POLL RESULTS: Top 100 Films of the 1980s

I'm betting A World Apart and The Night of the Shooting Stars aren't making it here...

Also I was sure BTTF would make top 10.

Withnail and I (201 points, 6 votes, 3 first-place votes)

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The British Fear & Loathing

-- Mike B

hard to isolate a particular moment, but the scenes preceding their attempt to clean out the sink always send me into wheezing fits.

-- lauren

"GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN!"
I actually finally just saw Withnail the other week. Pretty damned funny. It was nice actually hearing all them Ride/Orbital sample bits in context.

Actually, one of the funniest moments in Withnail, for all the quote possibilities, is strictly visual -- near the end, when McGann's "I" character is slowly waking up in the back of his car, and he's all comfortable and everything's fine...and then it dawns on him that something is very very wrong. It's perfectly done.

-- Ned Raggett

No funny bits in Withnail? Shooting fish in the stream? The camberwell carrot? "Honestly officer, I've only had a few light ales" and the best bit of swearing ever, "Monty, you terrible cunt!"

-- stew s

i have no interest in discussing films with people who don't like Withnail.

-- electric sound of jim

Airplane! (209 points, 12 votes)

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julie hagerty blowing up otto the autopilot and then leslie nielsen walks in on them in airplane (scratch that, ALL the leslie nielsen scenes in that are totally classic:
"well, there was a choice: steak or fish."
"mmm, yes, i remember. i had the lasagna.")

-- joseph

Think I'm gonna have to go with Airplane. I've seen it many many times since I was 6 or 7 years old and, depending on my mood, there's still several parts I laugh out loud at.

-- oops

Repo Man (232 points, 10 votes, 2 first-place votes)

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Make of this what you will, but my earliest film memory is Repo Man’s opening scene.

-- D. Keebler

One of the great movies of all time. Over.rated.my.arse, DavidM are you that Scottish cunt that presents films on the BBC? ;)
Filled with so much classic lines. I watched Repo Man so many times with a friend that we know all the dialogue by heart and still use a lot in conversation. Say somebody drops a beer: "Somebody piss on the floor again."

toking on a joint: "What's in the car? Drugs? Hermanos Rodriguez don't do drugs."

"Get in the car white boy"

"Otto?!? Otto Parts?".

"Eh pappa es un gringo en la calle con su coche!"

and the of course the whole "John Wayne was a fag" thing.

-- Omar

"Repo Man" is one of my favourite films - esp. the censored TV version, where they say "Melon Farmer" - best film (poss. only good film) made by alex cox IMO. I may have to watch it again soon. The first time I saw it, BTW, me & a friend watched that & "Raising Arizona" in one sitting. Great evening!!!
x0x0

-- Norman Fay

YAWN* a boring Friday afternoon, so I'd thought go through my GRATE PILE OF VIDEOS I hadn't seen yet, and decided to give Repo Man a go. And...well...

It's bloody marvellous, that's what it is. I looked it up on the IMDB, and to add to the comments previously posted:
"The dubbed dialogue of the TV version (e.g. "melon farmer" as an insult) has achieved cult status in its own right." Intense.

-- DG

Where noise-boys and glam fans and punks hold hands and sing, this movie.

-- Ned Raggett

One of the reasons I like this (and to a lesser extent To Live and Die In L.A.) is that it's an unmistakebly "Los Angeles" film that manages to avoid Get Shorty-esque filming locations.

-- Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?)

I always loved and feared how the other repo men were so unpredictable. In any other movie they would have instantly become either the main character's buddies or enemies, and every action they'd take would be either helpful or antagonistic. But in RM people behave just like people (insane people, but still) do in real life; they're on their own side.

-- Dan I.

The King of Comedy (234 points, 12 votes)

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Not Scorsese’s masterpiece, but on the other hand, at least Marty demonstrated between this film and After Hours that he was much more adept in exploring what defined the 80s (fame, money, less than casual sex, manipulation, advertising) than most of his peers.

-- D. Keebler

eerily prescient

-- Mike B.

I was watching a bit of it again just now. I guess it's my favourite Scorcese film. It gets to the heart of things that are important to me. Especially good is the way the story plays out (Pupkin's routine being neither triumph nor disaster).

-- N.

classic, yeah. isn't Jerry Lewis just playing himself in this movie?

