The 1980s split cinema between blockbuster excess and quiet, searching art house work: the same decade that gave us The Empire Strikes Back also produced Paris, Texas and Cinema Paradiso. Hollywood chased franchises and spectacle while European and world cinema asked slower, harder questions. Macca's reviews cover the full range, so have a browse.
Rating: 3.5★
There are films that feel like they arrive from a particular place and moment so completely that watching them is almost anthropological, and Time of the Gypsies is very much one of those films. Released in 1988 and co-produced across Yugoslavia, Italy, and the United Kingdom, it arrived at
Rating: 3.5★
There are films that wear their cultural heritage lightly, sprinkling in a few local details for colour before defaulting to familiar genre shapes. And then there is Yeelen. Released in 1987 and rooted in the oral traditions and spiritual cosmology of the Bambara people of Mali, Souleymane Cissé's
Rating: 3.5★
By the early 1980s, the partnership of Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung Kam-Bo and Yuen Biao had already become something of a Hong Kong institution. The three men had trained together at the Peking Opera School as children, and that shared history gave their on-screen collaborations a physical shorthand
Rating: 2.5★
By the late 1980s, the American action film had carved out a fairly reliable template: a physically gifted lead, an exotic location, and enough punching to fill ninety-odd minutes. Bloodsport, released in 1988, slots neatly into that tradition, though it adds a specific wrinkle by setting its story in
Rating: 3.5★
By the mid-1980s, Hong Kong cinema was operating at a kind of creative fever pitch that the rest of the world was only just beginning to notice. John Woo had redefined the action thriller with A Better Tomorrow in 1986, and the Shaw Brothers tradition of wuxia spectacle, stretching
Rating: 3.0★
By 1986, the American independent film scene was a world away from the polished studio machinery churning out blockbusters across town. Low-budget, self-financed pictures were finding audiences through word of mouth and festival buzz, and it was in that climate that a young film school graduate from Brooklyn
Rating: 2.0★
By the mid-1980s, the toy aisle had become one of Hollywood's favourite hunting grounds. Mattel's He-Man and the Masters of the Universe line had been a commercial phenomenon since its launch in 1982, generating billions in sales and anchoring one of the decade'
Rating: 4.0★
Few war films carry the weight of historical testimony quite as heavily as Come and See. Released in 1985 and set during the Nazi occupation of Belarus in 1943, the film is rooted in events that were still raw memory for many Soviet citizens at the time of its production.
Rating: 2.5★
There are films that announce themselves as Important Events and films that simply turn up, do their job with a grin on their face, and leave you feeling better than you did before. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) belongs very much to the second category. The premise is clean
Rating: 2.5★
There are films that arrive out of nowhere, make an improbable fortune at the box office, and then spend the following decades generating a rather uncomfortable conversation about what, exactly, we were all laughing at. The Gods Must Be Crazy is one of those films. Released in South Africa in
Rating: 3.0★
There are films that arrive quietly and find their audience over time, and then there are films that kick the door in. Clive Barker's Hellraiser, released in 1987, belongs firmly in the second category. Adapted by Barker himself from his own 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart, the film
Rating: 3.0★
There is a particular kind of documentary that turns the camera not on its ostensible subject but on the people doing the looking, and Cannibal Tours (1988) is one of the more bracingly honest examples of the form. Directed by Australian filmmaker Dennis O'Rourke, the film accompanies a
Film images and data courtesy of TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
The best new reviews, a buried gem with where to watch it, and where the every-country challenge is up to. Free, no spam.
Subscribe free