Crazy 80's Project: Fame

"I'm gonna live forever!" cries a euphoric troupe of artistic high school kids during the chorus of Fame's legendary title song. Who would have guessed that 30 years later, even after an audience-pandering, dumbed-down, sanitized remake that this original easily takes a diarrhea dump on, Fame still feels as alive and relevant as it ever did? Starting with a ballsy script focusing evenly on a good dozen character, which, in its best moments, feels Altmanesque, Fame feels far more mature than nearly every high school film made before or after it. From the way the film lends credibility and urgency to the problems facing these teenagers, it's easy to see Fame's influence on the Brat Pack movies (most notably The Breakfast Club) later on in the 80's. But this maturity also contributes to the film's biggest weakness. Unlike The Breakfast Club, the problems plaguing these teens, revealed in long, dramatic monologues, are decidedly situations most teens will find hard to relate to. And to make things even more unrelatable, director Alan Parker films these monologues in highly self-conscious long takes, trying to make them High Art. Sure, this may make Fame more intriguing to adult audience members who aren't interested in the "petty" concerns of teens, but it takes the film out of its natural environment. A shame, really, as Fame thrives in this environment, appearing against all odds to live forever. B+

Crazy 80's Project: When Harry Met Sally...

If, for any reason, When Harry Met Sally... feels familiar structurally or character-wise, let me start off by saying that it's not because the film is any less fresh or funny than it was upon its release. If anything, it's because nearly every romantic comedy of the 90's--before the genre became a joke to more than just film snobs--borrows heavily from the recently deceased Nora Ephron's brilliant script. Unlike Wiig & Mumolo's Bridesmaids, which punctuates sadness with ridiculously, gloriously, over-the-top comedic set pieces, Ephron's script punctuates sadness with a calmer, more realistic comedic style. You won't find Meg Ryan shitting in a sink, but you will see an equally well-orchestrated scene where Harry and Sally, the morning after jeopardizing their friendship by sleeping with each other, call their married friends for advice. Outlandish, no. But it's just as well constructed as any scene in any comedy of the last 20 years. This is what When Harry Met Sally... does best, though, finding depth and humor in the most common places, whether that's over a game of Win, Lose or Draw or having lunch in a crowded restaurant while discussing their sex lives. Crystal and Ryan also find surprising amounts of character through their romantic comedy "types" (he is the wisecracker who hides behind sarcasm, she is perky and optimistic with the slightest hint of neuroticism underneath the surface). They have great chemistry together and make it believable that these two would make the journey from friendship to something more. When Harry Met Sally... never set out to reinvent the wheel, nor does it ever, but, like It Happened One Night five decades before it, the film reinvented the romantic comedy subgenre and forever changed how we saw them afterwards. A-

Crazy 80's Project: Withnail and I

Two out of work actors, one a hopeless alcoholic, the other neurotic, both fed up with their squalid apartment, decide to spend a weekend in the country at the alcoholic's gay uncle's cottage. Chaos ensues as they deal with a lack of food, their lack of survival instincts and a surprise visit from the uncle himself. Withnail and I sounds like a "me" movie if ever I've heard one (Alcoholism? Check. Characters failing at life? Check. Clifford from Spice World? Check.). So why am I having the hardest time coming up with anything remotely interesting to say about this movie? Certainly, Withnail and I is clever in its own way, with quite a few amusing bits and a great turn from Richard E. Grant as the alcoholic actor. But everything in the film sort of runs together and nothing truly stands out. It has only been a week since watching Withnail and I, and I can barely remember anything about it. Maybe it's because the film is, in a sense, a comedic take on the British Miserablism film, which I find to be one of the hardest regional cinema subgenres to sit through. For all the banter and gags, Withnail and Marwood are living are extremely desperate, depressing characters sleepwalking through life; it certainly makes Bridesmaids' Annie looks like a winner in comparison.. Perhaps Withnail and I is another one of those films that requires multiple viewings to truly get what is special and funny about it. For now, it's a mildly enthusiastic B-.

