These Go To Eleven: The 10 Best Films Of The Eighties

Join us in our decade-based film retrospective, as we delve backwards all the way from 2009 to 1910. Most decade-based best movie lists grant you a whooping 50-100 entries, which makes perfect sense given all the years you have to take into consideration. But what if you were defining a decade in just ten films? Which movies would you recommend to somebody who might only watch a handful from a given decade? This week, we look back at the Eighties.

T.J. Barnard

Published: Nov 28, 2012 10:52 am

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7. Full Metal Jacket (1987) (Dir. Stanley Kubrick)

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Truly a movie in two halves, Stanley Kubrick’s mediation on war and its effect on human nature has endured as a classic of the genre, and certainly holds up as one of the master’s greatest achievements. Full Metal Jacket focuses on Pvt. Joker: we watch him triumph through the hell that is boot camp (where he and his company are terrorised by real-life drill instructor R. Lee Ermey) to the actual hell that is 1960s Vietnam. Though it’s been pondered as to what Kubrick was trying to say with Full Metal Jacket, it’s an unashamedly entertaining ride on even a surface level basis: Kubrick peppered the movie with a rocking soundtrack, glorious set-pieces and put them shoulder to shoulder with moments of genuine horror. As the movie ends with troops marching through a burned out city singing the theme from the Mickey Mouse club, there’s no doubt as to Full Metal Jacket’s lingering power.

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T.J. Barnard