Perfect '80s Movies Nobody Remembers

The 1980s produced many classics that remain well known, but the decade also yielded quieter films that have slipped from the public memory. Some of these were critically — and in a few cases commercially — successful at the time, and many sit alongside better-remembered works by major filmmakers.

My Dinner with Andre finds Wallace Shawn and André Gregory sharing an unusually immersive conversation over dinner, a simple premise elevated by performance and writing. Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict features Paul Newman as a lawyer seeking redemption in a tense courtroom drama that showcases one of his finest roles.

David Jones’s Betrayal, adapted from Harold Pinter and starring Jeremy Irons, Patricia Hodge and Ben Kingsley, unfolds in reverse-chronological order to devastating effect. Jane Campion’s Two Friends, also told backwards, is a short, heartbreaking debut about two young women whose drifting apart becomes clearer as the film presses into their past.

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