The Best Movies of the 1980s

The 1980s ranked by our composite score across 20+ authoritative lists, awards and polls — not one critic's opinion, but the weight of the whole canon.

Rain Man (1988) leads with a composite score of 5.43.

1
Rain Man1988 · Barry Levinson
5.43
Oscar Best Picture winner 1988 · Berlin Golden Bear winner 1989 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1989 #4
2
Amadeus1984 · Miloš Forman
4.84
Oscar Best Picture winner 1984 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1985 #1 · AFI 100 (1998) #53
3
Paris, Texas1984 · Wim Wenders
4.79
Palme d'Or winner 1984 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #185 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1985 #6
4
The Last Emperor1987 · Bernardo Bertolucci
4.55
Oscar Best Picture winner 1987 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1988 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1987 #5
5
Platoon1986 · Oliver Stone
4.40
Oscar Best Picture winner 1986 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1987 #2 · AFI 100 (2007) #86
6
Raging Bull1980 · Martin Scorsese
4.37
Oscar Best Picture nominee 1980 · AFI 100 (2007) #4 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #22
7
The Mission1986 · Roland Joffé
4.12
Palme d'Or winner 1986 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1986 · Vatican film list
8
Chariots of Fire1981 · Hugh Hudson
4.07
Oscar Best Picture winner 1981 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1982 #3 · BFI Top 100 British films #19
9
Missing1982 · Costa-Gavras
4.06
Palme d'Or winner 1982 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1982 · Criterion Collection spine #449
10
Gandhi1982 · Richard Attenborough
4.01
Oscar Best Picture winner 1982 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1983 #3 · BFI Top 100 British films #34
11
Under the Sun of Satan1987 · Maurice Pialat
4.00
Palme d'Or winner 1987 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1987 #1
12
Kagemusha1980 · Akira Kurosawa
3.79
Palme d'Or winner 1980 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1980 #2 · Criterion Collection spine #267
13
Do the Right Thing1989 · Spike Lee
3.72
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1989 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #24 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #29
14
A Room with a View1986 · James Ivory
3.66
BAFTA Best Film winner 1987 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1986 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1987 #6
15
Yol1982 · Yılmaz Güney, Şerif Gören
3.63
Palme d'Or winner 1982 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1985 #2
16
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial1982 · Steven Spielberg
3.61
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1982 #1 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1982 · BAFTA Best Film nominee 1983
17
When Father Was Away on Business1985 · Emir Kusturica
3.56
Palme d'Or winner 1985 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1986 #5 · Kurosawa's 100 favorite films
18
Ordinary People1980 · Robert Redford
3.50
Oscar Best Picture winner 1980 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1981 #3
19
Terms of Endearment1983 · James L. Brooks
3.43
Oscar Best Picture winner 1983 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1984 #4
20
A City of Sadness1989 · Hou Hsiao-Hsien
3.41
Venice Golden Lion winner 1989 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1990 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #157
21
Sex, Lies, and Videotape1989 · Steven Soderbergh
3.39
Palme d'Or winner 1989 · National Film Registry (inducted 2006) · Criterion Collection spine #938
22
The Ballad of Narayama1983 · Shohei Imamura
3.39
Palme d'Or winner 1983 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1983 #5
23
The Green Ray1986 · Éric Rohmer
3.38
Venice Golden Lion winner 1986 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1986 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #225
24
Driving Miss Daisy1989 · Bruce Beresford
3.32
Oscar Best Picture winner 1989 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1990 #8
25
Pelle the Conqueror1987 · Bille August
3.30
Palme d'Or winner 1988 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1989 #9
26
Atlantic City1980 · Louis Malle
3.26
Venice Golden Lion winner 1980 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1981 · National Film Registry (inducted 2003)
27
Vagabond1985 · Agnès Varda
3.17
Venice Golden Lion winner 1985 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #41 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #101
28
Dead Poets Society1989 · Peter Weir
3.12
BAFTA Best Film winner 1990 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 1989 · Letterboxd Top 250 #112
29
Man of Iron1981 · Andrzej Wajda
3.00
Palme d'Or winner 1981
30
Out of Africa1985 · Sydney Pollack
3.00
Oscar Best Picture winner 1985

The decade the industry rebuilt itself

The 1980s has a reputation problem in canon terms: it sits between the sanctified 1970s and the indie-boom 1990s, and for years critics treated it as the decade auteurism died. The data tells a more interesting story. Hollywood did reorganize around the blockbuster — Star Wars economics, saturation releases, the home-video windfall (VHS revenue overtook theatrical during this decade, quietly changing which films got made) — but the canon that emerged from that machine is real. Spielberg's E.T. (1982) topped Japan's Kinema Junpo international poll and entered the National Film Registry; Raging Bull (1980), a black-and-white passion project that nearly didn't get made, is now routinely the AFI's highest-ranked film of the decade.

Genre cinema is where the eighties did its most durable work. Horror hit a practical-effects golden age — Kubrick's The Shining (1980) was received coolly and is now a fixture of critics' polls, while Carpenter's The Thing (1982) went from box-office failure to community-canon staple, one of the clearest rehabilitation arcs in the library. Comedy produced the most rewatched studio films of the era (Ghostbusters, Ferris Bueller's Day Off — both now in the National Film Registry, which says something about how institutions eventually catch up with audiences). And the decade's teen films, action films and science fiction established templates the industry still runs on.

The international counter-record

Outside Hollywood, the decade's most significant development for the future canon happened in Tokyo: Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985, and My Neighbor Totoro (1988) — Kinema Junpo's Japanese film of the year — began animation's long march into the international all-time lists, a march that culminates two decades later with Spirited Away. Kurosawa, written off as unbankable at home, delivered Ran (1985) with French money, a late-style masterpiece that the polls have only ranked higher with time. Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989) closed the decade by demonstrating that American independent cinema could carry both formal audacity and political weight — its standing in the 2022 Sight & Sound poll is among the highest of any American film of its era.

Reading this page's composite scores against the 1970s page is instructive: fewer films with across-the-board consensus, more films whose standing comes from one passionate constituency — community canons, genre retrospectives, the Registry. That is the eighties' real signature: a decade whose best films were often recognized late, and from below.