FILMS FROM MY FORMATIVE YEARS
Recommended for fellow children of the 80's

All in all, the 80's seemed like a pretty strange time to be growing up. While Gordon Gekko sat high on movie screens across the globe to declare 'greed is good' as the defining maxim of that decade, no one we actually knew had any money, and the whole world quite simply seemed weary of itself, and yet still able to hold out a glimmer of hope for something as yet unforseen.

I think that this bittersweet sense of hope in the future is present in the best popular culture that came out of the 80's, and is most poignantly represented in its coming of age films. As a result, I have kept a particular soft spot for coming of age films over the years for their ever present sense of emotionalism, evocation of a limitless sense of time, energy, nostalgia value, and most of all, their ability to entertain.

Please find below a list of recommended coming age films that I have compiled. This list most prominently features films that hail from a time when the year 2000 seemed more like a wildly futuristic concept than anything that would actually come to pass, but also includes some more recent forays into the genre. Enjoy.

Vanessa Long

RECOMMENDED COMING OF AGE FILMS
From the 80's and beyond

Sixteen Candles (1984) dir. John Hughes
The Breakfast Club (1985) dir. John Hughes
Stand by Me (1986) dir. Rob Reiner
Pretty in Pink (1986) dir. Howard Deutch, written by John Hughes
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) dir. John Hughes
Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) dir. Howard Deutch, written by John Hughes
Less Than Zero (1987) dir. Marek Kanievska
The Lost Boys (1987) dir. Joel Schumacher
The Year My Voice Broke (1987) dir. John Duigan
Heathers (1989) dir. Michael Lehmann
Welcome Back, Roxy Carmichael (1990) dir. Jim Abrahams
Flirting (1991) dir. John Duigan
Slacker (1991) dir. Richard Linklater
Gas Food Lodging (1992) Allison Anders
The Nostradamus Kid (1993) dir. Bob Ellis
Reality Bites (1994) dir. Ben Stiller
Clerks (1994) dir. Kevin Smith
Metal Skin (1994) dir. Geoffrey Wright
Empire Records (1995) dir. Allan Moyle
Kids (1995) dir. Larry Clark
SubUrbia (1996) dir. Richard Linklater
Mallrats (1995) dir. Kevin Smith
Go (1995) dir. Doug Liman
How to Make an American Quilt (1995) dir. Jocelyn Moorhouse
A Fistful of Flies (1996) dir. Monica Pellizzari
The Virgin Suicides (1999) dir. Sofia Coppola
Ghost World (2001) dir. Terry Zwigoff
My First Mister (2001) dir. Christine Lahti

If you would like to suggest any additions to this list, or discuss any of the films on it, you are welcome to do so on the film-optimist discussion list.

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