Category Archives: Coming of Age

Summer School (1987)

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I never went to summer school, and I genuinely enjoyed taking standardized tests. But I still feel an instant kinship for these kids and their world.

I was a high school student decades later, and I’ve only taught in a classroom on a very limited basis. And yet, these experiences made me recognize one of the continual ironies of public education.

Sometimes it feels like the place where learning goes to die, and if not learning, then at least curiosity and passion. Oftentimes, organized education takes all the fun out of learning, assigning letters and tests to each of us and thereby effectively replacing our genuine desire to know more with extrinsic, even mercenary motivation.

If you’re like me, someone genuinely impatient with wasted time, public school is one of the worst time sucks known to man. If you factor in the substitute teachers, passing periods, and busy work, there are very few equals. It’s no wonder kids get bored, and that’s not even factoring in other distractions or genuine learning disabilities. It’s a wonder anyone learns anything at all, and this is a testament to inspiring teachers (and a certain amount of self-dedication).

I initially had to do a double-take because I thought Rob Reiner was the director until I realized it was his father, Carl Reiner (who also has a delightful opening cameo). The movie’s screenplay was written by Jeff Franklin, who created Full House very soon after.

Although there are pretty exchange students, bikini gags, and a few throwaway moments that are regrettably 80s, for the most part, the fact that Summer School feels quintessentially of its time is the highest compliment, given the world and rank-and-file of Ocean Front High School.

The school itself feels instantly placeable from its sun-soaked vibes to the student body’s total devotion to summer and the sweet freedom it represents to every teenager since the dawn of time. 

It might be a testament to what my cinematic diet has been of late, mostly dour and serious “cinema,” but sometimes you want something diverting like this; it delivers on its promise and doesn’t try to overshoot its ambitions as a teen comedy. And yet in delivering the goods, it does what many of its peers can’t always manage. It bends toward heart over crassness, making for a satisfying confection.

Mark Harmon is also such a charismatic lead. As a former UCLA football star, he falls easily into the role of a So-Cal P.E. teacher who has more use for waves to surf than a classroom. The premise works because there’s a sense that he used to be like some of his students. He’s more of a friend than a figure of authority. The latter role is taken on by the cartoonish ’80s villain par excellence, Vice Principal Gills.

Kirstie Alley is slotted in as the teacher overseeing the honors course next door. She watches Shoop with mild interest and then bemusement as she goes for the more intellectual romantic option in the vice principal, but we know who she’s meant to be with. Our hero does too. It’s only a matter of time.

In this way, perhaps it is a fantasy, fulfilling genre conventions, and yet as he’s stuck teaching an English course in Summer School to a room full of failures and misfits, there is a joyous, genuinely hilarious camaraderie that forms. It allows the movie to become something worthwhile above the level of typical drivel. 

I’m completely sympathetic to their desire to break out of the monotony and drudgery of the classroom. At first, they take “field trips” to Knott’s Berry Farm bumper cars and petting zoos, although these plans are eventually curtailed, and they have to either get it together or throw in the towel for good.

Sure, there are complications. Mr. Shoop looks about ready to give up multiple times, even as his cordial advances toward Ms. Bishop are politely rebuffed. The movie develops a nice cadence not through the usual antagonism of a Breakfast Club, but a pact between teens and adults to get to the finish line together.

Their contract of sorts involves “wishes” from all of them, and Mr. Shoop agrees to help them along if it means they will at least try to study and not goof off. However, it becomes more than bargaining because they see a teacher who goes above and beyond, and they begin to form a community where they look out for one another and cheer for each other’s victories.

“Chainsaw” and Dave are two of the worst goof-offs and loafers, but in their deep, abiding love for Chainsaw Massacre and gore in general, we see a passion and expertise in costuming and makeup that’s extraordinary even as it does not fit into the neatly created parameters of vocab tests and SAT scores.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized more and more of the flaws in education. And I loved school, but for some people, they have gifts and talents that will not be showcased in the classroom unless they are given the space to explore what truly interests them. These are the spaces where they can flourish.

This might seem too high-minded for a goofy comedy like this, but I think that’s part of why I was so taken with Summer School. These characters feel inherently decent, and we want to cheer for them as they bond.

There’s a teen pregnancy played for a laugh, and yet the girl has the baby — it’s never a question — even as she decides to give the child up for adoption since she doesn’t feel prepared. Another teen is smitten with her teacher, and it feels like a queasy scenario, yet she’s mature and realizes it is only a phase. Others have their own growth, whether it’s getting a driver’s license or improving their study habits.

What’s more, the message is not perfection or even the pipe dream that now everyone gets straight As and will go off to Harvard thanks to their teacher. The dream is of a different nature. All these kids and their parents gather in the principal’s office as the vice principal accuses Mr. Shoop, like Satan in a suit and tie.

Because the story it’s telling is not about doing all of this so you’ll get into a school of your dreams or get your heart’s content (though there is some wish fulfillment). Instead, it’s saying something more about what it means to truly invest in a community and pour into other people. Sometimes we think it will take everything out of us; we must simply look after our own interests. Except Mr. Shoop gives of himself, and everything else is added to him.

And sure, in his case, he gets a From Here to Eternity embrace with Kirstie Alley in the surf and doggy kisses to boot. But it just goes to show Summer School never forgets its identity while also never totally dumbing itself down to the least common denominator.

I feel like many people might be pleasantly surprised by what this movie has to offer, especially if they’re craving a trip back to the ’80s in all their glory. I never lived through the decade, but with a teacher like Mr. Shoop, I wish I had at least momentarily. Although that probably goes for any era, because teachers are such formative people in our adolescent lives.

3.5/5 Stars

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

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Some Kind of Wonderful announces itself in all its ’80s glory with a montage of drums, synths, working-class grease monkeys tinkering on cars, and a pair of teens making out. There’s no doubt it’s a John Hughes movie, and though Howard Deutch was called back after Pretty in Pink to helm this one, the script has many of the same tenets of the earlier picture, albeit gender-flipped.

Keith (Eric Stolz) is a teen from the poor side of town, and if he weren’t so reticent, the way he watches Amanda Jones (Lea Thompson) and her boyfriend from a wistful distance would be creepy. Actually, it is creepy, but we’re supposed to empathize with him.

