At first, Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) doesn’t seem to have a hell of a lot going for him. Most of his friends are girls, he lives with his bitter sister while his service parents float about overseas, and beyond a long shot fascination with the sport of kickboxing, he has no idea what he is …
John Hughes built his considerable reputation and wealth by dissecting and giving voice to the minds and hearts of Chicago’s upper class suburban youth. Risky Business, which came out the same year as Hughes’ initial effort Sixteen Candles, already knew what was in those hearts and minds and it wasn’t angst and parental misunderstandings, it …
River’s Edge opens with a twelve year old kid tossing his little sister’s prize doll into the river. It doesn’t even remotely get any more uplifting. Based on a true story, River’s Edge seemed like a searing indicted of the nation’s disaffected youth at the time. Who knows what to think of it now? It’s …
“Did you hear? School’s been cancelled today because Kurt and Ram killed themselves in a repressed gay suicide pact!” I’m actually pretty truly shocked that you can still rent this film after the Columbine massacre. When kids started lying in rows down the stretches of teeming highways in homage to a scene in The Program, …
Cameron Crowe (Say Anything) and Amy Heckerling (Clueless) would both go on to make better movies about the teen experience, but this old warhorse is the one that essentially started it all. Apparently there was so much talent lying around this set that you can see young versions of Anthony Edwards, Eric Stoltz, and Nick …
Better Off Dead is the kind of movie that people will rarely fess up to liking, but I’ve rarely met anyone who didn’t secretly love it passionately. Made by the courageously named Savage Steve Holland, it is on its face a typical teen comedy albeit one with tons and tons of silliness stirred in. I …
It’s probably a little hard to take Emilio Estevez seriously as a disaffected punk turned car re-possessor after three Mighty Ducks movies and that crazy celluloid dream with brother Charlie where they played garbage men, but that’s hardly wasteland auteur Alex Cox’s fault. Repo Man is not particularly light viewing, it’s not a great …
I’m a little obsessed with this movie. It may, in fact, be everything you need to know about the 80s.Essentially, this is The Breakfast Club Grow Up minus writer-director John Hughes, plus writer director Joel Schumacher, not a good start. It is perhaps the defining moment of the Brat Pack Generation in that anyone in …
“That’s the sound of the men they’re working on the chain gang.” Three performances stand as the purest defined enduring epitome of cool and they are all in trouble with the law in their first five minutes. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock, and Paul Newman in Cool Hand …
“You mean we get to hit the guards?” Cool Hand Luke plays football minus the Jesus fixation. This one isn’t so much about the durability of the human spirit in the face of a cold uncaring world as much as it is about manliness and the extent to which one man will go to redeem …
“Ladies and Gentlemen our corporate anthem.” Remember Roller Derby. What the hell was going on there? It was like a step below wrestling in class and there was even that Raquel Welch movie Kansas City Bombers about it. What was the object of Roller Derby? How did you score? Was there a score? Who were …
“I’m surprised that you’ve never been told before that you’re lovely and you’re perfect and that somebody wants you.” As someone who claims or pretends to have a reasonable grasp of film history, style and cool, I probably shouldn’t admit this, but my all time favorite movie is 1999’s Ten Things I Hate About You. …
It’s hard to believe anyone could really mistake Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag for woman with Marilyn Monroe within ear distance, but only top rank episodes of the Jerry Springer show provide more laughs and surprises from two con men made up to look like women. Monroe’s contract called for all of her …
One of the funniest things I have ever seen was Dustin Hoffman weeping uncontrollable as he recounted how he never truly understood the inner pain and torment of what it felt like to be an ugly woman until he made Tootsie, and I wouldn’t trade that thirty second spot for the entire film. Tootsie is …
Robin Williams in a dress how could it fail? I’m not really sure but Christopher Columbus’ involvement is always a good start. “We have Robin Williams in a dress who needs a script?” At one point a court ordered liaison having seen William’s impression of a hot dog ask him if he truly considers himself …