The Greatest Year for Movies: 1984?

Cafe Society
1

According to this article on EW.com, 1984 could possibly be the best year ever in terms of movies released that are now considered classics. Hard to disagree…

Here are a bunch from the list, but they have even more listed in the article.

Ghostbusters
Red Dawn
Sixteen Candles
Bachelor Party
Beverly Hills Cop
Amadeus
The Killing Fields
Blood Simple
A Nightmare on Elm Street
The Terminator
Purple Rain
Muppets Take Manhattan
The Karate Kid
Gremlins
The Natural
Splash
Footloose
Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai

2

I’ll still take '39 over '84 (not that there might not be a better year than '39, but it’s the most familiar typical answer). My guess? '84 is just the year most of the movies the presumably 30-something author grew up with and remembers nostaligically came out. In 10 years a new 30-something will be making the case for what a great year for movies '94 was (Shawshank Redemption! Pulp Fiction! Usual Suspects! Forrest Gump! The Lion King!).

3

Of course I can disagree; that list includes Red Dawn and Bachelor Party! Purple Rain, as a movie, is no great shakes either.

Gremlins, while fun, isn’t really a “classic”. I’d argue the same thing for Karate Kid, Muppets Take Manhattan, Buckaroo Banzai, and Beverly Hills Cop.

Movies like Blood Simple, Amadeus, and Killing Fields are good movies, but they’re no more classic than Oscar nominated movies from any other year.

ETA: You left This Is Spinal Tap off your list! That probably was the most classic movie released that year!

4

I’d argue that 1984 wasn’t even the best year for movies in the first half of the 1980s. Take a look at this list from 1980.

The Blues Brothers
Breaker Morant
Brubaker
Coal Miner’s Daughter
The Elephant Man
The Empire Strikes Back
Fame
The Great Santini
9 to 5
Ordinary People
Private Benjamin
Raging Bull
Superman II

I chose 1980 randomly. I’ll let advocates of 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1985 chime in.

5

I think 1999 could give 1984 a run for its money:

American Beauty
Being John Malkovich
The Matrix
Office Space
Magnolia
Election
Fight Club
The Sixth Sense
American Pie
South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut
The Insider
Man on the Moon
Run Lola Run
Eyes Wide Shut (a vastly underrated movie, if you ask me)

Hell, that list could probably give the entire decade of the 2000s a run for its money.

6

How about 1982?

 48 Hours
 Blade Runner
 Conan the Barbarian
 The Dark Crystal
 Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
 Diner
 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
 Fast Times at Ridgemont High
 First Blood
 Frances
 Gandhi
 Missing
 My Favorite Year
 An Officer and a Gentleman
 Pink Floyd The Wall
 Poltergeist
 Rocky III
 The Secret of NIMH
 Sophie's Choice
 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
 The Thing
 Tootsie
 Tron
 The Verdict
 Victor/Victoria
 Volver a empezar
 The Year of Living Dangerously

Good year, especially for SF/fantasy classics!

7

Yeah, I’m going to have to add my vote for 1982.

/old man voice They just don’t make years like that any more.

8

I’d remove the Stallone (ugh!) but add Burden of Dreams, Yol, Fitzcarraldo, Veronika Voss, Night of the Shooting Stars, The Draughtman’s Contract, White Dog, Shoot the Moon and Querelle.

9

Not that I completely disagree, but First Blood and Rocky III were both very good for their genres.

All the movies you listed were high-quality independent movies (except Shoot The Moon, which was a major release), but there are several of those released every year. The OP had no indies on his/her list, so I somewhat kept to that same format (Volver a empezar won the foreign film Oscar, so I included it.)

10

Yeah I’d have to second the vote for 1999.

11

No love for Repo Man?

12

I think the movies that the OP listed are very entertaining but I wouldn’t class any as great works.

The same way Gilligan’s Island is an entertaining way to kill a half hour but it is hardly great art

13

The top films from 1939 are still watched and still widely regarded as classics. Will those from 1984 be as highly regarded after 70 years? If so, perhaps the author has a point. But I think most of them will be forgotten.

14

More cherry-picking

2000

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Requiem for a Dream
Traffic
Billy Elliot
Gladiator
Meet the Parents
Timecode
What Lies Beneath
Castaway
Nurse Betty
American Psycho
High Fidelity
Best in Show
Chicken Run
Erin Brockovich
My Dog Skip
X-Men
State and Main
M:I-2
The Opportunists
Sunshine
Almost Famous

See that’s so easy!

15

Holy Crap! The only thing this thread has done for me is illustrate how much of my life has been spent watching movies instead of doing something productive. :frowning:

16

American Beauty is an awful, awful movie. No, seriously. I loved it when it came out but go back and watch it again if you haven’t done so in the last 10 years. It’s laughably bad.

And the list in the OP is a joke. Come on. Footloose? Rodgers01 nailed it in one.

17

The guy uses Cannonball Run II and Hard to Hold to make his case?

Seriously?

(BTW, Spinal Tap is mentioned in the list, just not by the OP)

18

I Googled the author. Assuming that he was 22 when he graduated from Connecticut College in 1991, he would be 40 now and 15 in the so-called “greatest year” of 1984. So I think you’re right that the list is based in nostalgia.

And note that the list includes Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, so it’s not all gems.

19

Wow, such mediocrity.

In think 1946 has numbers to back itself up.

20

I think 1946 and 1972 make very strong cases, for as stupid as the 1984 argument is, I personally think 1939 is still an excessively knee-jerk veneration for a host of movies that are more well-known than genuinely amazing.

The cream of the crop:

1939
Destry Rides Again
Le Jour se Lève
Ninotchka
Of Mice and Men
Only Angels Have Wings
The Rules of the Game
Stagecoach
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums
The Wizard of Oz
Young Mr. Lincoln

1946
La Belle et la Bête
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Sleep
Great Expectations
It’s a Wonderful Life
A Matter of Life and Death
My Darling Clementine
Notorious
Paisan
Shoeshine

1972
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Cabaret
Chloe in the Afternoon
Cries and Whispers
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
The Godfather
The Heartbreak Kid
Junior Bonner
Solaris
Sounder

For my money, that first list though formidable (primarily because of the foreign entries) still pales compared to the other two. Yes, there are lots of well-known titles (GWTW, Mr. Smith, Mr. Chips, etc.) missing from the '39 list, but I’d argue they’re fondly remembered but still terribly overrated, especially the high-profile lit. adaptations (Hunchback, Geste, Wuthering).