Tag: top fifty films of the 80s

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Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-One

Dan Seeger

#21 — The Verdict (Sidney Lumet, 1982) Sidney Lumet directed his first feature film in 1957 and his last one in 2007. Both those efforts were sensationally good, and Lumet had enough similarly marvelous efforts during the half-century between the two that it seems counter-intuitive to proclaim that he belongs to one decade more than any other. And yet, I can’t help but associate Lumet most strongly with the filmmaking of the nineteen-seventies. This isn’t just because he made a couple outright masterpieces right in the middle of that especially fertile span of American cinema; it’s because his smart, compact, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-One

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Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-Five

Dan Seeger

#25 — Hoosiers (David Anspaugh, 1986) A couple of years ago, I saw Gene Hackman with his regular writing partner Daniel Lenihan at a book reading. When it came time for the Q & A portion of the event, the audience was thankfully respectful enough of the actual motivation behind Hackman’s presence to largely confine their queries to topics relating to the book being actively promoted and writing in general. In fact, one of the only questions that broached film at all arrived after Hackman himself noted that he was effectively retired from acting. An audience member asked if he’d … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-Five

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Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-Nine

Dan Seeger

#29 — Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) There’s something unique about the sedate assurance Peter Weir brings to his films, especially when the works in question are at their most bleakly lovely and elegiacal. I remember reading an interview with Weir in which he talked about trying to find an approach where the elements of this film that were potentially most off-putting could be transformed into things of odd beauty. Death in a movie, even a movie that has some elements of mystery and action doesn’t automatically need to be kinetic, sharp. It can have a mesmerizing quality. It can challenge … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Twenty-Nine

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Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Thirty

Dan Seeger

#30 — Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989) Woody Allen had been directing movies for twenty years by the time he made Crimes and Misdemeanors, which might be a contributing factor to my sense that the film is a sort of cinematic final exam. It’s not that Allen had anything to prove, having already signed his name to multiple masterpieces. He may have been coming off of a pair of critical and commercial misfires–September and Another Woman–but the eighties had been an especially fruitful time for him. There was no familial scandal sullying his reputation, no prolonged stretch of mediocre … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Thirty