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The Best Films of the 1980s
The greatest films of the 1980s, from the end of New Hollywood to the rise of the modern blockbuster.
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And the Ship Sails On (1983)
The passengers that gather aboard the cruise liner of And the Ship Sails On are an eclectic mix of European aristocrats, each individually targeted by Federico Fellini’s irreverently absurd sense of humour, and together making up a nautical class satire that revels in their splendid merriment and misfortune.
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City of Women (1980)
The outlandish matriarchal society that middle-aged philanderer Snàporaz traverses in City of Women is not quite a grand feminist statement, but rather a self-deprecating cinematic tool for Federico Fellini to pick at his own masculine insecurities, sprouting deliberations on gender and sexuality through a string of surreal, chaotic vignettes.
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Out of Africa (1985)
To truly revere a land as incomprehensibly vast and complex as Africa is to feed a connection to one’s own soul, and yet as Out of Africa absorbs us into Baroness Karen von Blixen’s bubble of romantic bliss, Sydney Pollack also develops a poignant metaphor that keeps her greatest love as distant as her nostalgic reminiscences.
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The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
Whether Terry Gilliam’s mischievous storyteller in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a hero, a liar, or both, he is undoubtedly a man who can reach the hearts of those who listen, constructing magnificently surreal worlds of aliens and gods that place him right alongside history’s greatest mythical figures.
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Possession (1981)
As married couple Anna and Mark stand on the precipice of divorce in Possession, a simmering mixture of revulsion, self-loathing, and cruelty boils over into public displays of insanity, exposing the depraved souls at the heart of Andrzej Żuławski’s terrifying allegory for divorce.
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Lola (1981)
The image of post-war Germany that Rainer Werner Fassbinder composes in Lola is remarkably distinct from its 1905 source material, and yet its tragic romance between a middle-aged gentleman and young performer carries through with vibrant poignancy, melding social realism and colourfully heightened melodrama in a timeless fable of degraded honour.