The other parts of his life are more relatable. He’s the eldest of three siblings. There’s the young brainiac, the annoying middle child, and he’s the moody older brother. His father keeps on hassling him about the college question; it’s well-meaning because his dad doesn’t want him to wind up selling tires like his old man.

Although he doesn’t have many friends, Keith’s closest companion is drumming tomboy Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson), who eschews high school convention, wearing her hair in a bleached pixie cut. Hughes is also having a gleeful time with the Rolling Stones in-jokes.

All around them, the halls are spilling over with eightiness — the hair, the clothes, and the prototypical tough guy scuzzballs. Every school needs at least one. This one (Elias Koteas) looks like a buff Danny DeVito in his Cuckoo’s Nest era.

We soon learn he’s not half bad. It’s the prima donna preps with their coiffed hair, smooth talk, and pretentious narcissism who are really the dregs. What makes it worse is that people like Hardy (Craig Sheffer) have all the toys and the girls — namely, Amanda Jones. Keith will always be subservient to these jerks in the social hierarchy, left to fill up their gas tanks.

And yet his daydreams about Amanda won’t abate. He fantasizes about being with her and uses any excuse just to be close to her. It backfires when he willfully finds himself in detention, although Hughes sidesteps a mini Breakfast Club set-up when she skips out after cajoling her teacher.

Keith is left doing time with the bruisers and weirdos, but it’s a strange camaraderie that builds within their ranks. The trash have to stick together, and it’s a delightful if mostly unforeseen development.

The other crucial relationship is between Keith and Watts because it’s painfully apparent that there is a sexual tension between them. This girl is devoted to him, and yet she allows her feelings to be stepped over as he seeks her advice in pursuing the object of his desire.

They undergo a practice kiss, complete with embrace and all the trimmings, played against Stephen Duffy’s “She Loves Me.” It’s both uncomfortable and a strange portent. We question him for being so asinine. Surely a real person would recognize this is a bit more than friendship. 

If you start poking holes around, you find the problems and some of Hughes usual shortcomings. Keith exists as a fairly blasé male protagonist who represents the writer’s limitations. The female characters feel like they could have been even more intriguing if the story were from their POV.

Watts is all twisted up inside with unrequited feelings and wounded to boot. Amanda is perceived as a preppy person, and yet she’s dealing with an unfaithful boyfriend and petty friends. And it can’t come down to Stoltz because if he was ditched from Back to The Future, he also gave a stellar performance as Rocky in Mask.

But for a film of his that’s very rarely talked about, Some Kind of Wonderful might be my underrated pick of the lot. It has to do with specific moments. The whole trajectory of the movie is building to a party at Hardy’s place.

Keith knows full well that it’s meant to be a set-up to humiliate him in front of Amanda as payback, but he wants to go anyway. He also spends all his college funds on a lavish gift for this girl. It sounds extravagant and crazy, and yet he does it with a clear-eyed lucidity. Nothing else matters, and this girl feels the weight of it all. She wasn’t able to bring herself to dump him, and now she’s swept up by his candor.

They have an uptight dinner date over caviar at an uber-fancy restaurant, and then he lines up some entertainment after hours at a local museum. It’s closed, but he has some connections and gets a little help on the inside. It’s a bit peculiar and pure Hughes romanticism as the two teens walk through the exhibition rooms in an echo of the tranquility of The Art Institute of Chicago in Ferris Bueller. Keith tells her, “This place is my church.”

I’m not sure what to make of these more ethereal interludes. Although by the time we get to Hardy’s party, we’re ready for a showdown. The most uncomfortable detail is how they refurbish Watts’s ride, and she becomes their chauffeur for the evening. Keith shows his obliviousness by effectively taking two girls out for the evening.

Hardy has his own fall from grace as Hughes goes away from a prototypical roughing-up in favor of something more symbolic. Keith wins the competition because he maintains his reputation and calls the other boy’s bluff. He feels as feeble and phony as all the rest. What’s more, Keith’s detention buddies show up and have his back, staking their flag with the indelible line, “This party is about to become a historical fact!”

The movie’s coasting down the mountain. Keith heads out the door with Amanda on his arm after she gives Hardy a couple of cathartic and well-deserved slaps. However, Keith’s so thick in the head he needs her to tell him that Watts loves him…

It’s a bit frantic as Hughes tries to right the wrong from his earlier picture. The movie’s recognition is the open secret of the whole story, and sure, it’s what we want as an audience, but it feels a bit rushed as Keith chases after the girl who always had feelings for him.

Ask me if it all fits together, and I’d say “No,” and yet as a casual watch, it does seem like Some Kind of Wonderful delivers on the ’80s teen movie experience with a few caveats. It makes me want to go out and watch more Mary Stuart Masterson because this is her movie. She stakes her claim to it through a persona brimming with pathos and charm.

3/5 Stars

Wargames (1983)

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Wargames is a movie for the age of “Star Wars,” and by Star Wars, I’m referring to Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Because, despite detente, these are still the days of the Cold War, mutually assured destruction, and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Warm and fuzzy topics to be sure.

But isn’t this the beauty of movies from the ’80s? They can be packaged in such a way that’s entertaining, somewhat ridiculous, and generally cathartic. Somehow, it seems like there is a greater license for the suspension of disbelief. Wargames could be a certain type of movie that’s easy to place. We’re introduced to a NORAD control center with a brain trust of government employees who keep the country protected alongside gruff cigar-chomping military types.

One of their great assets is technology. Namely, the WOPR, a supercomputer using game theory to calculate all possible outcomes of a WWIII, should we ever come to such a crisis.

However, we also meet David Lightman (Matthew Broderick). He’s seemingly your average Seattle high school student. Unmotivated but intelligent. Broderick plays him as a bit of a likable smart-aleck who also happens to be a video game and technological whizz.

When he’s not in the arcade or goofing off in class, he’s holed up in his bedroom. His love interest is obvious. Peer pressure or crossing social cliques is never an issue in this picture, and they form a relaxed rapport from the outset. Ally Sheedy is your quintessential giggly All-American teenager (Pre-Breakfast Club). She’s lovey-dovey with the family dog and comes jogging past the home in her gym attire to pay a visit.

