1988

Academy winner Rain Man poster

Rain Man

Composite 78.73

Should have won Grave of the Fireflies poster

Grave of the Fireflies

Composite 83.83

The Academy's ballot

🏆Rain Man#578.73 🎬Mississippi Burning#775.73 🎬Dangerous Liaisons#1671.83 🎬Working Girl#1866.18 🎬The Accidental Tourist#1963.48

Your #1 was Grave of the Fireflies (#1).

The full slate

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

⭐ Top-rated🏛️ All-time great

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Dir. Isao Takahata · Tsutomu Tatsumi · Ayano Shiraishi · Yoshiko Shinohara · Akemi Yamaguchi

IMDb 8.5 (387,870 votes) · TMDB 8.443

In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency rations depleted, Seita and Setsuko struggle to survive.

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Cinema Paradiso (1988)

⭐ Top-rated🏛️ All-time great

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Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore · Philippe Noiret · Jacques Perrin · Marco Leonardi · Salvatore Cascio

IMDb 8.5 (317,329 votes) · TMDB 8.4

A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.

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Die Hard (1988)

⭐ Top-rated🏛️ All-time great

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Dir. John McTiernan · Bruce Willis · Alan Rickman · Alexander Godunov · Bonnie Bedelia

IMDb 8.2 (1,031,231 votes) · TMDB 7.8

High above the city of L.A. a team of terrorists has seized a building, taken hostages, and declared war. One man has manages to escape... An off-duty cop hiding somewhere inside. He's alone, tired... and the only chance anyone has got.

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My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

⭐ Top-rated🏛️ All-time great

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Dir. Hayao Miyazaki · Noriko Hidaka · Chika Sakamoto · Hitoshi Takagi · Shigesato Itoi

IMDb 8.1 (433,385 votes) · TMDB 8.1

Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.

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Rain Man (1988)

🏆 Winner⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #1

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Dir. Barry Levinson · Dustin Hoffman · Tom Cruise · Valeria Golino · Gerald R. Molen

IMDb 8.0 (585,556 votes) · TMDB 7.753

When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives.

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Akira (1988)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Katsuhiro Otomo · Mitsuo Iwata · Nozomu Sasaki · Mami Koyama · Taro Ishida

IMDb 8.0 (227,897 votes) · TMDB 7.941

A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.

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Mississippi Burning (1988)

🎬 Nominee⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Alan Parker · Gene Hackman · Willem Dafoe · Frances McDormand · Brad Dourif

IMDb 7.8 (127,089 votes) · TMDB 7.679

Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.

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Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #2

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Dir. Robert Zemeckis · Bob Hoskins · Christopher Lloyd · Joanna Cassidy · Charles Fleischer

IMDb 7.7 (233,054 votes) · TMDB 7.541

'Toon star Roger is worried that his wife Jessica is playing pattycake with someone else, so the studio hires detective Eddie Valiant to snoop on her. But the stakes are quickly raised when Marvin Acme is found dead and Roger is the prime suspect.

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The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! poster

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)

⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #9

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Dir. David Zucker · Leslie Nielsen · Priscilla Presley · Ricardo Montalban · George Kennedy

IMDb 7.6 (223,119 votes) · TMDB 7.281

When the bumbling Lieutenant Frank Drebin investigates events following the shooting of his partner, he stumbles upon an attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II.

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#10

Time of the Gypsies (1988)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Emir Kusturica · Davor Dujmović · Borivoje Todorović · Ljubica Adžović · Husnija Hasimović

IMDb 8.1 (34,596 votes) · TMDB 7.6

Perhan is a gypsy teenager with telekinetic powers. A wealthy gypsy, Ahmed, visits the village and promises to get Perhan's sister the medical treatment she needs if they join him to Italy. Perhan soon discovers that Ahmed's business activities are in fact quite shady and he is soon lured into the elder's corrupt surroundings.

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#11

A Short Film About Love (1988)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski · Grażyna Szapołowska · Olaf Lubaszenko · Stefania Iwińska · Piotr Machalica

IMDb 8.1 (28,334 votes) · TMDB 7.774

19-year-old Tomek whiles away his lonely life by spying on his opposite neighbour Magda through binoculars. She's an artist in her mid-thirties, and appears to have everything - not least a constant stream of men at her beck and call. But when the two finally meet, they discover that they have a lot more in common than appeared at first sight...

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#12

Beetlejuice (1988)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Tim Burton · Alec Baldwin · Geena Davis · Winona Ryder · Catherine O'Hara

IMDb 7.4 (419,264 votes) · TMDB 7.371

A newly dead New England couple seeks help from a deranged demon exorcist to scare an affluent New York family out of their home.

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#13

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #7

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Dir. Charles Crichton · Jamie Lee Curtis · John Cleese · Kevin Kline · Michael Palin

IMDb 7.5 (165,915 votes) · TMDB 7.208

While a diamond advocate attempts to steal a collection of diamonds, troubles arise when he realises he’s not the only one after the collection.

