My Favorite Top 30 Movies of 1983
by pardonemepaddre | created - 03 Jun 2017 | updated - 29 Dec 2020 | Public- Instant Watch Options
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1. Terms of Endearment (1983)
PG | 132 min | Comedy, Drama
Follows hard-to-please Aurora looking for love and her daughter's family problems.
Director: James L. Brooks | Stars: Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito
Votes: 65,467 | Gross: $108.42M
2. Star 80 (1983)
R | 103 min | Biography, Drama
A successful young model finds trouble when her obsessive manager-turned-husband becomes dangerously jealous.
Director: Bob Fosse | Stars: Mariel Hemingway, Eric Roberts, Cliff Robertson, Carroll Baker
Votes: 8,139 | Gross: $6.47M
3. Risky Business (1983)
R | 99 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
A Chicago teenager is looking for fun at home while his parents are away, but the situation quickly gets out of hand.
Director: Paul Brickman | Stars: Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay, Joe Pantoliano, Richard Masur
Votes: 99,820 | Gross: $63.50M
4. Zelig (1983)
PG | 79 min | Comedy
"Documentary" about a man who can look and act like whoever he's around, and meets various famous people.
Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Patrick Horgan, John Buckwalter
Votes: 44,170 | Gross: $11.80M
5. Trading Places (1983)
R | 116 min | Comedy
A snobbish investor and a wily street con artist find their positions reversed as part of a bet by two callous millionaires.
Director: John Landis | Stars: Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche
Votes: 165,766 | Gross: $90.40M
6. Silkwood (1983)
R | 131 min | Biography, Drama, History
A worker at a plutonium processing plant is purposefully contaminated, psychologically tortured and possibly murdered to prevent her from exposing worker safety violations at the plant.
Director: Mike Nichols | Stars: Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, Cher, Craig T. Nelson
Votes: 22,198 | Gross: $35.62M
7. To Be or Not to Be (1983)
PG | 107 min | Comedy, Drama, War
At the onset of WW2, a Polish actor's family and the Polish Resistance help the troupe of a theatre escape Poland and the invading Nazis.
Director: Alan Johnson | Stars: Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Ronny Graham, Estelle Reiner
Votes: 12,033 | Gross: $13.03M
8. The King of Comedy (1982)
PG | 109 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama
A passionate yet unsuccessful comedian stalks and kidnaps his idol to take the spotlight for himself.
Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Diahnne Abbott, Sandra Bernhard
Votes: 119,136 | Gross: $2.50M
9. The Meaning of Life (1983)
R | 107 min | Comedy, Musical
The comedy team takes a look at life in all of its stages in their own uniquely silly way.
Director: Terry Jones | Stars: John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones
Votes: 125,315 | Gross: $14.93M
10. Scarface (1983)
R | 170 min | Crime, Drama
In 1980 Miami, a determined Cuban immigrant takes over a drug cartel and succumbs to greed.
Director: Brian De Palma | Stars: Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
Votes: 916,324 | Gross: $45.60M
11. The Big Chill (1983)
R | 105 min | Comedy, Drama
A group of seven former college friends gather for a weekend reunion at a South Carolina vacation home after the funeral of another of their college friends.
Director: Lawrence Kasdan | Stars: Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt
Votes: 41,412 | Gross: $56.20M
12. Cross Creek (1983)
PG | 127 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
In the 1930s, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings moves to Florida's backwaters to write in peace. She feels bothered by affectionate men, editor and confused neighbors, but soon she connects and writes The Yearling, a classic of American literature.
Director: Martin Ritt | Stars: Mary Steenburgen, Rip Torn, Peter Coyote, Dana Hill
Votes: 2,033 | Gross: $0.20M
13. The Right Stuff (1983)
PG | 193 min | Adventure, Biography, Drama
The U.S. space program's development from the breaking of the sound barrier to selection of the Mercury 7 astronauts, from a group of test pilots with a more seat-of-the-pants approach than the program's more cautious engineers preferred.
Director: Philip Kaufman | Stars: Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid
Votes: 65,339 | Gross: $21.50M
14. Lianna (1983)
R | 110 min | Drama, Romance
A happily married woman comes to realize herself of being a repressed lesbian after she has an affair with a female college professor, and then tries to come to terms with her newfound lifestyle.
Director: John Sayles | Stars: Linda Griffiths, Jane Hallaren, Jon DeVries, Jo Henderson
Votes: 1,824 | Gross: $1.50M
15. Educating Rita (1983)
PG | 110 min | Comedy, Drama
An alcoholic professor has been hired by a working-class girl for higher education.
Director: Lewis Gilbert | Stars: Michael Caine, Julie Walters, Michael Williams, Maureen Lipman
Votes: 14,923 | Gross: $14.65M
16. The Grey Fox (1982)
PG | 92 min | Biography, Drama, History
When an aging, but gentlemanly stagecoach robber is released from prison, he decides to go to Canada to become a train robber.