With a certain boyish bravado to impress a girl, David gets into the school computer and proceeds to change both their failing grades. Jennifer has some amount of personal conscience, but not enough to be a killjoy.  Anyway, these escapades feel relatively mundane given the world we find ourselves in.

To this point, it also sounds like we’re talking about two entirely different movies: one concerned with world affairs and another a lot more juvenile in scale. Where can these worlds collide?  It’s all too obvious.

You can see how it’s a jumping-off point for the troublemaking charisma of Ferris Bueller that seems to come so easily for Broderick. Instead of a day on the town, his prowess winds up helping him unwittingly break into the government’s defense program.

It turns into a rather illuminating exploration of contemporary technology like computers (green text on a black screen),  library index systems, and newspaper microfilm readers, all tools of the trade for those trying to find any form of information, well before the proliferation of Google and the interwebs. For those with shorter lifespans or attention spans, it’s a reminder of where we’ve been before.

Sure enough, he gets into the program thinking he’s playing a game simulation called thermonuclear warfare, and it is a simulation, one that the computer “Joshua” believes to be real. David pretty much triggers a shot heard around the world.

We get establishing shots of the Emerald City, and later, David is being tracked down by FBI agents. Forget about Sleepless and Seattle. I’ll never think about the city the same way again after War Games. It’s crazy, cathartic, compelling — all of these things — blending the current events with all the facets of what we think of the 1980s coming of age genre.

Why do they leave him unattended in an office with a computer? You could name any number of other reservations with the plot, but then this is a movie with a whole premise based on a teenager who disrupts the United States government’s defense mechanisms. Any of these passing captious nitpicks misses the entire point.

In the era celebrating heroes like MacGyver, there’s something to be said for independent know-how when Google couldn’t answer all your questions, and it’s possible to use your superior intellect to solve seemingly life-or-death situations.

It’s hardly a narrative criticism when they meet an eccentric genius (John Wood) living in obscurity with a clouded past and an infatuation for dinosaurs. He’s living on a remote island under a presumed name. He’s become jaded by the world, and for whatever reason, he believes extinction is just a part of the natural order of things. Add it to all of the film’s other nerdy stereotypes.

Likewise, a game of tic-tac-toe was never so important. Every clock imaginable is counting down. They’re on the hotline with the president, jets are preparing to meet the enemy, and they have open lines of communication with bases all across the continent. And then the game is up, and all the screens burst into fireworks. What do they tell us? “Joshua” has concluded rather succinctly: No one wins in nuclear war. The message couldn’t be any clearer.

So David gets the girl and saves the world from imminent destruction. It sounds like the synopsis to a really bad movie. Believe it or not, I found Wargames rather refreshing. It isn’t imbued with a great deal of social significance, nor does it take itself too seriously, but it has a dose of ’80s-era charm, of Spielberg or Hughes, giving it a sense of good fun and developing an experience we can enjoy and be a part of. There’s also a message.

I’m usually quite hard on the ’80s from a film perspective, but the decade certainly has its share of perks. You only miss something like Wargames when you don’t see it being made anymore. It seems right to say it. They don’t make movies like they used to.

4/5 Stars

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

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Back to the Future is a film I have deep reservoirs of affection for, and I know it’s far from a landmark statement — I’m hardly in the minority. However, I will say that as I began to watch Peggy Sue Got Married, I slowly became attuned to its world and the unfolding premise. There seemed to be some very basic similarities.

Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) attends her 25th high school reunion with her daughter (Helen Hunt), reconnecting with old friends even as she rues her relationship with her husband and high school sweetheart (Nicolas Cage). She’s christened the evening’s queen of the class and faints from the excitement. As she drifts away, she wakes up, and it’s 1960 again. No DeLorean or Libyan terrorist necessary. She opens her eyes, and she’s there.

Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner’s screenplay utilizes some of the same time-tested tropes from Back to the Future, like uncanny knowledge that feels sentient to those living in the past, even as it’s common knowledge to those in the future, be it the Moon landing or pantyhose (or Calvin Klein for that matter). These breed rampant cultural miscommunications — the kind you get in these fish-out-of-water stories — engendered by messing with time. Peggy even bemoans the fact that she’s a walking anachronism.

The beauty of the picture is how it becomes something else entirely as it gets beyond these cursory elements to bring us something different — a far more pensive meditation. It’s not bombastic with Zemeckis’s flair for Sci-Fi or Christopher Lloyd’s out-of-this-world performance as Doc Brown. There aren’t the same ticking clocks or steadily increasing stakes that Marty must race against to save his parents (and his entire family’s existence). It’s not about that.

Kathleen Turner’s Peggy also has a poise and foresight Marty McFly was never supposed to have. Yes, they both go from the future into the past, but what a difference their life of experience makes.

Even the mechanisms of the time travel itself feel less important and mostly immaterial. We get beyond them quite quickly to focus on something more. Peggy marvels at seeing her parents as they used to be, as she remembers them when she was younger, and cherishes reconnecting with her baby sister (Sofia Coppola) as time has yet to sour their relationship.

At school, her whole outlook is different, too. Yes, she’s not prepared to redo her academics in the classroom, but her values are more intrinsic, and her social outlook is much more sincere. She’s cast off the insecurity we all have at that age to see the landscape with much greater lucidity.

She befriends the outcasts (one’s a nerd and a future billionaire); it’s not because she wants to capitalize on his future success, but because she knows he will believe her crazy reality. The other is a free spirit who scoffs at the literature they’re inculcated with in textbooks, instead nourishing himself on the self-expression of Jack Kerouac. It’s creative fodder for his own poetry as he seems to embody the dreams she never managed to pursue.

Also, she fosters an alternate relationship with her high school sweetheart: the man she married out of high school and ultimately divorced. She recognizes and even appreciates new contours to his character she was never prepared to notice before, just as she comes to forgive his flaws.

The casting as a whole might feel tighter than Back to the Future (which even famously included Michael J. Fox as an eleventh-hour replacement). There are so many faces who show up and give the right essence to the roles, whether it’s a young Jim Carrey, a very young Sofia Coppola, or Barbara Harris and Don Murray.

