I thought we should have thread devoted to the upcoming poll instead of discussing it in the 1999 thread etc. I just had a look at what films I've seen and it's weird that I have quite a lot of favourites from 1984 and 1988 but haven't got 5 real favourites from any other year.

So far I have an average of about 5 films I can list per year.

My favorites that there is a good chance you will also like:
Ran (Kurosawa)
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman)
Blue Velvet (Lynch)
Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen)
Zelig (Allen)
Wings Of Desire (Wenders)
Paris Texas (Wenders)
Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown (Almodovar)
Raising Arizona (Coen)
Videodrome (Cronenberg)
Once Upon A Time In America (Leone)

My favorites that, honestly, most of you will not like:
Idade da Terra (Rocha, Brazil)
The Sweet Bunch (Nikolaidis, Greece)
Damnation (Tarr, Hungary)
Sans Soleil (Marker, France)
Matador (Almodovar, Spain)
Vagabond (Varda, France)

There's also a buttload of Kaurismaki and Herzog I need to see. I'm definitely not going to miss The Sacrifice, and I'm hoping to be able to see some Kusturica and Greenaway.

Non-obvious films that I hope others will see and vote for (english titles):

We children from bahnhof zoo
Koyaanisqatsi
Trading places
My life as a dog
Jean de Florette and Manon of the spring
Goodbye children
My neighbour Totoro
When Harry met Sally

Some very good recommendations already, "Once Upon A Time" and "Ran" will top their respective years, and Leone probably even the entire thing.

Some of my own recommendations, which are few since I can barely make top 5's for each year:
Cinema Paradiso
Grave of the Fireflies (best animated film ever made)

Looks like I have to watch a few movies from '85 so I can vote for Back to the Future.

Some not-too-obvious 80s recommendations:

- Idi i Smotri / Come and See (Elem Klimov)
- Kárhozat / Damnation (Béla Tarr)
- Der Himmel über Berlin (Wim Wenders)
- Kaos (Paolo & Vittorio Taviana)
- Offret (Andrei Tarkovsky)
- Fanny och Alexander (Ingmar Bergman)
- Ran (Akira Kurosawa)

Actually, the last three are quite obvious...

Recommended
- Come And See (Klimov) is a russian war movie everybody should see, very realistic
- Pixote (Hector Babanco) 1981, first movie of Hector Babenco, about Brazilian street criminals
- Heimat 1984
- A short film about killing/A short film about love 1988 (Dekalog)
- Nausicaä, the valley of the wind/Laputa, the castle in the sky/Kiki's Delivery Service: Studio Ghibli animé's
- L'argent (Robert Besson) 1983: strange but fascinating
- Spoorloos 1988 (Dutch, the original of "The Vanising", but better)
- Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) the best Woody Allen movie because he doesn't appear in the movie
- Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies) 1988 Pete Postelwaite in all his glory
- Abel (dutch black comedy by Alex van Warmerdam) 1986

A few recommendations :

Mauvais sang [Bad Blood] - Leos Carax
The Belly of an Architect - Peter Greenaway
The Draughtsman's Contract - Peter Greenaway
Garde à vue [The Inquisitor] - Claude Miller
Rumble Fish - Coppola
Forbrydelsens element [The Element of Crime] - Von Trier
Dom za vešanje [Time of the Gypsies] - Kusturica

And, above all, Kieślowski's Dekalog

Mindrocker's tip for the 80s: Santa Sangre (1989).
It's one of my all-time favorite movies, by one of my all-time favorite directors, the Chilean/Mexican Alejandro Jodorowski. Jodorowski's aim in directing movies is to overwhelm the viewer with every filmshot and, despite the somewhat low-budget feel, with Santa Sangre he fully delivers. I found a review on RYM that says it all:

