As with the last post, below will be a list of my 9 favorite movies from this particular decade. It isn’t a “best movies” list and it isn’t a “quintessential movies” list.
I will say off the top that the 80’s isn’t the best decade for many artistic or cultural items. Unfortunately it is sandwiched between two notably better decades, particularly for movies. However, there are still some movies that are 80’s classics, and a few that are just straight up good movies.
SPOILERS ahead. On the bright side, it’s a “favorites” list and not a list about plot twists or on-screen deaths or anything that would be spoiled just by mentioning it.
To the list!
Most Honored of Honorable Mentions: This mention goes out to a couple of HUGE movie trilogies that I wanted to acknowledge, even though they aren’t my favorites: Star Wars (V and VI), the Indiana Jones franchise, and the Back to the Future franchise. I’ve seen all of these movies exactly one time each, and never had much desire to rewatch any of them. However, they were all huge movies from the decade that are still beloved and celebrated today.
9). The Thing (1982, directed by John Carpenter)
Although it is technically a remake (the original movie came out in 1951), Carpenter’s ’82 achievement stands out as the modern edition of the shape-shifting monster movie. Any movie where an alien/demon can attack a host body and assume its identity, owes something to this movie. In terms of quality and genre significance, The Thing would rank higher on the list. It sits at #9 because I have not seen it as many times as some of the others on this list, and though this list isn’t supposed to be about movies that quintessential to the style of the 80’s, I rewarded some other movies for being very singular to the decade.
Though I’m not especially well-versed in horror movies, I would personally include this movie in my top 3 horror movies, along with Alien and Halloween (what a triple feature!). The Thing hits a bit differently than the other two movies I just mentioned. It is an absolute masterclass in creating paranoia. There is obviously paranoia involved in any movie that induces fear, but the difference here is in the antagonist. The shape-shifting villain can provide the typical jump scares by attacking suddenly, but it also adds lingering doubt about which characters are still human. A single, established predator, like Michael Myers from Halloween, is very scary, but technically, we can assume he is the only person to fear. We don’t look at any of Laurie’s friends as possible enemies posing a threat.
The events of The Thing, happen to a deserted team of researchers in Antarctica, with no where to go. The action is confined to their living quarters and research facility. There are isolating hallways and quiet rooms, but overall, they don’t have an escape route. This setting adds to the intensity, and may allow the movie to transcend time, as the isolated location would likely preclude them from having internet or cell phone service.
As with many good horror flicks, the score is affecting, and grows in intensity throughout the movie. It was created by the extremely prolific Ennio Morricone, who is most famous for the “Man with no name” trilogy. It is an artistic contribution that shows this movie is better than B-movie fodder.
Hitting on another staple of horror movies, The Thing features groundbreaking special effects for the time, which are important for showing any number of shape-shifting or alien attacks.
Kurt Russell, who is by far the biggest star in the movie, plays the main character MacReady. Though it isn’t a typical action hero role, MacReady is a cerebral badass who takes charge in attempt to flush the alien out of hiding. It is a strong performance from a chronically underrated actor.
Finally, this movie has a very underrated ending. A perfect capstone to the thrilling nature of what takes place. Though an alternate conclusion wouldn’t have ruined the movie, what transpires is the only fitting way to cap it off.
8). Cocktail (1988, directed by Roger Donaldson)
This is the 80’s! Tom Cruise, possibly at peak charisma, plays a young bartender in New York City, with aspirations to one day be rich. The movie is a fun look at a time where gimmicky bartending was more in vogue.
After having a fallout with his mentor Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown), Cruise quits his gig in New York City, and apparently also quits the college courses he was taking, and starts tending bar somewhere tropical. It is there that he meets Jordan (80’s goddess Elisabeth Shue), and romantic drama ensues.
From a merit standpoint, Cocktail is harder to analyze – it isn’t on par with many of the Honorable Mentions, or the #9 entry. However, it’s just a fun movie that generally makes me feel good. Even when he’s down, you feel good that Cruise is going to land on his feet. It seems so singular to this one decade, which is also part of the fun. There are nice musical interludes with 80’s classics. Cocktail is just a ball!
7). No Way Out (1987, directed by Roger Donaldson, again!)
What a 1-2 punch for Roger Donaldson, directing each of the last two entries in back to back years! I was late to the game on No Way Out, but I enjoy it because it is a well-paced, no frills thriller. In the age of CGI and superheroes, it is great to watch a simple, old-fashioned drama.
The IMDb summary for this movie is “A coverup and witch-hunt occur after a politician accidentally kills his mistress.” Our protagonist, played by Kevin Costner, knows the politician killed the woman because the two walked by each other in the dark – Costner leaving the woman’s house, while the politician was coming. Costner was able to see the politician, but the latter was unable to identify him. The aforementioned witch-hunt is for the politician to find the one guy who could ID him as the woman’s killer (Costner). This witch-hunt occurs at the Pentagon, and Costner is stuck inside when they lock the building down. With…No Way Out…of the building, Costner has to prove the politician’s guilt before they can silence him!
