In the 1980s, if you wanted to ask someone on a date, you had to pick up the receiver of a landline telephone, hope that your prospective date was near their own landline, choose a place to meet, show up somewhere near the predetermined time, and engage with that person for the entirety of the date. And don’t even get me started on maps.
Yes, the world has changed since then—but that doesn’t mean the movies made in the 1980s are any less significant in 2025. What we were thinking up four decades ago was wild, wonderful, woolly, and rather chauvinist, but it was also violent, aspirational, moneyed, and a calculation of noise. The world was beginning to change very rapidly, and directors, actors, producers, and audiences were taking note. The films made for Gen X and their boomer parents wanted to discuss inequality, spirituality, commercialism, and what it meant to be young. And they had help: from Stanley Kubrick, Penny Marshall, Nora Ephron, Rob Reiner, and Spike Lee. They had something to say. And we should still listen.
Here’s a guide to the best 1980s movies you should not miss:
The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Steven King’s novel—about a paterfamilias (and failed writer) who descends into madness while looking after a very spooky empty hotel during its off-season—established a new standard for horror. Really, The Shining often feels too smart, visually stunning, suspenseful, and deeply frightening to be lumped in with Jason and Saw.
Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall work brilliantly together, giving a masterclass in restraint and measure. Meanwhile, Kubrick’s imagination and technical proficiency in visual storytelling not only fit the material, but augment it to new critical heights. It works. And the ultimate proof is in the pudding: nearly half a century later, The Shining is still scary.
Diva (1981)
Perhaps the chicest example of cinéma du look, Diva is a weird and exhilarating romp through the streets of Paris as a young postman’s recording of an opera star lands him in a world of hired killers, corrupt cops, bohemians, and Taiwanese gangsters. This film is worth a watch for its epic chase scene alone—on a moped through the Paris Métro—but there’s so much beauty, intrigue, comedy, and gorgeous music packed into these two hours, it’s really a marvel this movie isn’t better known. While the picture helped draw French filmmakers out of their realist rut, it’s also valuable as a quintessential cult film, and, not for nothing, a great date movie.
Reds (1981)
First, the bad news: It’s a three-hour portrait of an American leftist and the failure of his movement (John Reed, played by Warren Beatty—who also co-wrote, directed, and produced this film). The good news: it’s Diane Keaton at her absolute best, as she’s swept away by Beatty and his ideals, only to end up in the arms of Jack Nicholson (as playwright Eugene O’Neill). This movie is all about the performances, as three mega-stars give their absolute all in constructing a love triangle worthy of the setting’s tumult. Not so fun fact: between Beatty’s all-consuming passion, re-writes, and retakes, the experience of making this movie helped derail his and Keaton’s personal relationship. You can see the passion, and you should.
The Verdict (1982)
Sidney Lumet, an icon of American film whose masterworks (12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network) spanned half a century, hit something special when he teamed up with Paul Newman (playing a down-and-out lawyer looking to the bottle and taking on Boston’s archdiocese), Charlotte Rampling (as Laura Fischer, his love interest and, spoiler alert, a spy for the other sode), and writer David Mamet. In one of the era’s great salvation tales, you get to see Newman—no fading giant but entering the twilight of his career, and with his own tricky relationship to alcohol—beat the odds and play off actors, dialogue, and direction to deliver a rendition of justice and redemption for the ages.
Trading Places (1983)
You cannot talk about the 1980s without mentioning Eddie Murphy, who came to symbolize the big-budget comedy which helped define the era. The youngest-ever cast member of Saturday Night Live (joining in 1980 at just 19), Murphy made a series of phenomenally successful and funny films, including 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America, and this one, about an unhoused quick-talker who, through a twist of fate and his own wiles, scales the parapets of high finance. There is perhaps no more rapturous or better-sharpened sword than Murphy’s wit and atypical wholesomeness, wielded with brilliantly plotted glee against the (amoral, elitist) powers that not only populate this movie, but also defined so many ambitions of the time.
Risky Business (1983)
Every era has its iconography, and if there’s something from the 1980s more obligatory than Tom Cruise, in and Oxford and his tighty-whities, dancing to Bob Seger in his parent’s living room, you’re going to have to convince me (and maybe fight me). This is the kind of madcap teen romp (TLDR: a handsome boy’s parents leave town, so he naturally hires a sex worker—a sly and simmering Rebecca De Mornay—and then must figure out how to pay her bill) that can, and should, produce eye-rolls. But it’s also so quintessentially and admirably ’80s that we need to give it its due. The movie is a silly, sensual take on the decade’s version of teenagedom, independence, capitalism, and Cruise. Yep, this was his catapult, and it’s a ride worth taking.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
The unassailable giant of anime that would become Studio Ghibli was still taking shape in the 1980s, but Nausicaä is an early example of the wonders that Hayao Miyazaki would unleash on the world of cinema. Based on his own manga, and containing many of the auteur’s recognizable themes of environmentalism, pacifism, and technological incursion, Nausicaä’s namesake princess fights for her community, enlisting the aid of magical, giant insects to keep at bay the industrial and colonizing forces that threaten their valley.
