Recommend a movie to me, DL

Desert Bloom

Good rec, r1. I've seen it, though.

Maybe worth revisiting.

Paris, Texas

Another good one, r3. I watched it the day after the election, because I needed a break from watching the news

Baby It's You

Maria's Lovers

That Championship Season

Slam Dance.

There's a great film from the late 80s about a school. There's a cool girl and she's friends with these 3 bullies but then she hooks up with a new boy at the school and he's a total psycho and he accidentally poisons one of the 3 bullies and they frame it as a suicide and then they kill more students and frame the murders as suicides. Can't remember what it's called.

Do you mean Heathers, Rose?

Sorry I was thinking about the British TV series Grange Hill, not a movie.

OP wants AMERICAN only.

Mike's Murder

SHAG with Jane Fonda

The King of Comedy, my favorite Scorsese film.

Metropolitan

Body Heat with Kathleen Turner

House of Games

The Ice Storm

r20 I recently watched House of Games and was engrossed. And it felt oh-so-80s.

"Independent and/or not well-known"

all we're getting now is famous 80s movies

Man, you must be the very definition of a bossy bottom.

Figure out you own damn movie to watch.

Only one of Hal Hartley films is ensconced in the 80s, but I really liked his story telling and his discovery of Adrienne Shelly as his lead and muse at the start of his career. She was always luminous on screen.

It's weird to me you specified no comedies, and yet several people here have recommended comedies (The Unbelievable truth, heathers, Metropolitan).

Let me nominate: Smithereens.

Parting Glances

Longtime Companion

Desert Hearts

Life of Pi

You’ll watch All About Eve and you’ll like it, you needy bitch.

Probably not obscure on DL, but in the grand scheme of things:

Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

While Jim Jarmusch may still be making movies, there’s no denying he was one of the biggest directors of independent film in the 1980s, but that seems so obscured and forgotten by now, so for those who might not remember them I’d add Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law.

Choose Me

They're both comedies, r31.

sex lies & videotape

White Dog

The old film masterpiece to star Kristy McNichol

Metropolitan is witty.

Personal Best

Out of the Blue

The Rapture

The Trip to Bountiful

R33 Not in the 1980s sense of comedy, they were introspective art films.

Who’s time traveling Ang Lee?

try IMDB

After Hours. Lots of crazy, great scenes of NY in the mid-80s.

OK, it's a comedy, but it's an offbeat comedy, not National Lampoon's Vacation.

Serious movie: The Year of Living Dangerously. Not exactly American, but Australian, which is practically the same thing. Mel Gibson when he was gorgeous and less crazy. Sigourney Weaver. Atmospheric as hell, great performances, exciting thriller.

VERY serious movie: The Thin Blue Line. A documentary that ticks along like a thriller and packs an emotional wallop.

"Body Heat" Film-noir potboiler tale of love, lust, betrayal, money and murder. Kathleen Turner's film debut, William Hurt's second film, with Ted Danson a year before "Cheers", and Mickey Rourke when he was actually hot .

Mondo New York (1988)

Lake Mungo an Aussie film

disturbing

Streetwise (1984)

Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

Mala Noche (1985)

[bold]The Girl in the Swing[/bold]

Meg Tilly, Rupert Frazer

A London art broker goes to Copenhagen where he requires the services of a secretary fluent in Danish, English, and German. He falls deeply in love with the woman, despite the fact that he knows virtually nothing about her. She insists on not being married in a church, and after they are married, some bad things from her past begin surfacing in subtly supernatural ways, and he must find the best way to deal with them without destroying their relationship.

- 1980s ✅

- American ✅

- Independent and/or not well-known ✅

- No comedy, fantasy, scifi ✅

Yeah, Mala Noche was interesting. Gus van Sant's first movie. Pretty sexy.

Down by Law (1986)

Desert Hearts (1985)

Cutter's Way (1980)

The AIDS Show (1986)

Checking Out (1989)

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989)

Shanghai Surprise

Something Wild

It starts off kooky and lightweight, but boy does it turn (wonderfully) dark when Ray Liotta enters the film.

Near Dark Ms. 45 Thief

"Ghost Story" deviates as much as possible from its source material, Peter Straub's novel of the same title, but is beautifully filmed, has a fantastic score, an underlying sense of gruesome tragedy and some great shock scenes. Fred Astaire's last film, if I recall correctly.

Lotsa tits and ass and peen too, if that floats your boat.

R56, whose peen?

Another vote for Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously.

And, Peter Weir's "Witness", 1985. Atmosphere is Weir's specialty.

Bagdad Cafe

Thanks for the laugh, R29.

"Blood Simple," the Coen brothers debut film. The fine cast includes Frances McDormand, Dan Hedeya and a positively mean-as-hell M. Emmett Walsh.

Wrote LA Times critic Kenneth Turan, "Blood Simple becomes a dazzling comedie noire, a dynamic, virtuoso display by a couple of talented fledgling filmmakers who give the conventions of the genre such a thorough workout that the result is a movie that's fresh and exhilarating."

Poison

Half Moon Street

Flesh and Blood is totally insane dreck.

Walker! Anachronisms abound!

House of Games

Well known among cinephiles and critics, kind of obscure for the general public.

E.T.

