Hmm, while I love both of those films, I'm not sure I'd put them on the same level. Even if I did, I also feel those were the exception, not the norm for the 80's.

I think 1989 was the best year for highbrow cinema in the 80's. 1985 is my favorite year for quality fun movies, and guilty pleasure B-movies.

I just want to know why the Christ did you see Contact 12 times?!?

From a film buffs perspective the 80s probably has the least to offer of any decade. The explosion of small budget indy films really didn't explode in the Us until the 90s. The great post WW2 European directors were on there last leg and the explosion of great Foreign films from South America,Asia and non tradiotional European markets didn't take off until the 90s and 00s.

If your #1 type of movie is action films,superhero films or raunchy teen comedies(not that there is anything wrong with that) I could see the 80s being the mecca of film decades for a person.

From 1980 to 1990, the average production budget of a Hollywood film increased 186% from $9 million to $26.8 million; parallel costs for advertising increased 169%, from $4.3 million to $11.6 million.

The reasons and ramifications for this are pretty well known, or least pretty well assumed....but what we end up with is a decade with a lot of great highs, mainly in the first half, and a general decline, towards the end of the decade, due to saturation of the market with high-concept, sequelly, big-budget and star-powered projects catering to the international audience.

Having said that, my favoirtre movie is Blue Velvet and it's right in that sweet spot of 1986, which had a TON of great movies.

We're the same age, but I consider myself a 70's kid. I started watching movies on HBO in '75 and was exposed to a lot of great films while I was still in single digits (Paper Moon, Phantom Of The Paradise, Prisoner Of Second Avenue, Young Frankenstein), I was also a big monsterkid and would scour the TV listings for classic horror/monster movies (the original King Kong , which I saw at age 8 remained my favorite film until I was well into my teens). My aunt also took me to see Jaws on opening day. These were all before I turned 9. Some of us start early.
The 80's, by comparison, were a wasteland for me. The fashions and graphic design were generally ugly. The Reagan/conservative values/yuppie culture elevated jingoistic crap like Rocky 4 and 1001 cheezy action films, and seemed to stifle more creative adult fare.
Some good stuff leaked out, of course, and a few of my favorite films of all time are from that decade- but in general terms it was a decade of movies getting dumbed down (the trajectory of Empire from 1980 to Jedi in '83 is a perfect illustration of this) and budgets going up.

If you're looking for intelligent, well crafted films that are also designed to be commercial and please a crowd- I'd submit the 1950's over the '80s any day.
I was flipping through the book '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die' the other day- where all the titles are arranged chronologically, and I was struck by just how many truly great, and still very entertaining, movies- of all genres- came out of the staid, conservative '50s.
Just a few off the top of my head...

Westerns- The Searchers, The Big Country, Shane, Winchester '73 (and many more Jimmy Stewart/Anthony Mann classics), High Noon

Sci-fi/fantasy- Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad, Jason And The Argonauts

Dramas- All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard, Ace In The Hole, From Here To Eternity, Rebel Without A Cause, Night Of The Hunter, The Doug Sirk Universal melodramas, 12 Angry Men, Paths Of Glory, Sweet Smell Of Success

Epics- The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Bridge On The River Kwai,

Musicals- Singin' In The Rain, A Star Is Born, Gigi, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, An American in Paris, Band Wagon

Foreign- Seventh Seal, Rashomon, Ikiru, The Young And The Damned, Wages Of Fear, The Seven Samurai

not to mention what might arguably be Hitchcocks strongest decade.

Every decade holds pleasures for a movie buff- but I didn't realize until just recently, how strong the 50's were for both entertainment value and quality.

I wish you'd give more examples than those two Spielberg films so I'd have some idea what you're talking about. Which commercial films of the 1980s do you mean when you say "good art lasts"?

It was exactly the right movie at exactly the right time. I've always loved SF. I had the hots for Jodie Foster. 1997 was the year I really began my obsession with cinema. And there was a lot of free time in summer.

Later I got Contact for free (along with L.A. Confidential) when I bought my first DVD player at Target.

And even though I've been through all the extras, I've never actually watched Contact since it was in theaters.

You realize that when you're 12 (or so), you have a very low bar for makes a quality product. This means that fun (but not very good films) like Bill and Ted's Adventure grow mythically in your mind. Then, you see them again and either realize they don't hold up well (or, just as likely) you're entertained more by the idea that you're 12 again (and memory/nostalgia is giving you these positive emotions, not the film).

There's exceptions of course, like Raiders of the Lost Ark. But it's not fair to use that as an example, as the film is an extreme outlier (being incredibly succesful as entertainment, art, and a business).

I think that's unfair. The sole goal of a film like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is to be fun, and it is fun, and it remains fun, something true of many '80s movies. What makes it a bad movie?

BILL AND TED was one of the high points of '80s cinema for me. When it came out it was universally panned, but every review I read described situations that made me laugh, so I was determined to see it. And I loved every minute of it. A friend of mine was reviewing movies for the Catholic conference's newsletter at the time and she totally ripped the film. I was quite mad at her after I saw the movie and we had a very heated discussion about it.