Just like with pretty much any year in cinematic history, there were some very good films released in 1982. Gandhi was the Best Picture winner at the Oscars, and sure! It’s long and maybe a tad by-the-numbers in some ways, but it’s an impressive biographical film in other ways, and Ben Kingsley gives a great performance. The year also saw the release of The King of Comedy, Poltergeist, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, for a quick rundown of just a few noteworthy movies.
But as for the masterpieces? Well, there are a few of those too; the sorts of movies that go above and beyond mere greatness, and stand as classics within the genres they belong to. Those masterful flicks are ranked below, as best as possible. It’s hard when they’re all exceptional, but there’s an argument to be made that some are extra exceptional. Or not. The main thing is, all of these hold up, and each is more than worth watching (if you haven’t already).
7
‘First Blood’
Directed by Ted Kotcheff
Sylvester Stallone had a pretty good 1982, with Rocky III coming out and… okay, admittedly not being great, but it was fun. The whole Rocky series went kind of wild for films #3 and #4, and if you like the soap opera melodrama over the slice-of-life underdog stuff, there’s enough there. But his best film that came out that year was, undeniably, First Blood, which ended up kicking off another iconic series for Stallone: the Rambo one.
First Blood is still something of an action movie, but not really in an over-the-top or explosive way.
Compared to its sequels, First Blood is a more understated affair, though. It’s still something of an action movie, but not really in an over-the-top or explosive way. It’s more of a survival film that always moves forward, and remains exciting, owing to its “man on the run” narrative. Stallone is great here, the film is moving, and it’s emotionally intense, too. It’s easily the best of the Rambo movies, and contains maybe the single best Stallone performance outside – arguably – 2015’s Creed.
6
‘Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’
Directed by Nicholas Meyer
The first Star Trek movie is technically a good Star Trek movie, but it’s also the sort of thing that’s most appealing to big fans of the original TV series. It wasn’t the most approachable of science fiction movies, but that was potentially fixed with its first sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The word “potentially” was used there because some might prefer the more low-key and non-flashy stuff, but if you want excitement and a feeling of Star Trek getting bigger and more action-packed, you’ll find that here.
The Wrath of Khan has a great villain, the titular Khan, and is also memorable for the way it ups the stakes compared to what you might’ve found in the original TV series. It’s a movie that feels like it shakes things up and takes some risks narratively, all the while being easier to get into if you generally like sci-fi but maybe not Star Trek specifically. It’s one of several masterful science fiction movies to come out in 1982, too, with the year being one of the best of all time for the genre.
5
‘Pink Floyd: The Wall’
Directed by Alan Parker
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Pink Floyd are a beyond legendary rock band, with albums like The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall rightly regarded as some of the greatest of all time. The last of those was especially ambitious, being a double album with even more of a direct narrative (or concept) than what was found in Pink Floyd’s other concept albums, and so it made a certain amount of sense to make a movie out of The Wall, then.
And that’s what Pink Floyd: The Wall is. It’s kind of definable as a musical, but it’s also a bit like a feature-length music video, featuring all the music from the album while adding visuals that flesh out the story and themes more. The effect is dazzling, disturbing, and compelling, with the experience of the entire thing being hard to define/explain. But it’s a trip worth taking, even with it being kind of a nightmare in parts.
Pink Floyd: The Wall
- Release Date
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July 14, 1982
- Runtime
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95 minutes
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Christine Hargreaves
Pink’s Mother
4
‘The Thing’
Directed by John Carpenter
The Thing is arguably one of the scariest horror movies ever made, or is at least right up there in terms of mainstream horror. It’s about a group of researchers in Antarctica, and the paranoia among them that unfolds when they get targeted by an alien that can shape-shift almost perfectly, taking on the appearance of lifeforms it comes into contact with. This leads, inevitably, to people not knowing whether anyone else is the alien or not, and it turns out you can milk a great deal of suspense from such a premise.
That’s what John Carpenter did here, and it’s his direction – plus the perfectly executed special effects – that make The Thing more than just unsettling. It’s a persistently intense film that doesn’t let its characters rest for a moment, and it’s possible to feel that kind of exhaustion and ongoing sense of dread as a viewer, too. It’s another great sci-fi movie from 1982, functioning as both a perfect piece of science fiction and an ideal horror film in equal measure. It lives up to the hype, it’s great, it’s The Thing, and that’s all.
3
‘Blade Runner’
Directed by Ridley Scott
Even better than Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and The Thing, Blade Runner is an untouchable science fiction classic, and yet there’s one more sci-fi movie from 1982 that might well be even better. The year was just that good for the genre. Anyway, Blade Runner is about something pretty simple, on the surface. There are some replicants that have gone rogue, and Harrison Ford plays a man (seemingly) who’s assigned with tracking them down and terminating them, since they purportedly pose some kind of danger. He doesn’t really question his orders, but you, as a viewer, might, with the replicants being honestly more sympathetic than the film’s seeming hero.
But that’s just classic neo-noir stuff, and Blade Runner works as an interesting spin on film noir conventions, all with a remarkable science fiction sheen. It’s easily one of the best things Ridley Scott has ever directed, and indeed an all-timer as far as sci-fi movies go. Blade Runner looks incredible, with so much of it still holding up amazingly well more than 40 years on from release, and the score – composed by Vangelis – is also to die for.
2
‘Fanny and Alexander’
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
To highlight how it’s not only English-language movies that were great in 1982, here’s Fanny and Alexander, which is potentially Ingmar Bergman’s best film. That’s not something that can be said lightly, considering how prolific and consistent he was, as a filmmaker, but Fanny and Alexander is that good. It’s perhaps a more personal and nostalgic film than usual for the sometimes reserved (and arguably cold, at least sometimes) filmmaker, and it’s also more sprawling than pretty much anything else he’d directed up until that point.
Fanny and Alexander is primarily a family drama, focusing on a single mother and her two children trying to heal after the family’s patriarch dies suddenly, and how a new marriage to a cruel bishop makes life harder for everyone who remains in the family. Alongside all this is a bit of a supernatural spin, too. Fanny and Alexander is a drama first, but it does also work as fantasy in the magical realism sense; understated, sure, but definitely a part of the movie, and an extra layer to it all that makes it even more compelling. It’s an all-time great international film, and though its length might make it seem a bit daunting, it’s more than worth dedicating three hours to (or five hours, if you choose to watch the debatably better miniseries cut, which was officially aired/released in 1984).
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg has always understood how to make science fiction work, demonstrated as early as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and also displayed in the likes of Jurassic Park and Minority Report. But his greatest piece of sci-fi filmmaking might well be E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, with its placement here also intended to suggest that it’s not only the best science fiction film (of many) released in 1982, but also just the best film – from any genre – released that year. It’s sweeping, sentimental, and endearing, being about a young boy who befriends an alien who gets left on Earth by his own family, and so the boy endeavors to help get the alien back with his people. Or, well, back with his fellow aliens.
It’s a movie that expertly captures how it feels to be young, and in a way that resonates with you if you watch E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial as a child, and in a way that feels bittersweet and nostalgic if you watch the film as an adult. It has one of the best scores John Williams ever composed (and that’s saying something), while also benefitting from having an all-time great ending. Everything in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial works in perfect harmony. It’s an endlessly watchable, moving, and probably timeless movie, and it does all that without ever feeling cheesy or like it’s laying things on too thick. It is, for all intents and purposes, just a perfect movie.
