Fantastic Films of the '80s
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A Better Tomorrow (1986)
Directed by: John Woo
A reforming ex-gangster tries to reconcile with his estranged policeman brother, but the ties to his former gang are difficult to break.
Directed by: Jacques Demy
Set against the backdrop of an increasingly violent strike, a worker falls in love with the middle-class daughter of his landlady.
Directed by: Hou Hsiao-hsien
A coming-of-age story about a young brother and sister whom spend a pivotal summer in the country with their grandparents.
Directed by: Katsuhiro Otomo
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
Directed by: Brian De Palma
A movie sound recordist accidentally records the evidence that proves that a car accident was actually murder and consequently finds himself in danger.
Blue Velvet (1986)
Directed by: David Lynch
The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child.
Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki
A young boy and a girl with a magic crystal must race against pirates and foreign agents in a search for a legendary floating castle.
Directed by: Elem Kilmov
After finding an old rifle, a young boy joins the Soviet resistance movement against ruthless German forces and experiences the horrors of World War II.
Day of the Dead (1985)
Directed by: George Romero
A mysterious virus that turns people into the walking dead has infected a town, and only a few survivors immune to the disease must find a way to escape.
Dekalog I (1989)
Directed by: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Ten-year-old Pawel and his father Krzysztof run their lives on their beloved home computer, while Pawel's aunt worries that his spiritual education is being neglected. But Pawel is too busy enjoying life, not least thanks to his father's Christmas present of a pair of ice skates, because the computer has calculated that the frozen lake is safe to skate across...
Directed by: Spike Lee
On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.
Directed by: Eric Rohmer
Two young girls meet, Reinette from the countryside and Mirabelle from Paris, and decide to take a flat together in Paris where they attend University. Four successive stories about their daily lives illustrate the very different views, characters and relation to the world of these two friends.
Ghostbusters (1984)
Directed by: Ivan Reitman
Three former parapsychology professors set up shop as a unique ghost removal service.
Goshu the Cellist (1982)
Directed by: Isao Takahata
A cellist in a small orchestra receives help from animals to help him practice his music.
Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Directed by: Isao Takahata
A young boy and his little sister struggle to survive in Japan during World War II.
The Green Ray (1986)
Directed by: Eric Rohmer
A lonely Parisian woman comes to terms with her isolation and anxieties during a long summer vacation.
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Directed by: Woody Allen
Between two Thanksgivings two years apart, Hannah's husband falls in love with her sister Lee, while her hypochondriac ex-husband rekindles his relationship with her sister Holly.
Hellraiser (1987)
Directed by: Clive Barker
An unfaithful wife encounters the zombie of her dead lover, who's being chased by demons after he escaped from their sado-masochistic Hell.
Directed by: John McNaughton
Henry, a drifter, commits a series of brutal murders, supposedly operating with impunity.
Directed by: Tony Scott
A love triangle develops between a beautiful yet dangerous vampire, her cellist companion, and a gerontologist.
Directed by: Edward Yang, I-Chen Ko, Te-chen Tao, Yi Chang
Four short films from four different directors, spanning from the 1950s to the 1980s.
Landscape in the Mist (1988)
Directed by: Theodoros Angelopoulos
Two children journey the long road to Germany to find the man they believe to be their father.
Directed by: Ermanno Olmi
An alcoholic homeless man is given two hundred francs by a stranger, who requests that when he can he will return the money to Saint Therese in the cathedral.
The Meaning of Life (1983)
Directed by: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones
The comedy team takes a look at life in all its stages in their own uniquely silly way.
My Girlfriend's Boyfriend (1987)
Directed by: Eric Rohmer
Middle-class Parisian suburbs: Blanche and Lea, office worker and student, meet and become friends. Lea is going out with Fabien, but is thinking of leaving him. Blanche falls for Lea’s handsome and witty friend Alexandre, but is tongue-tied whenever she meets him. Lea goes on holiday and Blanche, still smitten with the dashing Alexandre, begins to get to get know Fabien. A classic Rohmer moral tale.
