Category: 1980s
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Perfect Movies: American Psycho
“You like Huey Lewis & The News?” I sure do, and Patrick Bateman makes a great argument for the strengths of their 1983 breakthrough album, Sports. It would be a great moment in any retro film for the main character to espouse his love of mainstream contemporary music, but becoming a counterpoint to the action…
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Awesome Garbage: Mac and Me
True story: I saw Mac and Me in theaters when I was 6 years old. I was visiting my grandparents in Virginia Beach and spending the day with my grandma, mom, and sisters, and since everything else out in the theater was definitely not kid-friendly (the weekend it opened, August 12, 1988, here were the…
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Cult Classics: Better Off Dead
Lane Meyer wishes he were dead. He tries over and over – self-immolation, carbon monoxide poisoning, jumping from a bridge, even hanging. But like most things in his life, it never quite goes his way. Did I mention this is a major plot point in an 80’s teen comedy? Better Off Dead isn’t just another…
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Perfect Strangers – “The Lottery”
Sometimes the world looks perfect, nothing to rearrange; sometimes you just get a feeling like you need some kind of change. Well, standing tall on the wings of my dreams (whatever that’s supposed to mean), Perfect Strangers became the anchor show for TGIF in 1988 in its fourth season on television, joining the insipid Full…
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10 Best Movies That Criticize Consumerism
Consumerism is the natural by-product of capitalism. Really, it’s the natural by-product of being alive: we all need things to survive, after all. Food, housing, clothing, from beginning to end it seems it’s our natural state to consume. But living in a capitalist society also complicates the matter, particularly since in a such a society,…
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10 Totally 80’s Horror Flicks For Halloween
If the 1980s in America was a decade about anything, it was one of excess: a supercharged economy afforded artistic enterprises to be produced that normally would have been ignored, if not outright abandoned, were it not for the gigantic amount of capital flowing and available at the time in the arts. As such, many…
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