Goddess of Love starring Vanna White as Venus. Featuring David Naughton, Amanda Bearse and David “Joe Isuzu” Leisure.

Destined to be a DL favorite.

Love Streams (John Cassavetes, 1984)

Variety by Bette Gordon w/ screenplay by Kathy Acker Born in Flames and Working Girls, both by Lizzie Borden Living in the World by Joe Gibbons

Chances Are.

Sorry, I meant

Variety by Bette Gordon w/ screenplay by Kathy Acker

Born in Flames and Working Girls, both by Lizzie Borden

Living in the World by Joe Gibbons

Texasville is pretty entertaining.

- Made in 1990 so close to1980s

- American

- Independent and/or not well-known

Not really a comedy per se but does have some very funny lines in it

r62 I recently watched Blood Simple for the first time. I loved it. M. Emmet Walsh totally makes the movie.

Paperhouse

Ooh, yes, R62, Blood Simple! Great movie. I just added it to my watchlist, as I haven't seen it since its original release.

Also, there's Blue Velvet. Not obscure enough, perhaps, but so weird and so much fun.

I second R46's mention of Body Heat. It wasn't at all obscure at the time, but you don't hear much about it now. The '80s and '90s were the heyday of neo-noir; there are so many good films in that genre from the final decades of the 20th century.

The Bigger The Better

Dead of Winter with Mary Steenburgen

I’ve Heard the Mermaid Singing-fun, quirky, and relatable. Also Canadian if you can see past that. I loved it when I first watched and still do. Miss Firecracker-Holly Hunter and Mary Steenburgen, do you need more than that?

Some Kind of Heaven

Missing starring Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek

Music Box starring Jessica Lange

Diner starring Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Steve Gutenberg, Paul Reiser, Tim Daly, Daniel Stern and Ellen Barkin

And another enthusiastic vote for Body Heat, airing on TCM next Friday.

If you like baseball stories, watch Eight Men Out, about the 1919 Black Sox scandal. Very well done and probably John Sayles' best film from that decade.

Alan Rudolphs's "Call Me"

Eight Men Out is really good

The Year of Living Dangerously is one of the few Mel Gibson movies I can stand

The Stunt Man

*bad influence

*clean and sober

Sayles also did Matewan in the 1980s, just as good as Eight Men Out in my opinion.

The Chocolate War. Great music too.

R90 Apparently, there was a movie version of I Am the Cheese in the 80s as well, know anything about it?

R57 Peen seen is Craig Wasson's falling backward out of a window nude.

R91, no, never knew there was a movie.

Another vote for Missing. Devastating film about the FIRST 9/11.

84 Charing Cross Road.

A man and a woman send each other letters and then one of them dies. With Anthony Hopkins, Judi Dench, Anne Bancroft and Mercedes Ruehl.

To Live and Die in LA. William Peterson shows dick. Willem Dafoe as a rather freaky bad guy. Neo Noir

Under the Volcano

Getting ready to watch Body Heat

I loved Body Heat! Thanks r19 / r46 / r77 / r82

Red Dawn fits the criteria the best. It’s an uplifting film.

[quote]Man, you must be the very definition of a bossy bottom. Figure out you own damn movie to watch.

Good for you, R24, yours alone is the appropriate response. The ready compliance of the commenters is unsettling. Who among us can be relied upon to join the resistance?

Men Don’t Leave starring Jessica Lange, Chris O’Donnell, Joan Cusack, and Kathy Bates

Getting ready to watch Dead of Winter

Student bodies! Pandemonium (sp?)

Dead of Winter was enjoyable BUT it was also one giant plot hole

Ed Wood...I loved this one. 1990s but if you haven't seen it..please do

Variety from 1983:

A woman becomes obsessed with pornography and the mysterious rich patron of the Times Square porn theater called Variety where she works selling tickets. This awakens her sexuality, which confuses her worried boyfriend.

Earth Girls are Easy

Mike Nichols is overrated and Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? in particular. For 2hrs virtually everything Martha says is a variation on 'You're a big fat flop'! it stops being fun and interesting after 45mins.

I think "Desert Bloom" from 1986 was going to be up for all the awards, but it quietly came and went.

It is Annabeth Gish's debut and she carries the film.

I think it is one of the best dramas of the 80s and I think you will enjoy it.

Why did I think Desert Bloom was Desert Hearts, the lesbian movie, this whole thread?

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989, Dir. Steven Soderbergh)

He was an indie director at the time as it was his first feature film.

An HBO Original, “Long Gone” is my favorite baseball movie. Made in 1987, when William Petersen could’ve had the world by the balls, if he’d wanted.

I don’t think this has ever been released on any format other than VHS, so good luck finding a copy.

I remember Long Gone, R113. IIRC, it was a good movie, and William Petersen was hot af.

Long Gone was quickly overshadowed by Bull Durham (1988) ... not an obscure movie but worth watching if only because Kevin Costner was impossibly gorgeous.

r90 getting ready to watch it

Loved it, r90. I wish I could buy the soundtrack, which was perfect

Yay! Nice to have a positive follow up from the OP.

Trouble in Mind, Lady Beware

Bagdad Cafe, Omaha the Movie

The Living End, Kiss Me, Guido

The Music of Chance

with Mandy Patinkin