Kevin Costner is smooth, as always, playing a great everyman. The politician is played by Gene Hackman, one of the best actors ever. Sean Young plays the mistress, and she is extremely likable in the role, not just in a sexual way. Honestly, I’d only previously seen her as Einhorn in Ace Ventura, so I was happy to see she could be somebody else.
Finally, there’s a plot twist. I wrote about it in my post on plot twists, but the funny thing about the twist in No Way Out is that it’s totally unnecessary in the movie, which is why it ends up being shocking! Basically, prior to the events of the movie, the Department of Defense had concern about a Russian mole codenamed “Yuri”. As a part of their witch-hunt, the politician and his consigliere fabricate a report to say that the person who killed the mistress must have been “Yuri”. This gives them political grounds to devote resources to figuring out who the witness is. So, “Yuri”, doesn’t have anything to do with what happened, it was a fabrication. Except that Costner ends up being Yuri! They show it at the very end of the movie, when all pertinent story loops have been closed. It’s quite a surprise!
The technology shown in the movie is a little outdated, but otherwise, No Way Out holds up today as a straightforward thriller with no CGI or anything but the actors acting. I’ve enjoyed the MCU, but Hollywood needs to keep producing these “smaller” movies like No Way Out.
6). Bloodsport (1988, directed by Newt Arnold)
HELL YES! Bloodsport rules! It is an insanely 80’s movie. Bloodsport might be the most noteworthy proof that Hollywood was making cocaine-fueled decisions for the whole decade. What makes me say this? It’s the story of American soldier, Frank Dux, a real person, who goes AWOL to fight in an illegal martial arts tournament in Hong Kong called “Kumite”. The tournament is supposed to be “underground”, but somehow everyone knows about it. So, now you know why it was an essential inclusion to this list.
Frank Dux was played by movie legend, Jean Claude Van Damme, in his first starring role. Van Damme nails the part, he is extremely athletic and is believable as a fighter. His best friend in the movie, Ray Jackson, is ridiculous. They don’t make characters like Ray Jackson anymore, which is too bad for everyone. Most notably, there’s a flashback scene where a young Frank Dux breaks into his future sensei’s house, and tries to steal a priceless sword. It’s something you have to see to fully comprehend, but here are a few highlights:
a) The kid has a completely indiscernible accent.
b) The kid is wearing a New York (football) Giants shirt, and a San Francisco Giants (baseball) hat.
c) This was that kid’s only movie role, which, we’ll say, isn’t surprising.
d) There’s a part where he fends off some school bullies, but his martial arts stance doesn’t look…impressive.
Almost everyone in the movie isn’t great at acting. Forrest Whitaker has a small role as a U.S. government agent who is pursuing Dux to arrest him and bring him back home. He doesn’t say much. If the acting weren’t enough, there is speculation that Dux may not have been entirely truthful when describing his life for the plot of the movie…KU-MI-TE KU-MI-TE KU-MI-TE!!!!!
5). Rocky IV (1985, directed by Sylvester Stallone)
Rocky IV might be my favorite Rocky movie. The stakes are the highest of any of the movies. It’s the Cold War, and he is basically taking on the whole USSR. The training montages are the best of any of the movies. The music is perfect.
Rocky has beaten Apollo Creed, who was older, but one of the best boxers ever. He beat Clubber Lang, who was an absolute animal, but now he has to face…Ivan Drago – a ‘roided up six-foot five inch two hundred-sixty pound specimen, portrayed by Dolph Lundgren. It’s USA vs Russia, I cannot even imagine watching this in the 80’s, when the Cold War was still raging, the intensity in the movie was palpable.
This movie is responsible for arguably the harshest emotional 180 in movie history. The USSR sends Drago to the U.S. for an exhibition match against the retired Apollo Creed…in Las Vegas. The match begins as all matches should, with an epic performance from James Brown, and a grand entrance from Apollo Creed. It makes me so happy! Then the match starts. Drago is so strong that he kills Apollo in the ring, and shows no remorse afterward. It’s the emotional equivalent of pulling the emergency break. Rocky has no choice, but to fight the Russian for the Heavyweight Championship, and avenge Creed’s death.
The Russians demand that the fight be in Russia, so Rocky has to train and fight in the belly of the beast. He lives in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, and his training involves running in the freezing cold temperatures, sawing logs, and working out in a barn. It’s awesome! Rocky’s training is juxtaposed with the state of the art training facilities that the Russian is using, treadmills and machines, all done indoors, away from the elements.