Director: Phillip Borsos | Stars: Richard Farnsworth, Jackie Burroughs, Ken Pogue, Wayne Robson
Votes: 2,491
17. Pauline at the Beach (1983)
R | 95 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Marion is about to divorce from her husband and takes her 15-year-old niece Pauline on a vacation to Granville. She meets an old love...
Director: Éric Rohmer | Stars: Amanda Langlet, Arielle Dombasle, Pascal Greggory, Féodor Atkine
Votes: 10,529
18. Tender Mercies (1983)
PG | 92 min | Drama, Music
A broken-down, middle-aged country singer gets a new wife, reaches out to his long-lost daughter, and tries to put his troubled life back together.
Director: Bruce Beresford | Stars: Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Betty Buckley, Wilford Brimley
Votes: 12,019 | Gross: $8.44M
19. Fanny and Alexander (1982)
R | 188 min | Drama
Two young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies and tragedies of their lively and affectionate theatrical family, the Ekdahls.
Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Bertil Guve, Pernilla Allwin, Kristina Adolphson, Börje Ahlstedt
Votes: 67,486 | Gross: $4.97M
20. La balance (1982)
R | 102 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
Police compel a couple of criminals to become its informants.
Director: Bob Swaim | Stars: Nathalie Baye, Philippe Léotard, Richard Berry, Maurice Ronet
Votes: 1,324
21. The Dresser (1983)
PG | 118 min | Drama
Personal assistant Norman struggles to get deteriorating veteran actor Sir through a difficult performance of King Lear.
Director: Peter Yates | Stars: Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, Edward Fox, Zena Walker
Votes: 5,699 | Gross: $5.31M
22. WarGames (1983)
PG | 114 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A young man finds a back door into a military central computer in which reality is confused with game-playing, possibly starting World War III.
Director: John Badham | Stars: Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, John Wood, Dabney Coleman
Votes: 110,720 | Gross: $79.57M
23. Christine (1983)
R | 110 min | Horror, Thriller
A nerdish boy buys a strange car with an evil mind of its own and his nature starts to change to reflect it.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Keith Gordon, John Stockwell, Alexandra Paul, Robert Prosky
Votes: 92,433 | Gross: $21.20M
24. Never Cry Wolf (1983)
PG | 105 min | Adventure, Drama
A government researcher, sent to research the "menace" of wolves in the north, learns about the true beneficial and positive nature of the species.
Director: Carroll Ballard | Stars: Charles Martin Smith, Brian Dennehy, Zachary Ittimangnaq, Samson Jorah
Votes: 8,781 | Gross: $29.60M
25. Local Hero (1983)
PG | 111 min | Comedy, Drama
An American oil company has plans for a new refinery and sends someone to Scotland to buy up an entire village, but things don't go as expected.
Director: Bill Forsyth | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Peter Riegert, Fulton Mackay, Denis Lawson
Votes: 26,691 | Gross: $5.90M
26.
American Playhouse (1980–1994)
Episode:
The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez
(1982)
PG | 105 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
The retelling of an incident in Gonzales, Texas in 1901 revolving around a stolen horse, mistaken identity and a killing. An unusual story of the all too usual exploitation of the powerless in Texas History.
Director: Robert M. Young | Stars: Edward James Olmos, James Gammon, Tom Bower, Bruce McGill
Votes: 1,033 | Gross: $0.80M
27. Baby It's You (1983)
R | 105 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
In a 1966 New Jersey high school, Jill and new student Sheik from the other side of the tracks make their way in a first love romance.
Director: John Sayles | Stars: Rosanna Arquette, Vincent Spano, Joanna Merlin, Jack Davidson
Votes: 2,149 | Gross: $1.87M
28. Psycho II (1983)
R | 113 min | Crime, Horror, Mystery
After twenty-two years of psychiatric care, Norman Bates attempts to return to a life of solitude, but the specters of his crimes - and his mother - continue to haunt him.
Director: Richard Franklin | Stars: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Meg Tilly, Robert Loggia
Votes: 31,067 | Gross: $34.73M
29. Testament (1983)
PG | 90 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
The life of a suburban American family is scarred after a nuclear attack.
Director: Lynne Littman | Stars: Jane Alexander, William Devane, Rossie Harris, Roxana Zal
Votes: 7,217 | Gross: $2.04M
30. Heart Like a Wheel (1983)
PG | 113 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
Shirley Muldowney is determined to be a top-fuel drag racer, although no woman has ever raced them before. Despite the high risks of this kind of racing and the burden it places on her family life, she perseveres in her dream.
Director: Jonathan Kaplan | Stars: Bonnie Bedelia, Beau Bridges, Diane Delano, Ellen Geer
Votes: 1,582 | Gross: $0.27M
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