Crazy 80's Project: Fitzcarraldo

A would-be entrepreneur/opera aficionado, Fitzcarraldo, (Klaus Kinski) hopes to break into the thriving rubber business in South America so that he can get rich and build his dream opera house in the jungle. In order to do this, Fitzcarraldo makes a dangerous journey down the river through the heart of the savage (read: non-white) lands, where very few white men have ever made it out alive. And if this wasn't a big enough obstacle to overcome, he then must move the ship he has been traveling on literally over a mountain in order to get to the rubber. If this doesn't sound like the makings of an epic film, I don't know what does. But the problem with Fitzcarraldo is that it never quite feels like the epic it should be. Don't get me wrong, there are quite a few spectacular moments, such as the quiet scene when Fitzcarraldo's ship enters the savage territory or when we first glimpse the complicated pulley system devised to move the ship over the mountain. But, more often than not, I was watching with a passive interest, rather than becoming particularly awed by the whole experience. I'm certainly glad I saw Fitzcarraldo, but it's not something I will probably ever feel the need to revisit. B-

Crazy 80's Project: Hairspray

  

As a big fan of director John Waters, the legendary Divine and the musical adaptation of the film, I'm really surprised it has taken me this long to see the original Hairspray. But I have now remedied this situation, and boy am I glad I did. The story is the same as in every other incarnation: plucky overweight teen Tracy Turnblad winds up on the popular teen dancing show The Corny Collins Show and finds herself fighting against segregation in 1960's Baltimore. Although far less crude than earlier Waters classics like Female Trouble and Pink Flamingos, Hairspray has its own peculiar charm which works in this family-friendly--at least for John Waters--film. It's easy to see why Hairspray was turned into a musical, as the original is already so dependent on its soundtrack of 60's hits to provide atmosphere. The film is so fun and bouncy you hardly notice Waters' racial commentary sneaking its way into the film, which was the 2007 version's only major flaw. There's one scene in particular where Tracy and Link are making out behind a building and they utter ridiculous, Waters-ian lines like, "Our souls are black, though our skin is white." Lines such as this give the Race Issue far more intrigue and depth than anything in the musical version. All in all, Hairspray is simply a gloriously fun time, and probably the only Divine film I'd let a child watch. B+

Crazy 80s Project: The Shining

I watched Stanley Kubrick's The Shining right before Halloween, hoping that it would both get me in the mood for the holiday but not freak me out too much. It turns out there was no reason to worry as The Shining is, for the most part, not a typical horror film. Instead of scary, the word I'd use to describe the film is unsettling. From scene to scene, you never quite know what to expect, whether Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson in Angry Jack mode) is going to be affectionate toward his wife (Shelley Duvall) and young son (Danny Lloyd) or completely fly off the deep end. Kubrick makes great use of the cold, isolated environment of the secluded luxury hotel Jack has been hired to look after in the resort's off-season. At once empty and claustrophobic, the hotel not only takes its toll on the characters but the audience as well, who quickly become intertwined with this polarizing environment. This sense on unease would be hard for most directors to keep up for a film half the length of The Shining, but you have to credit Kubrick, with the help of composers Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind's eerie score and John Alcott's fantastic cinematography (I absolutely love the repeated shots of the camera following the axe as Jack tries to break down a door with it), for making it work nearly the entire runtime of the film. The Shining is not a horror film in the traditional sense, yet the creepiness and feelings of dread it arouses stay with you long after the final credits have rolled. A-

Crazy 80's Project: Clue and WarGames

When the news a few years ago broke that Hasbro was planning on turning some of its board games into movies, many people moaned and groaned about Hollywood's lack of originality. But just like with any adaptation of any material, it comes down to the screenplay and the direction the writers and the director take the material (I, for one, have always maintained that CandyLand would make a fantastic film--provided Tim Burton doesn't get his hands on it, that is). Clue is an obvious example of this. Utilizing the structure of the board game while simultaneously making fun of it and the mystery genre as a whole, Clue has a point of view all its own, which is why it has become such a cult film all these years later. The main selling point of Clue, however, is its stellar comedic cast. The legendary Madeline Kahn and Lesley Ann Warren are obvious highlights, but Best in Show honors go to Eileen Brennan as Mrs. Peacock. From her feathery hat, her cat eye glasses, her befuddled delivery and her generalized confusion, she understands and nails the character beyond what the script asks of her. But the entire cast is superb and together they form one of the funniest, most "in sync" ensembles ever assembled. B+

