The party line states that the 1980s were a desolate time for movies. I don’t buy that. Just look at what was happening in British cinema alone. This was the decade that saw Bill Douglas return with his monumental Comrades, while Derek Jarman delivered his best film (Caravaggio) and one of his angriest (The Last of England). Terry Gilliam (US-born but subsequently a British citizen working in the UK) was at the peak of his powers with Time Bandits and Brazil, and Terence Davies and Peter Greenaway made their feature-length debuts.
Even at the more commercial end of the market there was room for adventurousness: take The Tall Guy, for instance, a daffy romcom by a little-known TV writer named Richard Curtis, who would go on to big, if not always great, things.
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