Then they have the showdown, and Rocky ends the Cold War. U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A!
4). Major League (1989, directed by David S. Ward)
We’re in the midst of a sports movie run! Major League is more intentionally comedic than the previous two entrants, while also hitting on all of the major sports movie tropes: It is an underdog story about a rag-tag group of MLB cast-offs who have to come together in order to keep their team in Cleveland, and it all comes down to the final game.
Writer-director, David S. Ward, is a die-hard Cleveland Indians fan, and there are a lot of small details that make the movie feel authentic. The movie is simultaneously very funny, but also speaks to the fan experience. The biggest element impacting both facets is Harry Doyle, the Cleveland Indians’ local broadcaster, played by the real-life Milwaukee Brewers’ broadcaster, Bob Uecker. Doyle sounds like a real broadcaster, because he is a real broadcaster. He represents a real aspect of fandom, the local team announcer, who is both self-deprecating about the team, and clearly biased in their favor. The commentary is wittily optimistic, both making fun of the Indians’ futility, and simultaneously hopeful that they’ll turn it around. It hits home for all baseball fans.
Although the rag-tag, underdog aspect is common for a sports movie, the way Major League gets there is interesting: A newly widowed owner of the Cleveland Indians puts together a bad team so that they’ll lose and she can move the team to Miami. They recruit all sorts of cast-offs, has-beens, and never-were’s to make the team bad, and that’s where we get our main characters. Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger) is a washed up catcher playing baseball in Mexico; Rick Vaughn (Charlie Sheen) comes from prison; Willie Mays Hays (Wesley Snipes) wasn’t recruited, he just shows up; manager Lou Brown (James Gammon) was working at an auto parts store. Eventually, the team gets wind of the plan to move, and that motivates them to start winning to stick it to the owner.
It’s really a movie for fans, and we get their perspective throughout. Early on, they’re incredulous over the no-name players that were brought in, but most of them are still blindly optimistic. Of course, a couple of them are cynical, but they ultimately turn when the team starts winning.
The thing the movie does really well is they illustrate the fans’ love for these random guys on the team. All-stars are known nationally, some role players in big markets like New York or Los Angeles may garner some recognition, but most teams are filled with a lot of names that most people don’t know. Fans form special bonds with these players, who are more “everyman”. If a player has a nickname, or something unique to their look like a haircut, or facial hair, or glasses, you can bet there are fans at each home game dressed up to show support for that player. If someone has crazy hair, the team will probably sell wigs to the fans, and you’ll be able to see them throughout the stands. This movie captures this with Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn. He comes from prison, and he clearly isn’t an all-star, but Cleveland fans love him. When he comes in at the end, the song “Wild Thing” plays and the fans go nuts. It’s what Bill Simmons refers to as a “chill scene”, the emotional impact gives viewers goosebumps.
Major League is a bigger movie that gets the little things right. It’s an 80’s classic, and one of the best sports movies of all-time.
3). Bull Durham (1988, directed by Ron Shelton)
If Major League is a great movie from the fans’ perspective, Bull Durham is the best movie from the players’ perspective. It was written and directed by Ron Shelton, a former Minor League baseball player, who based certain elements of the movie on his experiences. The movie covers streaks, superstitions, nicknames, interviews, and the day-to-day grind of being a ballplayer.
Given the creative architect, this movie feels very “inside baseball”. There aren’t many other movies that provide this. A lot of the familiar sports movie tropes that happen in Major League, do not happen in Bull Durham. They’re a Minor League team in North Carolina, no one is a star, and no one is recognizable. The only players we really spend time with are Crash Davis and “Nuke” LaLoosh. There are no rag-tag underdogs, and no “big game” heroics. Just one player whose career is winding down, and another who’s just getting started. It’s unclear whether or not the mentor-mentee storyline was based on something that actually happened, but it absolutely seems like something a ball club would do.
Susan Sarandon was great as Annie Savoy. I have a pretty low tolerance for romantic subplots, but her part feels lived in. There are locals in places like North Carolina, where the local Minor League team is their biggest (sporting) attraction, and baseball is such an American pastime that it’s easy to see someone being highly interested in the players. The fact that she is cultured, and believes she is imparting wisdom to the young players makes her more of an attraction than a charity case.
Overall, Bull Durham brings a different perspective to the sports movie genre, one that I would love to see applied to other sports. I imagine it is difficult for Hollywood to consider a movie like this because ignoring the usual genre tropes means that the story likely won’t have the same mass appeal, unless it is truly compelling, like with Crash, “Nuke” and Annie. It is hard enough for someone to become a writer-director, and the likelihood that this person would be a former pro athlete is even lower. Bull Durham was created due to a lucky confluence of factors, and I am holding out hope that we’ll see more movies of this ilk at some point in the future.