For a film about a couple of teens who inadvertently start and stop a nuclear war between the US and the USSR, WarGames is surprisingly more serious than its adolescent premise sounds. In fact, the film received Oscar nominations in major categories for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography (alongside the legendary Sven Nykvist!), which shows that even Oscar considered WarGames to be a good more adult than I originally considered when I put it on my list. The film is a little naive (Really, that's all it takes to hack into the government's computer that controls their nukes?) and there is no real sense of End of the World Terror that many of the best nuclear holocaust movies elicit. But WarGames is a genuinely good thriller, fast-paced, exciting and free from the extraneous fluff that often slows down blockbuster thrillers. Matthew Broderick is the film's star, but I believe that co-star Ally Sheedy, as his friend/love interest, stole the entire show. Whereas Broderick relies on the smarminess and sarcasm that worked so well a few years later in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sheedy has a glowing presence about her, an attractiveness of the spirit that instantly endears her to the camera. And it's a complete 180 from The Breakfast Club a couple of years later, where she defined the odd, antisocial outcast. Granted, WarGames doesn't give her character much to do besides chase Broderick around. She's still, however, a lovely, engaging presence that only makes WarGames stronger. B-

Crazy 80's Project: Grave of the Fireflies

What sets the Japanese anime film Grave of the Fireflies apart from so many other films about orphans surviving through and in the aftermath of war, particularly the films that flooded European cinema in the first few years after the end of World War II, is the lack of sentiment in Fireflies. Instead of hitting us over the head with adorable kids enduring hardships but somehow coming ahead at the very last moment, Fireflies eliminates any and all fluff, cutting straight to the core of the story. War is not easy, particularly for the children, but it's something they are forced to tackle head-on. The film begins with a massive bombing, destroying the city teenager Seita and his younger sister Setsuko live in with their mother. Seita and Setsuko make it to safety, but, unfortunately, their mother isn't so lucky. Seita finds her in a hospital, bandaged up from head to toe because of the massive burns all over her body, maggots and flies swarming the wounds. It's a horrifying scene, one I can barely imagine comprehending in real life. But the scene deliberately shows how director Isao Takahata is not going to deliberately shield these kids from the horrors of war.

But that's not to say that Grave of the Fireflies is all gloom-and-doom. What I admire most about the film, in fact, is the way Seita tries to shield Setsuko from part of the madness going on around her, letting her have some semblance of a childhood. After their mother passes away and is thrown in a mass grave, Seita and Setsuko go to live with their aunt. She quickly grows bitter toward them, believing that Seita is lazy for not going to work and supporting both the household's income and the Empire. But, although this remains unspoken, Seita sees it as his job to protect Setsuko's childhood as much as he can. These moments lack the corniness and sugary sweet sentimentality that kills a similar plot in Life is Beautiful. Instead, they overflow with an exuberance and a joie de vivre that contrasts harshly, albeit fascinatingly, with the insanity going on around them.

It's hard to remain objective about a film that became such an emotional experience for me. I think many of you know I'm not a crier. I can literally count on my hands the number of times I've cried since high school. I've had people tell me that they can't even imagine me crying at all. But I was totally ugly crying through a good 25% of Grave of the Fireflies's run time. I had no idea that this film would be so emotional when I rented it, so I first assumed I was just hormonal or something. But then I spoke to other people online who reacted the same way, and I realized that it was Takahata's sparseness and simplicity that was the main reason for my extreme reaction. You got me this time, Isao. You really did. A

Crazy 80's Project: Making Love

I wanted to hate Making Love and its safe, dated handling of a then-controversial plot (a married man upsets his comfortable upper-class life by having an affair with an openly gay man), but a funny thing happened on the way to a perfectly predictable and disposable film. In between the cheesy moments of pure marital bliss between Zach (Michael Ontkean) and Claire (the fabulous Kate Jackson), the scenes of Gay Life Circa 1982, which was apparently a lot more masculine and rugged than it is nearly 20 years later, and the ho-hum, middle-of-the-road easiness the film embraces for much of its runtime, there's something surprisingly refreshing about Making Love. Honestly, there's nothing even slightly offensive about Making Love, which is surprising since even a full decade later Philadelphia was far more uncomfortable with its sexuality and had much less to lose. This is both to Making Love's credit and a knock against it because it almost refuses to raise the stakes beyond the minimum necessary to move the story forward, which matches its indistinct Movie of the Week style. But the choice to have both Claire and Bart (Harry Hamlin), the man Zach has the affair with, speak long monologues directly into the camera like a documentary subject lends Making Love a touch more honesty than it probably deserves. Jackson and Hamlin deliver these monologues with the same delusions, idiosyncrasies and misguided conviction that ordinary people would (Bart claims he loves being single and unattached but something in his manner suggests otherwise; Claire naively thinks her marriage can still work even though her husband wants to bone dudes now). It's not especially groundbreaking--we're not talking Bergman-levels of self-examination--but it's enough to turn what could have been a turgid, past-its-prime piece of fluff cinema into something worth thinking of at some point in the future. Besides, how can you hate on an 80's film where the gay main characters neither contract HIV or die outright by the final frame? C+

