Nostalgia alert: Must-see films from the 1980s

An era-defining sci-fi classic, Blade Runner may be one of the more influential movies ever made. Of course, influential movies don’t have to be good, but Blade Runner manages to be both. The film is set in a future where androids known as replicants exist alongside humanity, and humans have also colonized parts of the galaxy. It follows Deckard, a private investigator assigned to take down a group of rogue replicants who have started to disobey their orders. Blade Runner is an examination of what makes us human, and it also features some of the most astounding production design of the decade.

Of all the movies on this list, Do the Right Thing is the one that remains the most profoundly relevant. The film tells the story of the largely Black residents of a single block in Brooklyn on the hottest day of the year. Racial tensions on the block heighten as the day wears on, and the community must reckon with all of the ways they feel marginalized even within their own circle of influence. The movie’s shocking but inevitable conclusion will leave you with plenty to think about, and also remind you how little progress we’ve made since 1989.

One of the most pivotal true crime stories ever told, The Thin Blue Line examines, in sometimes excruciating detail, the case of a man who was wrongfully imprisoned for killing a cop. The argument made by the film was so convincing that authorities actually took another look at the case, but The Thin Blue Line is not one this list just because it had a real-world impact. So much of modern true crime owes this movie a debt, but this documentary is more careful and precise than most modern products, and it’s riveting in part because it becomes so interested in the details.

An unusual, deeply captivating indie from Steven Soderbergh near the beginning of his career, Sex, Lies, and Videotape details the love lives of a quartet of characters as they bounce off of one another. The film’s central hook is a drifter who stays with a married couple and slowly reveals that he likes to film women as they talk about their sexual desires. That videotaping ultimately leads several of the film’s central characters to startling revelations about their own lives, and the movie feels like a thoughtful and somewhat revolutionary look at what it means to actually say what you want in the bedroom.