Some Of My Favorite 80's Movies

I dislike much of 80s mainstream cinema with as much passion as I dislike 80s mainstream music. Yet ironically, one of my all time favorite films came out in the 80s: Blade Runner.

Other 80s films I quite like are Hannah and Her Sisters, Moonstruck, A Fish Called Wanda, Aliens, The Terminator, Amadeus, Witness...

I just noticed Stranger Than Paradise is on the list. Great film as well.

As far as world cinema... the French film Diva is one of my all-time favorites... Wim Wenders' masterpiece Wings of Desire surely has to rank near the top; Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring has an awesome epic sweep... Rohmer's films in the 80s were of his usual high quality. Wong Kar-wai made his debut with the electric As Tears Go By (my favorites by him though are Ashes of Time and Chungking Express, both from '94). In China, the so-called Fifth Generation filmmakers began in the 1980s with great films like The Horse Thief, Ju Dou, Yellow Earth, and Red Sorghum. Iranian cinema became a force to be reckoned with, including Abbas Kiarostami's films Homework and Where Is My Friend's House? Almodovar arrived in the 1980s with an insane energy (e.g. Women On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) that I miss from his later period. Another favorite is Alain Tanner's In the White City, starring Bruno Ganz and set in Portugal.

I'm not all that knowledgeable about Japanese anime, but some of my favorite Studio Ghibli films came out in the 1980s, including Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, and My Neighbor Totoro.