-- Justyn Dillingham

KoC (not to be mistaken with now defunct pub KoC) is Office-like in its squirming unbearableness sometimes. But as a film about celebrity stalking and about the appeal and difficulty of comedy (note Scorcese has never really made a comedy) its both spot on and ahead of its time.

-- Pete

"Maaaaa, please!"
"I can't believe I'm going to kiss you now."

-- Sean

This Is Spinal Tap (234 points, 13 votes, 1 first-place vote)

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Hilarious. And based on Saxon’s tour of America. Hello Mr Dibergi.

-- Five Eight

makes some clever points about epistemology and the nature (that it is always a lie) of the documentary form.

-- Skottie

The Stonehenge scene in Spinal Tap made me laugh real hard the first few times seeing it, and it still makes me chuckle.

-- latebloomer

I'd like to think that VH1's documentaries will help others understand the glory that is This Is Spinal Tap.

-- Anthony Miccio

Spinal Tap is on tv tonight, so some goodies:
Guest cleaning some fluff off his guitar mid-solo as it sustains the note

the zombies-style drummer in their 'Gimme some money' performance

"the druids..no-one knows who they were...or what they were doing..."

Saucy Jack

Artie Fufkin

sandwich-folding

Guest working in a shoe-shop

-- pete s

The Spinal Tap in-character-commentary is hysterical. Actually, the whole DVD package is fab, you get practically enough good extra footage to make an entire other film.

-- Ricardo

Spinal Tap, in particular, is one bitchy little film. We'll call it the pierced nephew of All About Eve.

-- Eric H.

Sandra Bernhard's only approached that level again in parts of her solo shows.

What's amazing in my repeat viewings is that Pupkin's act is no worse than some pro stand-ups.

The script was by a Newsweek film critic. (and Scorsese subsequently worked with Jay Cocks, a onetime Time critic)

But think about it: Both movies throw the plot out the window in their last third. Both are an anti-hero's journey.

Maybe Repo Man is closer to Grease. Any movie that ends with a car flying off into the sky is classic. And greatest opening theme/sequence since Goldfinger.

The Empire Strikes Back (238 points, 12 votes, 1 first-place vote)

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The only Star Wars film the world really needs. Oh, except for the original. Wouldn’t make much sense without that huh. Anyway, if only Lucas realised what it was that made this movie the fan’s favourite, the look, the feel, the tone – we wouldn’t have had to sit through the merchandising advert that was Jedi, then watch powerlessly as the man single-handedly sabotaged his own legacy with Episodes I and II, not to mention suffer the futile anticipation for what is certain to be the forthcoming colossal disappointment of Episode III. La la la, we’ve all heard it all before – this is the ‘dark’ one etc etc. But it’s a great story, well told, great to look at still, and it features THE best trad bad guy in movie history, the one and only Lord Vader, a man who risks his entire fleet of star destroyers for the sake of one poxy ship and doesn’t flinch when one of them blows up even while he’s talking to its commander. A man who murders his leading Admiral for bringing the fleet out of lightspeed too close to the Hoth system, because he felt surprise… uhrggghhh… A man whose favoured method of graciously accepting an apology is to asphyxiate. And he comes out on top (if you don’t count the fact that he believes he’s murdered his own son). How often does that happen?

-- Five Eight

due to having it on vhs i'm sure i saw 10 times as much as any other movie before i was 14 or so. actually, that ratio is probably still intact.

-- andrew s

The heart of Star Wars is still "Empire Strikes Back." I'd watch that again right now. I'm not made of stone.

-- slightly more subdued

The new Star Wars are more or less 4-wave nostalgia for me by now cos of all the repackaging, so my childhood is not being stolen at all. I'm old enough to know how marketing works, so it doesn't really phase me. I can still look back to that time when I was 7 or so and mom was making lentil soup while I begged her to let me watch Empire on tv during dinner. It was raining outside and I still hadn't gotten into videogames yet nor He-Man toys, so this was my entire world.

Watching THX and American Graffiti, it seems to me that Lucas isn't all that bad a director, in fact he has the opportunity to be an awesome one, but I think he waited far too long to make the new ones.

One of the main problems with the new ones (besides the obvious acting and writing) is that nothing is given any room to breathe; we see a really complicated landscape filled with new creatures and vehicles and all that, but it wizzes by faster than a toy commercial.

