20 Totally Tubular 80s and 90s Movies on hoopla

Posted on April 24, 2020

by Heather H

Ahh, the 1980s and 1990s! To be young again.

If the current state of affairs has you dreaming of a simpler time – when the things you worried about were making sure your neon was poppin’ and all you wanted was your MTV – then I’ve got a list for you.

If you’ve not yet checked out hoopla Digital, I hope that you will today. It’s a great and free (with your Library card) Netflix alternative, and its surprisingly loaded with awesome movies from the 80s and 90s.

So, visit hoopla online or download the app (available for Apple, Google Play and Roku) and settle in for a nostalgia-filled movie night that’ll take you back in time. How very!

1980s Movies

The big screen fell in love with the world of boxing in the late 1970s with Rocky. This love affair continued into the early 80s with the release of Raging Bull. Directed by Martin Scorsese, Raging Bull received a slew of major award nominations and won Robert De Niro his first Best Actor Academy Award.

If action and adventure is your jam, don’t forget to also check out Jackie Chan’s Project A for some amazing Kung Fu or Bloodsport starring Jean Claude Van Damme, who with one iconic scene, made doing the splits the coolest thing ever.


Looking for something lighter? Enjoy a little levity with comedies like Girls Just Want to Have fun (don’t forget to sing aloud to Cyndi Lauper’s hit song), Teen Wolf with Michael J. Fox dominating the basketball court (or the top of Stiles’ van) and Overboard starring forever-power couple Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

If you need a little warmth for your heart, try the touching family drama On Golden Pond featuring pivotal 80s fitness icon Jane Fonda, or grab the kids and snuggle in with family films such as the Secret of NIMH and Short Circut.

Finally, what 80s movie list would be complete without a shout out to my namesake movie, Heathers.

Starring old-timey heart throb Christian Slater and the infamous Winona Ryder, if you don’t go gaga for this cult classic, all I have to say to you is – What’s your damage?!

1990s Movies:

From Titanic to Pretty Woman, movies of the 1990s brought us pure romance, of all different types! Fall in love with Reece Witherspoon’s first major starring role in The Man in the Moon (you’ll need tissues for this one), the sweeping WWII epic The English Patient or rom-com Shakespeare in Love, which took home Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

The 90s were also all about thrillers! Love crime-dramas? Watch Johnny Depp race to save his kidnapped daughter in Nick of Time or Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd as they track down a serial killer in Kiss the Girls. Also worth a mention is Total Recall, an out of this world (no really – it takes place on Mars) sci-fi thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

You’ll also find plenty of quirky comedies to laugh over such as Boomerang starring comedic giant Eddie Murphy, the cult-classic convenience store shenanigans of Clerks, and the offensively-cheesy but beloved teen comedy She’s All That.

As with the 80s, no 90s movie list would be complete with a mention of the cult phenomenon The Crow.

This movie encapsulated every goth/grunge/Gen X’ers angst and delivered by way of the late Brandon Lee who plays what else, a brooding undead avenger.

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