Blockbuster Era

The MBA executives take over Hollywood; the independents fight back. Lynch, Lee, the Coens, Tarantino, Linklater, Wong Kar-wai, Kieślowski, Almodóvar. Pulp Fiction reorders everything.

Part of Films

80 moments in this segment.

1. 1980-05-23 — The Shining. Stanley Kubrick. "Here's Johnny!" Steadicam through the hotel corridors. Stephen King hated it. Released to mediocre reviews; now one of the most analysed horror films ever made.
2. 1980-05-23 — The Shining - Official Trailer [1980] HD. · 00:01:28
3. 1980-12-19 — Raging Bull. Scorsese in black-and-white about boxer Jake LaMotta. De Niro gained 60 pounds for the later scenes. Frequently called the greatest film of the 1980s.
4. 1980-12-19 — RAGING BULL (1980) | Official Trailer | MGM. · 00:02:17
5. 1981-06-12 — Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg + Lucas. Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. The boulder, the swordsman shot dead, the melting Nazi faces. Perfected the popcorn-adventure film.
6. 1981-06-12 — Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:02:23
7. 1982-05-26 — E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Spielberg's gentle counterpoint to Close Encounters. Highest-grossing film of all time for 11 years. The bicycle silhouette against the moon is one of the canonical shots in cinema.
8. 1982-05-26 — ET The Extra Terrestrial (1982) Official 20th Anniversary Trailer Movie HD. · 00:02:06
9. 1982-06-25 — Blade Runner. Ridley Scott. Bombed at the box office; became the visual touchstone for every cyberpunk film since. Five director's cuts later, Rutger Hauer's "tears in rain" improv remains the high point.
10. 1982-06-25 — Blade Runner (1982) Official Trailer - Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford Movie. · 00:03:37
11. 1983-12-09 — Scarface. Brian De Palma + Oliver Stone script. Al Pacino as Tony Montana. Critically panned, banned in some markets, became the most quoted gangster film in hip-hop history.
12. 1983-12-09 — Scarface Trailer HD (1983). Director: Brian De Palma Cast: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio Plot: In 1980 Miami, a determined Cuban immigrant takes over a drug empire while succumbing to greed.
13. 1984-09-06 — Amadeus. Miloš Forman. Salieri's envy of Mozart in 18th-century Vienna. Won Best Picture; renewed mass interest in Mozart's music single-handedly.
14. 1984-10-26 — The Terminator. James Cameron, $6.4M budget. Schwarzenegger as an unstoppable cyborg assassin. "I'll be back." Started the franchise and made Cameron a major director.
15. 1984-10-26 — THE TERMINATOR (1984) | Official Trailer | MGM. · 00:02:05
16. 1985-06-01 — Ran. Akira Kurosawa, 75, his last great epic. King Lear transposed to feudal Japan. Self-financed because Japanese studios wouldn't back him by then.
17. 1985-06-01 — Ran | Official Trailer. · 00:01:04
18. 1985-07-03 — Back to the Future. Robert Zemeckis. Highest-grossing film of 1985. Marty McFly is the rare time-traveller hero everyone actually likes. "Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads."
19. 1985-07-03 — Back To The Future (1985) Theatrical Trailer - Michael J. Fox Movie HD. · 00:01:43
20. 1986-07-18 — Aliens. James Cameron's sequel — turned Scott's claustrophobic horror into a war film. Sigourney Weaver became the first action heroine nominated for an Oscar. The rare sequel as good as the original.
21. 1986-07-18 — Aliens (1986) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:01:56
22. 1986-09-19 — Blue Velvet. David Lynch. Suburbia with severed ears in the lawn. Dennis Hopper as Frank Booth. Made Lynch the patron saint of weird American cinema.
23. 1986-09-19 — BLUE VELVET (1986) | Official Trailer | MGM. · 00:01:48
24. 1986-12-19 — Platoon. Oliver Stone's Vietnam film, based on his own combat tour. Won Best Picture. The Adagio for Strings sequence ended the genre's remaining moral ambiguity about the war.
25. 1986-12-19 — PLATOON (1986) | Official Trailer | | MGM. · 00:01:52
26. 1987-05-17 — Wings of Desire. Wim Wenders. Angels listening to Berliners' inner monologues over the divided city. Shot the year before the Wall came down. Inspiration for City of Angels and a thousand black-coats-in-melancholy films.
27. 1988-04-16 — My Neighbor Totoro. Hayao Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli's breakthrough into the world's consciousness. The two sisters in 1950s rural Japan and their forest spirit. Permanently raised the bar for animated children's films.
