My Top Ten Films of 1982

This is part of my continuing series looking back on films from the years before I began this blog. The ten films below are unranked and listed in no particular order. Enjoy.

Missing - Costa Gravas looks at the 1973 Chilean coup from the POV of an ordinary American man. This is Ed, played with heartbreaking sincerity by Jack Lemmon, who wades into the middle of the chaos to search for his missing son Charles, a political activist. Faced by bureaucracy and lies at every turn, the film charts Ed's disillusionment with the American government, and reaching a gradual rapprochement with his daughter-in-law, played by Sissy Spacek. Gravas doesn't shy away from confrontation, and the results are harrowing. This is a difficult film, but a very brave and admirable one.

Pink Floyd – The Wall - I love the band and I love their music, but "The Wall" is on this list for being such an indelible cinematic experience. The deeply weird Gerald Scarfe animated sequences are still fascinating, and Bob Geldof's performance as the tortured Pink is a force to behold. This is still one of the darkest and strangest musical films ever made, full of apocalyptic visions, cynical self-examination, and surreal wartime horrors. This was one of the last great rock operas of its era, and serves as a wonderful snapshot of both the music and filmmaking of the times.

Boat People - It's still rare to see any depictions of the Vietnam war from the point of view of anyone from Asia. Hong Kong New Wave filmmaker Ann Hui takes a look at the nightmarish post-war lives of the Vietnamese under the control of Ho Chi Minh's government, using a fictional Japanese reporter as her naive stranger in a strange land. It's a rough, but very effective cautionary tale about the false promises of authoritarianism, full of big emotions and heart-tugging dramatics. The original, and much more fitting title of the feature is "Run Towards the Angry Sea."

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial - One of the most iconic films of the 1980s, and perhaps the quintessential Steven Spielberg fantasy. Echoes of this film are still being felt in our media today, especially with the recent surge of '80s nostalgia for kids on bikes having adventures. As a small child, I loved the film for its special effects, chase sequences, and the John Williams score. As an adult, I love it for its depiction of the kids and their dynamics, the sunny views of suburbia, and the John Williams score even more. They don't make them like this anymore, and probably never will again.

Victor/Victoria - To date, this is my favorite Blake Edwards film by far. It's a cheeky musical comedy about cross-dressing, homosexuality, and gender-bending that's safe enough for even the smallest tots and most uptight puritans to enjoy. Julie Andrews was never so charming or attractive as she is here, as a woman playing a man playing a woman. The musical numbers composed by Henry Mancini are magnificent, the farce is delightful, and the romance is exactly what it should be. Lively and lighthearted, but never flippant, it's a very difficult film to resist.

Fitzcarraldo - The arduous making of "Fitzcarraldo" often threatens to overshadow the finished product. However, the film was clearly worth the effort. Madness has rarely been brought to screen with the same gusto as it has by Werner Herzog, and leading man Klaus Kinski is at his most unhinged. It's difficult to argue against the dedication and daring of the filmmakers when you behold a real steamship actually being dragged over the Peruvian jungle, with a roaring Kinski at the helm. It may work better as spectacle than drama, but it's spectacle that is unmatched.

Moonlighting - Jerzy Skolimowski presents a nasty little parable about exploitation, exile, and social inequities, starring Jeremy Irons as a Polish official illegally smuggling workers into London to remodel an apartment. The scale is small and the frills are minimal, but the satire is excellent and darkly enjoyable. The disastrous building project makes a great visual metaphor for the state of Poland, putting the fate of the abused workers in sharp relief. Best of all, the themes are so universal, you don't need to know anything about Poland in the '80s to appreciate it.

Poltergeist - One of my favorite haunted house films, because it challenged my view of what a haunted house film could be. Instead of something dark and drab, "Poltergeist" is full of fantastic Spielbergian special effects, absorbing mythology, and characters I cared about. It's terrifying at times, especially when it offers manifestations of childhood fears, but also full of wonder and weird delights. It brought horror home to a suburbia that I recognized, and a family dynamic that hits close to home. And I now enjoy it in an entirely different way as a parent with small children.

The Atomic Café - A look back on the Cold War era and Americans' fears of nuclear war, using only media from the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. News footage, government training films, and other archival material are edited together to give the audience a look into once common attitudes toward nuclear war. Far more concerning than the threat of nuclear annihilation is the way the public was often mislead about it, and the extent of the paranoia surrounding the subject. It's also fascinating to see the different ways that the popular culture came to reflect the nuclear age.

Koyaanisqatsi - A groundbreaking experimental documentary feature that pairs a hypnotic Philip Glass score with macroscopic views of human civilization. There are no characters, no plot, and not a single word of dialogue or narration. Instead, the visuals speak for themselves. A secondary title of the film is "Life Out of Balance," as much of the running time is devoted to observing the negative impact that industrialization has had on the planet. Two subsequent documentaries from the same filmmakers further chart the relationships between humans, nature, and technology.


Honorable mention:

Blade Runner

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