for discussion fun
Tootsie, one of the inarguably great American comedies
"The Tuesday Top Ten will get more article-like soon," he said (again). "It really will." But it was so much fun to discuss the 1930s and the 1970s, which are arguably the two most respected decades (critically speaking) of American cinema. So how about a decade that gets no respect? The 1980s. The '80s are tough for me to feel discerning about because I lived through them and was a) young and b) just falling in love with the movies and c) just falling hard for the movies so how could the cinema possibly have been hitting its nadir? I still have inordinate fondness for movies that might more safely be called guilty pleasures like Yentl, Superman II, Splash, Return of the Jedi, Clue, and about half of the filmography of John Hughes... and so on. I even like revisiting really bad movies from that decade.
Off the top of my head my ten favorites of the decades.
A Sean Young polaroid from the set of Blade Runner
- The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen)
- Blade Runner (Ridley Scott)
- A Room With a View (James Ivory)
- Tootsie (Sydney Pollack)
- Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears)
- Amadeus (Milos Forman)
- Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)
- Aliens (James Cameron)
- Law of Desire (Pedro Almodovar)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg)
With apologies too... Silkwood, Reds, Diva, The Empire Strikes Back, The Little Mermaid, The complete works of Michelle Pfeiffer, Moonstruck, Raging Bull, Jean de Florette, Manon of the Spring, The King of Comedy, Heathers, sex lies and videotape, The complete works of Kathleen Turner, The Shining, Victor/Victoria, The Right Stuff, Bull Durham, Little Shop of Horrors, The Terminator, Witness, Broadcast News, Running on Empty, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Raising Arizona. I could go on and on and on but I'd better stop before I start singing Xanadu again.
I'd love to hear your lists, both guilty pleasures and critically lauded efforts you think deserve their reputations.