Gen X movies...

Ok, time to examine the quintessential Gen X movie list…

St. Elmo’s Fire: I have a problem with this one because I just don’t identify with it. Which when I think about it doesn’t make any sense at all because I don’t have any problem with The Breakfast Club (starring Ally Sheedy) but I have a problem with St. Elmo’s Fire (starring Ally Sheedy). I guess it’s the fact that when I was in grade school I could understand movies about high school but movies about post-college kids just didn’t seem to make much sense.

Red Dawn: Now that is a classic Gen X movie. I still remember seeing the trailer before watching The Last Starfighter. What a great Reagan era flick. The commies sneak attack the U.S. by invading various cities and it is up to the residents to repel the invasion. And this was considered a pretty sensible plot at the time. For those people who don’t believe that I grew up in a time where the thought that the world would end in a nuclear holocaust was viewed as reasonable, watch this movie.

Say Anything: First of all, any flick with John Cusack makes the list. (I mean, when I attended my high school reunion the first thing that I thought of was Grosse Point Blank). But I’ll take this movie over the John Hughes high school films any day of the week. It felt a lot more like what I remembered high school to be. Even if it ruined my life by making me think that I could change the way a girl felt about me simply by playing the right song. (Sixteen years later and I still think that it should work. That probably explains a lot of things)

Gleaming the Cube: The first super cool skateboarding movie. I’m pretty sure they’ve changed the title of this one when they released it to video/cable because no one understood what Gleaming the Cube meant. But us thrashers knew and we respected Hollywood for three seconds for it.

And a trilogy that should be added to the list…
Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco: These movies head my list of “Films that I am incredibly pissed aren’t out on DVD”. Even though they refer to a social circle that I wasn’t a part of (the young upper class who go to things like debutante balls and attend east coast prep schools and go on to the Ivy League) I find these to be some of the best films of the decade. You have all of these characters talking about philosophy and deep subject matter but knowing that much of it is just for show. In the end they have the same neuroses and problems as everyone else. These are three films that just capture what it is like to be young and have great friends and to believe that the world was created for you and you alone.