For this week's Ranked!, we compiled the twenty greatest movies from 1980. Tell us what you think when you get down to #1. And let us know if you would've ordered them differently.
Here are numbers 11-15:
15. Private Benjamin
"Has anybody ever died from basic?"The first half of this movie is classic: girl is a pampered princess, girl's husband dies on her wedding night, girl decides to enlist in the Army (WTF?), girl bumbles her way through basic training, girl graduates basic and the movie meanders aimlessly, bogs down, and becomes boring. But for that first half, the comic barbs traded between Goldie Hawn and Eileen Brennan make the movie worthwhile.--Chris
14. The Changeling
Forgive me if I don't wax too poetic on the 1980 horror classic The Changeling. You see, my first viewing of this haunting classic took place in the dead of night on the shag-carpeted basement floor of a fifth-grade slumber party. We'd just finished up our Bloody Mary and Ouija Board sessions for the evening and had settled in our sleeping bags to watch the grief-stricken George C. Scott make another bad movie decision by moving into a house haunted by a brutally murdered child, when it happened. Someone's teenaged older brother, in an attempt at hilarity, reenacted the ball bouncing down the stairs scene that we had just white knuckled it through and sent fifteen tiny girls screaming out the back door and into inky the blackness of the backyard. To this day, I cannot sit through the bathtub scene without taking several futile breaths to will life back into that child who's being drowned. Shudder.--Dufmanno
13. Somewhere In Time
As a general rule, the "chick flicks" I like tend to be romantic comedies, the ones with more emphasis on "comedy" than "romantic." For example, Forgetting Sarah Marshall? Good. Sleepless In Seattle? Not so much. And romantic dramas? Forget about it!There is one exception to my rule, however, and it's a big one. I went to see Somewhere In Time with my mother and sister, only agreeing to do so because Christopher Reeve was in it. He was Superman, after all... how bad could it be? I was expecting to hate it nevertheless, but I was more than pleasantly surprised. Part of it was the time travel element of the movie, certainly; I love time travel stories, and this was a really unique take on how to make time travel happen. It almost seems plausible. I mean, who hasn't been in an old building surrounded by things from the past with no visible element of the present and felt as if they had, just for a moment, moved backward in time?
But, if I'm being honest, it's way more than that. The romance part of this movie... well, it just gets to me. The performances of Reeve and Jane Seymour are so heartfelt. I get misty every time I watch this movie. I really do. Hell, I get misty when I listen to the soundtrack (one of John Barry's best in my opinion). Call me a wuss if you want... but I just love this movie.--Dave
12. Stir Crazy
There would be no Eddie Murphy without Richard Pryor. It's easy to forget that growing up in the '80s, but there's no doubt that Richard Pryor was ground zero for uncompromising, racially frank comedy. It was Stir Crazy that first introduced me to dick jokes and the n-word, the significance of which never really registered with me. At age ten, I thought Gene Wilder was the funny one! Years of imitators have dulled the punch that this movie had back in the day, but it still stands out as one of the great comedies of the '80s. I can't think of another movie that makes prison this funny.--CroutonBoy