I will say, I’m not sure if Nic Cage’s characterization is to the benefit of the movie. His voice, his whining, almost petulant nature. He’s aged with makeup to near-comic proportions. And even this and his connection to the director (Coppola is his uncle) lend themselves to a kind of rapport. Because what is he supposed to be if not a mixed-up, angsty, regretful high schooler? Somehow, even this has less of the winking humor of Back to the Future. Miscast or not, it has an alternate level of sincerity.

And of course, there’s the instance when Peggy meets her grandparents. Leon Ames and Maureen O’Sullivan are impeccable. It’s such a pleasure to watch them because, being an Old Hollywood aficionado, they’ve been offered to me in so many films of yore. But the very rhythm of Peggy Sue visiting her grandparents is such a meaningful and cathartic one. It’s as if she’s somehow reclaiming these moments she always wished to have back, even as she willfully shares her out-of-body experience and gains a rapt and receptive audience in her elders.

In their eyes, she’s not crazy. It’s as if any skepticism has evaporated with time, and all that’s left over is a heavy dose of wonder and congeniality. True, I was a bit weirded out by her grandpa’s lodge, even as Bruce Dern’s secret society in Smile unnerved me. Here, it still manages to fit into the time travel narrative even as it lacks the level of import of Hill Valley’s clock tower. Again, that’s hardly the point.

When Peggy returns to her present, back to her daughter, her estranged husband, and everything else, whether through dreams or some other uncanny supernatural force, she has changed. This is what matters. It’s not butterfly effects or space-time continuums or quantum mechanics or anything like that. I can hardly speak to any of these. The movie speaks to what is universal: It’s the gift of getting to redirect your life, saying “I love you” to those you wish you had more time with, and reclaiming the mistakes gnawing at you. It feels like the most serendipitous type of science fiction.

When you have the likes of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, or even The Conversation to your name, Peggy Sue Got Married is never going to enter into the conversation of Coppola’s best films. It’s mostly subdued and full of the joy and jubilation of a different time. But Coppola actually examines some fairly profound themes.

What’s more, although Kathleen Turner is mostly pigeonholed as a siren or a beauty, she’s quite good in a role that’s not flashy, and yet allows her to offer up a performance with subtle aplomb. It’s easy for these types of period movies (or movies from the ’80s in general) to feel like pastiche — mostly inane and made thoroughly for consumption. Even Back to the Future is ’80s Hollywood at its very best.

Here it feels like great care is being taken, and there’s a level of reflection and maturity that’s hard to discount. It’s saying something when we follow this woman through time and space, and we pretty much leave that device behind. What’s not lost is her emotional journey.

4/5 Stars

Licorice Pizza (2021)

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It’s apparent Paul Thomas Anderson lovingly pinches his opening shot from American Graffiti as his boyish hero Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman in his debut) primps in front of a bathroom mirror, a toilet all but exploding behind him. The whole movie is born out of a chance meeting at a school picture day, but it would come to nothing if Alana Kane (Alana Haim also in her debut) does not take him up on the proposition to meet at a local watering hole. Why does she do it? She’s 25, at least. He’s 15.

It seems suspect, and the film never tries to explain. It feels like a bit of nostalgic, rose-colored wish fulfillment, and yet we come to understand Alana doesn’t know what she’s doing with her life. Perhaps it’s Gary’s charisma that draws her in. He’s got a lot of nerve, but he also knows how to hustle and people gravitate toward him. She acts as his chaperone on a press junket back east for one of his adolescent TV credits.

They get into the water bed business, and there are the expected hijinks involving deliveries; Gary even gets arrested momentarily. It’s the 1970s. Gasoline shortages have been hitting everyone hard. Although Anderson draws early comparisons to Graffiti, his film lacks the same fated structure. Graffiti is roving and far-ranging, yes, and yet it’s focused on one night in one town. Once it’s over, we know each of our characters will have changed in very specific ways. The moment is gone forever.  

Licorice Pizza looks deceptively disorganized and free-flowing. It continually combs in these vignettes bringing in other personalities like Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, and Benny Safdie. Here it’s no longer solely about our leading “couple” and comfortably pushes their relationship to the periphery to play out against this wacky, narcissistic, and sometimes tragic world around them. It’s a world that Anderson waxes nostalgic about because it effectively resurrects the periphery of his childhood and old Hollywood haunts. 

As time passes, it feels more and more like a Hal Ashby flick – a filmmaker who remains emblematic of the seventies – whether the politics, the music, or even for providing a precursor to our somewhat cringe-worthy leading couple. There’s also the hint of political intrigue along with the menace of Taxi Driver that suggests the paranoia of the contemporary moment.

Still, what prevails is the mimetic tableau and the warmer tones. Anderson’s film is also bathed in the glorious golden hues of the bygone decade. As Licorice Pizza progresses (or digresses), at times I felt like it had lost me. Where was our denouement and where was this serpentine trail leading us beyond its impressive display of period dressings?

Even Quentin Tarrantino’s somewhat analogous Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… has an inevitable ending that we know is coming like Graffiti before it. In Anderson’s film we do get something…eventually. It involves a lot of running, pinball machines, and our two leads reunited again.

Given the turns by Haim and Hoffman, it’s a testament to what they’re able to accomplish together that we do feel like we have some form of resolution. Boy oh boy, is this a casual movie and that’s generally a compliment. Thankfully our two leads are full of so much winsome charm and good-natured antagonism to make it mostly enjoyable.

The movie relies heavily on a killer soundtrack, and the era-appropriate humor feels uncomfortable at best. I like John Michael Higgins as much as the next guy. However, even if his oafish Japanese restaurateur with his revolving door of Japanese wives is based on a real entrepreneur in the valley, it doesn’t mean the casual racism doesn’t still feel queasy.

Especially when you can’t discern if the audience is laughing at him or with him. Because the implicit punchline could easily be misconstrued to be that Japanese culture feels foreign and weird without appreciating the cultural subtext of these scenes. 

Still, there are ample moments to appreciate the film and cheer for Gary and Alana. We need their charisma and they more than come through. I will say that Blood, Sweat, and Tears’ “Lisa, Listen To Me” might be my favorite deep cut of the year. It’s so good, in fact, that Anderson uses it twice. 

