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High on a flowerpot cookie while present at the 1979 Oscars , Francis Ford Coppola boldly predicted a communications revolution : “ The movies of the ‘ 80s are going to be awful beyond what any of you may dream . ”
Though the ‘ seventy dream of a Hollywood control by the auteurs ultimately fizzle out by the former 1980s , cinematic masters still held their own against an entrench studio superstructure during that hungrily capitalist decade – a period that more and more seems to resemble our own .
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10. Airplane! (1980)
jest for joke one of the funniest picture ever made , Airplane!borrowed fromStanley Kubrick’sDoctor Strangelovethe bright conceit of redo an earlier , grave - disposed disaster film with a brazenly satiric oculus .
Where 1957’sZero Hour!took seriously the premise of a battle - scarred airman forced into piloting a passenger fountain when the archetype both become ill , Airplane ! — made by the comedy collective of Jim Abrahams , David Zucker , and Jerry Zucker — uses it as a jumping - off pointedness for a serial publication of sight gags and puns that start at bonkers and escalate to the breathlessly superb .
9. Paris, Texas (1984)
Wim Wenders’Paris , Texasoperates in a dissimilar register than most any other plastic film ever made . In its arsenal of weapon are Wenders ’ humanism , screenwriter Sam Shepard ’s sense for the American West , and a compact cast of characters of lineament actors led by the inimitable Harry Dean Stanton .
Stanton ’s nomad is led on a winding journey of reconnection with his alienated married woman and tike , a premise out of melodrama that rises to transcendent pinnacle thanks to Robby Müller ’s smeary cinematography and an unbroken range of masters in front of and behind the tv camera .
8. The Shining (1980)
Reviled in its time , The Shininghas come to be read as a standout in Stanley Kubrick ’s filmography , with its imagery second base in the public awareness only to2001 : A Space Odyssey . A highly ( and justly ) revisionist adaptation of Stephen King ’s novel of the same name , The Shining ’s tale of ghost - incited familial breakdown is occasionally as harrowing to ascertain as it was to take , but its undefended enigma is that it ’s oft crisply comic .
When Jack Torrance ( Jack Nicholson ) is told that the old caretaker of the Overlook Hotel “ work amok and killed his kinfolk with an ax , ” he responds with a genial smile , “ Well , you may rest assure … That ’s not move to happen with me . ” Anyone with a snuff it familiarity with the film gets the dramatic satire .
7. Broadcast News (1987)
at the same time a releasing , incisive dig of TV news and a wistful anti - rom - com , Broadcast Newsis the cinematic masterpiece of its writer / director , The Simpsonsco - creator James L. Brooks . While a gag - out - forte comedy , Broadcast Newsis also a morality play that frames the downfall of programme news media around a dysfunctional triplet fated from puerility to take shape a too - close - for - puff sexual love Triangulum ( William Hurt , Albert Brooks , and Holly Hunter , all never dear ) .
In 2016 , James L. Brookssaidthe greatest work of his calling was Albert Brooks ’ fictional character ’s spoken language in which he predicts what the daemon will be like if he ever arrives : “ He will just bit by little bit lower our standards where they ’re significant . ” That seems more spot - on every day .
6. Reds (1981)
When Warren Beatty do out to write , direct , and star in his own cinema , Heaven Can Wait , in 1978 , he may have seemed like a pretty - boy dilettante . AfterHeaven Can Wait’snine Oscar nomination and one profits , that misconception had pretty much dissipated – and just in time for Beatty to attempt his almost ridiculously ambitiousReds , which chronicle the life history of John Reed , the American journalist and Communist sympathiser whoseTen Days That Shook the Worldremains the unequivocal story of the 1917 Russian revolution .
Three - and - a - one-half hours long , featuring an original score by Stephen Sondheim , and co - starring Diane Keaton , Jack Nicholson , Gene Hackman , Maureen Stapleton ( who win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her piece of work ) , and George Plimpton , among others , Redsis a film one watches in wonder while substantiate its like will never be made again .
5. Die Hard (1988)
This action classic may be disguise as a shoot-‘em - up gloomy - neckband hero sandwich flick , but that ’s just on the aerofoil : Die Hardis in fact a “ What - if - We’d - Won - Vietnam ” motion picture . Eastern European villains ( take : Moscow ) are kept from destroying a tower that dish up as a symbol of Pacific Rim capitalism and democracy ( read : South Vietnam ) by John McClane ( Bruce Willis ) , the personification of down - to - earth American know - how .
McClane stumbling through a jungle - alike plant installation in the Nakatomi authority amid explosion and tumbling helicopters just drives the distributor point rest home . Die Hardgets better every prison term you find out ; even though the tension is dialed to 11 throughout , it ’s so everlasting that it ’s almost atmospherically comfortable to look on , like old , snug combat the boot .
4 . When Harry Met Sally … ( 1989 )
The germ from which all contemporary romantic comedy has grow , this Rob Reiner - lead , Nora Ephron - scripted golf hole - in - one is too often dismiss as a “ comfort watch , ” belike because its piercing insight and old - Hollywood - sports meeting - Castle Rock aesthetic has been so endlessly imitate in the 35 years since its release .
What ca n’t be written off so easily are the marvelous jumper cable performance by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan , neither of whom has ever had so much height or pathos in anything else .
3. My Dinner with André (1981)
There are very few completely unparalleled films . My Dinner with André , in which actor Wallace Shawn and dramatics managing director André Gregory , play themselves , hash out the nature of execution and contemporary alienation over an uninterrupted 111 - minute dinner party at Café des Artistes in New York , is one such film . ( They compose the screenplay , too , and director Louis Malle is laudably restrained in let them to take midway stage . )
If you love to hear heedful , articulate masses speak well and wisely , in dialog that dampen over the projection screen in run like a falls , you could n’t require for a better eve ’s entertainment . What is it reallyabout ? To quote Gregory ’s onscreen persona : “ It has something to do with living . ”
2. Ordinary People (1980)
Mary Tyler Moore ’s Beth Jarrett is perhaps the best Bad Mom ever committed to celluloid . InOrdinary People , she ’s a Lake Forest doyenne whose golden - male child firstborn son died in a boating accident that her shrinking - violet younger boy subsist . She is the epitome of the emotionally repressed WASP , the mainstay of a tragic , but deep warm picture show that wears its heart on its crisply weight-lift sleeve .
Robert Redford ’s directorial launching , which won Best Picture and Best Director , also features crushing functioning by Donald Sutherland , Judd Hirsch , and the vernal Timothy Hutton ( who won Best Supporting Actor despite being the unambiguous Pb ) .
1. Local Hero (1983)
If you watchLocal Hero , the story of a coastal Scottish village and the oil caller rep who wants to buy it away from its residents , and do n’t need to endure out the relaxation of your living inside the movie , you may be beyond avail . Peter Riegert , the best head man of the 1980s , and Burt Lancaster co - star in this triumph of atmosphere written and direct by Bill Forsyth .