28. 1988-07-15 — Die Hard. John McTiernan. Bruce Willis in the Nakatomi Plaza. The template for every "trapped in a [confined space] with [terrorists]" film for the next 20 years.
29. 1988-07-15 — Die Hard (1988) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:02:34
30. 1988-07-16 — Akira. Katsuhiro Otomo. The film that broke anime in the West. Neo-Tokyo, biker gangs, psychic powers. Influenced everything from The Matrix to Stranger Things.
31. 1988-07-16 — Akira (1988) Trailer. · 00:01:16
32. 1989-06-30 — Do the Right Thing. Spike Lee's Brooklyn block-party-becomes-riot. Released the week Yusef Hawkins was murdered in Bensonhurst. Roger Ebert called it the most important film of the year; the Academy nominated Driving Miss Daisy instead.
33. 1989-06-30 — Do the Right Thing Official Trailer #1 - Danny Aiello Movie (1989) HD. · 00:02:11
34. 1990-09-08 — GoodFellas. Scorsese. Henry Hill's rise and fall in the Lucchese crime family. The Copacabana Steadicam shot. The pure narrative drive that defined gangster cinema for the next 30 years.
35. 1990-09-08 — Goodfellas (1990) Official Trailer #1 - Martin Scorsese Movie. · 00:01:28
36. 1991-01-30 — The Silence of the Lambs. Jonathan Demme. Hopkins as Lecter for 16 minutes total. Third film to sweep the Big Five Oscars. The only horror film to win Best Picture.
37. 1991-01-30 — THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) | Official Trailer | MGM. · 00:01:59
38. 1991-07-03 — Terminator 2: Judgment Day. James Cameron. Most expensive film ever made at the time. The T-1000's liquid-metal morphing rewrote what CGI could do; Industrial Light & Magic's career as the leader of visual effects starts here.
39. 1991-07-03 — Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:02:13
40. 1992-01-21 — Reservoir Dogs. Quentin Tarantino's debut, $1.2M budget. Non-linear timeline, profanity-as-music, mid-heist diner conversation. Made him an instant figure and primed the world for Pulp Fiction.
41. 1992-01-21 — Reservoir Dogs (1992) Official Trailer #1 - Quentin Tarantino Movie. · 00:02:04
42. 1992-08-03 — Unforgiven. Clint Eastwood. The deconstructed Western — aging gunfighters with no glamour, only consequence. Won Best Picture; Eastwood's "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man" closed out the genre as a moral exercise.
43. 1992-08-03 — Unforgiven (1992) Official Trailer - Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman Movie H. · 00:01:56
44. 1993-06-09 — Jurassic Park. Spielberg. ILM's photoreal CGI dinosaurs ended the era of practical stop-motion. Highest-grossing film of all time until Titanic. Spawned an entire franchise and a thousand "we should clone X" pitches.
45. 1993-06-09 — Jurassic Park Official Trailer #1 - Steven Spielberg Movie (1993) HD. · 00:01:16
46. 1993-09-08 — Three Colors: Blue. Krzysztof Kieślowski. Juliette Binoche grieving a husband and child. The first in the Three Colors trilogy — Blue, White, Red. The defining European art-house films of the 1990s.
47. 1993-09-08 — Three Colors: Blue (1993) - Trailer. · 00:01:54
48. 1993-12-15 — Schindler's List. Spielberg in black-and-white. The girl in the red coat — only colour in the film. The first major Hollywood film to make the Holocaust unflinching mainstream subject matter.
49. 1993-12-15 — Schindler's List 25th Anniversary - Official Trailer - In Theaters December 7. · 00:02:31
50. 1994-05-21 — Pulp Fiction. Tarantino. Won the Palme d'Or, reset what an independent film could earn, brought Travolta back, made the diner-philosophy-monologue a cinema staple. The most influential film of the 1990s.
51. 1994-05-21 — Pulp Fiction Official Trailer #1 - (1994) HD. · 00:03:06
52. 1994-06-23 — Forrest Gump. Zemeckis. Tom Hanks Zelig-ing through 30 years of US history. Won Best Picture over Pulp Fiction and Shawshank — the platonic example of Academy taste vs critical canon.
