The Best '80s British Movie
by ElMaruecan82 | created - 18 Jul 2018 | updated - 18 Jul 2018 | PublicThey had the Cure, Genesis, Margaret Thatcher... and the movies. Indeed, if only for the many masterpieces that graced the silver screen, the British could proudly claim "Rule, Brittania! Brittania, rule... the screen!"
Which of these 1980s British movies is your personal favorite?
After voting, you may discuss the list here
- Instant Watch Options
- Genres
- Movies or TV
- IMDb Rating
- In Theaters
- Release Year
- Keywords
1. Chariots of Fire (1981)
PG | 125 min | Biography, Drama, Sport
Two British track athletes, one a determined Jew, and the other a devout Christian, compete in the 1924 Olympics.
Director: Hugh Hudson | Stars: Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nicholas Farrell, Nigel Havers
Votes: 53,021 | Gross: $58.97M
2. Gandhi (1982)
PG | 191 min | Biography, Drama, History
The life of the lawyer who became the famed leader of the Indian revolts against the British rule through his philosophy of nonviolent protest.
Director: Richard Attenborough | Stars: Ben Kingsley, John Gielgud, Rohini Hattangadi, Roshan Seth
Votes: 214,416 | Gross: $52.77M
3. A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
14A | 108 min | Comedy, Crime
In London, four very different people team up to commit armed robbery, then try to doublecross each other for the loot.
Directors: Charles Crichton, John Cleese | Stars: John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin
Votes: 128,763 | Gross: $63.49M
4. Brazil (1985)
PA | 132 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
A bureaucrat in a dystopic society becomes an enemy of the state as he pursues the woman of his dreams.
Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond
Votes: 183,507 | Gross: $9.93M
5. The Mission (1986)
14A | 125 min | Adventure, Drama, History
Eighteenth century Spanish Jesuits try to protect a remote South American tribe in danger of falling under the rule of pro-slavery Portugal.
Director: Roland Joffé | Stars: Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally, Aidan Quinn
Votes: 54,420 | Gross: $17.22M
6. Withnail & I (1987)
14A | 107 min | Comedy, Drama
In 1969, two substance-abusing, unemployed actors retreat to the countryside for a holiday that proves disastrous.
Director: Bruce Robinson | Stars: Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths, Ralph Brown
Votes: 39,127 | Gross: $1.54M
7. Local Hero (1983)
PG | 111 min | Comedy, Drama
An American oil company sends a man to Scotland to buy up an entire village where they want to build a refinery. But things don't go as expected.
Director: Bill Forsyth | Stars: Burt Lancaster, Peter Riegert, Fulton Mackay, Denis Lawson
Votes: 20,625 | Gross: $5.90M
8. The Long Good Friday (1980)
13+ | 114 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
An up-and-coming gangster is tested by the insurgence of an unknown, very powerful threat.
Director: John Mackenzie | Stars: Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Paul Freeman, Leo Dolan
Votes: 18,441
9. My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
R | 97 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
An ambitious Pakistani Briton and his white boyfriend strive for success and hope when they open a glamorous laundromat.
Director: Stephen Frears | Stars: Saeed Jaffrey, Roshan Seth, Daniel Day-Lewis, Richard Graham
Votes: 13,816 | Gross: $2.45M
10. My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)
103 min | Biography, Drama
Christy Brown, born with cerebral palsy, learns to paint and write with his only controllable limb - his left foot.
Director: Jim Sheridan | Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Alison Whelan, Kirsten Sheridan
Votes: 65,720 | Gross: $14.74M
11. Mona Lisa (1986)
14A | 104 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
A man recently released from prison manages to get a job driving a call girl from customer to customer.
Director: Neil Jordan | Stars: Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane
Votes: 12,707 | Gross: $5.79M
12. A Room with a View (1985)
PG | 117 min | Drama, Romance
In a Florence pensione circa 1900 with English guests, George Emerson (Julian Sands) and his dad (Denholm Elliott) offer their rooms with views to Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) and her chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett (Dame Maggie Smith). Lucy and George get acquainted, but Lucy returns to England. George and Lucy meet again, but now she's engaged.