My favorite scenes from the originals (and they are the scenes that will always impress me and spark my imagination) were not shots of spaceships flying busily and all that, they were the artsy bits. Luke standing outside his house in the desert with the twinkling lights from robots around him, looking at the distant twin suns, the shot saturated with purples and oranges and dark browns. When William's majestic score swoops in i think "holy shit, farm boys with robots wanting to be magic knights in outer space" and its just so damn cool to think about.

Another scene I always liked was when Luke and Yoda say their goodbyes in Empire, Obi-Wan as a wizened glowing blue ghost in an alien swamp talking to a wizard that is so old his ears are wider than his head is tall. He mysteriously says "no...there is another" as the ship takes off and we see him light up from blue to red while looking up at the sky. I don't know, maybe it was all this sense of wonder; I think it was something the characters experienced at the same time the audience did and this is why it meant so much to alot of people. The CGI in the new ones is so busy and backdropy, it's like the characters take this universe for granted, and naturally so do we.

I was watching Empire today and had to go to work so i only caught the first half-hour, but i totally loved it and it just makes the new films seem so much worse. Han Solo is hilarious and i had forgotten how handy the references to malfunctioning equipment were - the Falcon was screwing up all the time, making plenty of room for Han and Chewie to do comedy routines about trying to fix it. There's a lot of this in the original series (ie. R2 falling over, etc.) and not only does it add some humor, it makes the world actually seem relatable. I always thought "geez, even in Star Wars shit doesn't work right". Seems just like home.

-- Adam Bruneau

Blade Runner (256 points, 10 votes, 1 first-place vote)

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For me, Blade Runner is the most important and accomplished film of the decade. Not that I’ve seen over half the films on the nominations list mind, but oh my God what a piece of work this film is. Seductively beautiful to look at, richly layered in gravitas, loosely based on a brilliant book by a brilliant author, stunning in its accomplishments, wildly imaginative, fluidly and unselfconsciously inventive, decadent, flawed, and like the films I love best, absolutely rooted in dirty humanity and thereby subtly confronting the conditions of being human.

Some of the dialogue in this film contains lines that wouldn’t be out of place in a book of Nietzschean aphorisms: “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave,” “if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes” I mean this stuff, taken against the context of the melodrama, chimes right the way through literary and philosophical history. This is a film that stands up to hard critical analysis and throws up more interesting questions than it answers – in my eyes, the mark of a true classic. Yet throughout the film, you never get the feeling you’re being asked turgid fundamental questions or are expected to engage with weighty subtexts. They are there if you want to look, but otherwise, just enjoy the stunning trip into Scott’s dystopian imagination. What the fuck will we do if our world ever ends up looking and feeling like that? Who knows. Whatever. But this is a beautifully executed story that manages to investigate what it means to be human, what it is that might make us ‘human’, without ever being boring or pretentious.

As for the characters Scott runs in front of the lens, well, we get treated to some absolute classics: Decker, Leon, Tyrell, Rachel, Gaff, each of the players brings some quality that helps the film sparkle, but top of the goddamn Christmas tree is Roy. I think Rutger Hauer’s creation in this film is my all time favourite anti-hero, the guy is just fucking unbelievable, off the fucking head. He’s like some post-cyborg vision of brutal Aryan perfection, bubbling with psychotic rage though tempered with childlike sensitivities, a way out sense of humour and beautiful grasp of pathos, and ultimately, he proves to truly possess the grace and empathy of the philosopher. His performance rips of the screen and straight into my brain – the celebrated end sequence in the rain, with the short monologue and the dove – fuck me, to see that kind of thing plausibly visualised with a straight face, it’s pretty fucking special. Prior to that iconoclastic moment, Roy’s slow descent into trauma as his time ebbs away and his explosive anger at his fate, a prescribed fate that neither his advanced cognisance nor iron will nor perfect physique can evade, reaches a
terrifying apex with the murdering of his surrogate ‘father’ (a positively Shakespearean turn; Hamlet, parallels anyone?) and the hunting down of Decker, the man responsible for the deaths of his closest friends, his ‘family’ even. When Roy stalks Decker through the empty building he is reduced to a howling wolf, set naked against the dark, yet even at the
moment of his righteous revenge, Roy transcends his fate, destiny and all expectation, choosing to save the life of the man (is he a man?) whose own studious choices and preoccupations are suddenly exposed not as morality and fortitude but as prejudices and even cowardice. “Ah, kinship” Roy whispers as he grasps Decker’s wrist one handed, leaving the ‘human’ dangling over the abyss. And I guess that’s what this movie is ultimately about.

