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• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 86.3
• IMDb user rating: 7.4 (votes: 17,000)
• Metascore: 71
• Director: Percy Adlon
• Actors: Marianne Sägebrecht, CCH Pounder, Jack Palance
• Runtime: 1 hour 35 minutes
• Rating: PG

Bagdad Cafe wasn't shot in Bagdad. The real Bagdad was a Route 66 town in the Mojave Desert, abandoned after Interstate 40 bypassed it. Percy Adlon filmed about 50 miles away, at the Sidewinder Cafe in Newberry Springs, California. Fans of the film turned that cafe into a stop for European tourists, and in 1995 its new owners renamed it Bagdad Cafe. In the film, two women who have just left their husbands (Marianne Sägebrecht and CCH Pounder) strike up an unlikely friendship at a desert truck stop. Jevetta Steele's "Calling You" was nominated for an Oscar. The film won the César for Best Foreign Film.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 86.9
• IMDb user rating: 7.6 (votes: 313,000)
• Metascore: 70
• Director: Paul Verhoeven
• Actors: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy
• Runtime: 1 hour 42 minutes
• Rating: R

RoboCop was first rated X. Paul Verhoeven cut the violence to get an R, but he refused to remove the scene where a mutated gang member is obliterated by a car, because it got the biggest laughs at test screenings. Verhoeven had rejected the script twice before his wife convinced him the satire was the point. Peter Weller plays Alex Murphy, a Detroit cop who is murdered and rebuilt as a corporate cyborg. It earned $53.4 million and a special achievement Oscar for sound editing. Its reputation has only grown.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 87.5
• IMDb user rating: 6.9 (votes: 50,000)
• Metascore: 78
• Director: Kathryn Bigelow
• Actors: Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen
• Runtime: 1 hour 34 minutes
• Rating: R

Near Dark is Kathryn Bigelow's first solo feature as director, and it's a vampire movie dressed as a Western. Adrian Pasdar plays a young man from small-town Oklahoma who falls in with a family of nomadic vampires, played by Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, Jenette Goldstein and Jenny Wright. It made $3.4 million against a $5 million budget. Reviews were good. The audience showed up later, as a cult.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 88.1
• IMDb user rating: 7.4 (votes: 39,000)
• Metascore: 74
• Director: Woody Allen
• Actors: Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest, Mike Starr
• Runtime: 1 hour 28 minutes
• Rating: PG

Radio Days was the most expensive film Woody Allen had made up to that point. He spent it on memory. Allen narrates as the grown-up Joe, looking back on his working-class Jewish family in Rockaway Beach, New York, during radio's golden age in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The film weaves the family's lives together with the shows they listened to every day. It earned Oscar nominations for original screenplay and art direction, and won BAFTAs for production design and costume design.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 88.1
• IMDb user rating: 7.1 (votes: 57,000)
• Metascore: 77
• Director: Roger Donaldson
• Actors: Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young
• Runtime: 1 hour 54 minutes
• Rating: R

No Way Out is the third film based on Kenneth Fearing's 1946 novel The Big Clock, after The Big Clock (1948) and Police Python 357 (1976). Kevin Costner plays a naval officer who starts an affair with Susan Atwell (Sean Young), not knowing she's also the mistress of Secretary of Defense David Brice (Gene Hackman). Then he's ordered to lead a Pentagon spy hunt. Maurice Jarre wrote the score. It opened at No. 2, behind Stakeout, and went on to gross $35.5 million.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 88.1
• IMDb user rating: 7.6 (votes: 182,000)
• Metascore: 72
• Director: John Hughes
• Actors: Steve Martin, John Candy, Laila Robins
• Runtime: 1 hour 33 minutes
• Rating: R

John Hughes' first cut ran three hours and 45 minutes. Steve Martin and John Candy improvised that much. Martin plays an uptight ad executive trying to get home to Chicago for Thanksgiving, and Candy is the overly friendly traveling salesman he can't shake. Hughes once described a disastrous trip of his own from Chicago to New York, which apparently inspired the film. It also marked a turn away from the teen comedies he was known for. It grossed $49.5 million on a $15 million budget and became a Thanksgiving tradition.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 88.1
• IMDb user rating: 7.6 (votes: 201,000)
• Metascore: 72
• Director: Sam Raimi
• Actors: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks
• Runtime: 1 hour 24 minutes
• Rating: R

