Programmed May 2026

’80s Remakes (and Their Originals!)

As a new generation of movie-mad directors emerged in the 1980s, they drew direct inspiration from the films they grew up watching and obsessing over. The result was a striking run of idiosyncratic Reagan-era remakes in which filmmakers such as John Carpenter (turning the Cold War sci-fi classic The Thing from Another World into a glacial descent into existential terror), Paul Schrader (transforming the shadowy horror landmark Cat People into a hypnotic vision of erotic obsession), and Jim McBride (reimagining Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave bombshell Breathless as a neon-soaked rock ’n’ roll reverie) breathed new life into familiar stories. Viewed side by side, these films reveal a decade in provocative dialogue with the past, infusing timeless originals with the aesthetics, politics, and cultural permissiveness of a new era.