-- Five Eight

I just saw Blade Runner a couple of months ago, and adored it. I'd recommend the director's cut. That's a movie I could watch repeatedly, and there aren't too many of those.

-- JuliaA

Please do yourself a favor and watch Blade Runner. It's great!! Then you'll finally understand where all those other movies that you have seen that aren't as good ripped everything off from.

-- scott seward

Ridley Scott will probably never surpass Blade Runner again.

-- Tuomas

When I 'did' film studies 'Blade Runner' was the standard 'postmodern' film text, and I think a great deal of its (critical) popularity stems from the fact that you can read into/onto it any old wiffle you like abt pastiche, blankness, simulation and simulacra etc. But of course PKD got there first, and did it sooo much better.

-- Andrew L

Raiders of the Lost Ark (270 points, 12 votes, 1 first-place vote)

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Ah, it’s always gonna be a classic when you got the Nazi’s on board. Especially that chap with the wee round specs who gets the medallion pattern branded on to his palm. Great fun, all the way through.

-- Five Eight

It's got not a lick of sense, indulges in lazy racism and upped the Star Wars ante of movies as amusement-park rides. But as rides go, it's a doozy. It marked Harrison Ford's full emergence as Movie Star in a quasi-classic vein, but its secret weapon is Karen Allen. The sequels are both terrible, and her absence is at least part of the reason. I like Spielberg's fake movies more than his "real" movies, and this is his best fake movie. I think it's the last time he really let himself have fun.

-- gypsy mothra

Raiders of the Lost Ark was always my favorite Spielberg film, because of the more haunting qualities that hinted at, well, God being displeased with his gold box being fucked with. I'm not talking about the Nazi meltdown, just some other touches here and there throughout the film.

-- Gear!

Also, upon watching the Raiders DVD for the first time, it struck me that Lucas really DID owe much of his career to the talents of Ben Burtt. the sound design of the Raiders flick is one of its best aspects: Indy's .357 booming like a huge-ass cannon, the breathing effect when they finally crack open the vault holding the Ark, the God-spirit-lightning of the ending with the Nazi gear frying, the meaty punch of indy getting slugged in the stomach, the distant howl of Indy getting smacked inna chin with a mirror

also, i think Raiders began the habit of Harrison Ford getting the total shite kicked out of him onscreen for the next 20 years, even with them changing the ending to Clear & Present Danger so he could get his ass whupped in person instead of just gunning folks down from a chopper.

-- kingfish van vlasic pickles

Karen Allen is great in Raiders!! so much better than Mrs. Spielberg in the second. Every time I see Temple of Doom I wish someone would shoot her.

-- Shakey Mo Collier

Raiders of the Lost Ark is sincerely like one of the best movies that has ever been made.

-- Ally

That said, seeing it again was both a kick for realizing how much I had forgotten in the films -- I didn't even immediately remember the plane fight sequence until it actually started! -- and just a touch disappointing. More than once I was thinking about how some of the action scenes really could be better (like for instance when Indy and Marion get into the fight in the Cairo streets -- I was noticing how Karen Allen had been directed to apparently only slightly pound a bad guy on the head in the side of the shot, where these days I'd be expecting a little more in the way of Michelle Yeoh style asskicking). Also, John Williams' gift and limitations as a composer were pretty obvious; aside from the Raiders march and the Ark theme nearly everything musically just made me think of Star Wars.

Minor complaints, though, it's still a romp and a half, nothing about the film feels wasted, it uses economy to excellent effect, and even more successfully really pulls off suspension of disbelief well (when I first saw it in 1981 I wouldn't have known that the idea of 1936 Nazis having an openly armed force in British-controlled Egypt or a secret base on a Greek island was utterly ridiculous, but even though I do know it's not a worry because that's what Nazis do in the popular mind, have openly armed strike forces everywhere and plenty of secret bases).

Fun geek revelations -- the midget servant (who up until last night I just thought was meant to be a kid) who brings the poisoned dates to Indy and Sallah while they're waiting for the translation of the amulet is played by Kiran Shah, who was Elijah Wood's stand-in in Lord of the Rings which of course also starred John Rhys-Davies who played Sallah etc. Also, the guide who helps Indy into the temple at the start of film ("Throw me the idol, I give you the whip!" etc.) is Alfred Molina! As soon as I saw him on-screen I thought 'wait a minute...' and then his name popped up in the opening credits a couple of seconds later.

