Full Metal Jacket
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
1987
The first half is the most quoted boot camp ever filmed: Kubrick found a real Marine drill instructor, let him write half his own material, and made basic training terrifying.
★ 8.3
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1987
Showing 21 films from 1987
Wings of Desire
Directed by Wim Wenders
1987 · Germany
Wenders filmed a divided Berlin two years before the Wall came down and caught something nobody could stage again: angels listening in on what the people below are thinking.
★ 7.5
The Princess Bride
Directed by Rob Reiner
1987
It barely registered in cinemas and built its whole following on video: pirates, giants, a six-fingered man, and a grandfather reading to a boy who does not want the story.
★ 7.5
Raising Arizona
Directed by Coen Brothers
1987
The Coens' funniest film and by some way their fastest: a childless couple steal one of a furniture magnate's quintuplets, and the chase never once slows down afterward.
★ 6.9
The Untouchables
Directed by Brian De Palma
1987
Mamet wrote it and Morricone scored it: De Palma stages a shootout on a station staircase in open tribute to Battleship Potemkin, and turns Prohibition Chicago into pure American myth.
★ 6.6
Broadcast News
Directed by James L. Brooks
1987
James L. Brooks got the newsroom exactly right and predicted what television news would become: three colleagues tangled up in each other, and the one who is best on camera knows the least.
★ 6.4
The Last Emperor
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
1987
The Chinese government let Bertolucci shoot inside the Forbidden City, the first Western production ever allowed in: a child emperor is crowned before thousands and then history keeps rearranging him.
★ 6.4
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Directed by John Hughes
1987
John Hughes wrote it in three days: two men try to get home for Thanksgiving, and John Candy turns what starts as a comic irritant into the most devastating performance of his career.
★ 6.2
Predator
Directed by John McTiernan
1987
The original creature suit was so bad they scrapped it mid-shoot and had Stan Winston build another: a commando squad in the jungle slowly works out that something is hunting them.
★ 5.9
Wall Street
Directed by Oliver Stone
1987
Oliver Stone meant it as an indictment and a generation took it as a recruitment ad: Gordon Gekko's speech about greed is the most misread scene in American film.
★ 5.9
Withnail and I
Directed by Bruce Robinson
1987 · United Kingdom
Richard E. Grant does not drink and had to be taught to be convincing: two unemployed actors leave London for a cottage in 1969 with no money, no food and no plan whatsoever.
★ 5.8
Empire of the Sun
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1987
Christian Bale was thirteen and carries the entire film: Spielberg follows an English boy separated from his parents in occupied Shanghai, and never lets the war become an adventure.
★ 5.4
Lethal Weapon
Directed by Richard Donner
1987
Shane Black sold the script at twenty-three and set the buddy-cop template for two decades: one cop is counting down to his pension, the other is a widower nobody trusts to be careful.
★ 5.3
Evil Dead II
Directed by Sam Raimi
1987
Sam Raimi rebuilt his own debut as a Three Stooges routine with blood: Bruce Campbell spends an entire sequence fighting his own hand, and the camera moves like something chasing him.
★ 5.0
Moonstruck
Directed by Norman Jewison
1987
Cher and Olympia Dukakis both took Oscars from it, and the screenplay took a third: John Patrick Shanley wrote a Brooklyn Italian family who argue at operatic volume and mean every word.
★ 4.8
Fatal Attraction
Directed by Adrian Lyne
1987
It became a national argument for months and put a phrase into the language: a married man has a weekend affair in Manhattan, and Glenn Close will not let it end there.
★ 4.3
Good Morning, Vietnam
Directed by Barry Levinson
1987
Robin Williams was handed a microphone and the cameras simply ran: an armed forces disc jockey lands in Saigon in 1965, and everyone above him wants the broadcast back the way it was.
★ 4.1
The Lost Boys
Directed by Joel Schumacher
1987
Vampires got young, good-looking and sold on a soundtrack here: Joel Schumacher put them on a California boardwalk in 1987, and the horror genre never went back to castles.
★ 3.1
Spaceballs
Directed by Mel Brooks
1987
George Lucas allowed it on condition that no merchandise be sold, so Mel Brooks put a merchandising joke in the film: Star Wars parodied by someone who clearly loves it.
★ 3.0
Cry Freedom
Directed by Richard Attenborough
1987 · United Kingdom
Richard Attenborough got Steve Biko into cinemas while apartheid was still standing: Denzel Washington's first Oscar nomination, and a white newspaper editor learning what Black South Africans already knew.
★ 2.3
Hamburger Hill
Directed by John Irvin
1987
The least mythologizing Vietnam film anyone made: ten days in May 1969 taking one hill that the army abandoned immediately afterward, filmed as almost pure exhaustion and mud.
★ 2.0