If you are a child of the ’80s, if you are a movie fan of a certain age, then John Hughes films have a special place in your heart. Throughout the 1980s, he made movies about teenagers that felt real. His characters spoke like real teenagers spoke, they cared about things real teenagers cared about. They were funny and sad, romantic and heartbroken. They felt like they were made for…well, me. And a million other me’s.
It is hard to pick a favorite John Hughes film because so many of them are so good. As a teenager, I likely would have told you it was Some Kind of Wonderful. I think that was the first one I’d ever watched. It was definitely the first one I remember and the first one that had real impact on my life. These days, I’d probably go with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off because it’s so much fun to watch. Many decades away from my own awkward teenage years, Ferris makes me feel like the boy I wanted to be rather than the boy I really was.
But The Breakfast Club holds a special place in my heart. It is, perhaps, the quintessential John Hughes movie. It’s about a group of teenagers – an athlete, a brain, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal – from different social cliques who spend a Saturday in detention and learn a little about themselves. It isn’t his best film but it seems to be the one most people relate to. Or at least it’s the one I watched the most in college because so many of my friends seemed to love it.
It has been released multiple times in pretty much every format but this is the first John Hughes film that the good folks at Criterion have released. They’ve given it a new 4K transfer and loaded it with their usual assortment of special features. One could argue a film like this doesn’t really need Criterion release as it’s already popular and, again, it has many releases out already, but I think it’s pretty cool. I’d be happy for companies like Criterion to release all the films.
Also out this week that looks interesting:
American Made: Tom Cruise stars in this based-on-a-true story action flick about pilot who works for the CIA as a drug runner in the 1980s. The trailers looked good but it fizzled at the box office and I heard zero buzz about it.
Battle of the Sexes: Emma Stone and Steve Carell star in this based-on-a-true story about tennis greats Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs who completed in a “pitting the sexes against each other” match in 1973.
Seven Blood Stained Orchids: Code Red is releasing this Italian horror from Umberto Lenzi about a serial killer dubbed The Half Moon Killer.
Breathe: Andy Serkis stopped playing CGI creatures long enough to direct this inspirational based-on-a-true story drama about Andrew Garfield getting polio.
Ten Days in the Valley: Kyra Sedgwick stars in the television drama about a single mother in the midst of a bad break-up whose daughter goes missing. Reviews haven’t been great, but I love me some Kyra Sedgwick.
