My best movies of 1980s

Indiana: You want to talk to God? Let's go see him together, I've got nothing better to do.

Lloyd: Women: can't live with them, can't live without them. Jack Torrance: Words of wisdom, Lloyd my man. Words of wisdom.

Batty: Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.

Sandy Williams: I had a dream. In fact, it was on the night I met you. In the dream, there was our world, and the world was dark because there weren't any robins and the robins represented love. And for the longest time, there was this darkness. And all of a sudden, thousands of robins were set free and they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed that love would make any difference, and it did. So, I guess it means that there is trouble until the robins come.

"David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet says that we’re all evil in some aspect or another. This evil might manifest itself as raging violence, exemplified by Dennis Hopper’s thousand-yard maniac, Frank Booth, who cruises around the quaint town of Lumberton with a personal mandate to fuck anything that moves. When he finds a severed ear in the long grass, his subsequent journey isn’t one powered by civic concern, but a feeling that he finally has something to do with his time. Frank, too, has taken ownership of Lumberton, not because he wants to, because he can. Blue Velvet is about how America is an idea, a surface, an indistinct image. It’s about the simple ways we can corrupt that image for personal gain. It’s perhaps Lynch’s most trenchant and political film." DAVID JENKINS

Jake La Motta: I remember those cheers / They still ring in my ears / After years, they remain in my thoughts. / Go to one night / I took off my robe, and what'd I do? I forgot to wear shorts. / I recall every fall / Every hook, every jab / The worst way a guy can get rid of his flab. / As you know, my life wasn't drab. / Though I'd much... Though I'd rather hear you cheer / When you delve... Though I'd rather hear you cheer / When I delve into Shakespeare / "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse", I haven't had a winner in six months.

Radio Raheem: Let me tell you the story of Right Hand, Left Hand. It's a tale of good and evil. Hate: it was with this hand that Cane iced his brother. Love: these five fingers, they go straight to the soul of man. The right hand: the hand of love. The story of life is this: static. One hand is always fighting the other hand, and the left hand is kicking much ass. I mean, it looks like the right hand, Love, is finished. But hold on, stop the presses, the right hand is coming back. Yeah, he got the left hand on the ropes, now, that's right. Ooh, it's a devastating right and Hate is hurt, he's down. Left-Hand Hate KOed by Love.

"None of these people is perfect. But Lee makes it possible for us to understand their feelings; his empathy is crucial to the film, because if you can't try to understand how the other person feels, you're a captive inside the box of yourself. Thoughtless people have accused Lee over the years of being an angry filmmaker. He has much to be angry about, but I don't find it in his work. The wonder of “Do the Right Thing” is that he is so fair. Those who found this film an incitement to violence are saying much about themselves, and nothing useful about the movie. Its predominant emotion is sadness. Lee ends with two quotations, one from Martin Luther King Jr., advocating non-violence, and the other from Malcolm X, advocating violence “if necessary.” A third, from Rodney King, ran through my mind." Roger Ebert

Mickey: And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we're gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.

"By the end of the movie, the section titles and quotations have made an ironic point: We try to organize our lives according to what we have read and learned and believed in, but our plans are lost in a tumult of emotion." "The movie simply suggests that modern big-city lives are so busy, so distracted, so filled with ambition and complication, that there isn't time to stop and absorb the meaning of things. Neither tragedy nor comedy can find a place to stand; there are too many other guests at the party." Roger Ebert

Sam Lowry: I only know you got the wrong man.

Jack Lint: Information Transit got the wrong man. I got the *right* man. The wrong one was delivered to me as the right man, I accepted him on good faith as the right man. Was I wrong?

"What is so fascinating about “Brazil” is its emphasis of an absolute, all-encompassing bureaucratic presence within society. Every single aspect of culture requires a signature or another form in the film, even highly totalitarian acts like abduction at the hands of the government (“here is the receipt for your husband” is a direct line spoken within the film). It was in fact this very abuse of information control and obsession that Terry Gilliam found inspiration for creating this film because he was so sick and tired of the sensationalizing of technology and data in his own life." Brian Gallagher

Harry Burns: I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

Marty McFly: Hey, Doc, we better back up. We don't have enough road to get up to 88. Dr. Emmett Brown: Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.

Eddie: You know, it's funny... you come to someplace new, an'... and everything looks just the same.

