What's everyone's top movies of 1980?

The Elephant Man / Lynch
Raging Bull / Scorsese
Airplane! / Zucker(s)
The Blues Brothers / Landis
The Fog / Carpenter

Ordinairy People / Redford
Cruising / Friedkin
Empire Strikes Back / Kershner
Altered States / Russell
The Shining / Kubrick

Low-key one of the best years ever right?

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HEI guys.

The first to come to mind was Empire Strikes Back. I've always loved that film. It is a bit of a nostalgia thing vis I grew up watching Star Wars. It does still hold up today.

Elephant Man and Airplane! are great too. They're polar opposites as well. That's not a bad thing. Actually having two distinct films be equally great is a good thing, at least to me.

I wasn't a fan of Raging Bull nor Ordinary People nor Shining though. Raging Bull and Shining are made by people whose work I don't like. Ordinary People I just found boring. Yes it won Best Picture. That doesn't mean I have to like it.

I'd have to look to see what other 1980 films I've seen.

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I think we all can agree that Empire Strikes Back is a masterfully crafted movie.


I was a Star Wars kid, but even those that aren't fans of the series, it's still a neat Perfect movie. The soundtrack, cinematography, artistic backdrops, cast, story, and of course the brilliant pre-cgi effects.


It's clearly one of the top 10 movies of the decade.

1. Shining, The
2. Empire Strikes Back, The
3. Airplane!
4. Blues Brothers, The
5. Friday the 13th
6. Changeling

There are a lot of good horror movies that came out that year too, but not near the top.

Top 5

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Ordinary People
3. Superman II
4. The Elephant Man
5. The Shining

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I can go with that. The original Star Wars trilogy is some of the finest cinema ever. My brothers and my parents introduced us to Star Wars with the original trilogy, and it's about the only thing Star Wars I'll watch now. It's excellent.

I believe this was just 1980, not the 1980s. Just glancing at a post a page or two back, it sounds like other people also mis-read it.

1. The Shining
2. Zigeunerweisen
3. The Elphant Man
4. Raging Bull
5. City of the Living Dead
6. The Ninth Configuration
7. Inferno
8. Bad Timing
9. Encounters of the Spooky Kind
10. The Fall of the House of Usher (Svankmajer)

Haven't seen that I could imagine making my list

• Cruising
• Ordinary People
• Kagemusha
• American Gigolo
• Permanent Vacation
• Berlin Alexanderplatz
• Shogun Assassin
• City of Women
• The Big Red One
• Breaker Morant
• The Apple

I'm WAY behind many other users here on 1980. I just checked my chart, and I only have five rated 90 or higher, so I'm gonna hold off on that.


I'll tell you my top ten ALBUMS of 1980, though:


1. Talking Heads - Remain in Light
2. Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
3. John Williams - Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
4. Augustus Pablo - Rockers Meets King Tubbys in a Fire House
5. Jackson 5 - Triumph
6. Motorhead - Ace of Spades
7. Tatsuro Yamashita - Ride on Time
8. Harold Budd / Brian Eno - Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror
9. Joy Division - Closer
10. Siouxsie and The Banshees - Kaleidoscope

You're probably ahead of me. According to my IMDb ratings, I've seen 16 movies from 1980, and they don't have the shiniest numbers from me.

The original post is looking for top or favorite movies from the calendar year 1980, not for the entire decade of the 1980s.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

1. Ordinary People - I've had several viewings over the decades, and it still holds up, still moves me, still impresses me that MTM had that in her (after years of her playing sweet hearted people on her TV series)

2. Mon oncle d’Amérique - a comedic, thought-provoking slap in the face, IMO, it's on par with Resnais early greats.

3. Atlantic City

4. Confidence - István Szabó had a great decade, along with this he filmed Mephisto, Colonel Redl, and Hanussen

5. Aakrosh - Hindi arthouse cinema, I named Naseeruddin Shah my best actor on the year for his performance as a lawyer defending a man accused of murdering his wife... movie left me shaken and angry

6. Pixtoe - painful, very painful - Marília Pęra was my best supporting actress

7. Airplane! - funny, very funny

8. Coal Miner’s Daughter - once again, agreeing with Oscar; Sissy Spacek was my best actress winner as well

9. The Shining

10. The Elephant Man

Kagemusha, and Raging Bull are slotted just outside of them.

Runners up: Babylon, Breaker Morant, Resurrection, Hopscotch, The Changeling, Heaven's Gate, The Long Riders, The Nest, All My Girls, Legend of the Fox, Foam Bath, A Distant Cry from Spring.

Caddyshack, The Gods Must Be Crazy & The Blues Brothers were fun

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I had been told for years that I should be mad at Ordinairy People for winnings Oscars over superior films that year... but once I watched it, I simply couldn't.

It's not without serious cliches - the girlfriend and the bullies bits just had to be part of this story, the shrink scenes are treated like they're the first of their kind in a Hollywood film (are they?) - but as a whole, it's precious... and I loved two or three performances in it.



