Thursday Movie Picks - Movies Set in a High School

Written as part of the blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. You should join; it's fun and easy! Just pick three movies that fit the week's theme and tell us about them!

Ah, high school: that great cesspool of American teenage life. I actually had a pretty decent high school experience - certainly not the best time of my life (that would be college), but certainly not even close to a bad one. But in the movies, high school is either a magical place you never want to leave or a hellhole you can't get away from fast enough. And nothing in between. I always wondered if people who wrote movies about how amazing high school was were people who peaked in high school or if they were re-writing their teenage years to be better than they actually were.

BUT ANYWAY.... Enough about me. On to my picks for the week! Two 80s classics and two modern almost-classics.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I originally didn't pick Clueless and She's All That for "Teen Comedy" week because I wanted to save them for this. But then I thought of two other films I liked better.

The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985) Easily the greatest movie about high school ever made, and the only movie I can think of that is entirely set inside a high school. This '80s classic should be shown to every incoming high school freshman on their first day, so effectively does it show that no matter what our outwardly defining traits may be, everyone has some deep hurt in their life, and that "each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal." John Hughes's masterpiece speaks to every teen, and to the teen inside all of us. If only all detention was this rewarding (and unsupervised).

Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, 1989) Set in an all-boys prep school in the 1950s, this film's cast is like a who's who of (then) up-and-coming actors: Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, Josh Charles... and of course, Robin Williams as the English teacher we all wish we had (except for the whole defacing a book thing). Williams's Mr. Keating (which also just happened to be the name of my favorite high school English teacher) inspires his students to actually love poetry and live by the principles of the great poets - to really see beauty in the world around them, not just study it as the school's Headmaster would have him do. Of course, this being a prep school in the 50s, the parents don't take too kindly to their sons getting silly ideas in their heads about performing in plays and not respecting their fathers' authority. A beautiful film filled with great performances.

Hamlet 2 (Andrew Fleming, 2008) It's really a pity not many people saw this movie. This story of down-and-out high school drama teacher Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), who decides to write a musical sequel to Shakespeare's immortal play Hamlet for the annual school show, is the best/worst, funniest/stupidest, most inappropriate high school movie ever made. A spoof of inspiring-teacher dramas, let's-put-on-a-show musicals, and high school movies in general (think of an unholy combination of Dangerous Minds, Step Up, and Waiting for Guffman) Hamlet 2 is completely insane, and that's before Elizabeth Shue shows up playing herself. And WAY before we actually get to the performance of the show itself, which includes such stirring musical numbers as "Raped in the Face" and "Rock Me, Sexy Jesus".

BONUS PICK:

G.B.F. (Darren Stein, 2013) When three popular high school girls running for prom queen realize that the must-have accessory for the school year is the elusive (in their neck of the woods) Gay Best Friend (or GBF), they all latch onto the one gay guy they know, who was recently accidentally outed by his own gay best friend. Suddenly, his life becomes worse and better simultaneously. Because you see, he's really a shy little wallflower, not the outgoing FABULOUS! gay the girls want/expect him to be. Naturally, they help hum out! But do any of these girls actually like him for him? Or do they just like him for what he can do for them? G.B.F. isn't quite the next-gen Mean Girls it's clearly dying to be, but the cast is game (all hail Xosha "fluorescent beige" Roquemore from Precious, who is EVERYTHING), it's pleasant to watch, and it's very funny. And lead Michael J. Willett is, as the kiddies say nowadays, totes adorbs.

Thursday Movie Picks - Unrequited Love

Written for Wandering Through the Shelves' weekly blogathon. In order to play along, just choose three films that fit the week's category.

This week's theme for movie picks is Unrequited Love. My favorite kind. But in trying to make my picks this week, I had to remind myself of the definition. According to Wikipedia, Unrequited love is "love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such. The beloved may or may not be aware of the admirer's deep and strong romantic affections." The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines unrequited as "not reciprocated or returned in kind."

You could argue that nearly every Romantic Comedy involves unrequited love in some way, but they usually end with the beloved's realization that SHOCKER, their true love was right in front of them the whole time! I rejected all those films outright, and insisted on some other parameters: The love must be made exceedingly clear, if not stated outright, and genuinely rejected (goodbye, In The Mood for Love, The Great Gatsby, etc.); no mid-film flings (sorry, Chasing Amy); and no anthology-type films where the unrequited love only plays a part in one story out of many (apologies, Love Actually). Fortunately... or unfortunately, depending on your point of view... I immediately thought of one perfect pick and two other picks for which I wanted to talk about anything BUT the unrequited love part. The fact that this is a gif-heavy post might give you a clue as to what I wanted to talk about instead...

