The Best Movies of the 1980s, According to Top Critical Sources

Martin Scorsese's portrait of the boxer Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro), a middleweight champion whose jealousy and violence wreck his marriage and his family. Shot mostly in black and white, its fight scenes are brutal and its quiet scenes are often worse. De Niro gained around 60 pounds to play LaMotta in his later years.

It won Oscars for De Niro and for Thelma Schoonmaker's editing. It appears on only one of our lists, but AFI ranks it #4, tied with Come and See on Letterboxd for the highest any 1980s film reaches on any list. Scorsese and De Niro also made the 1970s list with Taxi Driver.

Elem Klimov's war film follows Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko), a teenage boy in Nazi-occupied Belarus in 1943 who digs up a rifle to join the Soviet partisans. What he sees over the following days, ending in the burning of a village, ages him before our eyes.

It was Klimov's last feature film. Its audience has grown a lot in recent years, and Letterboxd users now rank it #4, the highest any 1980s film reaches there.

Steven Spielberg's story of Elliott (Henry Thomas), a lonely suburban boy who finds an alien stranded in his backyard and hides him from his mother and from the government agents searching for him. Its bicycle flight across the moon, set to John Williams's score, became one of the most famous images of the decade.

It passed Star Wars to become the highest-grossing film ever made, a record it held until Jurassic Park. It won four Oscars, including Best Original Score. AFI ranks it #24, second among 1980s films only to Raging Bull.

Claude Lanzmann spent more than a decade making this documentary about the Holocaust, and it runs about nine and a half hours. It uses no archival footage. Instead, Lanzmann interviews survivors, witnesses and former Nazis, and films the places where the killing happened as they looked decades later.

It's the only documentary in the top ten. The critics in the BFI Sight & Sound poll rank it #27, second among 1980s films only to Do the Right Thing.

Giuseppe Tornatore's film follows Salvatore, a successful filmmaker who returns to his Sicilian hometown for the funeral of Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), the projectionist who befriended him as a boy and taught him to love the movies. Ennio Morricone wrote the score, and its final scene is one of the most loved endings in film.

It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. IMDb users rank it #46 and Letterboxd users #19.

Akira Kurosawa moved Shakespeare's King Lear to feudal Japan. An aging warlord, Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai), divides his lands among his three sons, and the betrayals that follow end in civil war. Its battle scenes, with armies in red, yellow and blue banners, are some of the largest Kurosawa ever filmed.

Kurosawa was 75 when it came out. He was nominated for the Oscar for Best Director, and Emi Wada won for Best Costume Design. Letterboxd users rank it #17.

Ingmar Bergman's family saga opens with a lavish Christmas at the Ekdahl home in a Swedish town in the early 1900s. When the children's father dies, their mother marries a stern bishop, and young Alexander and his sister Fanny find themselves prisoners in his house.

Bergman made it as his farewell to cinema, and it won four Oscars, including Best Foreign Language Film and Sven Nykvist's cinematography. Metacritic ranks it #14, higher than any other 1980s film there.

The second Star Wars film splits its heroes up. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) trains with Yoda on a swamp planet, while Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) run from the Empire, straight into a trap. Irvin Kershner directed it from a script by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan.

Darth Vader's "No, I am your father" is one of the most famous twists in film. IMDb users rank it #15, higher than any other 1980s film there.

Isao Takahata's animated film, made at Studio Ghibli, follows Seita and his little sister Setsuko, two children left to survive on their own after American firebombing destroys their home in Kobe in the last months of World War II. It's based on a semi-autobiographical story by Akiyuki Nosaka.

It first opened in Japan on a double bill with Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro. Rotten Tomatoes ranks it #44, the highest of any 1980s film there.

Spike Lee's film takes place on a single block in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant on the hottest day of the summer. Lee plays Mookie, who delivers for Sal's Famous Pizzeria (Danny Aiello as Sal). Over the course of the day, small arguments in the heat build into violence. Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" plays throughout.

It was nominated for Oscars for its screenplay and for Aiello, but not for Best Picture. It's the only 1980s film on four of our seven lists, and Variety (#14) and the BFI Sight & Sound poll (#24) both rank it higher than any other film from the decade.