• Catalog
• My Account

Greatest Movies of the 1980s

Enjoy this list of the best films from the 1980s.

Airplane!

The passengers and crew of an airplane suffer every catastrophe in the book in this spoof of disaster movies

The vanishing

During a road trip with her husband, a woman is abducted by a methodical, calculating psychopath. Her husband becomes obsessed with learning her fate, and neither time nor the love of another woman can end his tormented quest

Amadeus

The life and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is viewed through the memories of an envious rival, Salieri

Bill & Ted's excellent adventure

Screwball comedy about two high school students who face a difficult history exam. With the help of a time-traveling messenger they round up some historical heavyweights for their class project!

Midnight run

A bounty hunter is charged with delivering an embezzling, bail-jumping accountant to Los Angeles. What he doesn't know is that the Mob is also after said accountant for embezzling the money in the first place

The little mermaid

The story of Ariel, the mermaid girl who falls in love with a human prince

Full metal jacket

Vietnam war drama which begins with a depiction of the brutality of Marine Corps training and then shifts to Vietnam, focusing mainly on a group of Marines responding to the Tet Offensive of 1968

Viva Pedro : the Almodóvar collection: Talk to her; Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown; special features

Heathers

A high school student begins systematically to murder his fellow students

Ghostbusters

The paratroopers of the paranormal face their greatest challenge when a woman discovers that her refrigerator leads directly to the gates of hell! With the whole world watching, it's up to the Ghostbusters to keep Manhattan from becoming a madhouse!

48 hrs.

Nolte is a rough-edged cop after two vicious cop-killers. He can't do it without the help of smooth and dapper Murphy, who is serving time for a half-million dollar robbery. Both pursue their separate goals--Nolte wants the villains and Murphy wants his money and some much-needed female companionship

Caddyshack

The greenkeeper is about to start World War III- against a gopher. The judge plays to win but his nubile niece has her mind set on scoring her way

Blood simple . 2-DVD edition

A man hires a private investigator to kill his wife, who he thinks is cheating on him, and her lover, but the investigator has a plan of his own. A bad situation suddenly gets worse

Desperately seeking Susan

A bored housewife enjoys reading the personals, but after losing her memory, she believes she is the wild-spirited Susan from the ads

The Long Good Friday

Just as he is about to go legit, a gangster learns of a mysterious threat to his underworld kingdom

Back to the future . 1-DVD edition

When teenager Marty McFly is blasted to 1955 in the DeLorean time machine created by the eccentric Doc Brown, he finds himself mixed up in a time-shattering chain reaction that could vaporize his future, and leave him trapped in the past

Akira

A powerful psychic force known only as Akira resurfaces in Neo-Tokyo in the 21st century. Tetsuo, a young, inexperienced motorcycle biker driven beyond the boundaries of sanity by the power of Akira, is forced to conjure up demons laying dormant within his subconscious

Broadcast news . 2-DVD edition

A caustic inside look at the Washington news media, stars Holly Hunter in her breakout role, as a feisty television producer torn between an ambitious yet dim anchorman and her closest confidant, a cynical veteran reporter. James L. Brooks' witty, gently prophetic entertainment is a captivating transmission from an era in which ideas on love and media were rapidly changing

Evil dead II

The sole survivor of the evil dead returns to the same cabin in the woods and again unleashes the forces of the dead

Bull Durham

American romantic comedy, dealing with a very minor minor-league team and three of its current constituents, an aging baseball groupie that beds one player each season, a cocky foolish new pitcher, and the older, weary catcher brought in to wise the rookie up

My dinner with André

An actor has dinner with his friend, a theater director, at an Upper West Side restaurant. Together they discuss everything from money to death to love and all the superstition in between. Playing variations on their own New York-honed personas, the two dive in with introspective, intellectual gusto. All captured in a delicate, but artful detachment

Purple rain

Tells the tale of pop-star Prince's struggle for love, attention, acceptance, and popular artistic recognition in Minneapolis

Big . 1-dvd edition

After a twelve-year-old boy's wish comes true when he asks a mechanical carnival genie to make him older, he manages to land a job at a toy company where he experiences the complications of being an adult

Sophie's choice

A drama set in post-World War II Brooklyn revolves around Sophie, a Polish Catholic beauty who survived Auschwitz, her lover, Nathan, and Stingo, a would-be writer. As the three grow closer, Stingo discovers the captivating and moving truths that each harbor

Thief

A professional thief is caught between Chicago organized crime families and corrupt police

Aliens

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the sole survivor from the original ALIEN, is awakened after 57 years of drifting through space, her stories disbelieved by Company executives who tell her that the alien's planet is now inhabited and colonized. When contact is suddenly lost with the colonists, Ripley returns to the planet with a squad of marines, an android (Lance Henriksen), and a Company executive (Paul Reiser) with a mission of his own. Once on the planet, no survivors can be found except for Newt, a little girl who awakens motherly instincts in Ripley just in time for the acid-blooded aliens to attack in what quickly becomes a one-sided battle for sheer survival

