But, why?
If I had it my way, I’d be stuck in a movie version of one endless summer of a 1987’s Hollywood movie. Living in suburbs in a some major American city in a white house with white picket fence, with weird neighbours, an inventor friend / daddy, go to a beach party and throw some hoops. My posse of four kids would plot out against our enemies of a gang of juvenile punk rock badasses in our own secret tree hideout and my mixed-breed english shepherd dog would always follow me wherever I go, appearing every now even in the 3-minute music montage as we train together for that BMX competition.
You see, I love everything about 80s Hollywood cinema; that positive tone, over the edge action and characters, hand made animatronics and film color and its grain. There was such a good, organic vibe and faith in the future to be awesome that was lost some way along the way in the ever so boring and plasticky CGI nineties.
This blog is me watching every 80s movie I can find, in that matrix of 1987.
Ok ok, sounds good. But are you really watching all of them?
My aim is to watch all the Hollywood films of the 80s. I’ve watched (and still do watch) a ton of world cinema of the era, but they rarely tickle my fancy and are usually a completely different beast to the American films. I do make some exceptions for some english speaking movies from Canada, UK or Australia if they are somehow interesting enough, feature known American actors or just somehow masquerade themselves well enough to pass an American movie, and I do bend my own rules if something extra interesting comes along my way.
While it’s not an exact science, here’s roughly some of the films that will be excluded:
- Cartoons and family movies that don’t have any angle for grown ups
- Documentaries
- Camcorder shot movies (as there is nobody in this world who has the time to watch every American home movie of the 80s)
- TV mini series and made-for-tv movies that span for over 3-4-5 hours
- Short movies (under 75 minutes)
- Porn and exploitation movies
Don’t worry. This still leaves me roughly a few thousand movies to watch.
Thanks for writing this blog! It has been an invaluable resource for finding new movies to watch. I have been focusing on watching comedies from the 80’s and have looked through all the comedy entries here.
I have to ask: What is your poster source and how do you get them so clean? Some of these posters are really rare and I’ve never seen online before; and the ones that I have seen are usually badly photographed or poorly scanned.
Keep up the great work!
I love the posters and VHS box art pretty much as much as I love the movies themselves so I put a special attention to having the images always of the highest quality, instead of just something ripped out of google image search.
I have an extensive poster collection I’ve put together during 10+ years. I also use the AI based image tools to improve low quality images and manually repair damaged / worn out / scratched scans of posters to make them look immaculate. Glad to hear you enjoy the effort, Jon.
Hey man! I’m from California, i’ve lived here my entire life. I’ve been obsessing over movies from the 1980’s (i’m 32 years old) so I grew up in the 90s but my dad would always have 80s movies playing. I started a list of my favorite 80s movies, I have about 65 of them written down. But then as I was searching for more, I saw your site. How are the movies going?? Are you still watching em?? I saw your ”recommendation” area and there was only a few of them in there so I assume you’ve got more that you’d recommend haha.
Hi James, and thanks for reaching out. Recently, major life changes have left me with little energy for writing, but rest assured, my passion for movies hasn’t waned—I’ve continued to watch them consistently. Your nudge is appreciated, and I’m gearing up to resume posting reviews soon.
I’ve often wondered how the Hollywood movies of the 80s look like for someone having lived in California, glad to hear you are enjoying them as well. Having visited the coastal area several times myself, I myself get part of the same vibe than in these movies, especially when traversing the exact locations where the movies were filmed.
Regarding your interest in the recommendations feature, I’m thrilled to hear it’s of interest. It’s a recent addition with only a handful of movies added, but I’ll make sure plan to comb through the site and highlight my top picks for fans of the era.