Oh and for all that they've changed the name on the packaging (to Indiana Jones and the Raiders etc.) the actual title of the film remained the same in the opening credits. Good thing too.

-- Ned Raggett

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Do the Right Thing (277 points, 11 votes, 3 first-place votes)

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It's hard to remember now how incendiary this felt at the time. Spike Lee's liveliest, most colorful, most electric movie. It simmers on screen. And Danny Aiello confounds any attempt (including Spike's) to unmuddy the waters. Plus, of course, it has "Fight the Power."

-- gypsy mothra

his tremendous skills and his glaring weakness are generally all tied up in the same knot i think — he is good at really unexpected things which he then completely distracts you from by some shouty bit of business (that said, rosie perez shouting in do the right thing is just some of the funniest, sexiest acting in cinema)

-- mark s

i watched do the right thing about six months ago because nancy had never seen it and i must say it holds up remarkably better than i expected it to from the last time i saw it as a freshman film student.

-- mohammed abba

Spike vs. Spielberg is a tough call for me, Lee's such a sloppy filmmaker. He's almost the antithesis of Spielberg - the pedantry without the style. He really only has one great, perfect film and that's "Do the Right Thing". There's good stuff scattered in his other movies (I haven't seen 25th Hour) but by and large its one trainwreck after another... Girl 6, Get on the Bus, Bamboozled, Summer of Sam, etc. Has there ever been a Spike Lee movie that *doesn't* end with someone getting murdered...?

-- Shakey Mo Collier

just this past Sunday I was randomly flipping channels, and I found Do The Right Thing somewhere, about a third of the way into it. I decided to watch because I hadn't seen the thing in ... heck, maybe a decade. It totally made me weep. I'm not really even sure why. I didn't cry when I first saw it as a 17 year old in 1989, even though I knew it was of the most intense things I'd ever witnessed. I'm not prone to crying at all. I guess I never joined in on those crying threads that were active recently, but honestly I can count the number of times I've cried in my adult life on one hand.

-- Mr. Diamond

Blue Velvet (409 points, 15 votes, 4 first-place votes)

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It's an obvious choice, but it's obvious for a reason. Blue Velvet (made by a Reagan fan, don't forget) is all the bullshit of '80s Americana, not just exposed (that's easy) but celebrated. Wallowed in. Lynch wants it both ways, the robins AND the beetles, Laura Dern's simpering blondie by day AND Isabella's fuck-me-hit-me brunette by night. And it lets its hero have both. It is a stupendously fucked-up movie, hypocritical and callow, like a Disneyland S&M weekend tour package. And like America, its hypocrisy is what makes it work. It's what makes it honest. I like to imagine Frank Capra emerging from a screening of Blue Velvet, horrified and blinking into the Hollywood sun, and Lynch hollering in his ear, "It's great, isn't it? Just like one of yours!" (Also, on a technical level, the colors and sound and blah blah blah, Lynch is a genius but you already knew that.)

-- gypsy mothra

This film is all about one man. Frank. Indeed, what Hopper and Lynch achieve with this film is something rather spectacular. It is this: To bring to the screen the most utterly fucked up, distressingly disturbed, genuinely terrifying plane-crash of a mash-up man. Frank is unlike any screen character I can think of in that he operates beyond the more recognisable parameters and conventions of fucked up. For a start he’s alarmingly unpredictable, veering dangerously between pussy-cat mewling to screaming psychotic rage in the space of a few seconds. He’s loaded up with more weird idiosyncrasies than a troupe of necrophiliacs, and he’s not afraid of a spot of sudden sickening violence, which he administers with charismatic, almost charming, surreal enthusiasm. He’s an out of control missile, a cataclysm, and every time he lopes onto the screen you actually fear for what he might do. Hopper’s Frank is a fascinating view into the surely tortured imagination of his authors. And though he might be one of cinema’s greatest time-bombs, he is never less than convincing.

-- Five Eight

"Girolamo Savonarola will return for the 60's poll."

(xpost) No idea - that's how the email identified him.

Hahaha, that joke justifies the thread.

I can see how it might have seem as though I was attacking Dee when the controversy all started.

Since I've bumped this thread, here's as good as any to talk about the AFI 100 Years ... 100 Movies list redux.

http://connect.afi.com/site/DocServer/Movies_ballot_06.pdf?docID=141

Which is to say, I was exactly what blount said I was: a troll.