IndieWire’s Eccentric Best Films of the ‘80s List

Back in March of 2021, I had posted the results of our 1980s critics poll. Over 175 critics lists were tabulated and these were the top ten:

1) Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
2) Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
3) Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
4) The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)
5) Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg)
6) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott)
7) Fanny And Alexander (Ingmar Bergman)
8) Brazil (Terry Gilliam)
9) Aliens (James Cameron)
10) Ran (Akira Kurosawa)

It’s ‘80s week over at IndieWire and to mark the event, they’ve posted their own top 100 of the decade. This is based on the lists submitted from their staff, around 20 of them. Here’s the top 10:

1) Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
2) Mishima (Paul Schrader)
3) The Thing (John Carpenter)
4) Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders)
5) Shoah (Claude Lanzmann)
6) My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki)
7) Vagabond (Agnes Varda)
8) The Green Ray (Eric Rohmer)
9) Possession (Andrzej Żuławski)
10) Sans Soleil (Chris Marker)

“Fanny and Alexander,” “Ran,” “Blue Velvet” “The Shining” and “Raging Bull” not being in the top 10 is kinda sacrilege. I do get what they were trying to do with their list, make it less obvious and more eccentric.

No surprise, Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” tops the list much like it did our own poll. Lee’s film has no doubt benefited from an abundance of relevance over the past few years in a socially and politically tumultuous America dominated by racial issues. Regardless, when seen today, the film still packs a major punch in the gut and remains the best film Lee has ever made. A stone-cold masterpiece.

Back in 1989, a similar poll of critics was conducted by American Film magazine, and a top 20 was produced, crowned by Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull.”

Now, 30 years later, reassessments have occured. Included in the American Film poll, but nowhere to be found in the IndieWire and WoR lists, include such films as “Terms of Endearment,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” “Atlantic City,” “The Killing Fields,” “The Right Stuff,” “The Dead,” and “Melvin and Howard.”

Also, John Carpenter’s “The Thing” keeps being reappraised. Carpenter’s film was met with negative reviews described as “instant junk”, “a wretched excess”, and, back in the day, proclaimed as the most-hated film of all time by film magazine, Cinefantastique. Now it’s a horror classic.