4/5 Stars

Note: This review was originally from 2022

His Motorbike, Her Island (1986) and The Rocking Horsemen (1992)

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His Motorbike, Her Island (1986)

There’s an immediate aesthetic artifice to His Motorbike, Her Island. Our hero is cool and simultaneously cruel representing a husky-voiced, brusque masculinity that feels no doubt appealing and equally toxic. He recounts his life’s observations through voiceover — the monochrome dreams making up his memories — and as such the movie slaloms easily between black & white and color.

It feels perfectly at home in its moment as part ’80s biker movie full of style. Some of this no doubt comes from director Nobuhiko Obayashi who always seems to have a propensity for commercial pop culture imagery. I would hesitate to call him a technician, and yet since he both edited and directed many of his films, maybe I don’t want to use the label because it sounds too austere.

His films are suffused with a vibrant energy and although the comparison misses the mark, the only reference I could think of was Richard Lester. I’d be interested in hearing who others bring up.

The movie’s premise is quite simple. Koh Hashimoto (Riki Takeuchi) runs errands on his motorcycle part time. His idle hours are taken up with a docile beauty name Fuyumi. He even gets in a duel with the girl’s older brother, who’s worried for her honor. Whether the outcome impacts his view of her or not, Koh, breaks it off. By his estimation, she’s boring (all she knows is crying and cooking).

Koh is looking for the Japanese version of the aloof dream girl, and he finds it in Miiyo. She captivates him with her confident vivacity, taking pictures of him, chatting in the onsen, and ultimately taking up his first love of motorcycles.

Their relationship blossoms when he visits her hometown out in the country during Obon, and we witness how the summer holiday is rooted in both a veneration and a celebration of dead loved ones. Koh’s captivated watching Miiyo dance during the festival proceedings. It’s something about her spirit he finds so attractive.

It also signals the film’s dangerous edges. Because if I wanted to distill His Motorbike, Her Island, down to its essence, we would need to talk about the intoxicating and reckless abandon of youth. It’s mesmerizing when it’s projected up on the screen in all its glory existing without worldly consequence of any kind.

Miiyo follows Koh and becomes infatuated by his singular passion: a 750cc Kawasaki. But it’s not just a supercharged motorcycle, and it’s not so much about an object made of chrome and an engine. It’s the adrenaline hit and emotional high of riding a motorcycle and riding it fast. It’s almost a dare for life to come at you head-on. For them, living life on on the edge like this is an obvious antidote to the malaise.

It’s both what attracts them to one another and threatens their ultimate undoing. Live fast, die young, has a poetic inevitably to it. I feel like I will need to watch the movie again down the road sometime, but there’s a pervasive sense that this motorbike, this island, this young man and this young woman take on a kind of mythic proportion.

Just like I never caught onto a perceptible rhythm of the monochrome and color, what we witness is not always an objective, tangible world. It exists in the hinterlands of memory, love, passion, and emotions just out of reach. The irony is obvious.

Sometimes, to feel alive, people need to get as close to death as possible. I’m not sure if this star-crossed, high-octane hedonism is still en vogue, but it’s easy to understand how it could seem attractive albeit misguided. There’s a hubris to it.

3.5/5 Stars

The Rocking Horseman (1992)

When I lived in Japan, I was flabbergasted to learn that there was a group that was bigger in Japan during the ’60s than the Beatles. It was The Ventures! This instrumental act kicked off the “Eleki Boom” as their iconic onomatopoeic glissandos (deke-deke-deke) captivated a generation of youth. These teenagers subsequently rushed out to buy their electric guitars and start their own bands during the “Group Sounds” explosion.

Although I didn’t think about it at the time, I’m a sucker for a good musical coming-of-age movie, and this landscape was ripe for such a story. Recently, when I came upon The Rocking Horsemen, I realized a void in the cinematic landscape had been filled thanks to Nobuhiko Obayashi

Fujiwara (Yasufumi Hayashi) feels like the most innocent and congenial of Obayashi’s boy heroes, a Ferris Bueller-type who instantly takes us into his confidence by not only providing voiceover but speaking directly to us.

OB’s films are easily placed in this provincial milieu outside the hustle and bustle of the big city. This gives them a kind of comfortable intimacy, and it’s only a small jump to place them in the past. In this case, Japan during the 1960s. I already mentioned that the movie covers a subgenre I have a private preoccupation with: form-a-band origin stories. That includes That Thing You Do! and Sing Street to The Commitments, Nowhere Boy, and School of Rock. What sets this one apart is the unique context and cultural moment.

Now I’ve been inculcated from an early age that the Beatles had the greatest music, but Fujiwara is coming of age with an ear raised to the admonitions of his elders. Pop music is puerile entertainment, cultural dregs compared to the sophistication of classical music. The Beatles included.

Then, his radio played “Pipeline” and he is changed forever. Any kind of snobbery quickly dissipates. The new sound assaults him as he reclines in his bedroom. There’s no escaping its force, and he converted for good, caught up in the same boom I read about. It was electric liberation.

Since a rock musician can’t look like a Buddhist acolyte, the first course of action was to grow out his hair. It occurs to me that one of the reasons I find these movies compelling is it involves some kind of youthful industry. When you’re young you don’t need to be told the odds. If you want to start a band, and that’s you’re impetus, you can go ahead and do it. No permission is necessary (parents notwithstanding).

In this way, Fujiwara meets his future bandmates. The first shares his interest in rock and turns his back on the more traditional setlist the school club follows. The rest of the members include a priest’s son, who’s the band’s source of worldly wisdom, and then a gawky dork who gets coerced into playing the drums for them.

If initially they fall together organically enough, they also premeditate how to best go about their business. In the end, they resolve to get summer jobs at a local manufacturing plant to save up to buy their instruments. These scenes are mostly transitory — only an end to the means — but as “Woolly Bully” plays over their assembly line, there’s a sense of optimism. They’re getting closer to their goal.

Ittoku Kishibe shows up again after Lonely Heart as a good-natured teacher who supplies American lyrics and ultimately offers to become their club advisor. It’s a small addition, but his tacit affirmation of their endeavors speaks volumes.

I’m fascinated by how pop culture can infiltrate and suffuse through the cracks of a society, especially in an international context. I met Japanese folks with very specified knowledge about Korn or Olivia Newton-John, Sam Cooke, Jazz or Punk music. Or think of the two teens in Mystery Train who go on a pilgrimage to Memphis in search of The King. Where does this come from?

