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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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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