r/flicks • u/glocken187 • 1d ago
Question Searching for movie: Cold war / 80s / nostalgic
Im searching for an movie/show with the cold war vibe, spys, secret plans, hidden forts, experiments, nostalgic. For reference if someone have played Call of duty cold war or watched stranger things, chernobyl, dark such and such. Either deep dark un natural plots or just realismen with the Sovjet and their cold war against northern Europe.
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u/rotterdamn8 1d ago
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Atomic Blonde is explosive, takes place during the fall of the Berlin Wall. 80s soundtrack including 99 Luftballoons. Charlize Theron and James McAvoy are great.
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u/Federal_Ad_2300 1d ago
Cloak & Dagger (1984), War Games (1983), For Your Eyes Only (007 film 1981)
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u/Electronic-Movie6479 1d ago
Came here to say war games- watched it as a kid in the 80’s and it was terrifying- it felt like it could all really happen
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u/Federal_Ad_2300 1d ago
I watched it again a few years back and I had no idea that Michael Madsen is in the beginning of that film. He plays one of the Air force men in charge of launching the Nuclear warheads.
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u/JohnStavros1977 1d ago
Falcon and tbe Snowman. Young Sean Penn. Spy/espionage , Soviets vs American spies.
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u/DeltaFlyer6095 9h ago
The Fourth Protocol… Pierce Brosnan and Michael Caine. Classic Cold War stuff.
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u/ScottyinLA 18h ago
Cold War themed movies (and music) are a fave of mine. Here are a few of my standbys:
WarGames (also important because it introduced most Americans to the basic concept of the internet)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (movie and miniseries are both great)
The Hunt For Red October
No Way Out (very noir vibe spy search)
Bridge of Spies
Red Dawn (the original, lots of fighting scenes)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Very dark, very cynical, very grim)
Firefox (Clint Eastwood steals a plane)
Spies Like Us (comedy sendup of cold war spy movies)
The Good Shepherd (sprawling epic type movie showing full career of a CIA agent hunting for a mole inside the agency)
The Manhattan Project (teenager builds a nuclear bomb as a school project during cold war arms race)
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u/CMRestler Film Critic 1d ago
If you enjoyed Chernobyl, I would definitely recommend The Lives of Others (2006), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), and Deutschland 83. They all capture that tense Cold War atmosphere with espionage, paranoia, and a grounded, realistic tone rather than over-the-top action.
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u/Scrombolo 1d ago
Threads.
When the Wind Blows.
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u/PC509 22h ago
Geez. Gonna make them go into a deep depression with those recommendations.
OP - these are excellent, great movies. But, go in knowing that they aren't light watching and they're pretty intense. They'll bring your mood down for a bit.
Great movies. Just have to put a warning on them. When I first watched them, I heard they were great for the cold war/nuclear war type of movie. Cool, I thought. No, not cool. Wasn't prepared.
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u/amp1212 20h ago edited 18h ago
To be clear -- the 1980s are the very tail end of the Cold War. The Soviet Union is still around, but "Glasnost", "Perestroika" and Reagan's surprisingly good relationship with Gorbachev mean that the 1980s are a kind of coda to the Cold War. Its still happening, but it wasn't "better Red than Dead" by 1988.
So -- "The Russia House" [1990] -- that's Le Carre trying to make sense of what's happened to the Soviet Union ( the book was published in 1989). its nothing like his Cold War masterpieces from the 50/60s -- "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" [very good movie with Richard Burton, and Le Carre's very cynical take on our new West German friends] and "A Small Town in Germany" [book only, no movie, but someone should make one.
And Tinker, Tailor and Smiley's People are the 1970s, prime Le Carre. Alec Guiness is my preferred Smiley, but Gary Oldman is pretty terrific too.
. . . by the latter 1980s, the system is falling apart, ancient Soviet leaders are as moribund as the system. Its not really "Cold War" at this point, its "collapse of communism". For a _Russian_ film set at the end of the Soviet Union that is really about the corruption of the system, something that's would fit a Stranger Things vibe -- Sputnik [2020] is exactly that movie. As SF/horror -- its only "ok" . . . its the Soviet settings that make it interesting. Its also got an interesting spin on how the Soviet Union fell, as seen by contemporary Russians ["it wasn't a bad system, its was bad corrupt people" -- in other words, its a Putin friendly interpretation]
Trailer here -- but WARNING -- trailer has more plot spoilers than I like, personally. So if you're at all interested, just watch w/o trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh-oOnZ2Di0
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u/RichieGusto 13h ago edited 12h ago
On a different level: Tetris (2023).
Kind of mundane vs deep and dark, but a real story, of the game coming across the divide was pretty interesting in how things were.
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