Streaming Nostalgia: The Breakfast Club

by Baby Clyde

From Rydell to Ridgemont and The High School of Performing Arts nothing seemed more exciting to a British tween in the 80’s than going to school in America. They had jocks and cafeterias and grade point averages. We had cricket and Spam Fritters and mock exams. There were no proms in the UK. No leather jacketed bad boys or Homecoming Queens. Nobody drove their own cars to school (Their own CARS!!!). It was blazers, morning prayers and the occasional coach rip to Hever Castle if you were lucky. We had Grange Hill. They had The Breakfast Club.

It's hard to explain just how cool the American education system seemed to us as kids back then. We thought that all US teens lived in their own John Hughes movie the same way the rest of the world thinks that we Brits attended Hogwarts. For that you can mostly blame The Brain, The Athlete, The Basketcase, The Princess and The Criminal...

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1998: Patricia Clarkson in "High Art"

We're revisiting the 1998 film year in the lead up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown. As always Nick Taylor will suggest a few alternates to Oscar's ballot.

Unlike my last two companion pieces for 1998, which opened with well-deserved grousing about the meager recognition Velvet Goldmine and Beloved received from audiences and industry professionals alike, I actually feel pretty good about how High Art was received on the indie circuit. No, it didn’t get any notices from Oscar, but five nominations at the Independent Spirit Awards, with Ally Sheedy deservedly winning their Lead Actress prize, is a damn good run for any film, to say nothing of how well its reputation has grown since it debuted. But surely the best thing to come from High Art’s success is giving us Patricia Clarkson, Character Actress Extraordinaire™. Her highwire turn as the perpetually soused, washed-up German actress Greta earned Clarkson a handful of runner-up citations from critics groups who would go on to throw prizes at her for the first half of the ‘00s. The remarkable career that High Art made possible for Clarkson gives her performance a wonderful afterglow, and the fact that it still holds up as one of her best turns makes it even more glorious . . . .

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Bathroom Break with "The Breakfast Club"

Chris here. The days of deleted scenes providing much intrigue have long since past, ever since they became par for the course on DVD extras and overspeculation fodder for message board. Seldom does long-buried footage emerge that really screams "gimmie!" but the Criterion Collection has just that and it's coming very soon: nearly an hour of extra scenes for The Breakfast Club... 

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Looking back at St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

by Eric Blume

Director Joel Schumacher’s St. Elmo’s Fire captures 1985 perfectly:  the word “yuppie” had just come into vogue, and this film follows seven Georgetown students finding themselves lost after graduation.  They’re all white, attractive, fairly affluent, and awfully boring, and nothing much happens in the movie.  So why is it so damn watchable?

St. Elmo’s Fire is a curio from this era, because while it wasn’t a huge box office success, it’s an instantly-recognizable title after 22 years.  This of course is due to the film’s actors: Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Mare Winningham, Judd Nelson, and Andrew McCarthy.  Schumacher did manage lightning-in-a-bottle with that casting, and while very little about the film is objectively good, watching these actors near the start of their careers provides a kicky joy...

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Pixie Sticks and Cap'n Crunch. Holla.

It's Back to School Month at TFE

Hello, lovelies. Beau here, fixating on a tiny moment from one of my favorite films.

John Hughes was a Godsend to me growing up. From the ages of 14 through 17, hardly a weekend went by where I wasn't revisiting one of his key entries over the span of a twenty year career. These viewings alternated between Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club. It's remarkable to me that we've managed to survive over ten years of remakes and rehashes, and no one has dared  touch any of his material.

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