Director: James Ivory | Stars: Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, Denholm Elliott, Julian Sands
Votes: 38,272 | Gross: $20.97M
13. The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)
108 min | Comedy, Drama, History
A young artist is commissioned by the wife of a wealthy landowner to make a series of drawings of the estate while her husband is away.
Director: Peter Greenaway | Stars: Anthony Higgins, Janet Suzman, Anne-Louise Lambert, Hugh Fraser
Votes: 8,890
14. Educating Rita (1983)
110 min | Comedy, Drama
An alcoholic professor has been hired by a working-class girl for higher education.
Director: Lewis Gilbert | Stars: Michael Caine, Julie Walters, Michael Williams, Maureen Lipman
Votes: 12,120 | Gross: $14.65M
15. Hope and Glory (1987)
14A | 113 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Bill, a young boy living on the outskirts of London experiences the exhilaration of World War II. During this period, Bill learns about sex, death, love, hypocrisy, and the faults of adults as he prowls the ruins of bombed houses.
Director: John Boorman | Stars: Sarah Miles, David Hayman, Sebastian Rice-Edwards, Geraldine Muir
Votes: 12,127 | Gross: $10.02M
16. The Killing Fields (1984)
R | 141 min | Biography, Drama, History
A journalist is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody 'Year Zero' cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million 'undesirable' civilians.
Director: Roland Joffé | Stars: Sam Waterston, Haing S. Ngor, John Malkovich, Julian Sands
Votes: 50,090 | Gross: $34.70M
17. The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)
14 | 124 min | Drama, Romance
Wife and husband, both actors, play a couple in love from the Victorian era. Soon they begin to feel that fiction interweaves into reality.
Director: Karel Reisz | Stars: Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Hilton McRae, Emily Morgan
Votes: 11,717 | Gross: $22.60M
18. The Meaning of Life (1983)
R | 107 min | Comedy, Musical
The comedy team takes a look at life in all of its stages in their own uniquely silly way.
Directors: Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam | Stars: John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones
Votes: 111,220 | Gross: $14.93M
19. Gregory's Girl (1980)
91 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Gregory is a normal teen who is infatuated with a classmate. He must work to win her affection.
Director: Bill Forsyth | Stars: John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn, Jake D'Arcy, Clare Grogan
Votes: 7,324
20. The Dresser (1983)
118 min | Drama
Personal assistant Norman struggles to get deteriorating veteran actor Sir through a difficult performance of King Lear.
Director: Peter Yates | Stars: Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, Edward Fox, Zena Walker
Votes: 4,654 | Gross: $5.31M
21. A Passage to India (1984)
PG | 164 min | Adventure, Drama, History
Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.
Director: David Lean | Stars: Judy Davis, Victor Banerjee, Peggy Ashcroft, James Fox
Votes: 16,533 | Gross: $27.19M
22. Cry Freedom (1987)
PG | 157 min | Biography, Drama, History
South African journalist Donald Woods is forced to flee the country, after attempting to investigate the death in custody of his friend, the black activist Steve Biko.
Director: Richard Attenborough | Stars: Denzel Washington, Kevin Kline, Josette Simon, Wabei Siyolwe
Votes: 12,147 | Gross: $5.90M
23. Shirley Valentine (1989)
108 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Shirley is a 42-year-old Liverpudlian bored housewife, who takes a holiday trip to Greece, meeting a local man who bolsters her self-confidence. She evolves and transforms to the point of finally being unrecognizable by her husband.
Director: Lewis Gilbert | Stars: Pauline Collins, Tom Conti, Julia McKenzie, Alison Steadman
Votes: 6,872 | Gross: $6.35M
24. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
18+ | 124 min | Crime, Drama
The wife of an abusive criminal finds solace in the arms of a kind regular guest in her husband's restaurant.
