My Top Ten Films of 1980:
- The Shining
- Melvin and Howard
- Airplane!
- 9 to 5
- The Elephant Man
- Raging Bull
- Grown-Ups
- Atlantic City
- Babylon
- Pixote
Honorable Mentions: Altered States. American Gigolo, Dressed to Kill, The Empire Strikes Back, The Fog, Ordinary People, Popeye, Private Benjamin, Times Square
For My Watchlist: Bad Timing, Coal Miner’s Daughter, The Long Good Friday, Permanent Vacation, Used Cars
*
I’ve previously written about 1980 as an exceptional year for some fascinatingly bad movies (and television); in that context, the good stuff from this era feels almost miraculous. Even during such a confused, in-between period, studios were still capable of great art amongst dreck like Neil Diamond’s ill-advised remake of The Jazz Singer.
My top three titles above are all worthy of the number one slot. I ultimately went with my favorite Stanley Kubrick film, an idiosyncratic adaptation of Stephen King’s novel that at least seems completely devoid of studio tampering (save for the deleted coda/ending.) For this reason, perhaps, it’s one of the most inexplicable films ever made (although the subjects of documentary Room 237 will argue otherwise.) It courses with baffling choices (um. the painting in Scatman Crothers’ bedroom!); one certainly notices but inevitably accepts them since this entire world is wired so weirdly.
Although I haven’t seen Melvin and Howard in some time, this parable of average Americana altered by an extraordinary crossing of paths remains my favorite non-concert Jonathan Demme film for its warm, generous humor (not to mention Mary Steenburgen’s deserved, Oscar-winning breakthrough.) I also have no qualms putting Airplane! at top—it’s fiercely committed to the point where it locates the sublime within the silly at a hit rate that puts nearly all of its imitators to shame.
9 to 5 is nearly as hilarious a comedy even if little in it touches the let’s-off-the-boss dream sequences (though Lily Tomlin’s reading of the line, “That’s right, I’m a doctor… so why the hell am I talking to you? Piss off!” is of the same caliber.) On the other end of the tonal spectrum, The Elephant Man, which I hated after a high school class viewing, was revelatory on a rewatch a little over a decade later. Anyone who dismisses David Lynch as incapable of tenderness or sincerity should watch it (along with Mulholland Drive and the first season of Twin Peaks.)
The rest of my top ten is quite the assortment from Scorsese’s anti-hero biopic (decades before that actually became a thing) and Pixote’s astonishingly candid study of child criminals to Atlantic City’s intimate character study and Grown-Ups’ acidic take on young marrieds (see the latter for a delightfully, incomparably unhinged Brenda Blethyn.) A first-time watch last year, Babylon is a vital time capsule of an ultra-specific culture (Jamaican immigrants in London) that remains ever-relevant in how it examines racism from various angles.
My honorable mentions contain what is likely to be the only Star Wars film on these lists as well as one of the few John Carpenter flicks. Roberrt Altman’s looney Popeye remains a sentimental fave, its inclusion justified by its weirdness (rivaling that of The Shining, only as an intentional comedy). Once generally regarded as a written-off bomb, Times Square is increasingly ripe for rediscovery for serving as both another time capsule and slightly ahead of its time (I’d like to think young Madonna was watching and taking notes) and also for the amazing Robin Johnson, a proto-Natasha Lyonne.
For me, Used Cars is something of a great white whale. As an admirer of other early Zemeckis films, it’s been on my watchlist forever. It also rarely seems to be streaming anywhere but I’ll try to see it, soon. Bad Timing is currently on Criterion, but I may have to get over my slight aversion to Art Garfunkel-as-actor (picked up since not being fully convinced by Carnal Knowledge.) Bob Hoskins and Sissy Spacek are primary reasons for wanting to check out the films they star in; as for Jim Jarmusch’s first feature, is it worth seeing or juvenilia like Sean Baker’s first feature Four Letter Words?
Haunted Jukebox 