santino
Paris, Texas
Raging Bull
The Shining
Once Upon a Time in America
Hannah and Her Sisters
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Blue Velvet
The Last Emperor
Dressed to Kill
A Nos Amours