MOFO 80's Teen Movie Hall of Fame

I’ll finish this towards the end of this month.

Say Anything was Cameron Crowe's directorial debut and with some obvious help from producer James L Brooks he nailed it. Say Anything is the story of underacheiving kick boxer Lloyd who pursues valedictorian Diane in the summer before she goes off to college in UK. The third piece of the puzzle is Diane's father played wonderfully by John Mahoney.


The film does a great job of subverting your expectations with the characters. Jim is an overbearing father but he's also sweet and supporting. The story of the popular kid and the nerd are somewhat reversed from the typical gender norms. Crowe also has a lot of fun with a series of cutaways as we get glimpses into a fully formed world.

I approve of these screenshots.

Also: Teen Wolf > All other werewolf movies.

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I'm taking my time with this because it seems like a number of people are going to drop out....


If you want to start making cuts to the master list then fine but a month is a little soon for me.

I'm still in, just been busy with end-of-year contracts. I should be able to finish by end of DEC or mid JAN.

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"My Dionne Warwick understanding of your dream indicates that you are ambivalent on how you want life to eventually screw you." - Joel

"Ever try to forcibly pin down a house cat? It's not easy." - Captain Steel

"I just can't get pass sticking a finger up a dog's butt." - John Dumbear

Just watched my last film for the 17th HoF so I'll be dedicating more time to this and the Second Chance.
I think January 15 is a possibility for me if I push a little harder in watching these. I've got 8 left to watch and review.
We can always configure after the holidays and see where we all are and make a definitive date for mid January or a little later.

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What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio

Stand By Me is a Stephen King short story adapted into a feature length film. I'm a little curious to read the story and wonder how much of the plot was padded out or cut because upon my second rewatch I noticed how quick the story moved along.

My initial feelings of the film is that three of the four boys are well flushed out and Vern(Jerry O'Connell) is a bit underwritten. What's interesting about the film for me was all the side stories and character development I forgot about. I think in a lot of ways this was a story about story telling and an attempt to flush out the adolescence thoughts of King.

With lesser actors the film might have seemed either pretentious or saccharin but the film walks that fine line. The boys feel authentic and most of the emotional moments hit the mark..most of them. The film isn't perfect I would have liked to see Sutherland do something to make him menacing and not just a standard bully. But my issues with the film are really just quibbles from seeing the film and the clips so many times over the years.

I finished watching all the movies, (except the optional movies). I just have to find some time to post my write-ups. Hopefully I'll find some extra time once the holidays arrive.

I'm waiting to send in my list until I post my write-ups, but if you need it earlier, just let me know and I can send it in within a day or two.

I didn't know that Stand by Me is based on Kings short story
Idea of "hunting' dead body looks like King though.

Crossroads

The fun thing about this is that, when it came out I was seeing this from the young pup, in search of the blues and the "lost song". And now, I see it through Willy Brown's eyes. Having walked the road, stood at the crossroads, and lived the blues for the good and the bad of it all.
Making a wonderful full circle of internal vision and insight into this film and the underlying story of finding the music by living and experiencing.
Which is what our lead actor discovers. Not realizing, at first, how blessed he is to have a Willy Brown to travel the road with.
Caught up in the mystery of a lost song by Robert Johnson; the blues slide guitarist who allegedly learned to play at the crossroads by selling his soul to the devil. Our Classical trained teen tracks down a surviving friend of Johnson from back then in an attempt to find that song and become famous aka his ticket into the Blues.

The soundtrack to this is truly exceptional for me, being a big fan of the blues and seeing it all through Willy's eyes was a far more pleasure than I remember when this came out and all I could see was the narrowed sight of Lightning boy, back then.
A good blues film with some great guitar work culminating in the popular Webster and the Devil face off of guitar players with eternal souls on the line.

A very cool addition to this HoF and quite the pleasant revisit for myself.

Better off Dead, one of the problems with this Hall of Fame is the more of these you watch the more the routine and cliches come out. The good news is Better off Dead attempts at making a straight up farcical comedy of the 80's teen film.


It's a little difficult to go through the plot because the film is all over the place but basically the lead actor gets his heart broken by his girl friend when she dumps him for the blonde douchy skier guy. You also have a subplot about a foreign exchange student who is brought in to basically fall for a weird guy that just wants to knit.


It's a silly film that constantly goes on these strange tangent's some of which are slightly funny other of which did nothing for me. The whole idea is to make everyone in the film weird which is fine but I would have preferred a slightly more grounded approach. I think if the film had a bit of restraint it would have been funnier because the elements for humor were there it just didn't really age well to me.

