Stanley Kubrick once named his favourite movies of the 1980s
The 1980s were a time of feverish change in Hollywood, with the entire industry going a little bit mad on the liberating sugar rush of almost total creative freedom that came as a result of the emergence of the movie franchise. James Cameron created the insane sci-fi series The Terminator and George Lucas continued to change the game with Star Wars, all while the likes of such ambitious arthouse filmmakers as Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick were also hitting their prime.
But, this frenetic fever parading through Hollywood didn’t equate to critical and box office success, with filmmaker Quentin Tarantino being very harsh on the quality of the decade’s cinema while casting his eyes back. Calling it the “worst time for movies”, the Pulp Fiction director added: “Everything was cynical, then all of a sudden in the ‘80s all that was washed away and the most important thing about a character was that they were likeable… Every character had to be likeable, and the audience had to like everybody”.
Still, one director who was, most certainly, in the prime of his life was Kubrick, with the acclaimed cinematic mastermind going on a two-film winning streak, which included the releases of The Shining in 1980 and Full Metal Jacket in 1987. Yet, to put a foot wrong in his filmography, Kubrick enjoyed success at the very height of the industry in the 1980s, earning a ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ nomination for Full Metal Jacket.
As one of the decade’s greatest creatives, Kubrick was highly admired at the time and wasn’t shy about sharing some of his favourite movies from the era, with the BFI collating every single one of the films that moved him over his lifetime.
Included in the list was a collection of iconic movies from the decade, including the comedy-horror flick An American Werewolf in London by director John Landis, Oliver Stone’s Vietnam War flick Platoon and Steven Spielberg’s beloved family film E.T. the Extra-terrestrial. Predictably, Kubrick also deeply adored a host of arthouse films from across the world.
Such movies included The Sacrifice by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, who often saw himself as a rival to Kubrick, particularly after the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, which the former believed was “cold and sterile”. This didn’t stop Kubrick from liking Tarkovsky’s bleak apocalypse picture The Sacrifice, calling it “very important” according to the director’s close friend Jan Harlan.
Elsewhere, combining both his love for horror cinema and foreign movies, he named the 1988 work The Vanishing by Dutch director George Sluizer. Finding the eerie film that tells the story of a man who tries to track down his kidnapped wife utterly terrifying, Harlan further recalled that Kubrick stated that the movie was “the most horrifying film I’ve ever seen”.
Take a look at the full list of Kubrick’s favourite movies from the 1980s below.
Stanley Kubrick’s favourite 1980s movies:
- An American Werewolf in London (John Landis, 1981)
- Babette’s Feast (Gabriel Axel, 1987)
- Blood Wedding (Carlos Saura, 1981)
- Danton (Andrzej Wajda, 1984)
- E.T. the Extra-terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
- Heimat (Edgar Reitz, 1984)
- Henry V (Kenneth Branagh, 1989)
- House of Games (David Mamet, 1987)
- Modern Romance (Albert Brooks, 1981)
- Pelle the Conqueror (Bille August, 1987)
- Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986)
- Radio Days (Woody Allen, 1987)
- Roger & Me (Michael Moore, 1989)
- The Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1986)
- The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1988)