And not to mention that ending

Kagemusha is fairly good. The problem it has isn't that it's bad. The problem it has is that his Ran overshadows it. I've seen Kagemusha once some time ago, and I did really like it. I just wildly prefer Ran, the one the former was made for which to be a dress rehearsal. Kagemusha is great on its own, except it isn't on its own. That's its one negative.

I try and watch a film as its own entity, rather that knock it for not being something else, Ran or whatever, so I didn't filter it through that lens. My only issue, if I'm remembering it correctly, was all the tell, not show. It lessens the impact of certain scene. Mizoguchi did that in the 47 Ronin for another, and I always wondered if Kurosawa was inspired by that? I get the reasons, and it can work at times, the reactions can be powerful, but sometimes it's frustrating. (In Ronin, Mizo had the attack relayed by way of letter... and that seriously undercut the moment for me).

It's been decades since I've seen it but I really remember loving Woody Allen's Stardust Memories released from that year, but I need to watch it again. The same goes for The Elephant Man, though I remember that film far more. Loved both of them, but they are due for re-watches before I'd rank them, but both would certainly be at the top of my list of 1980 (the year, not decade) films. I also remember liking The Last Metro by Truffaut a lot too, but it's been years since I've seen it.

Raging Bull of course is great and would be toward the top. I also liked two films that are reasonably well known, but not necessarily considered true classics: Heaven's Gate and The Long Riders.

The Long Good Friday is really a cool British gangster film and of course The Shining by Kubrick is a bonified and well recognized classic that is amazing.

Funny thing, last October we saw The Shining in the theater and I had a discussion afterward because I swear that thing is a low-key subtle comedy. It's absolutely catch you off guard hilarious and I had always slightly been aware of something there to the humor, but until I watched it in the theater, it didn't stand out to as prominently as when seeing it on the big screen. For instance Jack reading Playboy in the waiting room (just as our "heroes" in Dr. Strangelove did) and also the huge HUGE setup of Scatman Crothers coming to "save the day!" and then how anticlimactic, sudden, and shocking his death was. His murder seemed more like a satire of how horror movies tend to go and really just seemed like a dig against horror movie conventions. I also love Jack's response to Duvall while driving up to the Overlook Hotel, "See, he saw it on television; it's OK!" I think Duvall played her role straight, but I swear Kubrick and Nicholson had an agreement to do The Shining as a three layered film... horror on the surface, horror on the inner layer underneath, and dark comedy at the core.

Airplane! is great from that year too and Kurosawa's Kagemusha is a film I was bewildered by and need to watch again too.

Yeah lots of interesting films from the year the ushered in the 1980s.

My favorite is The Empire Strikes Back, which I recently wrote a review of sorts in my top 100 films of all time thread linked at the bottom of my posts in the bio-section or whatever it's called.

Also MUBI does a cool top lists of by year if you're looking for some ideas or want to "blind watch something." I'm really interested in The King and the Mockingbird:

https://mubi.com/en/lists/mubi-s-top-50-films-of-1980

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It's good, yes, but I wouldn't call it one of the best necessarily. 1939 will always be the best year and I know 1974, 1975, and 1999 get a lot of props around here too, but if I had to name a second best year of film, I'd build my case around 1960.

That might be an entirely different subject for a different thread.

Yeah it's important to take a film for its own merit than filter it through something else, even though it can be hard to do. People will compare films to each other even with a loose connection, and even if it isn't fair to either film. I do recall Kagemusha always being touted as "Kurosawa's dress rehearsal for Ran" and I kind of went in with that mindset because it had been pounded in my brain, and I had seen Ran once or twice, so it was hard to get away from that. It wasn't fair to Kagemusha, but it happened anyway. Oops...

My theater is going to screen The Elephant Man in a couple of weeks (and they showed Mulholland Dr. tonight)... but for whatever reason they're showing it as part of a horror series (ironic, right? )

I've heard so much shit (positive and negative) about The Shining over the years I'm kind of scared to re-watch it...but a part of me as well, always felt that it's somewhat funny, intentionally or not...

I did watch opening minutes of The Long Riders but turned it off mainly because it didn't seem anything "special" (unlike The Driver and The Warriors which were fire from the get-go)... care to elaborate on it's merits?

I wondered why I forgot about the Long Good Friday, after seeing it mentioned. Took a look and oh, it's on my 1981 list - I go by theatrical rather than festival showings or test screenings or whatnot, for my release dates on my lists (and movie blog), sometimes that trips me up. So that's why... but yeah, agree it's one of the good ones, no matter what season you place it in.

You're not wrong, comparisons and such are inevitable, and can be an important part of film study, and will or can, pop up in general conversation. If a person were going through Hitch's 'man on the run' films for another example, you're likely going to contrast and compare and speak of the progression's movie to movie. It's just going to happen.

I just meant that if I'm watching like, the 39 Steps, I try to be in 39 Steps mode, rather than going, "Yup, but it's no North by Northwest."