Evil Dead II was released through a made-up distributor to get around an expected X rating. Stephen King helped get it made by bringing the project to producer Dino De Laurentiis. Sam Raimi's sequel sends Bruce Campbell's Ash to a remote cabin, where a tape recording of ancient texts unleashes demons that possess and torment him. It grossed just under $6 million in a limited release. Many critics now consider it better than the original and one of the greatest horror films ever made.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 89.3
• IMDb user rating: 7.2 (votes: 26,000)
• Metascore: 78
• Director: David Mamet
• Actors: Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mantegna, Mike Nussbaum
• Runtime: 1 hour 42 minutes
• Rating: R

House of Games was David Mamet's first film as director, based on a story he developed with Jonathan Katz. Lindsay Crouse plays a psychiatrist who tries to help a compulsive gambler and ends up in a world of con men run by a smooth-talking grifter (Joe Mantegna). Ricky Jay and J.T. Walsh are also in the cast. The Criterion Collection released it in 2007. Three years later, it became a play in London. Mamet also wrote another film on this list: The Untouchables.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 89.9
• IMDb user rating: 7.6 (votes: 28,000)
• Metascore: 75
• Director: James Ivory
• Actors: James Wilby, Rupert Graves, Hugh Grant
• Runtime: 2 hours 20 minutes
• Rating: R

E.M. Forster wrote Maurice in 1913 and 1914, then refused to publish it in his lifetime because of public and legal attitudes toward homosexuality. It came out in 1971, after he died. James Ivory turned to it after A Room with a View. King's College, Cambridge, which held the rights, considered it an inferior work and hesitated to approve a film. Producer Ismail Merchant persuaded them. James Wilby, Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves star in the love story, which keeps the happy ending Forster insisted on.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 91.1
• IMDb user rating: 7.7 (votes: 121,000)
• Metascore: 76
• Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
• Actors: John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole
• Runtime: 2 hours 43 minutes
• Rating: PG-13

The Last Emperor was the first Western feature film that China allowed to shoot inside Beijing's Forbidden City. Producer Jeremy Thomas raised the $25 million budget himself, and Columbia agreed to distribute it in North America only after filming wrapped. John Lone plays Puyi, from his ascent to the throne as a small child to his imprisonment and rehabilitation under the Communist Party. It didn't crack the weekend top 10 until its 12th week. Then it won all nine Oscars it was nominated for, including Best Picture.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 92.3
• IMDb user rating: 7.2 (votes: 80,000)
• Metascore: 83
• Director: Norman Jewison
• Actors: Cher, Nicolas Cage, Olympia Dukakis
• Runtime: 1 hour 42 minutes
• Rating: PG

In the Metropolitan Opera scene, Cher and Nicolas Cage were watching an empty stage while a recording played, and director Norman Jewison described the plot of the Puccini opera to them. Cher plays a widowed Brooklyn bookkeeper who falls for her fiancé's hot-tempered younger brother (Cage). John Patrick Shanley's script won an Oscar, and so did Cher and Olympia Dukakis. The film spent 20 weeks in the top 10, though not all in a row, and grossed $80.6 million in the U.S. and Canada.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 92.9
• IMDb user rating: 7.8 (votes: 24,000)
• Metascore: 78
• Director: Gabriel Axel
• Actors: Stéphane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel
• Runtime: 1 hour 43 minutes
• Rating: G

Babette's Feast was the first Danish film to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. It was also the first Danish feature adapted from a story by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen). Stéphane Audran plays a French refugee taken in as a servant by two pious sisters in a strict religious village in 19th-century Denmark. Bodil Kjer, whom Danes called the first lady of Danish theater, plays one of the sisters. It premiered at Cannes. In 2019, Alexander Payne was asked to direct an American remake.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 93.5
• IMDb user rating: 7.3 (votes: 37,000)
• Metascore: 84
• Director: James L. Brooks
• Actors: William Hurt, Albert Brooks, Holly Hunter
• Runtime: 2 hours 13 minutes
• Rating: R

Holly Hunter got the lead in Broadcast News two days before filming started, after Debra Winger became pregnant and dropped out. James L. Brooks wrote the role of reporter Aaron Altman with his longtime friend Albert Brooks in mind. Hunter plays a gifted, driven TV news producer caught between Albert Brooks' reporter and William Hurt's charming, shallow anchorman. Jack Nicholson and Joan Cusack also appear. It earned seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and joined the National Film Registry in 2018.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 93.5
• IMDb user rating: 7.8 (votes: 358,000)
• Metascore: 79
• Director: Brian De Palma
• Actors: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro
• Runtime: 1 hour 59 minutes
• Rating: R