Part of the pleasure here is the film’s delicate balance between universal notions of heroism, sacrifice, and understanding with Japanese animism, history, and spirituality. And it’s gorgeous at every turn.
Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
What happens when Sergio Leone, godfather of the spaghetti western, decides to tell an epic story of Jewish gangsters in New York? The results of the director’s final film are polarizing, but between Robert DeNiro and James Woods’s gripping performances as pals Noodles and Max, simmering against a background of tradition, violence, ambition, and sex (it must be added that there is a horrific—and, some argue, egregious—rape scene, after which we are somehow supposed to feel Noodles, the perpetrator) and you get a final product that’s worthy of its scope. This movie is at once a teen romp, a revenge narrative, a mob movie, and an upside-down, rags-to-redemption fairy-tale that takes on all of the complexities its title suggests.
Stop Making Sense (1984)
Far from the documentary category’s best era (no disrespect to Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah or Burden of Dreams, which introduced many of us to the dark discernment of Werner Herzog), the 1980s yielded a fantastic rock doc in Stop Making Sense from Jonathan Demme (the director behind the fantastic Something Wild from this decade, and Silence of the Lambs from the next). From David Byrne’s oversized suit to his and Demme’s postmodern play with notions of songwriting, storytelling, and music, this film—stitched together from three Talking Heads performances at Hollywood Pantages—demonstrates just what you can show with sound.
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Christopher Guest’s feature mockumentary debut (the story of a British metal band that never quite made it going back on the road) is not only uproariously funny, but where the improv genius and former SNL castmember laid the code for an entire genre. Without it, there’s no The Office (either version), Parks and Rec, Modern Family…the list goes on. His follow-ups, like 1996’s Waiting for Guffman and 2000’s Best in Show, may even be improvements—with their expanded and unparalleled comedic ensembles—but this movie, with Rob Reiner in the director’s chair, is the bedrock.
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
The wonderful amount of weird that Paul Reubens brought to mainstream comedy with Pee-wee, in all his forms, was undercut by a tabloid scandal (utterly innocuous by today’s standards)—one of comedy’s great injustices. But the work remains, and the gay, punk, absurdist-coded fantasyland that was Pee-wee’s world stands out in Hollywood’s iconography. Tim Burton’s take on Pee-wee, notionally a mission to reclaim the title character’s stolen bicycle, is a meandering hike through what remained of American counterculture during a decidedly conformist decade. It’s silly; it’s anti-heroic; it’s bliss.
Aliens (1986)
A female-led action movie that’s as smart and critical as it is suspenseful, action-packed, and horrifying? Yes, please! While Hollywood’s yen for the sequel kicked off in the 1970s, with results in categories good (The Godfather Part II), bad (More American Graffiti), and ugly (The Shaggy D.A.), the 1980s is when the form really exploded. When James Cameron took the wheel from Alien auteur Ridley Scott, expectations were all over, but Cameron not only delivered a phenomenally plotted and performed sequel, but also moved the entire genre forward with special effects and production design that holds up to this day. And it’s fun!
Children of a Lesser God (1986)
The romance between a new teacher at a school for the deaf and a former pupil who is now a custodian is the premise for this film, but what it’s actually about—and what it accomplished—is much bigger.
With Children, director Randa Haines managed to break new ground for representation and set new standards for authentic filmmaking, while tackling deeply complex issues of identity and the differently abled’s place in society. She did it hand-in-hand with deaf actress Marlee Matlin (who won an Oscar for her efforts) and William Hurt, whose sensitive, committed, and impassioned performances make space for the difficult issues at play.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
While many saw themselves reflected in the four high school archetypes of John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club, others will argue that that film is simplistic trash, and the far more enjoyable, less didactic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is where we find echoes of the real. Is this movie great? I think so, but cannot say for sure. What I can say is that if there were a measurement for fun on film, the units would be expressed in Buellers.
While the film’s irrepressible title character can be too energetic, too smug, or just too much, his counterweights in Jennifer Grey’s snarling sister, Alan Ruck’s depressive Cameron, and too-bad-to-be-true Principal Rooney balance out Ferris’s go-for-it flavor. In the funland that Hughes made of the Chicago suburbs, Ferris is the roller-coaster of choice.