Directed by: Nagisa Oshima
During WWII, a British colonel tries to bridge the cultural divides between a British POW and the Japanese camp commander in order to avoid bloodshed.
Nostalghia (1983)
Directed by: Andrei Tarkovsky
A Russian poet and his interpreter travel to Italy to research the life of an 18th-century composer.
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
The rivalry between two gangs, the poor Greasers and the rich Socs, only heats up when one gang member kills a member of the other.
Directed by: Wim Wenders
Travis Henderson, an aimless drifter who has been missing for four years, wanders out of the desert and must reconnect with society, himself, his life, and his family.
Directed by: Chi-Hwa Chen, Jackie Chan
A virtuous Hong Kong police officer must clear his good name when the drug lords he is after frame him for the murder of a dirty cop.
Directed by: John Waters
A suburban housewife's world falls apart when she finds that her pornographer husband is serially unfaithful to her, her daughter is pregnant, and her son is suspected of being the foot-fetishist who's been breaking local women's feet.
Directed by: Andrzej Zulawski
A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.
Directed by: Woody Allen
In New Jersey in 1935, a movie character walks off the screen and into the real world.
Ran (1985)
Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
In Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other...and him.
Directed by: Paul Verhoeven
In a dystopic and crime-ridden Detroit, a terminally wounded cop returns to the force as a powerful cyborg haunted by submerged memories.
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Rusty James, an absent-minded street thug struggles to live up to his legendary older brother's reputation, and longs for the days when gang warfare was going on.
Directed by: Chris Marker
A woman narrates the contemplative writings of a seasoned world traveler, focusing on contemporary Japan.
Directed by: Alejandro Jodorowsky
A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his armless mother - the leader of a strange religious cult - and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name as he becomes "her arms".
School Daze (1988)
Directed by: Spike Lee
A not so popular young man wants to pledge to a popular fraternity at his historically black college.
Directed by: Michael Haneke
A European family who plan on escaping to Australia, seem caught up in their daily routine, only troubled by minor incidents. However, behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, they are actually planning something sinister.
Directed by: Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann's epic documentary recounts the story of the Holocaust through interviews with witnesses - perpetrators as well as survivors.
Directed by: Roger Donaldson
Al Shaw's life revolves around motor racing and his back country junkyard, the "Smash Palace". His French wife, Jacqui, doesn't appreciate the lack of attention due to Al's obsession with cars. When Al finds her in the arms of another man, he takes his daughter, Georgie and heads for the bush, desperately hoping to hold on to the only family he has left.
Directed by: Victor Erice
A woman reflects on her childhood relationship with her father, attempting to understand the depths of his despair and the truth of his myths.
Directed by: Shôji Kawamori, Noboru Ishiguro
It is A.D. 2009 and the human race is caught in a war between giant humanoids, male Zentrans and female Meltrans. Returning from the edge of our solar system after making a space fold, the SDF-1 Macross makes the long journey back to Earth with survivors of South Ataria Island.
Taipei Story (1985)
Directed by: Edward Yang
Lung, a former member of the national Little League team and now operator of an old-style fabric business, is never able to shake a longing for his past glory. One day, he runs into a former teammate who is now a struggling cab driver. The two talk about old times and they are struck by a sense of loss. Lung is living with his old childhood sweetheart Ah-chin, a westernized professional woman who grew up in a traditional family. Although they live together, Ah-chin is always weary of Lung’s past liason with another girl. After an argument, Ah-chin tries to find solace by hanging out with her sister’s friends, a group of westernized, hedonistic youths.
Tampopo (1985)
Directed by: Juzo Itami
A truck driver stops at a small family-run noodle shop and decides to help its fledgling business. The story is intertwined with various vignettes about the relationship of love and food.
The Terminator (1984)
Directed by: James Cameron
A robotic assassin from a post-apocalyptic future travels back in time to eliminate a waitress, whose son will grow up and lead humanity in a war against machines.
Terrorizers (1986)
Directed by: Edward Yang
A metaphysical mystery about the lives of three couples in Taipei that continually intersect over a span of several weeks.
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