I forgot about Heavy Metal and The Last Dragon.

THIS looks like a job for GARTH MARENGHI.

You've probably never seen this one, but it is an AWESOME date movie (well, I might have to rewatch to make sure that assessment still holds, it used to score a good make-out or more back in the day): Mystery Date.

Also, Better Off Dead always gets a laugh out of me.
And sadly there is no human strength that could possibly avoid clicking that link no matter how much I knew I would regret it.
Please stop...

These are my 5 star movies from the '80s.

'night, Mother
The Abyss
Aliens: Collector's Edition
Blade Runner
Brazil
Cinema Paradiso
Cobra Verde
Come and See
The Decalogue
Die Hard
Fitzcarraldo
Full Metal Jacket
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
The Princess Bride
Raging Bull
Ran
The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky)
The Shining
Star Wars V and VI

Going through my list though, I noticed that the 60s and 70s each had quite a few more than the 80s did.

man, garth is hilarious. can't beleive i've never seen that before, is he british or american or what?

Real Genius.

Holy crap, I can't believe no one has mentioned one of the best movies of all time!
Howard the Duck

*hard to believe this was actually produced by George Lucas....

?
why?

British. You have his website . And the full first episode of Darkplace [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T4-N1jRuQA]here.

Can't agree with that one. Mood and character of our culture and society are constantly changing, and movies, being situated on the cusp of both high and pop art, are reflecting these changes very accurately. While I'd agree that "French" constitutes a certain (complex) quality that is recognizable in movies from the whole century, the 40s were different from the 60s and the 80s, and of course that applies to the cinema of the respective time as well.

Well, it's the era of the best works of Godard (Breathless, Pierrot le fou) and Truffaut (The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim), as well as of other stunners like The Wages of Fear or Last Year at Marienbad. These movies are more than simply classics to me, it's shit like that that defines my very being.

The Sacrifice is the one I'm missing. Not for much longer though, since everything I've seen from Tarkovsky has been stunning. Mirror and Stalker are probably my favourites.

And it makes me so mad that Netflix isn't available here in Germany.

When it comes to science fiction movies you can't beat the 80's. The Last Starfighter, Tron, Star Wars, Wargames and ET are among my favorites from that decade

I see an 80's movie night in my future :)

I'd argue that most of these movies are fantasy, not science fiction. ET and Star Wars certainly are. Not that that says anything about their quality, it's just that there are disappointingly few true scifi movies.

Star Wars (the first one anyway) actually fits the Western genre more than anything else. Seriously, imagine six guns and John Wayne instead of Harrison Ford, yep, Western.

A Western is defined primarily by its setting, then by its themes, and only to a smaller degree by character constellations, I'd say. And I can only really see the last one as a commonality.

More obvious influences would be Kurosawa's period dramas and the Vietnam war (Rebels = Vietcong, Empire = USA).