Best of the Decade

Raging Bull (1980). Realism so intense it transcends and transforms the ugly banalities of boxer Jake La Motta's life. The talents of Robert De Niro and director Martin Scorsese turn the film into a crazy-angry vision of the American Lower Depths.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). All of Steven Spielberg's gifts -- his narrative gusto and suburban wit, his technical finesse and an emotional directness that buoys the heart -- blend sublimely in this fable of intergalactic friendship. One of the greats.

The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). The middle film in Woody Allen's splendid trilogy about American celebrity dreaming. It shares Zelig's technical and narrative virtuosity and Radio Days' insinuating nostalgia, but suffuses them with a unique spirit -- a sort of cautionary romanticism.

Prizzi's Honor (1985). John Huston's favorite country was the social margin, where improbable characters pursue impossible dreams. A hit man (Jack Nicholson) and a hit moll (Kathleen Turner) seek love and find death in a film that deliciously combines operatic emotions and black comedy.

Out of Africa (1985). Sydney Pollack's romantic adventure movie showed that Hollywood could still make 'em like it used to, with as much power and more subtlety. Meryl Streep had her most popular role as author Isak Dinesen, her restless heart liberated by the untamed beauty of Kenya.

Brazil (1985). The movie too good to be seen! That's what Universal Pictures suggested when it hedged on releasing Terry Gilliam's apocalyptic satire about a man caught in the vise of bureaucracy. The studio couldn't see that Brazil does brilliantly what movies do best: create teeming, coherent worlds beyond our imagining.

The Fly (1986). Adults need bedtime stories too. This one, about a man who turns into a huge insect, was the decade's scariest. And the most affecting, because director David Cronenberg made it a parable about how little we know of the people we love, and how much we still love them as they slip out of their control and ours.

Blue Velvet (1986). Deadpan humor and deadpan violence in small-town America. If Sinclair Lewis and Mickey Spillane had collaborated on a Sandra Dee movie, they might have created a dreamscape something like writer-director David Lynch's -- vivid, dislocating, utterly original.

The Last Emperor (1987). And, arguably, the last movie epic, for its hero is the prisoner of world events, not the shaper. With sumptuous visual intelligence, director Bernardo Bertolucci created a poignant tale about the last Emperor of China -- the poorest little rich boy in the world.

Wings of Desire (1988). The Berlin Wall -- the one that divides not just East and West, but fantasy and documentary, high art and popular art -- comes crumbling down in Wim Wenders' heartaching fairy tale. See it, concentrate, and be astonished.