Blues brothers

The all-new 25th Anniversary Edition includes the Director's Cut and the original theatrical version, plus amazing bonus materials. Dual sided disc

Once upon a time in America

Two childhood friends form an uneasy partnership in crime which leads to death

The road warrior

Story is set in the post-nuclear outback of Australia where a battle is raged by a tiny band of civilized survivors and a group of barbarians over a precious cache of gasoline

Dekalog

Originally made for Polish television, Dekalog focuses on the residents of a housing complex in post-Communist Poland, whose lives become subtly intertwined as they face emotional dilemmas that are at once deeply personal and universally human. Using the Ten Commandments for thematic inspiration and an overarching structure, the ten hour-long films deftly grapple with complex moral and existential questions concerning life, death, love, hate, truth, and the passage of time. Also presented are the longer theatrical versions of the series' fifth and sixth films: A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love

Reds

The true story of the love affair of John Reed, American Communist, journalist and activist and Louise Bryant, writer and feminist

My neighbor Totoro

Deep inside a tree trunk, two children discover a fascinating new world inhabited by Totoros, amazing, charming creatures who become their friends

The elephant man . 2-DVD edition

When the London surgeon Frederick Treves meets the freak-show performer John Merrick, who has severe skeletal and soft tissue deformities, he assumes that he must be intellectually disabled as well. As the two men spend more time together, though, Merrick reveals the intelligence, gentle nature, and profound sense of dignity that lie beneath his shocking appearance, and he and Treves develop a friendship

Star Wars : the original trilogy

Science fiction tales of derring-do, heroism and romance. Set in the distant past, they relate the adventures of Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo as they battle the forces of the evil Imperial Army

Fanny & Alexander

Told through the eyes of Alexander and his sister Fanny, we see the exuberant and colorful Ekdahl household in a Swedish town early in the twentieth century. Their parents, Oscar and Emilie, are the director and the leading lady of the local theatre company. Oscar's mother and brother are its chief patrons. After Oscar's early death, his widow marries the bishop and moves with her children to his austere and forbidding chancery. The children are immediately miserable, but befriend a local Jewish merchant whose odd household becomes the children's refuge

Risky business

Joel's parents are going on vacation and leaving him in charge of the house. They trust their college-bound 17-year-old son but they shouldn't. Every kid's dream is every parent's nightmare. No sooner do Joel's parents step on the plane when he raids the liquor cabinet, has a joyride in Dad's Porsche, and has a night of passion with a young call girl named Lana

Fast times at Ridgemont High . 1-DVD edition

A comedy that chronicles the trials and tribulations of several high school students

Repo man

When a repo man and his protégé set out to find a '64 Chevy Malibu that contains a mysterious item in its trunk, they unwittingly enter a world of nuclear weapons, aliens, government agents, and more

The Terminator

In 2029, the ruling giant super-computer, Skynet, sends an indestructible cyborg, a Terminator, back in time to 1984 to kill a woman, Sarah Connor, whose unborn son will become mankind's only hope

E.T. : the extra-terrestrial . 2-DVD edition

Relive the adventure and magic in one of the most beloved motion pictures of all-time, from Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg. Captivating audiences of all ages, this timeless story follows the unforgettable journey of a lost alien and the ten-year-old boy he befriends

The king of comedy

Talk show host Jerry Langford is kidnapped on his way to the studio by an aspiring stand-up comic who is short on talent but long on ambition. The ransom demand: an appearance on Langford's show to perform his routine

Robocop

Robocop is created to stop a crimewave which is spreading all across America. All goes well at first and Robocop stops every sleaze ball he encounters, but there are forces which will stop at nothing to see him eliminated

Paris, Texas

After having been missing for four years and presumed dead, Travis emerges from the desert near the Texas-Mexico border and collapses at a gas station. His younger brother, Walt, a billboard artist, takes him to Walt's Los Angeles home where Travis' son, Hunter, has lived with Walt and Walt's wife, Anne, since Travis and his wife, Jane, disappeared. Travis reestablishes a relationship with Hunter, finds Jane and brings about a reunion between Jane and Hunter before leaving again. Loosely based on Sam Shepard's Motel Chronicles

The right stuff

The true story of Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Walter Schirra, Gordon Cooper, and Deke Slayton-- the seven men chosen for the Mercury Project manned space flight program in the U.S

An American werewolf in London . Full moon edition

It's a rainy night on the Welsh moors. Two American students on a walking tour of Europe trudge on to the next town, when suddenly the air is pierced by an unearthly howl ... Three weeks later, one is dead and the other is in the hospital