"I really really adore this film, definitely one of the strangest yet most compelling films I've come across. Cinematically this can hardly be topped, there is always something grandioso and surreal going on. They've even staged an elephant's funeral dumping the bloodied corpse off of a cliff, then watching hungry folks devour it! Things you thought you'd never see are guaranteed to be in this film. Although at times I found it hard to believe my eyes it is definitely one of the most interesting films I've ever seen. Well, the story is actually about a young circus boy who's Father was caught cheating by his Mom...so she throws acid on his penis. Well to retaliate he cuts off her arms. During this part we see a weird tattooed Woman doing some strange sexualized things, some bizarre circus folks and we meet the boy's friends which include a mute tightrope walker, and a midget. Anyhow, fast forward to later when Jr. is in a looney bin acting like a bird when he "discovers" his mother. I don't want to ruin anything but you won't believe all the stuff that is crammed in this film, from taking Downs children to snort cocaine to, oh I simply can't ruin more. It's a visually absurd feast, but one that needs to be seen. I must say when I read the synapses for this film before actually watching I was skeptical that it could be as good as it sounded. Well it was honestly better than I could have imagined. All I can say is do whatever you can to get your hands on this film, it satisfies in every possible way."


Other classic films by Jodorowski are El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973), both as confrontational and mysterious as ever. But Jodorowski's most notorious project may very well be his attempt to film the science fiction novel Dune, which never materialized.
After he purchased the rights to the book, he planned to cast Salvator Dali as the Emperor, who requested a fee of $100.000 per hour. Also involved were science fiction illustrator Jean Giraud (Moebius), H.R. Giger and Orson Welles (who only agreed to participate if he could have his favorite gourmet chef to prepare his meals throughout the filming). The music would be composed by Pink Floyd, Magma, Henry Cow and KarlHeinz Stockhausen. Jodorowski's script had the size of a phonebook and would result in a 14 hour movie. Of course, this way the 10 million budget quickly disappeared and the production for the film collapsed. The rights went to Dino De Laurenttis and David Lynch, who created Dune in 1984.
But really, Alejandro Jodorowski. What a dude.

To get into a few of the practicalities of the '80s poll:
1. Are we sticking to 2 weeks per year? My knowledge of '80s movies, like I mentioned, is limited to barely 5 (worthy) films a year so I wouldn't mind extending it to 3 weeks or even a month.
2. Depending on the outcome of question 1 we'll start either today (if we chose a month) or next week.
3. Pretty much all of June I'll be traveling and BillAdama will take over the poll for a while. In any scenario of question 1 I'd like to only 'miss' one year at most, so it'd be nice if we could at least extend that year to a month of voting.

Now, back to the recommendations. Anyone else not enjoying Berlin Alexanderplatz as much as they thought they would?

I'm probably not going to see the entire thing in time for the vote, but I will see the entire thing in time for the final vote.

I wouldn't mind extending the period of time. Here's the current length of my lists for each year:

1980: 6
1981: 6
1982: 3
1983: 9
1984: 3
1985: 6
1986: 4
1987: 2
1988: 7
1989: 3

In addition, I'm trying to participate heavily in the Mubi director's cup. With only two weeks I will probably only have time to watch the ones that qualify for the final vote.

Mine is similar:

1980: 7
1981: 6
1982: 5
1983: 7 (including Trading Places and WarGames)
1984: 7
1985: 5
1986: 8
1987: 8
1988: 5
1989: 6

Therefore, my personal vote goes out to taking a month per year, like we do for music. I know this means it'll take a long time to get through the '80s, but it could mean we can get some personal favorites through by means of recommendation—which is one of the goals of these kinds of games after all. I'm just speaking for myself of course.

A quick scroll through RYM 1980's list tells me that my lists will be about 15 movies per year, maybe more.
All is fine by me, if you want to spread it out a little, go right ahead.

I could go for either three months or a year. My only reason for wanting to get through the 80's poll quicker would be that I think the 70's poll is going to be absolutely epic.

Three weeks or a month, you mean?

For the 1970s I can list even fewer films per year than the 1980s, particularly the first few years, so I feel there's as much to discover in the '80s as in the '70s.

I managed to do alright with two weeks for the 1990s though, and I had to watch 3-4+ films per year, so I guess 3 weeks works. I'll start it up Monday along with the results of the 1990s.

Um...no! I meant a year! It took us a year to watch these films the first time, so why not run the poll that way? Perfectly logical if you ask me.

I probably have more slots to fill for the 70's than the 80's, but look at the kind of films that start showing up in the 70's. Taxi Driver, Chinatown, Apocalypse Now, Godfather, Star Wars, Annie Hall. We start getting consistent output from directors like Cassavettes, Bunuel, Herzog, Tarkovsky, Bergman, Fellini, Malick, etc.