Sean Connery won Best Supporting Actor for The Untouchables. As of that ceremony, he was the first and only Scottish actor ever to win an acting Oscar. David Mamet wrote the screenplay, loosely based on Eliot Ness's own book, and Ennio Morricone wrote the score, which was nominated for an Oscar and won a Grammy. Kevin Costner plays Ness, who builds a small, incorruptible team to bring down Al Capone (Robert De Niro) in 1930 Chicago. It grossed $187 million worldwide.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 94.0
• IMDb user rating: 7.9 (votes: 85,000)
• Metascore: 79
• Director: Wim Wenders
• Actors: Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander
• Runtime: 2 hours 8 minutes
• Rating: PG-13

The angels in Wings of Desire see the world in black and white. Wim Wenders and cinematographer Henri Alekan shot the humans' world in color. Bruno Ganz plays an angel who listens to the thoughts of Berliners in a city still split by the Wall, then gives up immortality for a lonely trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin). Peter Falk appears too. Wenders won Best Director at Cannes. A sequel, Faraway, So Close!, followed in 1993, and Hollywood remade it as City of Angels in 1998.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 94.0
• IMDb user rating: 8.0 (votes: 492,000)
• Metascore: 78
• Director: Rob Reiner
• Actors: Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Robin Wright
• Runtime: 1 hour 38 minutes
• Rating: PG

The Princess Bride was a modest hit, grossing $30.8 million against a $16 million budget. Then it became a cult film. William Goldman adapted his own novel, keeping its story-within-a-story: a grandfather (Peter Falk, also on this list in Wings of Desire) reads to his sick grandson (Fred Savage) about Westley, a farmhand who must rescue Princess Buttercup from the evil Prince Humperdinck. It won the Hugo Award and the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2016.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 94.6
• IMDb user rating: 7.3 (votes: 16,000)
• Metascore: 86
• Director: John Boorman
• Actors: Sarah Miles, David Hayman, Sebastian Rice-Edwards
• Runtime: 1 hour 53 minutes
• Rating: PG-13

John Boorman wrote, produced, and directed Hope and Glory from his own memories of growing up in London during World War II. The title comes from the patriotic song "Land of Hope and Glory." The story follows the Rohan family through the Blitz, seen through the eyes of young Billy (Sebastian Rice-Edwards). It won the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy, earned five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and picked up 13 BAFTA nominations. Susan Wooldridge won the BAFTA for best supporting actress.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 95.2
• IMDb user rating: 8.2 (votes: 861,000)
• Metascore: 78
• Director: Stanley Kubrick
• Actors: Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D'Onofrio
• Runtime: 1 hour 56 minutes
• Rating: R

Stanley Kubrick found the title in a gun catalog. He thought readers might take the novel's title, The Short-Timers, as a joke about people working half days. His adaptation of Gustav Hasford's novel follows Marines from boot camp at Parris Island, under R. Lee Ermey's abusive drill instructor, to the streets of Huế during the Tet Offensive. Kubrick began his research in 1983, reading Vietnamese newspapers on microfilm. It earned $120 million worldwide and an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was the last Kubrick film released in his lifetime.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 96.4
• IMDb user rating: 7.5 (votes: 53,000)
• Metascore: 87
• Director: Bruce Robinson
• Actors: Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths
• Runtime: 1 hour 47 minutes
• Rating: R

Withnail and I was Bruce Robinson's first film as a director, loosely based on his own life in late-1960s London. Richard E. Grant, in his film debut, plays Withnail. Paul McGann plays his unnamed flatmate, who narrates as "I." The two out-of-work actors leave their squalid Camden flat for a weekend at a country cottage owned by Withnail's eccentric Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths), and it goes badly. Robinson fired McGann during rehearsals over his Liverpool accent, then brought him back. The film became one of Britain's biggest cult films.

• ±¬ÁÏTV score: 100.0
• IMDb user rating: 8.0 (votes: 39,000)
• Metascore: 88
• Director: Louis Malle
• Actors: Gaspard Manesse, Raphael Fejtö, Francine Racette
• Runtime: 1 hour 44 minutes
• Rating: PG

Louis Malle wrote, produced, and directed Au Revoir les Enfants from his own childhood. The film is based on Père Jacques, a French priest and headmaster who hid Jewish children at his school during the Holocaust. He was arrested and sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp. Decades later, Yad Vashem named him Righteous Among the Nations. The film won the Golden Lion at Venice, won the César Awards for best film and best director, and earned two Oscar nominations. Quentin Tarantino has said the title Reservoir Dogs came from a video store customer who misheard it.