Nostalgia alert: Must-see films from the 1980s

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.

Steven Spielberg had a pretty good run in the 1980s, but Raiders of the Lost Ark may be the pinnacle of it. The film that introduced us to Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a rip-roaring adventure film that features what amounts to a pretty impeccable script, which Spielberg directs to perfection. Raiders of the Lost Ark is probably the best place to start if you want a great adventure film featuring a top-tier Harrison Ford performance. The sequels vary in quality, but this first installment is about as good as big-budget filmmaking gets.

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.

John Carpenter’s magnum opus, The Thing tells the story of a group of researchers living in the middle of the arctic who take in a dog and discover that it’s actually an alien capable of becoming anything it kills. As the crew begins to suspect that someone among them is picking them off, they go to increasingly elaborate measures to hunt out the imposter. Thrilling from beginning to end, The Thing also features incredible effects sequences, and never lets up on the tension that provides it with its defining rhythm. Kurt Russell has truly never been better.