I completely forgot about this!

Will work on this as much as possible over the coming weeks.

Edit: I also think Jan 13th is too early for me though.

So I just re-watched Better Off Dead. I will roll out a full review for this soon as I currently have quite the headache.

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Once Bitten

I had completely forgotten that Cleavon Little was camping it up in this one as Lauren Hutton's assistant

Which was pretty cool though I kept flashing back to Blazing Saddles every time he was on screen. Though, to be fair, I was doing the same with Hutton and Zorro, The Gay Blade.
The real HUGE surprise cameo came with Megan Mullally from the TV sitcom Will & Grace

Which I had no idea when watching this and simply pondered the subtle sarcastic outrageousness of the ticket girl.

I think, for myself, the rough bit was just how much cheesy Eighties generic muzak gets pumped into this lil teen comedy of sexually regressed virgins looking for excitement and running away it shows up. Otherwise, it was a fun lil romp back to when Carey was still trying to get himself noticed by Hollywood.
With two, even more oddball buddies, little virgin not wannabe, Carey, standing, frustrated, outside his ice cream truck with everyone in every single car, nearby, is a-banging away. He agrees to join them in Hollywood to get laid.
And what he gets is the vampire Lauren Hutton looking for a three-time dose of virgin blood.
Cue zany antics.

A very definitive film for this HoF.

Once Bitten, well this didn't age well. Once Bitten is an 80's sex comedy which attempts to slip in Vampire lore into the tired genre. Jim Carrey plays an 18 <cough> year old trying to lose his virginity to his 18 <cough> year old girlfriend Karen Kopins. After getting tired of preasuring her into sex he then decides to travel into Los Angeles to find an easy older lady. He comes across Lauren Hutton who is a 400 year old Vampire (Lauren Hutton) who needs to feed on Virgin blood three times before Halloween.


The humor is fairly weak (I think they repeat jokes several times) but the world building is interesting. Unfortunately the writer doesn't really know where to go with the plot after a certain point in the film. The third act feels rushed and unsatisfying. I wonder if the story would have been better if they would have split the screen time with Robin, Mark, and Countess flushing Robin and Countess out a bit more. Or conversely had The Countess kill and eat Carrey's two goofball friends to give it more of a horror feel.

My Bodyguard is an A/B story about a fifteen year old who lives in a swanky hotel and then has to go to school in a crappy New York public school. The film manages to do a number of things well that most of the other teen films missed out on. To start off with the film has a score not a soundtrack the lack of pop music running through the story gives it and aged quality. The film also uses multiple settings this is a fully formed world while other films would just focus on the High School and the Hotel you get street action so the story feels bigger. Finally the director did an excellent job with the casting, Martin Mull, Matt Dillon, and Ruth Gordon are great in supporting parts, not only that but the actors are age appropriate, Adam Baldwin was 18 when they made this film (Dillon and the lead were both 16). So the film actually plays into the high school hierarchy.


So I've got 4 films left which I won't touch till we get a final date.


Akira (my film that I'm saving for the end)
Three O'Clock High @Joel 0 films reviewed
Lucas @smudge 1 film review
Crossroads @ynwtf 0 films reviewed

Earlier today I sent MovieGal an updated list of the movie's watched.

This is the tally:
Citizen Rules 12/12 Done
MovieGal 12/12 Done
Siddon 8/12
Edarsenal 6/12
GBG 4/12 Has watched them all

Rhys 3/12
Usual Suspect 3/12
Velvet 2/12
Smudge 1/12
Sedai 0/12
Joel 0/12
Ynwtf 0/12

I don't expect Joel, Sedai, Smudge, Velvet, Ynwtf to finish...Rhys is iffy too.

THANKS CR! I actually tried doing a list with links to reviews a short time ago and it didn't work right, so I was going to try again and looks like you already took care of it --- VERY cool!!

So, holding off on three of those nominations will leave me three to finish up on: Grease 2, My Bodyguard, and Teen Wolf

This is the tally:
Citizen Rules 12/12 Done (Grease 2)
MovieGal 12/12 Done (Once Bitten)
Siddon 8/12 (Akira)
Edarsenal 6/12 (Better off Dead)
GBG 4/12 Has watched them all (My Bodyguard)

Rhys 3/12 (Say Anything)
Usual Suspect 3/12 (Teen Wolf)
Velvet 2/12 (Can't Buy Me Love)
Smudge 1/12 (Lucas)
Sedai 0/12 (Stand by Me)
Joel 0/12 (Three O'Clock High)
Ynwtf 0/12(Crossroads)

Just helping my pal MovieGal out