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#14

Midnight Run (1988)

⭐ Top-rated

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Dir. Martin Brest · Robert De Niro · Charles Grodin · Yaphet Kotto · John Ashton

IMDb 7.5 (104,116 votes) · TMDB 7.18

A bounty hunter pursues a former Mafia accountant who is also being chased by a rival bounty hunter, the F.B.I., and his old mob boss after jumping bail.

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#15

Big (1988)

⭐ Top-rated💰 Box office #10

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Dir. Penny Marshall · Tom Hanks · Elizabeth Perkins · Robert Loggia · John Heard

IMDb 7.3 (261,206 votes) · TMDB 7.186

When a young boy makes a wish at a carnival machine to be big—he wakes up the following morning to find that it has been granted and his body has grown older overnight. But he is still the same 13-year-old boy inside. Now he must learn how to cope with the unfamiliar world of grown-ups including getting a job and having his first romantic encounter with a woman.

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#16

Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

🎬 Nominee

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Dir. Stephen Frears · Glenn Close · John Malkovich · Michelle Pfeiffer · Uma Thurman

IMDb 7.5 (80,227 votes) · TMDB 7.195

In 18th century France, Marquise de Merteuil asks her ex-lover Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the future wife of another ex-lover of hers in return for one last night with her. Yet things don’t go as planned.

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#17

Coming to America (1988)

💰 Box office #3

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Dir. John Landis · Eddie Murphy · Arsenio Hall · Shari Headley · John Amos

IMDb 7.1 (240,670 votes) · TMDB 6.884

An African prince decides it’s time for him to find a princess... and his mission leads him and his most loyal friend to Queens, New York. In disguise as an impoverished immigrant, the pampered prince quickly finds himself a new job, new friends, new digs, new enemies and lots of trouble.

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#18

Working Girl (1988)

🎬 Nominee

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Dir. Mike Nichols · Melanie Griffith · Harrison Ford · Sigourney Weaver · Alec Baldwin

IMDb 6.8 (68,104 votes) · TMDB 6.604

When a secretary's idea is stolen by her boss, she seizes an opportunity to steal it back by pretending she has her boss' job.

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#19

The Accidental Tourist (1988)

🎬 Nominee

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Dir. Lawrence Kasdan · William Hurt · Kathleen Turner · Geena Davis · Amy Wright

IMDb 6.7 (18,576 votes) · TMDB 6.272

After the death of his son, travel writer Macon Leary seems to be sleep walking through life. Macon's wife is having similar problems. They separate, and Macon meets a strange, outgoing woman who brings him 'back down to earth', but his wife soon thinks their marriage is still worth another try.

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#20

Twins (1988)

💰 Box office #5

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Dir. Ivan Reitman · Arnold Schwarzenegger · Danny DeVito · Kelly Preston · Chloe Webb

IMDb 6.2 (149,602 votes) · TMDB 6.045

Julius and Vincent Benedict are the results of an experiment that would allow for the perfect child. Julius was planned and grows to athletic proportions. Vincent is an accident and is somewhat smaller in stature. Vincent is placed in an orphanage while Julius is taken to a south seas island and raised by philosophers. Vincent becomes the ultimate low life and is about to be killed by loan sharks.

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#21

Cocktail (1988)

💰 Box office #8

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Dir. Roger Donaldson · Tom Cruise · Bryan Brown · Elisabeth Shue · Lisa Banes

IMDb 6.0 (98,528 votes) · TMDB 6.117

After being discharged from the Army, Brian Flanagan moves back to Queens and takes a job in a bar run by Doug Coughlin, who teaches Brian the fine art of bar-tending. Brian quickly becomes a patron favorite with his flashy drink-mixing style, and Brian adopts his mentor's cynical philosophy on life and goes for the money.

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#22

Rambo III (1988)

💰 Box office #6

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Dir. Peter MacDonald · Sylvester Stallone · Richard Crenna · Marc de Jonge · Kurtwood Smith

IMDb 5.8 (149,930 votes) · TMDB 6.2

Combat has taken its toll on Rambo, but he's finally begun to find inner peace in a monastery. When Rambo's friend and mentor Col. Trautman asks for his help on a top secret mission to Afghanistan, Rambo declines but must reconsider when Trautman is captured.

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#23

Crocodile Dundee II (1988)

💰 Box office #4

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Dir. John Cornell · Paul Hogan · Linda Kozlowski · John Meillon · Ernie Dingo

IMDb 5.7 (64,494 votes) · TMDB 5.9

Australian outback expert protects his New York love from gangsters who've followed her down under.

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How scoring works: films are ranked by a composite of a weighted (Bayesian) IMDb rating — the same method as the IMDb Top 250, so a high score from few voters can't outrank a strong score from many — blended with TMDB. Box office is a tiebreaker and a badge, never part of the score. Raw IMDb ratings and vote counts are shown on each card.