80s Movies: WarGames (1983)

The second in a Matthew Broderick (Godzilla, The Stepford Wives) double bill - but actually the first of the films to be released - WarGames is a very different kind of 80s movie from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's always strange writing about a film released in the year I was born. In fact, WarGames was in cinemas just two weeks before I arrived, which gives it a personal relevance as a snapshot of the world into which I was born.

What it portrays is the remnants of the Cold War, which was entering its final stages in the early 80s. Told through the eyes of Broderick's David Lightman, what seems like two hours of fairly disposable drama actually highlights some of the key aspects of the stalemate between the US and Russia in the post-war era - including the futility of nuclear war.

80s Movies: Flashdance (1983)

What a feeling! Flashdance pretty much carved a niche for "I wanna be a dancer" movies, with Jennifer Beals (The Book of Eli, The Search for One-Eye Jimmy) as exotic dancer and welder Alex Owens. Cue dance sequences and 80s anthems only really ever rivalled by Fame and perhaps Dirty Dancing, and you've got the recipe for a legendary movie.

Unlike some of the other films we've covered so far in our 80s movies series, Flashdance really hasn't aged well. I don't mean that it's no longer enjoyable - or that it's not still a great movie, in fact - but, unlike some of the others, it's totally tied into the time in which it was made.

A strong female lead, an industrial backdrop and very, very 1980s music make it as much a time capsule as it is a movie - watching it transports those who were there (well, I was born two months after its release, but I grew up in the 80s) back to a unique and changing time.