See also: Thief (1981)

There’s a wealth of strong Brian De Palma thrillers to choose from in the ‘80s, whether you prefer them accessibly mainstream (The Untouchables), sleazy (Body Double), or downright problematic (Dressed to Kill). But for a decade where studios sought to maximize the gifts of former-vanguard blockbuster-makers, including some who logged time making B-movies for Roger Corman, it feels particularly fitting to select Blow Out, a thriller about the mechanics of filmmaking bleeding over into real life when a sound engineer (John Travolta) recording effects in the field thinks he may have captured evidence of an assassination. Like a lot of ‘80s classics, the film remixes several cultural touchstones from previous decades, whether political (the JFK assassination) or cinematic (Blowup; The Conversation); the result is one of De Palma’s best, with Hitchcockian thrills chased by grimly tragic ironies. Thief, meanwhile, is considerably more earnest, with Michael Mann introducing a more hypnotic, sometimes painterly visual sensibility to a relatively straightforward criminal-trying-to-get-out narrative. The commentary isn’t quite as acid as De Palma’s, but Mann still includes a sharp critique of capitalism and labor at the dawn of the Reagan era.

Best Family Fantasy: E.T. (1982)

See also: The Dark Crystal (1982)

There were a lot of big-budget fantasy movies in the wake of Star Wars throughout the 1980s, many of them impressive on some level, whether costumes or sets or other production value, and somewhat turgid when actually sitting down and experiencing them straight through. Naturally, George Lucas’s pal Steven Spielberg had been instincts than that, inverting a standard family-fantasy-movie trope (the normal human kid traveling to a fantastical land, Wizard of Oz-style) so that the visitor to a strange land is also the fantastical creature: E.T., a little lost alien befriended by Elliott (Henry Thomas), a lonely kid dealing with the aftermath of his parents’ divorce. Spielberg weaves transporting fantasy from suburban ingredients, instilling genuine awe with a shot of a child’s bicycle in silhouette as it flies past the moon. If you do go in for something more otherworldly, though, it’s hard to beat The Dark Crystal—not just in the 1980s, but for the history of American cinema more broadly. Yes, the story is largely bits and pieces of familiar fantasy lore, but the all-puppet world of this movie is astonishing, beautiful, and, at times, nightmare-inducing.