While I wouldn’t call the general Japanese populous particularly aware of world culture, you do find these hyperspecialized niches of expertise. These boys glean their inspirations thanks to radio and import records, even older siblings who pass down a love of Nat King Cole.

A perfect example is Jan and Dean’s “Little Old Lady from Pasadena” played as our hero rides his bike through his neighborhood. It’s a totally different context from the California surf culture I was born and bred in. But it still reaches them on the other side of the world. The same might be said of The Animals, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”

It doesn’t feel like a mistake that the first time the new band convenes and brandishes their new name — The Rocking Horsemen — they start playing, and it’s a flawless rendition of “Pipeline” (exactly like the Ventures recording). They make their debut at a show during Christmas with mixed results, but they disregard the critics and play their hearts out. What’s more, they gel and become galvanized as a group. How can you not under the circumstances?

But as school comes to a close, their journey together winds down too. Their first and last big show comes at the annual school cultural festival and with a set list including “I Feel Fine” and “Johnny B. Goode,” they can’t miss. We’ve seen this moment before in many a movie so it’s a kind of expected wish-fulfillment watching them go out.

When you’re an adolescent these are the kind of memories that stay with you. And in a final act of solidarity, Fujiwara now listless and despondent over the future, has his newfound brotherhood to come around him. They christen him their “Bandleader for Life.” So even as their journey as a band might have met its logical conclusion more than an impasse (not many make it like The Beatles), The Rocking Horsemen do have some amount of closure. The music and those relationships will never leave them.

4/5 Stars

Lonely Heart (1985)

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Lonely Heart is a film bathed in the golden hues of nostalgia (“natsukashii” in Japanese). It also boasts a rural landscape with a topography that’s the utter antithesis of Tokyo’s urban skyline. This in itself already evokes a certain quaintness, regardless of the story being told almost 40 years ago.

Hiroki (Toshinori Omi) envisions his world through the shutter of his camera — though he rarely has actual film to use — and so he imagines what he might capture. After school, he can be found scampering through the village streets in his school uniform with his two best friends doing backflips and cracking all manner of jokes. They have a youthful ingenuity that’s clever when it’s not getting them in trouble.

For instance, their use of Bunsen burners, forceps, and various pieces of lab equipment to cook up a delectable meal is inspired. Then, Hiroki’s friends razz him about following his father’s footsteps to be a Buddhist monk — he must give up meat lest he goes to hell for cutting corners on the road to enlightenment — and they’ll gladly eat his portion.

The next moment, they’re ushered off to the principal’s office to clean as a minor punishment. Instead, they teach vulgarities to the principal’s prized parrot and their mothers have the ignominy of coming into school to atone for their indiscretions. Hiroki’s mother is your typical portrait of a Japanese parent, at the very least because she’s always on her son to study more and pick up his grades. Their underlining failure to communicate is a universal adolescent struggle.

But his life stage is also about love, something that still feels naïve and untarnished by regrets and ample experience. He often looks through his camera viewfinder at the mystery girl, “Lonely Heart,” as she plays the piano, rides her bike, and takes the ferry home. If this was all it was, Lonely Heart might be a fairly rudimentary exploration of youth — another boyish awakening where the girl is cast as an object rather than a human being with a unique inner life.

Some of this happens in the movie with the ethereal Yasuko Tomita, but there’s also a parallel tale leaning into these themes in a more profound way. In fact, it takes them a step further. Hiroki receives a visitation from an impish ghost of a girl who materializes on numerous occasions even going so far as berating his mother and toying with her.

This seems like a curious development, but then Japanese culture has a greater tolerance for ghosts. If you’ve seen some of Miyazaki’s movies (arguably Japan’s most beloved cinematic export), you already know there’s a kind of acceptance of these things. They aren’t so much supernatural and if she’s labeled as “weird,” she’s also more or less accepted as fact.  Just as magical realism and surrealism can often permeate Japanese cinema.

This is easier to accept as I often have trouble with Japanese humor because it feels broad (whatever that means). The film is full of juvenile shenanigans and adult caricatures who overwhelm the screen from time to time blindsiding us with absurdity.

However, in juxtaposition, there are these instances of sensitivity playing out in Lonely Heart’s more pensive parts, personifying what Hiroki grapples with all throughout the film. It’s this long-lost love — the deep longing within all of us — resigning us to be these lonely creatures.

In Japanese culture, there’s also something innately beautiful about this sacrificial melancholy for the sake of some greater good or greater call. If I didn’t get my cultural signals crossed, it ties into the essence of “mono no aware” — an impermanence or transience of things. I’m not sure if Japanese culture would speak about love with these same terms, but please allow me to, even if only momentarily.

I’ve gotten to a juncture in my film-viewing life where, if I haven’t quite matured, I’m willing to take things on their own terms. Lonely Heart does not function within our western logic. If you asked me to explain everything away I’d be hard-pressed to say all the whys and wherefores. And yet something about this movie, mixed in with all its various forms and flights of fancies, left me with an indelible sense or feeling that will remain with me.

Somehow it reminded me of the more recent gem Petite Mamman. It has to do with honing in on a magical and poignant connection between parents and children. It developed differently than what I was expecting — the fantasy has a unique kind of functionality — and so by the time the movie’s over it has done work on us.

It’s offered up a quiet epiphany that we might tuck away for later enjoyment. Hopefully, if you get the chance to watch the film you’ll understand exactly what I mean. However, I wouldn’t dream of divulging that here.

3.5/5 Stars

La Bamba (1987)

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I must have learned about Ritchie Valens through Don McLean’s “American Pie.” Because there was a time when I was fascinated by all the musical references that seemed so oblique to my young mind. Eventually, the songwriter’s ode leads you to “The Day The Music Died” and if you know about Buddy Holly, you soon learn about The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens.

The song “La Bamba” feels like a definitive track of a certain rock n roll era, and only now does it become easier to realize what an important cultural milestone it represents. The Mexican language went mainstream blending the rock craze with folk traditions of a people who felt well nigh invisible if no less important in the ’50s.