The 80's are good, but 50's through 70's, that's the golden age.

My knowledge of 80's movies outside of the blockbusters and childhood favorites is what you would call limited... at best.

In the 90's poll I tried to do a real sweeping sample of all the best stuff from the year. For the 80's poll I think I'm going to stick to the films that qualify and the films that would probably be on my 'Watch' list anyway.

Right now for 1980 my 'Seen' list is:

Raging Bull (Scorcese, US)
Airplane! (Landis, US)
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (US)
A idade da terra (The Age Of The Earth) (Rocha, Brazil) (Highly recommended to anyone who is open to essay films)
The Elephant Man (Lynch, US)
The Shining (Kubrick, US)
Kagemusha (Kurosawa, Japan)
Caddyshack (US)

And my 'Watch' list is:

The Last Metro (Traffaut, France)
Mon Oncle d'Amerique (Resnais, France)
The Big Red One (Fuller, US)
Berlin Alexanderplatz (Fassbinder, Germany)
Blues Brothers (Landis, US)

If anyone has other big 'Must see' recommendations for 1980.

Of 1980, I enjoyed Pixote (1st Hector Babanco movie) and American Gigolo (which I saw a few years later because it was forbidden under 18 at the time). Both I saw in the 80's though, so it's a long time ago.

I think only the classics emerge in this decade because our ages.
It's for why I recommend to see films at the margin.

As usual my favorite French films by the 80's (*** : must see, ***** : chef d'oeuvre)

1980
Mon oncle d'Amérique (Resnais)***
Le Dernier Métro (Truffaut) *****
Un mauvais fils (Sautet) ***

1981
Diva (Beineix)
Malevil (De chalonge)
Coup de torchon (Tavernier) *****
Garde à vue (Claude Miller) ***
La guerre du feu (Annaud)*** (be careful, strange film)
Le choix des armes (Corneau)

1982
Le père noel est une ordure (Poiré)***
Le retour de Martin Guerre (Vigne) ***
Les Misérables (Hossein)

1983
A nos amours (Piallat) ***
La vie est un roman (Resnais)
L'été meurtrier (Becker) ***
Tchao Pantin (Berri) *****

1984
Les ripoux (Zidi)
Fort Saganne (Corneau)
L'amour à mort (Resnais) ***
Paris-Texas (Wenders) ***
Un dimanche à la campagne (Tavernier) *****

1985
Trois hommes et un couffin (Serreau)
L'effrontée (Miller) ***
Shoah (Lanzmann) ***** Be careful, it's not really a film but everybody must see this 10 hours of film/documentary
Sans toit ni loi (Varda)

1986
Tenue de soirée (Blier) *****
Mélo (Resnais) ***
Le nom de la rose (Annaud)
37°2 le matin (Beineix)
Thérèse (Cavalier)
Jean de Florette & Manon des sources (Berri) *****

1987
Sous le soleil de satan (Pialat) ***
Au revoir les enfants (Malle) *****
Le grand chemin (Hubert) ***

1988
La lectrice (Deville) *****
Une affaire de femmes (Chabrol)
Drôle d'endroit pour une rencontre (Dupeyron)
Camille Claudel (Nuytten) ***
Itinéraire d'un enfant gâté (Lelouch)

1989
Trop belle pour toi (Blier) *****
La petite voleuse (Miller) ***
Monsieur Hire (Leconte) ***
Un monde sans pitié (Rochant)


And, after making my list and seing the other foreign films....I could see how much this decade is again fabulous.
Finally, we easily forget some movies when the time pass and find the decade poorer than other, but when we look the lists of films of this period it's not true.

Finally, I found the 90's better than the 2000's and I think I will find the 80's better than the 90's.

If I have to choose only 5 films for the "international" audience, I'll choose :
Le Dernier Métro (Truffaut) *****
Jean de Florette & Manon des sources (Berri) *****
Trop belle pour toi (Blier) *****
Au revoir les enfants (Malle) *****

Will "Michael Jackson's Thriller" be eligible for the 1983 poll?

In case people are watching ahead for the film polls, I just wanted to say that Dekalog will not be eligible since it's not a film and never saw a full theatrical release. The films adapted from Dekalog V and VI, A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love will of course be eligible, for 1988.