Crazy 80's Project: Diva

The first real dud of this project. This widely acclaimed French suspense thriller is neither suspenseful or thrilling as it tells the Hitchcockian story of an innocent mailman who winds up with a tape implicating the leader of a suspected sex trafficking organization. There are a couple of other subplots, including one about a bootleg recording the main character makes of his favorite opera diva's concert, and that's precisely the problem with Diva. When the film should be as sleek and to-the-point as possible, director Jean-Jacques Beineix drastically drags the film out 20-30 minutes longer than it needs to be. How are we supposed to be involved in this film when the main character is in no real danger until more than halfway into the runtime? Even when the "suspense" does amp up, it's neither exciting nor particularly clever; it's everything we have seen done better a million times before. It's particularly telling when the opera diva the title is referring to is referenced as being disagreeable having a volatile temper and we see neither during her entire, almost unnecessary, subplot. What's the point in having an exciting, electric diva and then forcing her to remain entirely calm and collected nearly the entire time? Just one of this misfire's many mistakes. D+

Crazy 80's Project: Heathers

Michael Lehmann's Heathers, is, without a doubt, one of the sharpest, scathing--not to mention most ambitious--films the high school/coming of age comedy subgenre has ever seen. Not content to merely be a film about navigating the tricky sea that is high school, Heathers is also an explosive combination of black comedy, Bonnie & Clyde-style examination of love and social commentary ("Suicide (Don't Do It)"). To say it's an ambitious film is an understatement, but, to it's credit, Heathers nails it far more often than it misses. Lehmann has a keen eye for details and visual gags, which immediately separates it from nearly every other high school comedy ever made. The screenplay from Daniel Waters has its own undefinable cadence that in ways reminded me of both Tennessee Williams and Diablo Cody; Williams in how the actors must speak with a certain stylization otherwise it all falls flat and Cody in how, whether you like it or not, you wouldn't mistake the writing for anyone else. While this makes the screenplay more intriguing, it's also where most of the film's problems lay. First of all, Heathers has such a strange stylization, it takes a good twenty minutes to get into the rhythm of how the film will flow. While I suppose it would be easier to understand on a second go-around, I must confess it threw me for such a loop I had a hard time getting into it. Secondly, the dialogue is so on-the-nose, stars Winona Ryder and Christian Slater fall flat about a quarter of the time. There's no way I would ever classify them as bad by any stretch of the imagination, and they both have ace moments that prove their worth, but I was a tad disappointed by them. Again, I wager a second viewing of the film is in order for it all to click, but I found the few loose ends far too distracting to overlook in favor of Heathers' strong points. B+

Crazy 80's Project: The Times of Harvey Milk

Back in the 1970's, we had people like Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the U.S., fighting the good fight for the rights of gay people in this country. Today, 35 years after his tragic assassination, we have Lady Gaga, a pop singer whose fans like to pretend that she's doing far more to advance gay rights than she actually is (or has the capability to do). A bit of a comedown, don't you think? The Times of Harvey Milk is a document of Milk's years as an influential San Francisco politician, culminating in his election to the city council in 1977. He was a politician who cared about his community, a claim many politicians have made but few have actually backed up. Where I think this film is most successful is in describing that not only was he was a fighter but he also had the brains to navigate the tricky world of politics. During his all too brief tenure on the city council, Milk took it upon himself to try and defeat Proposition 6, a proposed California law that would ban openly homosexual teachers from teaching in public schools. There is this great footage of Milk and a speech professor associate of his on some TV show debating the issue with the bill's right-wing writer. When the writer tries to argue that the law protects children from pedophiles, Milk intelligently tears his argument down, citing facts and statistics the other guy has no logical way of refuting. He's loud and aggressive but never resorts to name-calling or some other cheap tactic to win the argument. These are admirable traits that many other politicians could take a lesson from. My only complaint with the film is that it all but refuses to discuss Milk's personal life; if you thought Van Sant's Milk sanctified him to no end, Times damn well turns him into Jesus. But the reason for this, I feel, is far greater than any criticism I could hurl at it. Times isn't interested in talking about the "real" Milk. They're trying to make him a political, a savior to a disaffected and alienated segment of the population, the Martin Luther King, Jr. for the gay community. Then and now, the community needed Harvey Milk as a hero. And there's no way in hell I won't endorse that with every fiber of my being. The Film: A-, Harvey Milk himself: A+