I do not know much about Luis Valdez, but as an emblematic figure in the Chicano movement of the ’60s and ’70s, he also gave us two of the most noteworthy Chicano movies of the 1980s. He turned his own play into Zoot Suit with Edward James Olmos, a film I was never able to fully connect with, but La Bamba feels like a more straight down-the-line biopic. He effectively brings to life one of the great Chicano heroes of the second half of the 20th century.

Lou Diamond Phillip’s vibrant performance glows with undeniable warmth and vitality. There’s not a disingenuous bone in his body, and he’s able to evoke the joy behind the microphone and the quiet fortitude that comes with his humble migrant background.

This is one of the most moving things about Valdez’s film because even almost 40 years on, these slices of life are still not always prevalent on the big screen. To see them in a period piece seems even more fitting because it’s a way of capturing the cultural moment for us lest we forget.

We see the plight and humble living conditions of migrant workers, there’s instability and broken families, but also the unbreakable bonds of extended families and communities looking out for one another.

La Bamba also has many of the beats of the biopic and since I don’t know the life of Valens intimately, I can only give conjecture on what’s fact and fiction. Part of the story involves his older half-brother (Esai Morales), who exists as the black sheep of the family opposite Ritchie. There’s the blooming of young love with the new girl in class, Donna (Danielle von Zerneck). His family and high school lives run in tandem with his meteoric rise after a record producer, Bob Keane (Joe Pantoliano), agrees to record some of his tracks.

Valens fear of flying, after a midair collision over his school, which killed his childhood friend and left him with recurring nightmares, has the ring of truth stranger than fiction. In keeping with this, the opening interlude of Santo and Johnny’s “Sleepwalk” feels apropos to represent the general mood of the era. What follows is a bit of a dream even as other moments sting with harsh realism.

There are so many narratives that could happen. There’s a bit of a Romeo and Juliet romance as Donna’s father tries to rebuff Ritchie’s sincere advances. Still, Donna remains devoted throughout the picture, and what a lovely thing is to see their euphoric joy together. The images suggest you don’t have to look like one another to fall in love. The fact the movie draws up this star-crossed romance between a 17-year-old and his 15-year-old beau feels of small consideration. It is a movie.

His brother knows how to make an entrance rolling up on his motorcycle, sunglasses on, cigarette between his lips. Or maybe this is only how we imagine him. Still, Bob’s demons could have been their own movie making him into a perturbing, abusive, drunken figure at the movie’s volatile center.

He’s effectively cast as Cain, never good enough or able to find favor in comparison to his thriving little brother. He spends the whole movie self-destructing and coming to terms with his brother’s burgeoning success. Later in life, it seems his real counterpart was able to resurrect his life and became a beloved member of his community.

Likewise, Bob Keane shows up in Ritchie’s life. We don’t really know how he got there or what all his motives are; still, there’s nothing too sinister in it. He helps Ritchie get big by recording and promoting him, and Valens is on top of the world.

It’s easy to see how all of these dynamics might have been either simplified or drawn up in such a way as to streamline the story or punctuate the dramatics. And yet I never begrudge the movie its choices, because it does feel like such a bountiful cultural artifact. The fact Los Lobos provided much of the soundtrack and even show up in a musical cameo is another notable distinction.

And the gutting, sinking feeling in the pit of our stomachs signals the dream cannot last. This talent taking the world by storm and rocking out with Eddie Cochran and Jackie Wilson will be snuffed out far too soon. So if everything else gets resolved in a Hollywood manner, our star is still going to be taken from us in the final reel. There’s no way to get around it.

McLean’s song mourned over it as “The Day The Music Died.” Thankfully, he was wrong. Yes, we no doubt lost out on years of musical output from Holly and Valens. Their young talents were undeniable, and yet their contributions to rock ‘n roll are far from dead. For their relatively short time in the public eye, they’ve cast very large shadows indeed. “La Bamba,” “Come on, Let’s Go,” and “Donna” feel like genre standards by now.

In his own way Valdez has guaranteed Valens won’t be totally disregarded (it was added to the National Film Registry in 2017), and Lou Diamond Phillips, bless his heart, made Valens far more than a hagiography of a deceased icon. He’s a young man with a warm, beating heart, a love for his family’s culture, and a love for rock ‘n roll. I can’t think of a better testament to Ritchie Valens than that.

4/5 Stars

Mask (1985): Eric Stoltz and Cher

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Peter Bogdanovich lost his girlfriend Dorothy Stratten to tragedy in 1981 and after the release of their picture together, They All Laughed, it was anyone’s guess if he’d ever be able to return to directing.

I’ve heard an often-repeated anecdote that he ultimately decided to take Mask as his next project as a way to honor Dorothy. The reason isn’t immediately obvious. However, he explains that Dorothy was fascinated by the Elephant Man, who shared the same condition as Rocky in Mask. But she was a highly sought after beautiful woman. How could she relate?

It seems that extreme ugliness and extreme beauty by the world’s standards puts you outside of the normal purview of society. It’s not something individuals asked for. They are born with it or given it by circumstance, and as a result you have the world’s prying eyes looking at you. So both of these films are about this kind of social “others,” who must make an existence for themselves in a world where they’ll never quite fit in.

The greatest epiphany of Mask is how Rocky (Eric Stoltz) does exactly that. We’ve seen movies about people lashing out because of the hand they’ve been dealt. This is a reasonable reaction, but this movie is never about that.

It’s my own human inadequacies making it so I look at him and feel discomfort. But it’s a classic example of not judging a book by its cover. Outward appearance doesn’t define the mark of an individual.

The brilliance of this teenager is how he rewrites the script and subverts the expectations around him. He’s the personification of all our outcast inclinations when we’re in middle school and high school. None of us would have envied him during those formative years. And yet he rarely gets rattled by any of it, even when he might have the most excuse to do so.

Rocky has a level of supreme confidence so in a manner of weeks teachers know he can succeed and look after himself and his fellow students come to appreciate his wit and his near-Encyclopedic knowledge. He has a high view of himself and this allows him to be self-deprecating. I like the idea that we don’t think less of ourselves, but we think of ourselves less often. It makes our lives centered around others.

Part of this is the family unity around him. They support him and love him for who he is even as he does yeoman’s work to look after his mother. It’s almost as if he’s her guardian sometimes with the lifestyle she leads, a holdover from the ’60s with drugs and a conveyor belt of male suitors.

