10 Essential Movies of 1988 Every Film Fan Should See

The 1980s was an iconic decade for cinema, featuring many filmmakers working at the height of their powers, including John Hughes, Steven Spielberg, Amy Heckerling, and Rob Reiner. Even as they were winding down, there were still plenty of major titles produced that are well worth rewatching or checking out for the first time.

To that end, we’re drilling deep on 1988 specifically to share 10 essential titles from that year. Without any further ado, let’s dive in!

10. License to Drive

It’s important to remember that “essential” doesn’t mean “arthouse.” Understanding the teen culture of the 1980s is one of the most important things when trying to wrap one’s mind around the decade. And in 1988, outside of the Brat Pack, there was perhaps nobody more essential to teen culture than The Coreys. Just one year off from their first collaboration in the vampire movie The Lost Boys, Corey Haim and Corey Feldman reteamed for this charming “one crazy night” comedy about a teen trying not to let his lack of a driver’s license prevent him from impressing his date with a ride in a cool car.

9. My Neighbor Totoro

The only reason why Hayao Miyazaki’s stunning anime masterwork My Neighbor Totoro is so low on this list is that, in the English-speaking world, it doesn’t “feel” like a 1988 movie. Its first English dub was released in 1989 exclusively on Japan Airlines flights, and it didn’t come to U.S. theaters until 1993, when said dub was put out by Troma Entertainment (yes, the company behind The Toxic Avenger).

Regardless, it did debut in 1988, and it is essential in any era, bringing lovely, sweet magical realism to a deeply felt story about two sisters discovering spirits in the forest by their house, where they have recently moved to be closer to their hospitalized mother.

8. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

No list of essential 1980s movies is complete without a slasher, and the Renny Harlin-directed effects extravaganza Nightmare on Elm Street 4 (which features Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger finding a new crop of kids to torment in their dreams) is a perfect exemplar of the dizzy, decadent, but fizzily fun place that the genre had reached by the end of the decade.

7. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Legendary Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s (All About My Mother, Volver) international breakthrough came with Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, a sparkling farce led by a propulsive, almost entirely female cast of wacky characters.

6. Miracle Mile

Two more things that any list of essential 1980s movies needs are Cold War-era nuclear anxieties and aerobics, and Miracle Mile somehow features both.

This genre-bending movie, which takes place in various locales along Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile (including an aerobics studio), spends one act as a romance (between Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham), the next as a Twilight Zone episode (in which characters in a diner discuss a call that Edwards’ character accidentally intercepted, which implies that a nuclear missile is en route to L.A.), and the rest of its runtime as a high-octane thriller (as the city descends into chaos and citizens try any means possible to escape).

5. A Fish Called Wanda

In a comedy that reunites Monty Python members John Cleese and Michael Palin, Kevin Kline is somehow the standout, committing 110% to an Oscar-winning performance that feels like a Looney Tunes character brought to life. Jamie Lee Curtis rounds out the impressive cast of this unforgettable crime comedy about a bumbling group of thieves trying to handle the fallout of a botched diamond heist.

4. Working Girl

Mike Nichols’ Working Girl allows viewers to take the temperature of mainstream culture’s approach to depicting women in the workplace eight years after the iconic 9 to 5. The movie, which depicts a receptionist, Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith), having her idea stolen by her boss Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver), is far from perfect, but it’s an interesting social document that also features Harrison Ford tackling an early down-to-earth role after years of being best known for playing adventurous archaeologist Indiana Jones, spacefaring smuggler Han Solo, and blade runner Rick Deckard.

3. Colors

Colors was directed by Dennis Hopper and stars Sean Penn and Robert Duvall as police officers in the C.R.A.S.H. unit in Los Angeles. Even though the leads are white cops, the movie (which was a hit, earning back more than four times its $10 million budget) had many actors of color in its supporting cast and proved to be a seminal early entry in the “hood film” genre, with its success opening the door for characters of color to take center stage in later urban dramas like Do the Right Thing, Boyz n the Hood, Juice, and Menace II Society.

2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit

How on Earth do you follow a zeitgeist-defining movie like Back to the Future? For Robert Zemeckis, it was easy. The answer was to one-up himself with the zany, ambitious Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a Chinatown riff that follows a hard-boiled detective (Bob Hoskins) teaming up with a cartoon rabbit (Charles Fleischer) to solve a crime that exposes a deadly conspiracy.

It’s impressive enough that the filmmakers got Disney and Warner Bros. to agree to allow Looney Tunes characters to intermingle with Mickey Mouse and his pals, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The way that live-action and animated elements are blended together here simply boggles the mind, especially with the limitations of 1988 filmmaking technology.

1. Die Hard

Die Hard honestly puts in a bid for being one of the most essential movies of the entire 1980s. In addition to being a rock-solid action movie (about an NYPD officer whose trip to visit his estranged wife in LA goes horribly wrong when their Christmas party is hijacked by terrorists), it turned Bruce Willis’ career on a dime, instantly transforming him from “that guy from Moonlighting” into an all-time action star. Die Hard also brought us Alan Rickman, for which it must be endlessly thanked.

So what are your essential movies of 1988, and did any of them make the list? Sound off in the comments below! There are certainly plenty more movies to choose from, as runners-up that unfortunately didn’t make the list include a raft of strong titles like Beetlejuice, Coming to America, Child’s Play, They Live, and The Land Before Time.