Dirty Dancing (1987)
This movie is dumb, but gloriously so, and you should immediately be suspicious of anyone who doesn’t like it. Baby, played by a delectably bored Jennifer Grey, is the younger sister in a upwardly mobile ’60s family spending their summer at a lodge in the Catskills where dancing seems to be incredibly important—to the staff, to the guests, to their professional futures, to the world. You just have to accept it; then, you can become besotted with the romance between Grey and Patrick Swayze’s bad-boy dance instructor. There’s much rump-shaking, assignations, some ’80s neo-liberal abortion politics, and Jerry Orbach as the world’s best dad. As heels kick and clothes come off, this movie manages to capture both the hopeful exuberance of youth and an entire era. It’s also a funny time capsule of what Hollywood considered “sexy” and “unsexy” in the ’80s, which is wild and a great deal of fun.
Big (1988)
If this list is suspiciously short of female directors, that’s because Hollywood in the 1980s was too (and, with all respect to Amy Heckerling and Joe Piscopo, Johnny Dangerously is not making this list). One giant exception was Penny Marshall, an absolute force whose Big (co-written by Anne Spielberg) showcased Tom Hanks’s pure charm and surprising depth, setting him on the path to national treasurehood. The story of a picked-on kid whose wish to be “big” is made literally true overnight—launching him out of his bunk bed and into the world of corporate executives—is as sweet, simple, and moving as ’80s comedies come.
Heathers (1988)
A middle finger to The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and other aggressively positive ’80s teen movies (a number of which are on this list), Heathers is a cynical yet clever stab at that hoary genre. When Wynona Ryder’s Veronica decides to align with her new boyfriend (played with comely sangfroid by Christian Slater) against the popular girls—all named Heather—things get a little out hand, and some cool kids end up dead. For a movie with a fair amount of teenage murder and sexual assault, Heathers also brings a delightfully surreal suggestion to teen flickdom, and an important rejection of the genre’s most pervasive tropes. In other words: watch the cool kids get theirs.
Working Girl (1988)
The hair alone is enough of a reason to watch this glorious, female-first crystallization of the go-go ’80s. Melanie Griffith plays Tess, a sweet and sexy secretary on Wall Street, who can’t seem to get ahead. “I have a head for business and a body for sin,” she says at one point, before a seemingly sympathetic Sigourney Weaver, her new boss, steals her million-dollar idea. While Harrison Ford gets first billing, women rule this absolutely rollicking flick (with nods to its screwball forebears) that is at once a riot, a smart exploration of the era’s frivolity, and an interrogation of class, power structures, ambition, and loyalty. It’s a movie about breaking into the boys’ club, but manages—while laughing, flirting, and cajoling—to show just how broken those clubs can be.
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Spike Lee burst onto the scene with his remarkably original rom-com She’s Gotta Have It in 1986, but Do the Right Thing was his volta. The comedy-drama, which takes place over a single day in a Brooklyn neighborhood—bringing class and racial tensions to the fore—shifted Lee’s power from that of an upstart to a major new voice in Hollywood (via NYC). The opening credits, wherein Rosie Perez dances to Public Enemy, is one of the greats in modern cinematic history; her brisk, sexy hip-hop choreography ushered in a new era of film, and filmmaking.
Say Anything (1989)
Cameron Crowe’s directorial debut (he’d follow it with Singles, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous) gave the world Lloyd Dobler, a digestible teenage anti-hero who was willing to be different, speak for the marginalized, and stand outside the home of his crush, boombox held overhead, in a scene worthy of imitation ad nauseum. While Dobler became an archetype for off-beat teenage Romeos, John Cusack (matched up against love interest Ione Skye) gave us a striver we can root for. Moreover, this film paved the way, and made a market for, the class of teen films that followed. If you like Dazed and Confused, Juno, Ladybird, Booksmart, or really any underdog coming-of-age story since 1987, this is the lodestar.
When Harry Met Sally… (1989)
The world of ’80s rom-coms ranged from the hopelessly absurd (Blame It on Rio, Splash) to the absolutely perfect in this blueprint for the form, written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner. This will-they-or-won’t-they love story, spanning decades, boasts all-time charming turns from stars Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, iconic fall fashions, and a masterclass on negotiating relationship boundaries (and faking an orgasm, for extra credit). The lasting power of this movie is a testament to the talents involved, but also to its complex dynamics, which continue to plague friends, lovers, and everyone in between to this day. Both onscreen, and in real life, that’s this movie’s power.