Crazy 80's Project: Aliens

I'm surprised that more people haven't drawn parallels between Aliens and director James Cameron's most recent blockbuster Avatar. Besides obvious borrowed set pieces (the robotic machine both Ripley and the mad general in Avatar use for very different reasons), the two films share a common theme, albeit one that is filtered through different eras and ideologies. Avatar is a product of the Obama Era. Worthington and Weaver encounter aliens and learn to get along with them so they can co-exist as one while corporate blowhards are trying to exploit the aliens and their environment's resources for profit. Aliens, on the other hand, is a byproduct of the Reagan/Bush Sr. Era. Find yourself encountered by a strange race? Obliterate them. But, oh, don't forget to try to exploit the aliens for profit (I guess some things never change). Whatever you think of those ideologies, Aliens is still a kick-ass film. It's one of the few action films I can think of that has the ability to scare you shitless without becoming a full-blown horror film. Aliens also has a great sense of environment, namely the ability to draw you into its abandoned space station so that you feel like you're with Ripley and the gang every (terrifying) step of the way. Michael Biehn is surprisingly sexy, while Glamazon Sigourney Weaver steals the whole damn movie as Lt. Badass Ripley. She's quite possibly the smartest and ballsiest female action hero the genre has ever seen and puts many of our lame "action" heroes today to shame. If only Ryan Reynolds was half the man Signourey Weaver is in Aliens. A-

Crazy 80's Project: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Steven Spielberg's filmography can more or less be siphoned off into one of three types of films: intense, emotional historical drama, sugary-sweet schmaltz and eager-to-please blockbuster. The first type gave us Schindler's List and The Color Purple, so I can't complain too much. The second gave us E.T. and...yeah, enough said about that shitty film. The third has the most variance as Jaws and Jurassic Park are lumped in with War of the Worlds and Minority Report. Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first entry in his Indiana Jones series, thankfully avoids landing in the schmaltz category. Unfortunately, it's neither as thrilling or jubilant as the best of Spielberg's blockbusters. For the most part, Raiders of the Lost Ark just kinda sits there like a dried-out lump of clay, moving from Point A to Point B with great efficiency but little passion. There's nothing outlandishly bad about the film; I just can't find anything to get excited about in the exotic locals, nice, if a bit too on-the-nose action sequences, cartoonish bad guys and hilariously awkward attempts at making Karen Allen's character a woman who can defend herself. Raiders may be supreme popcorn entertainment for some, but I'll stick with Jaws, thank you very much. C+

Crazy 80's Project: Hollywood Shuffle

My Crazy 80's Project (click the link for more details) gets started with a film that wasn't on my original list. It wasn't until StinkyLulu mentioned Hollywood Shuffle, a film I had seen clips from years ago on some "race in film" documentary but had forgotten about since, that I realized I had to make room for it. The film, through various comedic sketches, discusses the state of roles for black actors in Hollywood and the effect of seeing all black men portrayed as jive-talking, hustling fools has on the race. Star, director and co-writer Robert Townsend makes some wonderful observations (most of which, sadly, have not changed much since 1987) and skewers them head-on, most notably in the "Black Acting School" sketch: a commercial for a fake school which teaches African Americans how to act more "black" for the movies. Students are taught how to jive talk and walk like a black--by white people, of course. While Townsend and company make some great points, it often feels like the material could have been pushed in far more uncomfortable ways. The sketches are good on their own, but with a runtime of only 75 minutes, the film's structure is flimsy at best, never really in the moment unless in a sketch. This isn't necessarily a criticism, as great commentary can come from sketch comedy, but Hollywood Shuffle is merely Saturday Night Live next to the off-the-wall examination of racial stereotypes in Hollywood Bamboozled's Network. B