Director: Peter Greenaway | Stars: Richard Bohringer, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Alan Howard
Votes: 33,799 | Gross: $7.72M
25. Time Bandits (1981)
PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy
A young boy accidentally joins a band of time travelling dwarves, as they jump from era to era looking for treasure to steal.
Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, John Cleese, Katherine Helmond
Votes: 56,682 | Gross: $42.37M
26. Caravaggio (1986)
93 min | Biography, Drama, History
A retelling of the life of the celebrated 17th-century painter through his brilliant, nearly blasphemous paintings and his flirtations with the underworld.
Director: Derek Jarman | Stars: Noam Almaz, Dexter Fletcher, Nigel Terry, Sean Bean
Votes: 5,108 | Gross: $0.00M
27. Burning an Illusion (1981)
101 min | Drama
A young black woman in England becomes increasingly frustrated with her life with her lazy, demanding boyfriend, and with the help of friends seeks something better.
Director: Menelik Shabazz | Stars: Cassie McFarlane, Victor Romero Evans, Beverley Martin, Angela Wynter
Votes: 94
28. Sid and Nancy (1986)
R | 112 min | Biography, Drama, Music
The relationship between Sid Vicious, bassist for British punk group Sex Pistols, and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen is portrayed.
Director: Alex Cox | Stars: Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, David Hayman, Debby Bishop
Votes: 28,868 | Gross: $2.83M
29. Moonlighting (1982)
97 min | Drama
A Polish contractor, Nowak, leads a group of workmen to London so they can provide cheap labor for a government official based there. Nowak (Irons) has to manage the project and the men as ... See full summary »
Director: Jerzy Skolimowski | Stars: Jeremy Irons, Eugene Lipinski, Jirí Stanislav, Eugeniusz Haczkiewicz
Votes: 2,535
30. Henry V (1989)
PG-13 | 137 min | Action, Biography, Drama
In the midst of the Hundred Years War, the young King Henry V of England embarks on the conquest of France in 1415.
Director: Kenneth Branagh | Stars: Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Simon Shepherd, James Larkin
Votes: 27,636 | Gross: $10.16M
31. Babylon (1980)
14A | 95 min | Drama
The movie centres around Brindsley Forde's character Blue. He fronts a reggae sound system based in West London. The film captures the trials and tribulations of young black youths in troubled London in the early eighties.
Director: Franco Rosso | Stars: David N. Haynes, Trevor Laird, Victor Romero Evans, Brian Bovell
Votes: 915 | Gross: $0.11M
32. Maurice (1987)
140 min | Drama, Romance
After his lover rejects him, a young man trapped by the oppressiveness of Edwardian society tries to come to terms with and accept his sexuality.
Director: James Ivory | Stars: James Wilby, Rupert Graves, Hugh Grant, Denholm Elliott
Votes: 15,535 | Gross: $3.13M
33. Wish You Were Here (1987)
R | 88 min | Comedy, Drama
In a staid English seaside town after the Second World War, young Lynda grows up with her widowed father and younger sister. Rebellious Lynda has been swearing constantly from an early age.... See full summary »
Director: David Leland | Stars: Emily Lloyd, Trudi Cavanagh, Clare Clifford, Barbara Durkin
Votes: 2,532 | Gross: $3.28M
34. Threads (1984 TV Movie)
112 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, War
The effects of a nuclear holocaust on the working class city of Sheffield, England and the eventual long-term effects of nuclear war on civilization.
Director: Mick Jackson | Stars: Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale, David Brierly, Rita May
Votes: 11,308
35. Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987)
93 min | Comedy, Drama
Realistic story of working class Yorkshire life. Two schoolgirls have a sexual fling with a married man. Serious and light-hearted by turns.
Director: Alan Clarke | Stars: Siobhan Finneran, Michelle Holmes, George Costigan, Lesley Sharp
Votes: 3,351 | Gross: $0.12M
Tell Your Friends