Stop making sense

The Talking Heads, live in concert. Includes performances of Girlfriend Is Better; Psycho Killer; 'Burning Down the House; Heaven; Life During Wartime; Take Me to the River; and more

Blow out

Jack is a movie sound-effects man who believes he has accidentally recorded a political assassination. He enlists the help of Sally, a possible eyewitness to the crime who may be in danger herself, to uncover the truth. With its jolting stylistic flourishes, intricate plot, profoundly felt characterizations, and gritty evocation of early-1980s Philadelphia, this is an American paranoia thriller unlike any other, as well as a devilish reflection on the act of moviemaking

Something wild

A staid, respectable Wall Street tax consultant embarks on a crazy, erotic, wild, but ultimately dangerous, weekend

Say anything

A young man, recently graduated from high school, wants only one thing: a date with a fellow graduate. The catch is she's beautiful, brilliant and headed to England to study, and all his friends and her father tell him she's way out of his league. When they fall in love anyway, the result is a funny, poignant and joyous celebration of first love

Raising Arizona

An ex-con and a police officer decide to get married and start a family. To their dismay, they discover that they can neither have nor adopt children. Desperate, they resort to kidnapping one of the newborn quintuplets of the wealthy Arizona family. However, their attempt at living a normal life is complicated by neurotic co-workers, two fugitives, and a mysterious bounty hunter

The shining : 2-disc special edition

A writer and his family are snowbound in a hotel and are haunted by either the hotel itself or the writer's dementia

Die hard . 1-DVD edition

It's Christmas time in L.A. and on the 30th floor of the Nakatomi Corporation building there's an employee party in progress. The revelry comes to a violent end when the partygoers are taken hostage by a group of terrorists headed by Hans Gruber, who plans to steal the 600 million dollars locked in Nakatomi's high-tech safe. Gruber and his henchmen pretend to be politically motivated in order to throw the authorities off track. Gruber has no intention of allowing anyone to get out of the building alive. Meanwhile, New York cop John McClane has come to L.A. to visit his estranged wife, Holly, who happens to be one of the hostages. Disregarding the orders of the authorities surrounding the building, McClane takes on the villains, armed with one handgun and plenty of cunning

Brazil

A comedy/romance about a surreal world in which terrorists scare the citizens, and where nothing can be accomplished without paperwork. Highly critically acclaimed. Directed by Terry Gilliam

The Thing

Set in the winter of 1982 at a research station in Antarctica, a twelve man research team finds an alien being that has fallen from the sky and has remained buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Unfrozen and unleashed, the THING creates havoc and terror as it changes forms and becomes one of them

Come and see

As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in Belorussia, teenage Flyora eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty. Nearly blocked from being made by Soviet censors, who took seven years to approve its script, is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made

Sex, lies, and videotape

Erotic comedy about a long lost college friend who drifts back into town and into the lives of a self-involved philanderer, his angelic wife, and her saucy sister

Indiana Jones and the raiders of the lost ark

Indiana Jones, an archeologist, embarks on a thrilling quest to locate the mystical Ark of the Covenant. Accompanied by his fiesty ex-flame Marion Ravenwood, Indy must discover the Ark before the Nazis do, and he has to survive poison, traps, snakes and treachery to do so

The thin blue line

Errol Morris sets out to prove that a convicted hitchhiker did not kill a Dallas policeman in 1976 - and that the lowlife that fingered him did. Based on a true story

Blade runner the final cut, 1-DVD edition

Los Angeles, 2019: Rick Deckard of the LAPD's Blade Runner unit prowls the steel & microchip jungle of the 21st century. His job is to track down and eliminate assumed humanoids known as 'replicants.' Replicants were declared illegal after a bloody mutiny on an Off-World Colony, and are to be terminated upon detection. He wants to get out of the force, but is drawn back in when 6 "skin jobs," the slang for replicants, hijack a ship back to Earth. The city that Deckard must search for his prey is a huge, sprawling, bleak vision of the future

Shoah

Over a decade in the making, this monumental investigation of the unthinkable: the murder of more than six million Jews by the Nazis. Using no archival footage, Claude Lanzmann instead focuses on first-person testimonies (of survivors and former Nazis, and other witnesses), employing a circular, free-associative method in assembling them. The intellectual yet emotionally overwhelming Shoah is not a film about excavating the past but an intensive portrait in which the past is always present

Blue velvet

A college student stumbles across a bizarre mystery and wants to know more. The strange world he's found lurking beneath his hometown picture-postcard veneer is about to become much stranger

Raging bull

A biographical film about psychologically destructive, violent middleweight champion Jake La Motta

Do the right thing : 2-disc edition

"The hottest day of the year explodes onscreen in this vibrant look at a day in the life of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. A portrait of urban racial tensions sparked controversy while earning popular and critical praise,"--Container

Recipient of the National Medal, the nation's highest honor for libraries.