Reality Blows: The Best and Worst of Gen-X Flicks (#2)

In my newest post about the movies of Generation-X, I chose to write a little bit about one of the funnies comedies of the 1990s, Clerks.

The movie is kinda brilliant.

Clerks (1994)

One of the problems with many films made about young people in the ‘90s is that screenwriters tried so hard to make their characters hip.  Think about Reality Bites, a movie that sank under the weight of forced injection of pop culture references into every scene and the characters’ boring, drawn-out examinations of their lives.

And then consider Clerks, a welcome reaction to phony movies like Reality Bites.  With its biting dialogue and true-to-life feel, you might actually want to spend a few hours discussing girls and Star Wars trivia with Clerks’ characters.

Kevin Smith’s first picture, shot in black-and-white on a $28,000 budget, looks at Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson), two slackers who work in adjoining retail stores in Jersey.  Dante mans the register in a QuikStop market, while Randall runs a failing video store right next door.  Stuck in dead-end jobs, the college dropouts spend their days discussing Return of the Jedi, stupid customers and fetish pornography with the same fervor as PhD candidates discussing their research.

My Thoughts: She’s Having A Baby (1988)

I haven’t ever felt badly after viewing a John Hughes movie before.  From Ferris Bueller to Sixteen Candles to Home Alone, I was never bored by any of his pics.  Planes, Trains & Automobiles, Hughes only true “adult” movie, is a triumph of 1980s screenwriting and acting.  So it’s sad to watch She‘s Having A Baby, another so-called “grown up“ pic.  Even with a few good scenes, it’s easily the most boring movie with Hughes’s name attached to it.  And a weak Hughes flick to me is strangely disheartening.

Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth McGovern star as Jake and Kristy Briggs, a couple of recent college graduates with minimal career aspirations and undying love for one another.  For the first few minutes, Kevin Bacon gives an extremely boring voiceover chronicling his life from meeting his fiance until college graduation.

My Thoughts: Ryan’s Daughter (1970)

About two hours into Ryan’s Daughter, I was only thinking about an episode of “Seinfeld” I’d watched a few days earlier.  That’s right.  My mind wouldn’t stop mulling over the “English Patient” episode where Elaine finally slouches over next to J. Peterman in the middle of a screening of the film and screams “It’s too long!”

That how I feel about David Lean’s movie, and my stray thoughts present two problems.  First, the film is a simple love story stretched into an unbearable running length.  And secondly, I was thinking about an episode of “Seinfeld” for about the last hour of the picture when I should’ve been wrapped up in the action.  Not a strong vote of confidence.

My Thoughts: A Shock to the System (1990)

A Shock to the System, a pic about an under-appreciated ad man who sets out to exterminate everyone who serves as a roadblock on his path to success, is a fun watch, but little else.  The comedy is generally to my taste–pitch-black.  Michael Caine is, honestly, in one of his best five roles of all time.  Swoosie Kurtz, as his domineering wife, and Elizabeth McGovern, as a beauty at the ad agency where he works, are both fine.  Peter Reigert, as the youn’in whose destined to get the promotion Caine’s character deserves and yearns for, is quite funny.  So what’s missing?

After a second viewing, I’m certain that the script just doesn’t hold together.  There are brilliant scenes of dark comedy followed by pedestrian sequences of cat-and-mouse police games.  The ending, far too predictable, isn’t nearly as over-the-top as it should be.

I do know one thing, though:  nothing that goes wrong is Michael Caine’s fault.

Reality Blows: The Best and Worst of Gen-X Flicks

Yeah, okay, I’m definitely a few years beyond the Generation-X cutoff, but it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy movies about our favorite late-’80s and ’90s outcasts, slackers and burnouts.

Right now, I’m writing a series of reviews of Gen-X movies, regardless of whether they’re good or not.  And I’m playing the professor and assigning letter grades to each movie…something I almost never do.

To kick things off, I watched Reality Bites, a movie that’s supposedly all about Generation-X, a week ago.  I sort of remember giving it a spin a few years back and, at the time, I thought it was pretty damn funny and perceptive.

My current (and less favorable) assessment:

Reality Bites (1994)

Reality Bites, Ben Stiller’s directorial debut, is an unworthy Gen-X staple, a mostly cliché story of four Houston college grads who wander out of graduation into dead-end jobs.  While its opening third is perceptive and funny, it ultimately becomes just another formulaic study of young adults trying to find themselves and fall in love in a mean corporate world.

The pic stars Winona Ryder as Lelaina, valedictorian of her college class, who, armed at all times with a video camera, obsessively films all her friends being “spontaneous.” They include the sharp-tongued slacker musician Troy (Ethan Hawke), the funny and sensitive Vicki (Jeneane Garofalo) and the shy Sammy (Steve Zahn).

