*batteries not included

Disorderlies
Mac and Me

Just kidding, those were fucking terrible.

But I did love some Near Dark and Lost Boys.

Stand By Me

phatj wrote:Stand By Me

"Chopper, sic balls!"

80's was the best for BOTH movies and music

and being 16-26

The hair was really bad though.

As someone who got a lot out of the late 80s/early 90s, I reject this strict decade by decade essentialism.

Here's some of mine that weren't mentioned already:

Gremlins
Major League
Back to School
Summer School
Three Amigos
Teen Wolf
Revenge of the Nerds 1 and 2
Beverly Hills Cop 1 and 2
Rocky IV
WarGames
The Toy
Harry and the Hendersons
Overboard
Superman III
Bill & Ted
Road House
Tango & Cash
Die Hard
Lethal Weapon
Beetlejuice
Look Who's Talking

Trent Steele wrote:midnight run

This is the first one mentioned that is not on my list but definitely should be - It is a classic, and includes a classic Dennis Farina role

The '80s are probably my favorite decade for music. "Our Band Could Be Your Life" more or less sums it up.

For movies I think I'd take the '90s, but it's fairly close. It's been years since I listed my 50 favorite movies... maybe time to do that again.

I had a different reality in the 80's. In the early 80's, I was split. My life was involved with academia and arts. So the music I was discovering was not of any pop genre. But I moved to NYC in '82 and had been hangin there since '79 -- and so I touched the edges socially of some of the punk, new wave, ska, and early rap/hip-hop. Disco was horrid. I abhorred that part of the late 70's. I never got with much of the rock stuff whether Duran Duran, REM or U2. I did get with Cure, New Order, English Beat. As you can tell from my list -- I saw a lot of foreign films along with some of the hollywood stuff. For me, other than the Ska stuff of the early 80's -- music in any popular genre didnt interest me til the early 90's when GangStarr, Roots, Tribe on the hip-hop side and Portishead, DJ Cam on the trip-hop side and labels like MoWax -- sampling moving to a new art-form. I'm just not a "bands" guy. While my day-to-day tastes in music are more acoustic and less experimental -- I still prefer Jazzanova, Amon Tobin, Bebel Gilberto remixed, etc.

Film-wise -- a great film is a great film. Some things are more impactful in their time because they influence many after or were first at something. I'd put films like Blue Velvet, Das Boot, and some others I listed in some of the top films of my life for any decade.

90's also had a plethora of great films. I was still active on the film fest circuit in to the 90's. Or dig film fests like the now defunct ResFest which was cutting edge.

I'm always surprised to see how many of the films that don't make my list but are on other peoples lists I've actually seen. Though I'm not sure I saw them in the theater as things end up on cable/tv, etc... but some in theater. I didn't live in a vacuum and not everyone I knew was as hard core as I was when it came to film, art, music, etc...

Great, great book.

dajafi wrote:The '80s are probably my favorite decade for music. "Our Band Could Be Your Life" more or less sums it up.

I think a case could be made that the 70s were better than the 80s for movies.

Luzinski's Gut wrote:Great, great book.

dajafi wrote:The '80s are probably my favorite decade for music. "Our Band Could Be Your Life" more or less sums it up.

Pretty much never listened to The Replacements or Husker Du before I read it and now the Mats are my favorite and Husker Du is up there

kind of a bummer PtK didn't care for Eric B. and Rakim's stuff or Paul's Boutique


I think the reason the '80s have a bad rep musically is that a lot of the bigger hits have such an artificial sound. That stuff is all well and good when it's released because if the song is good, it's good. But it doesn't hold up so well down the road. Like every turntablism record from the aughts.

to cross this digression over with the topic, Stop Making Sense is the best concert film I've seen

TenuredVulture wrote:I think a case could be made that the 70s were better than the 80s for movies.

I'd maybe go along with that. Coppola's three masterpieces, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Star Wars, Rocky, Blazing Saddles, A Clockwork Orange, Chinatown... classics. Of course the theory is that Star Wars killed art in Hollywood by showing what was possible, gate-wise, when you found the formula.

Also, great call from Jive on Stop Making Sense.

I loved the 80's even though I was a kid and confused as shit when looking at my older brother's friends in their underwear made my dick move during sleepovers. Perhaps it was because going to the movies was such an escape for me. It was two hours of not being made fun for acting like a girl or getting scolded by my mother for trying on her dresses while she was in the shower.

For me, nothing tops the feeling I felt after watching the Karate Kid or the Breakfast Club or Goonies or ET or Stand by Me...

TenuredVulture wrote:I think a case could be made that the 70s were better than the 80s for movies.

Understatement of the decade(s).

Most of my favorite 80s movies are at least one part camp. I am struggling to think, off the top of my head, of any movies from the decade that I think approach "art," whereas you can't walk around the 70s without falling over one. I love Amadeus, maybe that's one I could nominate. As a period piece, it also kind of hides the decade of its origin quite well.

I love 80s movies, don't get me wrong (it was the decade I grew up in!), but I kind of think of Quentin Tarantino with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction as the film version of Nirvana - Tarantino and Nirvana broke hard with the prevailing aesthetic to make something much grittier, and much, much better, from a purely artistic standpoint.

From the other direction, for example, Rocky is how the 70s di a sports movie, and Rocky IV is how the 80s did one. I like both, but only one of them is a serious "film."

Helluva lot of movies mentioned already. Didn't see these, but I may have missed 'em:

Christmas Story
Chariots of Fire
Pale Rider
Dangerous Liaisons

more that haven't been mentioned

An Officer and a Gentleman
The Man With Two Brains
Author! Author!
Reversal of Fortune
White Nights
Footloose
Fatal Attraction
Plains, Trains, and Automobiles
My Bodyguard

The Last American Virgin
Body Double

Neither were great movies but I think they represent the decade very well