Titles released by boutique connoisseur video label.

Pietro Germi and Eleonora Rossi Drago in The Facts of Murder (1959)

John Cusack, Curtis Armstrong, Diane Franklin, Tina Littlewood, Yuji Okumoto, and Dan Schneider in Better Off Dead (1985)

Keanu Reeves, Michelle Meyrink, Alan Boyce, Pamela Gidley, and Jennifer Rubin in Permanent Record (1988)

My personal TOP-350+ in alphabetical order; films I've rated 9/10 or 10/10. (More films will be added whenever I happen to see a non-animated feature film that I consider worth 9/10 or 10/10.)

Best feature films of all times (non-animated)

Henry Fonda, Martin Balsam, Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, Edward Binns, John Fiedler, E.G. Marshall, Joseph Sweeney, George Voskovec, Jack Warden, and Robert Webber in 12 Angry Men (1957)

Ebla Mari and Dave Turner in The Old Oak (2023)

Que les gros salaires lèvent le doigt! (1982)

Harrison Ford, Anthony Daniels, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Kenny Baker, and Peter Mayhew in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Estética novedosa, cuidada, realista, efectos especiales...

Harrison Ford and Sean Young in Blade Runner (1982)

The Eighties crank the volume on spectacle and marketing while underground voices slip in through the aisles of the multiplex and the tracks of the VHS. Box-office titans, neon-soaked daydreams, and camcorder insurgencies live side by side in a decade that treats film as both Saturday-morning toy commercial and late-night confession booth.


* Blockbusters & Brand Power – Spielberg’s E.T. (1982), Zemeckis’ time-warp Back to the Future (1985), and Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters (1984) perfect the “high-concept” one-liner you can pitch in an elevator—and sell on lunchboxes worldwide. Star Wars churns out The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983), proving trilogies are forever; while Don Simpson & Jerry Bruckheimer weaponize MTV editing in Top Gun (1986) and Beverly Hills Cop (1984).



* Action Heroes & VHS Sweat – The video-store shelf becomes Olympus for muscle-bound demigods: The Terminator (1984), Die Hard (1988), Predator (1987), First Blood / Rambo II (1982/85). Across the Pacific, Jackie Chan ( Police Story, 1985) and John Woo ( A Better Tomorrow, 1986) reload action grammar with Hong-Kong balletics.



* Sci-Fi, Fantasy & the FX Revolution – Practical wizardry melds with dawn-of-digital wonders: Blade Runner (1982) rain-soaks cyber-punk; Tron (1982) dives into vector-grid cyberspace; Cameron’s The Abyss (1989) unveils the first photoreal CGI creature. Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986) turn puppetry into psychedelic folklore.



* Art-House Countercurrents – Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) peers into suburban rot; Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) freezes terror into baroque geometry. Spike Lee detonates a fire-hydrant rainbow in Do the Right Thing (1989); Jarmusch’s deadpan road poems (Stranger Than Paradise 1984) and the Coens’ gonzo lullaby Raising Arizona (1987) make indie cool. Sundance crowns sex, lies & videotape (1989) and signals that mini-DV confessionals can topple studio walls.



* Global Golden Spurts – China’s Fifth Generation bursts with Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum (1987); Poland’s Kieslowski maps morality in Dekalog (1988-89); Spain’s Almodóvar splashes pop melodrama in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988). In the USSR, Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1980) and The Sacrifice (1986) whisper cosmic lament, while Iran nurtures Kiarostami’s quiet revolutions.



* Animation Reawakens – Anime goes widescreen-apocalyptic with Akira (1988) and lyric with Studio Ghibli: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), My Neighbor Totoro & Grave of the Fireflies (double-shot 1988). Stateside, Disney’s doldrums end as The Little Mermaid (1989) kick-starts the next renaissance.



* Horror’s Splatter & Subtext – Slasher icons Freddy, Jason, and Michael leave crimson trails, while Cronenberg reinvents body horror in Videodrome (1983) and The Fly (1986). Cameron’s Aliens (1986) reloads Ripley as action-heroine archetype.



* The Home-Viewing Earthquake – VHS and cable turn every living room into a repertory theater, fueling cult afterlives for The Evil Dead (1981), Repo Man (1984), and midnight-movie experiments the multiplex never saw coming.


By 1989, cinema is a double-exposed frame: one side lit by merchandising glare, the other by camcorder grit and global art-house fluorescence. The Eighties prove that a movie can be both an amusement-park ride and a punk-rock zine—often in the same reel.

Screenprints on My Mind – The High-Concept Eighties (1980-1989)

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