53. 1994-06-23 — Forrest Gump - Trailer. Stupid is as stupid does, says Forrest Gump (played by Tom Hanks in an Oscar-winning performance) as he discusses his relative level of intelligence with a stranger while waiting for a bus. Despite his sub-normal IQ, Gump leads a truly charmed life, with a ringside seat for many of the most memorable events of the second half of the 20th century. Entirely without trying, Forrest teaches Elvis Presley to dance, becomes a football star, meets John F. Kennedy, serves with honor in Vietnam, meets Lyndon Johnson,…
54. 1994-09-10 — The Shawshank Redemption. Frank Darabont. Bombed at the box office; saved by VHS, cable, and word-of-mouth into the all-time #1 on IMDb. Proof that audiences eventually find the right films.
55. 1994-09-10 — The Shawshank Redemption | Official Trailer | Warner Bros. Entertainment. · 00:01:40
56. 1995-09-15 — Seven. David Fincher. "What's in the box?" Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey. Made Fincher a major director after Alien 3 nearly ended his career. The 1990s serial-killer template.
57. 1995-09-15 — Se7en (1995) Official Trailer - Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman Movie HD. · 00:02:16
58. 1995-11-22 — Toy Story. Pixar. First fully computer-animated feature film. Made $373M on a $30M budget; killed hand-drawn animation as a commercial form within ten years.
59. 1995-11-22 — Toy Story (1995) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:01:28
60. 1995-12-15 — Heat. Michael Mann. Pacino and De Niro on screen together — for one diner scene — for the first time. The downtown LA bank-robbery shootout. The high-water mark for the LA crime film.
61. 1995-12-15 — Heat Trailer HD (1995). ) · 00:02:27
62. 1997-01-15 — Lost Highway. David Lynch. Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, Robert Blake. The Möbius-strip narrative that became Lynch's late-career template (Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire follow).
63. 1997-01-15 — Lost Highway. Fred Madison, saxophoniste, soupçonne sa femme, Renee, de le tromper. Il la tue et est condamné à la peine capitale. Le film raconte l'histoire de cet assassinat du point de vue des différentes personnalités de l'assassin lui-même.
64. 1997-11-01 — Titanic. James Cameron. First film to gross $1B. Won 11 Oscars (tied with Ben-Hur). Convinced studios to spend $200M on tentpole movies. "I'm king of the world."
65. 1997-11-01 — Titanic | #TBT Trailer | 20th Century FOX. · 00:04:18
66. 1998-02-26 — The Big Lebowski. Coen brothers. Jeff Bridges as The Dude. Modest reception; became one of the most-quoted cult films in history. Lebowski Fest is now an annual thing.
67. 1998-02-26 — Official Trailer | The Big Lebowski | Screen Bites. · 00:02:34
68. 1998-07-24 — Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg. The 27-minute Omaha Beach opening was so visceral it sent WWII veterans out of theaters. Defined every war film made after — from Band of Brothers to 1917.
69. 1998-07-24 — Saving Private Ryan (1998) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:02:10
70. 1999-03-31 — The Matrix. The Wachowskis. Bullet time. "There is no spoon." Sold a generation on simulation theory and cyberpunk aesthetics. The Wachowskis introduced action choreography (Yuen Woo-ping) to Hollywood.
71. 1999-03-31 — The Matrix (1999) Official Trailer #1 - Sci-Fi Action Movie. · 00:02:20
72. 1999-04-08 — All About My Mother. Pedro Almodóvar. The film that won him his first Oscar and consolidated his reputation as the great living filmmaker of women. Trans, mother, dead son, faith — all of his themes in one piece.
73. 1999-04-08 — All About My Mother | Theatrical Trailer | 1999. · 00:01:35
74. 1999-09-10 — Fight Club. David Fincher, from Palahniuk. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. "The first rule of Fight Club..." Misread as a celebration of toxic masculinity by exactly the people it was satirising.
75. 1999-09-10 — Fight Club (1999) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. · 00:02:28
76. 1999-12-08 — Magnolia. Paul Thomas Anderson. Three-hour ensemble of Los Angeles damaged people. Ends with a rain of frogs. Established Anderson as the heir to Altman and Scorsese.
77. 1999-12-08 — Magnolia (1999) Official Trailer #1 - Paul Thomas Anderson Movie. · 00:02:45
78. 2014-09-17 — My Neighbor Totoro - Official Trailer. · 00:00:53
79. 2022-06-14 — WINGS OF DESIRE (4K RESTORATION) | Official UK trailer [HD] In Cinemas 24 JUNE. · 00:01:36
80. 2025-01-08 — Amadeus | 4K Ultra HD Trailer | Warner Bros. Entertainment. · 00:02:06