The Goonies takes me back to that last big adventure with childhood friends – the one we didn’t know was the last. Mouth knew. Maybe that’s why he was trying so hard. It was now or never again. Every year, I re-watch this on the last weekend in August, it’s a ritual I’ve had for … Read more
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve…” This film appeared in my life as I awkwardly began navigating Junior High – being shoved into that heady time when early burgeoning social pressures crept in and started edging me outside my childhood comfort zones. I’d spent a … Read more
A Pyromaniac’s Love Story nudged its way into that mid-90s moment when studios were throwing money at anything that looked vaguely indie but still had top shelf appeal. This was peak Sundance fever – it seemed that every exec wanted their own chatty romantic comedy with shiftless Gen X characters. The film sits awkwardly between … Read more
Corporate synergy, 80’s style. There was a time – let’s call it the mid-to-late ‘80s – when you couldn’t walk into a video store without seeing that iconic New World Pictures logo plastered everywhere. Founded by Roger Corman in 1970 and sold in 1983, New World kept its scrappy, low-budget ingenuity but aimed for mainstream … Read more
We need to talk about David Bowie’s codpiece. Not the goblin king. Not the crystal balls. Not even the M.C. Escher stairways. The codpiece. I was teetering on the brink of puberty when Labyrinth (1986) came out, caught in that liminal space between childhood and whatever came next. About thirty seconds into “Dance Magic Dance,” … Read more
It’s not the teen rebellion manifesto it thinks it is. It’s a film about kids who needed their terrible adults more than they’d ever admit. When Brian writes that letter to Vernon: “You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions” – it’s meant to … Read more
I love this one, unironically (ironically too, but mostly not). Benny & Joon might have been sold as a quirky romantic dramedy, but it masks an exploration of how people can build a life together using entirely different toolkits. And still manage to understand one another. For some of us weirdos whose vocabulary is made … Read more
It Flicks da police. By ’88, the image of the American police officer on screen had been pretty well-established. Hollywood spent decades reinforcing the cop as a figure of order and moral fortitude. These characters didn’t simply enforce the law, they were lower-case-s superheroes who stopped at nothing to defend the greater good. On TV … Read more
By 1990, Jim Varney was at the peak of his cultural visibility with a steady stream of Ernest features, national ad campaigns, and thirteen episodes of a CBS Saturday morning show behind him. His name and gas-station vaudeville shtick carried instant recognition, which made him valuable in the home-video market. Vidmark Entertainment had, by this … Read more
Nadja is a vampire film, technically. But it’s really a lo-fi, black-and-white art piece where Elina Löwensohn drifts through a grainy, urban twilight while whispering existential poetry that smolders with ennui. That’s my kind of party. Produced by David Lynch – who probably did it just so he could cameo as the morgue attendant – … Read more