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Post by dadsburgers on Feb 18, 2019 5:10:55 GMT
The 1980s get a bad rap in terms of movies, which I tend to agree with, but I took a look at my winners and I dunno... thoughts?
Ordinary People* Das Boot ET the Extra-Terrestrial A Christmas Story Amadeus Brazil Blue Velvet* My Life as a Dog Wings of Desire Do the Right Thing
1980 HMs include: Raging Bull, The Shining, The Elephant Man 1986 HMs include: Stand by Me, Platoon, Aliens
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Feb 18, 2019 5:53:12 GMT
yeah I'm not crazy about this decade (especially the Oscar lineups) but as always there are A TON of underappreciaited gems and overlooked masterpieces. The 80s did provide some flat-out classics (The Shining, The Elephant Man, The Thing, Blade Runner, Paris Texas, Amadeus, Come and See, Brazil, My Neighbor Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies, Do the Right Thing) which are widely loved among cinephiles for good reason. The decade also produced some of my absolute favorite highschool films (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the underrated Risky Business, Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the transgressive Heathers). But there's also lots of stuff that slipped through the cracks. Peter Greenaway's 80s oeuvre still seems relatively obscure apart from The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (I can't recommend his other stuff enough, especially the wickedly delightful Draughtsman's Contract which was one of the films that inspired the The Favourite, and The Belly of an Architect, and for fans of those films you'd also do well to check out Drowning By Numbers). His anti-narrative approach to filmmaking is quite liberating and his rigid formalism and obsession with patterns creates cinematic experiences that are wholly unique and invigorating and dryly, ironically whimsical. A kind of richly, obsessively textured symmetrical deadpan. There are no filmmakers like Greenaway, even if his projects do recall the free-wheeling whimsy of the French New Wave which he loved. and then are some films that seem to be a bit underseen: Maniac, Breaker Morant, Danton, Educating Rita, Testament (the most devastating depiction of annihilation I've seen), Angst, Under Fire, The Hit, Kiss of the Spider Woman, House of Games, Drugstore Cowboy some others that just underrated (in my opinion anyways): the largely unglamorous Fame, Ragtime, The Year of Living Dangerously, the aforementioned Risky Business, Nineteen Eighty-Four (the John Hurt version), Another Year, Places in the Heart, Desert Hearts, A Room with a View, Driving Miss Daisy, and one of my favorite movies of all time My Dinner with Andre. so yes, while I'm not head over heels for the 80s, that's mostly just in comparison to the 60s and 70s which were insurmountably better. On reflection I may actually prefer the 80s to the 90s and maybe even the aughts. There's a lot of gold here if you know where to find it. *all of this with the disclaimer that as always there's a lot more I need to see
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Post by pacinoyes on Feb 18, 2019 18:20:22 GMT
It's a bad decade for American films. The best stuff to me is early in the decade with sort of 70s hangover films films that could have been made in '75 - The Verdict, Raging Bull (not a big fan but it's impeccably made), Blow Out and at the end of the decade (Crimes & Misdemeanors, Dead Ringers) something starts to creep in that would flourish in the 90s - sort of things that are one thing on one level and something else underneath). The middle of the 80s is a sort of wasteland to me (except for Allen who is monumental the whole decade and of course the Coens emerge).
In world cinema it's a terrific decade for the French, in acting it's a great decade for Depardieu, Irons, Streep, Huppert. For films in world cinema, Fassbinder dies but Wenders flourishes, Spoorloos, Dekalog, Ran .......there's major things to be sure there.
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Post by stephen on Feb 18, 2019 18:25:55 GMT
Hot take: I think it's overall got more quality films than the '70s.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Feb 18, 2019 18:40:05 GMT
I love the 1980s. I reckon it has some of the best films, which manage to be hugely entertaining, while still being very creative and high class productions.
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Post by pupdurcs on Feb 18, 2019 18:49:20 GMT
I love the 1980s. I reckon it has some of the best films, which manage to be hugely entertaining, while still being very creative and high class productions. This. The 80's was great. So many "genres" as we recognise them today were truly formed in that decade. The teen movie ( anything John Hughes), the modern day cop/thriller/ action buddy comedy (48 Hours. Die Hard. Lethal Weapon etc). Spielberg reached his creative/commercial apex. You still had the "art" films that won Oscars, but the marriage of creativaty and commerce was never greater than in the 80's. Personified by Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Back To The Future
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Post by pupdurcs on Feb 19, 2019 6:18:46 GMT
Also to add, I think the 80's might have been the golden age of American film comedy. Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Steve Martin, John Candy at their peaks and their funniest, knocking out classics like Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Planes Trains And Automobiles, Ghostbusters, Roxanne, Caddyshack...what a time to be alive!
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Post by dadsburgers on Feb 22, 2019 2:57:34 GMT
Agree with all this-- definitely a high point for comedy.
Thanks, Tommen, for the Greenaway recommendations--- it's been years since I've seen TCTTHWAHL and I'm still entranced by it and think about it alot. I'll have to check out his other stuff.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2019 3:23:16 GMT
The 80s had great movies. Don't know why that era is shit on.
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Post by pupdurcs on Feb 22, 2019 4:39:03 GMT
The 80s had great movies. Don't know why that era is shit on. My theory is that some people shit on the 80's because the 70's has been idealised by critics and cinephiles as the golden age of American filmmaking, where the auteur director was king. The 80's was less about the auteur director in American film. It was more about concept and ideas and producers vision. But I feel the films produced in the 80's were no less quality because of that, and the great films were probably far broader in style, genre and content...wheras the 70's was broadly dominated by what we would consider today to be arthouse dramas. And again, comedy in the 80's crushed comedy in the 70's, but it goes to show how disreslected comedy as a genre is that not enough is made of that.
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