2). Road House (1989, directed by Rowdy Harrington)
It’s crazy that Road House isn’t #1 on every list. So far, the only other time I’ve talked about it was for movie heroes. It’s clearly the best movie about the bar industry. Dalton is a “Cooler”, which is basically a head bouncer who also oversees all of a bar’s operations. He calms the trouble, he spots theft and scammers. It is a ridiculous 80’s concept that sort of came to life with Jon Taffer on Bar Rescue, except that Dalton also handles security.
You can’t watch Road House and have a bad time. It is everything you could want in an 80’s movie:
a) Ridiculous hair and outfits
b) Unrealistic occupations
c) Quotable lines (“Pain don’t hurt”)
d) Extremely hatable villains
Dalton is so freakin’ cool we begin to wonder, was he born like this? How did he get into the Cooling game? It turns out he has a mentor who brought him in. And who’s the only person cool enough to be Dalton’s mentor? Sam M-F Elliott. He played Wade Garrett who, per Dalton, is the best Cooler in the game.
Garrett eventually makes his way to Jasper, Missouri to meet up with Dalton who is in the midst of his battle against the hatable, Brad Wesley. The villain is a criminal who basically owns the town of Jasper, and forces all of the local business to pay him. He owns the police, and therefore the town doesn’t have any recourse agains him, until Dalton shows up.
Dalton saves a town from a self-appointed criminal dictator. Road House proves all of the cheese of the 80’s in a wildly fun 114 minutes. It is a quintessential movie of the decade that pretty much never gets old, which begs the question, what could possibly be better than Road House?
1). Die Hard (1988, directed by John McTiernan)
Shocker. Die Hard wins out here for being a genre G.O.A.T (action movies). It is the best of a genre that was really big in the 80’s, and it achieved this status by subverting a lot of familiar genre tropes:
a) Bruce Willis’ John McClane is just a regular cop, with a receding hairline and a regular physique. This came at the end of a decade where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone played multiple muscled up super soldiers.
b) McClane was a smart-ass, but his one-liners weren’t cute or said as a pun.
c) McClane didn’t knowingly enter into a heroic situation. He happened to be visiting his estranged wife when their building was taken over by terrorists.
d) The villains were merely thieves, not maniacs interested in terrorism or world domination.
e) McClane expresses his vulnerability and admits to being at fault in his marriage, and that he expects to die.
I don’t want to beat a dead horse because I’ve written about this movie many times, perhaps most notably when I wrote that it was my favorite action movie ever. It has the best hero, the best villain, and the best plot.
John McClane is the best hero in any movie. As noted above, he is a vulnerable everyman who is thrust into a situation he doesn’t want to be in. His one-liners are more out of frustrated sarcasm than perfectly set up wordplay. Perhaps most importantly, we get to see his intelligence as he thinks out his problems. Obviously, there isn’t a brainstorming session, but more than other movie heroes, we see him think through what he is trying to do, which would directly allow the audience to put themselves in his shoes…if he were wearing any shoes!
Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) is the best action movie villain, and one of the best film villains of all-time. He is smooth, intelligent, and ruthless. It’s easy to see his leadership and adaptability, and how he is able to keep his team on task despite McClane’s disruptions. The only reason the movie is a fair fight is because Hans is in control.
Finally, there’s the plot, which is worth mentioning for two reasons. The first is that, per Bill Simmons, it spawned several copycat movies. After the success of Die Hard, other movie studios wanted to build action movies with reluctant heroes that are trapped in an area that is being held hostage; for example Steven Seagal in Under Siege, or JCVD in Sudden Death. Although nothing was ever as good as Die Hard, so it is questionable whether or not we should be giving it credit, any time people are ripping off your idea, you must have achieved something.
Secondly, and this is more of a nod to the screenplay, but Die Hard is fantastic because all of the events are connected and it builds from scene to scene. The stakes increase steadily throughout the movie. So many action movies have high stakes, but they don’t do a good job of having each plot point connect to previous and future plot points to help raise stakes and tension steadily throughout the film. Die Hard’s screenplay is actually featured in a book about screenplays, because it is an excellent example of structure.
Since it’s an action movie, there were no Oscar nominations for Die Hard. However, even though this is a favorites list, I think this is the best movie of the decade, both technically and culturally.
Honorable Mentions: Caddyshack (1980); Halloween II (1981); The Color of Money (1986); Fatal Attraction (1987); Midnight Run (1988); Kickboxer (1989); Body Heat (1981); Vampire’s Kiss (1988); When Harry Met Sally (1989); Top Gun (1986); Wall Street (1987); Dead Poets Society (1989); Commando (1985); Amadeus (1984); Rocky III (1982); Tootsie (1982); Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989); Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982); The Karate Kid (1984)
Movie Opinions 