Cher is a powerful force and she always has a natural charisma in front of the camera that suggests so much about her. Although their relationship is the backbone of the whole movie, they have an entire motorcycle gang to watch out for them including the old family friend and Cher’s past lover Sam Elliot.

He’s a quiet enigma of cool, but with his laidback demeanor and a “Moustache Rides” tee, a character who could easily be a vehicle for outside conflict becomes more of a stabilizing force.

Rocky is even granted one of the loveliest adolescent romances of the 80s as he begrudgingly decides to spend his summer volunteering at a camp for the blind meeting Diana Adams (Laura Dern).

It’s reminiscent of City Lights with a love story based on personality and kindness as opposed to superficial appearance. In other words, it is a deeper bond and even as she’s an equestrian girl with an affluent background and he’s been raised on the road with a motorcycle gang, they relate on what’s most important.

I couldn’t help myself and seek out the writing on the wall. Rocky can’t last forever. In real life Roy L. “Rocky” Dennis passed away at 16 years old. If you didn’t know him you might think this was merciful and yet having watched his life play out on screen, we see the tragedy of it. He was such a loving, vibrant, jovial force to behold. He could have accomplished so much. And one can only imagine his mother was devastated. Because her boy was special and the bond they held was incomparable.

Bogdanovich augments the story with his trademark use of dietetic sound to fill out the world on top of some of Bruce Springsteen’s finest tracks. I watched the director’s cut which included a few extra scenes and all I can say is that I’m thankful to Bogdanovich’s conviction to get his version out there without compromise. This included working with Springsteen himself to get the original recordings licensed for the rerelease. It pays heavy dividends.

Regardless of the director’s shortcomings, I will dearly miss his classical sensibilities as a filmmaker. He made films imbued with joy and melancholy. Both speak to me and surely I’m not the only one because life becomes a subtle dance between a panoply of emotions.

Like the masters of old, he was able to take a story and personalize it so the core themes are somehow made manifest and evident in his own life. It’s a lovely brand of storytelling, and it allows Mask to constantly ambush us with some winsome surprises. This is how movies should be.

4/5 Stars

Running on Empty (1988): River Phoenix, Fire and Rain.

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I know only very little about River Phoenix’s upbringing but somehow it’s easy for me to make the leap from his real-life existence to his family in this movie. Running on Empty has to do with an unconventional upbringing.

Danny Pope (that’s his real name) has grown up with his little brother and two parents Annie (Christine Lahti) and Arthur (Judd Hirsch), who have lived on the run from the feds since the early 70s. They were implicated in an anti-war protest at a napalm plant that left a janitor dead.

The Popes are a tight-night clan in spite of their unusual circumstances or because of them. Somehow in this environment of constant flux and fresh identities, they’ve managed to raise two boys who are loving and smart.

Danny enrolls in a new school and immediately distinguishes himself on the piano. He seems like an obscure prodigy because no one knows anything about him and his benevolent music instructor (Ed Crowley) gets little information on him. Still, he’s talented and generally considerate. He doesn’t play into the expected stereotypes of a malcontent.

He also makes the acquaintance of the teacher’s daughter (Martha Plimpton) who has a much more jaundiced view of education and musical appreciation. She’s used to a more typical lifestyle and yet she’s drawn to the new boy, not out of an act of rebellion against an overbearing father or anything like that. Danny is genuinely decent and kind. She immediately likes him, and they spend time together. She wants to get to know his family too and so she does.

I was a bit disappointed Jackson Browne’s tune “Running on Empty” has no place in the movie, but they may have done themselves one better with James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain.” Their celebration of Anne’s birthday turns into a dance party in the dining room; there’s something spontaneous and joyous about it.

It encapsulates the best aspects of the movie where we’re suspended in these moments of relational goodness. To be a part of the scene feels organic and the characters become all the more real in front of our eyes. We enjoy their company.

Martha Plimpton has a James Dean Rebel Without a Cause poster in her bedroom and somehow Phoenix carries some of the same ethos. There’s the morbid similarity in that they both died young and yet more than that, it has to do with a palpable emotional investment in their roles. It’s more like music than it is blue-collar craftsmanship and their brand of sensitive masculinity feels off the charts.

Phoenix has an emotional maturity and precociousness that feels wise beyond his years and still wracked with inner demons. Here he must carry the burden of his parents’ life. It also fuels the budding romance that Phoenix and Plimpton were an item in real life.

Christine Lathi still feels mostly underappreciated as an actress. She’s a loving mother, a strong wife, and the scene where she has a teary reunion with her father after many years is lachrymose but never totally saccharine. They supply just the right amount of heartbreak and tenderness.

Judd Hirsch deserves his plaudits as well though if you’re like me you appreciate him for being the stabilizing force on Taxi. He plays the part so well that sometimes you forget he’s an actor’s actor.

I’m reminded of his rapport with Timothy Hutton in Ordinary People and his scenes with Lahti and Phoenix here. He always gives off this aura of street smarts. He’s tough and able to spar, but it’s never totally untethered from his unerring heart. He cares and somehow he’s able to make his audience feel his concern.

What I appreciated most is that Running on Empty never feels over-reliant on its political elements which are often relegated to the background in favor of far more sensitive developments of character. It would be so easy to succumb to drama. Instead, it chooses a more nuanced road as Danny starts to put down roots and gets encouraged to apply to Julliard. Suddenly, his lifelong anonymity is bumping up against his youthful dreams of a normal future.

Director Sidney Lumet was always a fine filmmaker and one of the most enduring because he was a workman and he knew how to rehearse, he was smart, and made compelling movies. Running on Empty is never one of the most high profile mentioned, but it leaves space and feels attuned to the family at its center and their relationships. This is why I go to the movies to be shown people’s humanity up on the screen and then be uplifted by it.

The movie hardly dwells on its ending. Perhaps we could have done with a bit more resolution, but it does itself proud with a refrain of James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” pulled from an earlier scene. It’s as if the chorus of singing voices — the family all joyful and gay — is a concrete reminder that that bond will never be broken even as they move on.

There’s something satisfying about discretely reaching back and referring to the movie’s most poignant moment. Because it means so much and these are the kind of memories we carry with us wherever we go. Family is forever.

4/5 Stars