They Don’t Write ‘Em Like That Anymore: The Ten Best Episodes Of Frasier (Part 2)

Continuing onward with our countdown…#s 5 to 1:

5.  Author! Author! (Season 1, Episode 22)

The Premise:  Niles has a book deal with a demanding publisher and decides, spur of the moment, that bringing Frasier in on the action might help him get through a bout of writers block.  They decide to write a text on the history of sibling relationships, using Frasier’s radio show as a source for stories of great and awful brother-sister interaction, alike.  While Frasier resists at first, he’s tempted by the fruit of additional fame.

They Don’t Write ‘Em Like That Anymore: The Ten Best Episodes Of Frasier (Part 1)

“Frasier,” is probably one of the best three or four sitcoms to ever grace the small screen.  The premise, that of two nitpicky, sophisticated, unathletic psychiatrist brothers and their interactions with their beer-swilling retired cop father, a sex-crazed producer and a flighty British health-care worker, sounds like it could go either way.  It might be just a bit too quirky and self-conscious, right?

That isn’t the case at all.  “Frasier” is a remarkable comedy show that aired between 1993 and 2004, at about the same time when “Seinfeld” was considered the gold-standard for half-hour prime-time sitcoms.  While I adore “Seinfeld,” my favorite show of that era will always be “Frasier.” Being ten years old, I remember watching “Frasier” with my parents and watching half of the jokes whiz clear over my head.  Now, almost fifteen years after I watched my first episode of “Frasier,” I love being able to give it a glance and actually get almost 80% of the jokes.  Honestly, I’ve actually expanded my vocabulary by listening to Niles’ and Frasier’s banter.

Movies That Rule: Adventureland (2009)

Coming out of college with an unusual major and no job prospects is a hell of a scary thing.  Higher ed. ends so goddamn abruptly, and many of us are in no way prepared for those final days.  I spent my entire last semester at school in some kind of sustained haze, grilling burgers, drinking beer out on the back deck with friends and somehow managing to get the highest semester GPA I’d ever achieved in college.  I guess I’d figured out all of the ways to succeed at college without really trying.  That, in turn, gave me false hope that I’d amount to anything out there in the “real world.”

The night before I graduated, I was relaxing in my favorite dive bar with a bunch of my best friends.  We weren’t nostalgic even after ordering our sixth pitcher of the night.  Instead, we talked about random crap like it was any other night of any other year of college.  The next day, I got up, put on a shirt and tie, and zipped up my gown.  And after the keynote speaker and the whole pomp-and-circumstance, I walked back to my old college house, tossed the tassled cap onto the couch, threw the last of my stuff in my Volvo, peeled away from the curb and, only about 30 miles into my trip back home, realized the overwhelming terror.

Movies That Rule: Dazed and Confused (1993)

Slater: Are you cool, man?
Mitch: Like how?
Slater [rolls eyes]: Ohhhhkay…
[Pause]
Pink [bemused]: He was just asking if you got high…

It’s the last day of school.  It’s time to think about the future…or just get wasted instead…or both?

Dazed and Confused is a far more entertaining movie than it has any right to be.  Hearing about it from a friend seven years ago, I figured it’d be a slightly more insightful than-average high-school rom-com, but with no interesting conclusion, no boy-gets-girl, nothing.  I was hesitant to give this one a spin to say the least.  And that’s even after he told me: “This movie’s gonna change your life, bro.  It just makes sense.  It’s insane.”

Yeah, Dazed has minimal plot, and even with a couple of “main” characters, it’s a hodgepodge affair, a slice-of-life movie that switches quickly between scenes involving revolving combinations of its characters.  So why’s it so compelling, so brilliant and ‘insane,’ and in many ways, underrated?

My sort of existential answer: it just is.  Like many of the characters in the film itself, Dazed is scarily matter-of-fact–romantic, funny enough when it needs to be and understated and observant the rest of the time.

This pic, arguably director Richard Linklater’s finest achievement, does nothing in particular except explore the emotional crises of people of a certain age, using a host of vignettes to make a bigger point–one which, I think, centers on how differently we interpret our adolescent years the more we age.  Don’t approach Dazed expecting anything more.  Take it as it comes, ponder it afterward.  Then watch it again.

My Thoughts: Running on Empty (1988)

When you saw Stand By Me (1985) for the first time, who was the character you really connected with?  If you asked most people who’d seen the movie, the answer would be Gordy (Wil Wheaton) or Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), the two smartest kids in Rob Reiner’s masterpiece.  Disregarding Wheaton for the moment, good as he was, you could easily see that River Phoenix was the remarkably talented actor in the movie, even at the ripe age of 12.  He was quiet and acted self-assured.  He was also insecure and scared–a terrified teen from a terrible background–but pushed on in scene after scene with false confidence until he finally cracked.  Life must’ve been exhausting for Chris Chambers.  We know for sure that it was for the actor River Phoenix, who died of a heroin overdose at age 23.

Running On Empty, a very good movie helmed by a very good director (Sidney Lumet),  showcases River Phoenix’s talents so well that, watching it and also knowing how his life fizzled, leaves crying as the only possible outcome.