The 1980s ran on excess, practical effects, and synth, and its movies never apologized. This tag collects reviews of 1980s cinema: the blockbusters, the B-movies, and the decade’s outsized influence on everything since.
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Stripped to Kill (1987) rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Katt Shea's first film as director, made for Concorde under a brief requiring a fixed number of dance sequences, and she used the constraint to build something…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
The New York Ripper (1982) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Lucio Fulci made a giallo about a killer who murders women and quacks like a duck on the telephone. It was seized in Britain, refused certification…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Streetwalkin' (1985) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A Concorde Pictures production shot in New York in about three weeks, with Melissa Leo in her first lead role eight years before her career started, and a structure…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Sharky's Machine (1981) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Burt Reynolds directed himself in an Atlanta police thriller with a jazz score, a surveillance structure and a genuinely nasty streak, and it is the best film he…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Ms. 45 (1981) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Abel Ferrara made a rape-revenge film with a mute protagonist, almost no dialogue and a budget of around sixty thousand dollars, and Zoe Lund's performance is better than…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Nighthawks (1981) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Stallone and Billy Dee Williams are New York decoy cops assigned to an international terrorist, and Rutger Hauer is so much better than the film around him that he…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Avenging Angel (1985) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The sequel recast its lead, aged the character to university student, and converted a squalid character piece into a revenge picture with a real estate conspiracy. It is…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Angel (1984) rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. New World Pictures built a film around the tagline about a high school honour student who works Hollywood Boulevard at night, and the premise is the problem. What is…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Times Square (1980) rates 6 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Two teenage girls live rough in pre-cleanup Times Square and form a band, in a film that was recut against its director's wishes, had a relationship removed from…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Do the Right Thing (1989) rates 10 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. One block in Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the year, a pizzeria, a wall of photographs, and a film that refuses to tell the audience…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Star Trek: The Next Generation rates 6 to 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A hundred and seventy-six episodes with a ceiling higher than almost any television of its era and a floor that includes the most embarrassing…
1980sSeptember 11, 2026
Ordinary People (1980) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Robert Redford's first film as director is a carefully observed drama about a family that cannot discuss a death, and it won Best Picture and Director over Raging…
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