Pretty In Pink (John Hughes, 1986) - Finally, a hero for the GUY with an unrequited crush on his GIRL best friend! I may never forgive Pretty In Pink for unleashing Jon Cryer on the world, but it's kind of hard to deny that this film, and Duckie, are damn good and iconic for a reason - and it's not that HIDEOUS dress Molly Ringwald wore to the prom. Much like John Hughes's previous classic The Breakfast Club, there's something here for any teenager to relate to. And really, enough cannot be said about that perfect final scene, scored to OMD's "If You Leave". No matter who you want Ringwald's Andie to end up with, it's impossible not to get caught up in the romance of that scene.

Crazy, Stupid, Love. (Glenn Ficara, John Requa, 2011) - A young boy not-so-secretly in love with his babysitter, who's secretly in love with said boy's father - at least until her own father discovers the nude pictures she planned to give her unrequited love. Oldest story in the world, right? Okay, fine, this is really just a Trojan horse to talk about Ryan Gosling's Photoshopped body. Can you blame me? The man is PERFECT. The mid-film scene with Gosling and Emma Stone is a masterpiece short film, a sex scene that-really-isn't.... a love scene in the best sense of the word. This is one of the best mainstream romantic comedies Hollywood has produced in years, primarily because it treats its characters like real people with real emotions (and perfect bodies).

The Paperboy (Lee Daniels, 2012) - Jesus, who WOULDN'T be in love with Nicole Kidman's Charlotte Bless?!? Because, really, how fucking brilliant is she in Lee Daniels's batshit, tonally confused (and still somehow slightly dull) Southern Gothic? It's one of the most audacious star turns in recent memory. You can't blame Zac Efron for going all head over heels for her crazy sexy/sexual hairdresser. It's hard to believe she doesn't reciprocate for him in those wet briefs, but, well... she kinda has a thing for creepy psycho backwoods murderers played by John Cusack at his most repugnant, so... Plus, I think it's pretty obvious she's WAY too much woman for poor little Zac - she'd chew him up and spit him out in five minutes.


BONUS PICKS:

These are two of my favorites, ones I almost picked but determined they didn't really count for some reason.

My Best Friend's Wedding (P.J. Hogan, 1997) - I was seconds away from choosing this one, but then I remembered that there's one scene where Dermot Mulroney makes it pretty clear that he wants Julia Roberts to tell him she loves him. We don't know that he feels the same way back, but the subtext is that he probably does - or at the very least is considering running away with her. If you don't know this one (and you should), Roberts's Julianne and Mulroney's Michael made a pact that if neither of them were married by the time they turned 28 they would marry each other. Three weeks before that happens, Michael calls Julianne and tells her that he's getting married to the preppy Kimmy (Cameron Diaz). Julianne freaks out that he's marrying someone so "wrong" for him and realizes it's because she really loves him. But he sees her as his best friend so much that Kimmy asks Julianne to be her maid of honor. So of course, Julianne decides to split up the happy couple before they even get married. Of course, things don't exactly go according to plan. Julia Roberts is deliciously bitchy in one of her best performances, and Cameron Diaz is perfect as Kimmy. And also, Rupert Everett plays the ultimate Gay BFF.

A Single Man (Tom Ford, 2009) - I had already written this up when I suddenly had a crisis of conscience: Does Julianne Moore's Charlie ACTUALLY say to Colin Firth's George that she loves him? Panicked, I checked. Unfortunately, the answer was yes AND no. She tells him that she is jealous that she never had the kind of love with him that he had with his now-dead lover of many years Jim (Matthew Goode at his most perfect), but then immediately follows it up by saying, far too honestly to be covering anything up, that she never had that kind of love with anybody. That would have to include George, so I have to say that it isn't true unrequited love. This is one of my favorite Julianne Moore performances, such a finely-detailed character study in really only one scene. And to say nothing of Colin Firth's heartbreaking, career-best work. And Tom Ford brings his flawless designer's eye to every single frame. He's not quite Wong Kar-Wai, mind you, but I still treasure this film, flaws and all.