Raging Bull
Directed by Martin Scorsese
1980
Scorsese shot boxing as penance rather than sport, and audiences come out feeling bruised: De Niro's jealousy destroys everyone near him, in the blackest black and white imaginable.
★ 9.6
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1980
Showing 8 films from 1980
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Directed by Irvin Kershner
1980
Everyone learned how to make a sequel from this: the pressure builds for two hours, the tone stays darker than anyone expected, and one line near the close rearranged a generation's childhood.
★ 9.4
The Shining
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1980
Whole documentaries exist about what this film means: Kubrick threw out most of King's novel, sent a Steadicam gliding down those corridors, and left a dread nobody can explain away.
★ 9.2
Airplane!
Directed by David Zucker and Jim Abrahams
1980
It fires jokes at a rate almost nothing before it attempted and lands most of them: the trick was casting dramatic actors and telling them to play everything straight.
★ 7.8
The Blues Brothers
Directed by John Landis
1980
It held the record for cars destroyed on film and works as a music documentary besides: Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown and Cab Calloway all get a full number.
★ 6.1
Ordinary People
Directed by Robert Redford
1980
Redford directed this before anyone thought he could, and it goes at what American families do not discuss: a Chicago suburb where everyone is fine, and a son in therapy who is not.
★ 5.6
Caddyshack
Directed by Harold Ramis
1980
Bill Murray improvised nearly all of his part and the gopher was added after shooting finished: a country club comedy with no functioning plot and absolutely no need for one.
★ 5.1
The Big Red One
Directed by Samuel Fuller
1980
Samuel Fuller fought in the division he is filming and waited thirty-five years to tell it: a squad from North Africa to Sicily to Normandy, filmed as a job that does not end.
★ 3.3