Raiders of the Lost Ark
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1981
Every adventure film since is measured against it: Spielberg and Lucas built a machine of chases and near misses so efficient that forty years of imitation have not worn it out.
★ 9.5
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1981
Showing 8 films from 1981
Das Boot
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
1981 · Germany
No war film has ever been this claustrophobic: Petersen ran a camera the length of a U-boat again and again until the steel walls start pressing in on you.
★ 8.1
Blow Out
Directed by Brian De Palma
1981
Travolta's best performance is in a thriller that flopped and spent forty years being rediscovered: a movie sound man records an accident and hears something that should not be on the tape.
★ 6.6
Thief
Directed by Michael Mann
1981
Michael Mann's first theatrical feature, with Tangerine Dream on the score and real ex-burglars advising: a safecracker who has planned his whole future on a diner napkin tries to buy his way out.
★ 5.5
Reds
Directed by Warren Beatty
1981
Beatty tracked down dozens of surviving witnesses and cut their interviews straight into the film: the Russian Revolution seen through two American radicals who cannot stop arguing.
★ 5.5
Escape from New York
Directed by John Carpenter
1981
John Carpenter turned Manhattan into a prison on a shoestring and it still looks right: Kurt Russell plays a convict given twenty-two hours to retrieve the president, and enjoys none of it.
★ 4.6
Chariots of Fire
Directed by Hugh Hudson
1981 · United Kingdom
The Vangelis theme is so famous that people forget the film underneath is about religion: two runners at the 1924 Olympics, one running for God and one against English antisemitism.
★ 3.3
On Golden Pond
Directed by Mark Rydell
1981
Henry Fonda won his only competitive Oscar at seventy-six and died four months later: he and Jane Fonda play an estranged father and daughter, which was not much of a stretch for either.
★ 2.9