So lately I've had a bug up my ass to watch a movie from 1998 called Strike! which focuses on a group of girls at a private school trying to keep their girls-only school girls-only. This spawned the idea of trying to convince @theguelphgirl to do a shit happens at school movie night. Maybe its my age, but lately I've felt the urge to re-watch a few great movies from the turn of the century, when I ceased to be a teenager and started into adulthood. If nothing else, maybe they'll rekindle the flame of rebellion and shake off some of the belligerent ennui which seems to have arrived with 30. (Fuck, am I really that old?)
First there's Strike!, as mentioned above. Set in the 1960s, this movie stars Gaby Hoffmann, Rachael Leigh Cook and Kirsten Dunst as rebellious teenagers at an all-girls private school who take on the task of ensuring their institution doesn't get swallowed up by a near by all-boys school. They hatch plans and concoct schemes to fight the co-edification of their beloved école and the end result is a surprisingly entertaining little movie that, while not anything spectacular, is an interesting embodiment of teen angst and not bowing down to the man. Or the head mistress.
Next in the queue would be The Hole. A like-struck Thora Birch devises a plan to get the guy of her dreams to like her: By getting locked into a long-forgotten bomb shelter nestled deep in the woods surrounding their school with a few of their friends (one of whom is Keira Knightley). Naturally, things wind up going a little sideways and they're each eliminated in turn as things wear on and you're left with what becomes an amazingly good character-driven psychological thriller. I'm not spoiling anything by saying Thora Birch's character survives because, well, that's pretty evident in the first scene of the movie. At the end of the day, this movie could've been set in a bright sunny meadow and it still would have worked just as well. Although people die, it doesn't really have that much in the way of teen angst, so that's why it's number 2.
Generally when I do my movie marathons, the third tends to fall around supper time so I have to pick a movie which follows the theme and doesn't really matter if you miss a few minutes here and there, so I know I have to look no further than The Smokers. Years ago I wrote a review of this movie for a previous incarnation of HTI (which has been, unfortunately, lost forever to time. And the stack of damned near 2 dozen dead or dieing PATA drives in my closet) and billed it as "a rallying cry to feminists everywhere: Go home." In a nutshell, this movie's about a group of sluts who get sick of being sluts and decide they need to start raping guys at gun point. Yah. When the protagonists are kilt wearing seniors in the shape of Dominique Swain, Keri Lynn Pratt and Busy Philipps it's not so much rape as unexpected sex with a dangerous prop. A bunch of things happen in this movie, Thora Birch shows up long enough to do whippits... One of the girls gets raped, one of them dies in a fire... Mostly they pass as "meh" moments because none of the characters are really that likable. Basically, the perfect movie to mostly ignore while dealing with the mechanics of ingesting sustenance.
As most of my marathons only cover four movies (mostly owing to the fact I've usually had a few wobbly pops and my interest in movies wanes), there could be only one movie to finish off this quartet: Outside Providence. Set in the mid 70s, Shawn Hatosy plays Tim "Dildo" Dunphy, a hapless working-class stoner with a three-legged dog who's sent off to prep school by his father (played by The Baldwin) after hitting a parked cop car while driving stoned. Throughout the course of the movie he deals with being a fish out of water, the death of a friend and finds time to hook up with Jane Weston (played by the incredibly hot Amy Smart). Basically, it's a small-town stoner makes good story which, minus the dead mother, prep school and Amy Smart could be roughly biographical. The old adage is to save the best for last and, hands down, this movie stands out as one of the greatest 1999 had to offer. What do you think, folks? Are there any I'm missing? I know Fast Times and Ridgemont High, Dazed and Confused and Pump Up The Volume are absent from this fictional marathon but, as kick-ass as they all are, they are the lynch pin on 3 other lists themselves. Note: I say "fictional" because Outside Providence is the only one of these movies I have in a format I can actually watch, and the last time I went to Rogers or Blockbuster it seemed like they only made 6 movies before 2002. Maybe the next time I'm downtown and sober enough I'll comb through that store by the Baker St. lot.
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