The Crazy 80's Project

While watching Repo Man about a week ago, an odd, intriguing sci-fi film from Sid & Nancy director Alex Cox, I had a thought I often have when I think about cinema of the 80's: I have not seen enough from it. I'm sure I've talked about this before, but ever since I fell in love with the cinema, I have been a strict devotée of TCM. I have seen many, many, many wonderful films on that channel, so I would never say anything negative about the channel. However, the word "classic" is in the title and that means they show very little from the 80's (outside of their annual 31 Days of Oscar marathon). People are surprised when I, the huge film geek that I am, haven't seen such-and-such big, widely known film from the 80's.

I've thought about this "problem" before, but this is the first time I decided to do something about it. I came up with a list of five films from each year of the 80's I'm determined to see. In an attempt to keep this interesting, I tried to come up with a mix of box office hits, popular arthouse films and cult films from a variety of different genres (even from genres I'm not normally interested in). What I tried to stay away from was the major Oscar films of the decade; most of what I have seen from the decade have been the Oscar nominees in the major categories. When I did pick an Oscar nominee, it was either an atypical, genre film (Raiders, Aliens) or something I have been curious about for years (Last Temptation).

So, what should you, as a reader, expect from this big project of mine? I'd like to say I'll review each of these films, but I realize that is a farfetched goal. Hopefully I can manage at least a paragraph about each of them, when I do get around to seeing them. I don't have a set date to finishing this project because we all know that I'd never make it. I plan on taking my time and enjoying some of the high points of the decade.

Without further ado, here is the list. What do you all think? Are there any must-see films I'm missing? 

1980

The Shining Eerie, unsettling sense of environment lends much more grit to this horror film. A-

Cruising

Xanadu

Friday the 13th

Fame The precursor to nearly every great high school film made afterwards. B+

1981

Raiders of the Lost Ark Efficient filmmaking, everything lacks true passion. Sexism a joke. C+

Diva A film full of missed opportunities: bulky narrative when it should be as sleek as possible, dull lead characters, including a toned down, in-control diva (what?!). D+

Man of Iron

Raggedy Man

Excalibur

1982

Veronika Voss

First Blood

Fitzcarraldo All the elements of an epic never once come together to feel like an epic. Great set pieces, though. B-

Making Love Dated gay melodrama that has neither many highs or lows. Mostly ho-hum but a few moments in the lives of these "ordinary people" ring true. C+

One From the Heart

1983

Scarface

Ballad of Narayama

Risky Business

WarGames Not as silly as expected. No real sense of terror here but it is a sleek, engaging thriller. B-

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

1984

Beverly Hills Cop

Splash

The Times of Harvey Milk A lively and engaging portrait of a man who could honestly be called a visionary hero. A-

Once Upon a Time in America

Ghostbusters

1985

Shoah

Clue One of the finest comedic ensembles ever assembled. Raise what should have been lame cash-in on "brand" into a genuinely hilarious film. B+

Back to the Future
Brazil

The Official Story

1986

Top Gun

Aliens Brilliant sense of environment. True edge-of-your-seat excitement. Weaver is a motherfucking badass. A-

The Fly

The Sacrifice
Labyrinth

1987

The Last of England

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story

Babette's Feast

Hollywood Shuffle Striking observations about race in Hollywood. Couldn't it have pushed a little harder? B

Withnail & I Comedic British Miserablism. Certainly has its merits but not for me. B-

1988

The Last Temptation of Christ

Hairspray Every bit as joyous as its musical adaptation with the added benefit of Waters' sly racial commentary and the glorious Divine. B+

Colors

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Grave of the Fireflies Haunting, paralyzing, tense, melodramatic, but never soft or overly sentimental. An exemplary look at the cost of war. *Breaks down in tears again* A

1989

When Harry Met Sally... The reinvention of the romantic comedy. Ryan & Crystal are the perfect romcom couple. Who'd have guessed? A-

Heathers Brings style and substance to high school comedy subgenre. Has a very unique voice that is sometimes completely stumbled over by actors. B+

Jésus de Montréal

Batman

Sweetie