Willie: No kiddin', Eddie. "Jim Jarmusch’s breakthrough film “Stranger Than Paradise” — famously described by its director as ““a neo-realistic black comedy in the style of an imaginary Eastern European director obsessed with Ozu and ‘The Honeymooners'” — captures something essential about the American character: the contradictory desire to be anonymous and to be identified, to blend into the crowd and yet still stand out. When Eva (Eszter Balint) arrives in New York City from Hungary, she goes to meet her cousin Willie (John Lurie) at his apartment. When Eva gets there, Willie makes it clear that she’s an unwanted nuisance and instructs her only to speak English while she’s staying with him. Though Willie’s roots are European, he’s embraced the Enlightenment idea of “tabula rasa,” a concept built into the fabric of America, and has become a Chesterfield-smoking, TV dinner-eating, football-watching American through and through, which means that there can’t be any reminders of his immigrant heritage. Though Eva ostensibly comes from Hungry to see America, Willie shows her nothing of New York during her ten day stay beyond his drab apartment and the surrounding area. Instead, they just stay inside and blend into the walls because what’s more American than sitting on your bed watching TV and smoking cigarettes all day and night?" Vikram Murthi, Indiewire

Claire: Why didn't you want me to know that you are a virgin? Brian: Because it's my business - my personal business. John Bender: Well, Brian, it doesn't sound like you're doing any business.

Adam: What are your qualifications?

Beetlejuice: Ah. Well... I attended Juilliard... I'm a graduate of the Harvard business school. I travel quite extensively. I lived through the Black Plague and had a pretty good time during that. I've seen the EXORCIST ABOUT A HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN TIMES, AND IT KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME I SEE IT... NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT YOU'RE TALKING TO A DEAD GUY... NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK? You think I'm qualified?

"vibrant to the point of being garish, warm and generous, with a spiky sense of satire, this supernatural comedy is one of Tim Burton’s best. It is a time capsule of the 1980s, both in its absurd stylings and its parable of Reagan-era commodification culture. And what a cast. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis play the Maitlands, a meek, childless couple whose contented existence is disrupted by their unfortunate deaths in a road accident. Back home, it takes them a while to realise they are dead, though the Handbook for the Recently Deceased and the surreal Technicolor hellscape outside the front door are strong clues. The story almost comes off the rails, but Beetlejuice’s charm lies more in the execution. The movie is crammed with visual invention and snappy comedy. The afterlife is richly imagined as a macabre bureaucracy. The living world is no less outlandish, especially with those eye-popping interiors and costumes (for me, the film’s only flaw is that the house actually looks better after its remodelling). Burton was a bracing new talent with a headful of ideas here. His now-familiar Dr Seuss gothic sensibility was a novelty, and crucially, it was still tethered to the real world." Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

Reginald Fleming 'R.J.' Johnston: The Emperor has been a prisoner in his own palace since the day that he was crowned, and has remained a prisoner since he abdicated. But now he's growing up, he may wonder why he's the only person in China who may not walk out of his own front door. I think the Emperor is the loneliest boy on Earth.

"This is a strange epic because it is about an entirely passive character. We are accustomed to epics about heroes who act on their society - "Lawrence of Arabia," "Gandhi" - but Pu Yi was born into a world that allowed him no initiative. The ironic joke was that he was emperor of nothing, for there was no power to go with his title, and throughout the movie he is seen as a pawn and victim, acted upon, exploited for the purposes of others, valued for what he wasn't rather than for what he was, In Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane," one of the tycoon's friends says, "I was there before the beginning - and now I'm here, beyond the end."

"The Last Emperor" ends with an extraordinary sequence, beyond the end, in which an elderly Pu Yi goes to visit the Forbidden City, which is now open to tourists. He sees a little boy sneak past the velvet rope and climb onto the Dragon Throne. Once that would have been a fatal offense. But the old man who was once the boy on that throne looks on, now, with a complex mixture of emotions. It is an inspired ending for the film, which never makes the mistake of having only one thing to say about the life of a man who embodied all of the contradictions and paradoxes of 20th century China.

I'll be back.

Frank : I have run out of time. I have lost it all. So I can't work fast enough to catch up. I can't run fast enough to catch up. And the only thing that catches me up is doing my magic act.

"This movie works so well for several reasons. One is that "Thief" is able to convince us that it knows its subject, knows about the methods and criminal personalities of its characters. Another is that it's well cast: Every important performance in this movie successfully creates a plausible person, instead of the stock-company supporting characters we might have expected. And the film moves at a taut pace, creating tension and anxiety through very effective photography and a wound-up, pulsing score by Tangerine Dream.

It's a thriller with plausible people in it. How rare." Roger Ebert

Michael Dorsey: You don't have to. She's right here. And she misses you. Look, you don't know me from Adam. But I was a better man with you, as a woman... than I ever was with a woman, as a man. You know what I mean? I just gotta learn to do it without the dress. At this point, there might be an advantage to my wearing pants. The hard part's over, you know? We were already... good friends.

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: I bet you're the kind of guy that would *beep* a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around. I'll be watching you.

Tony Montana: In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.