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This amused me, particularly the first two things our movies capture...ChatGPT's response to our list of movies (and the big budget movies Gigem excluded because they didn't fit the 1980s timeframe) as they relate to the culture of the 1980s:

Your list is already unusually strong at capturing suburban youth culture, masculinity, action-movie individualism, technology, consumerism, and late-80s institutional cynicism. The biggest gaps are workplace/corporate culture, changing gender roles, race, class mobility, family transformation, yuppie culture, and the Reagan-era military/Cold War worldview.
If the goal is specifically large-release movies that help explain 1980s American culture, rather than simply adding acclaimed films, these are the additions I'd prioritize:

Priority	Film	Year	What it adds culturally
Essential	Working Girl	1988	Yuppies, Manhattan corporate culture, women entering professional power structures, class mobility, meritocracy
Essential	Fatal Attraction	1987	Careerism, marriage, sexual anxiety, gender roles, affluent professional life, backlash against 1970s sexual liberation
Essential	The Color Purple	1985	Race, gender, family, religion and Black American experience largely missing from the list
Essential	Born on the Fourth of July	1989	Vietnam, patriotism, disillusionment and the political legacy of the 1960s
Essential	Red Dawn	1984	Possibly the purest artifact of Reagan-era Cold War anxiety and patriotic militarism
Essential	9 to 5	1980	Women in the workplace, sexism, office hierarchy and changing gender expectations
Essential	Tootsie	1982	Gender expectations, workplace sexism, media/entertainment culture
Essential	Broadcast News	1987	Careerism, television, information culture, professional elites and authenticity vs. image
Essential	Baby Boom	1987	The career/family conflict, yuppie culture and changing expectations for professional women
Essential	The Secret of My Success	1987	Corporate ambition and the almost comic 80s faith in upward mobility

All of those movies were considered and not chosen for various reasons. 

Color Purple is a period piece. It takes place outside the 80’s. 
same for 4th of July.  All very fine movies, some just didn’t make the cut. 

it’s what makes this thread so great. Here we are still arguing about who got left out. 

I left silly movies like They Live in, but cut The Secret of My Success