Italian Neorealism was a film movement that ran roughly from 1943 to 1952, but it’s influence carries on today. Italian Neorealism is easily recognizable by its characteristics – a focus on the poor and working class, filmed with non-actors, and filmed on location instead of in a studio. Except for maybe the use of non-actors, those traits are incredibly common these days, and it’s hard to imagine that they were practically unheard of prior to the Neorealist movement. That influence carried over to the French New Wave, Indian cinema, Iranian cinema, Cinema Verite documentary filmmaking, and even American cinema from the 1970s to now (we have Italian Neorealism to thank for both Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Ice Cube’s Friday). What’s funny is that this film movement was so influential to the rest of the world, but not only was it not well-received in Italy, but the Neorealist filmmakers couldn’t agree on what the value of the movement was. Because of this, 1948’s Bicycle Thieves is considered the quintessential example of Italian Neorealism around the world, and is generally criticized by the other Italian Neorealists.

Bicycle Thieves is a movie where bad things keep happening to good people, and therefore, a movie I can’t get my wife to watch with me. In Rome, just after World War II, a man named Antonio is struggling to find work to provide for his wife and two children. When he does find a job putting up ad posters throughout the city, a bicycle is required to accomplish each day’s task in time, and Antonio has already pawned his off. His wife, Maria, offers the last of their valuables, her bedsheets, in exchange for the pawned bike. The next day, Antonio gets right to work, but while he is on a ladder putting up a poster, his bike is stolen. Antonio is unable to catch the thief on foot. He files a police report, but there is very little the police can do, so Antonio and his son, Bruno, search the city for the thief. Eventually, they do find him, but it’s in the thief’s home turf, and so while Antonio publicly accuses the man for stealing his bike, the man (maybe) fakes a seizure (it could be genuine, but come on, it’s pretty convenient timing) and everyone looking on at the spectacle blame Antonio for what happens. Dejected, Antonio and Bruno head towards home, but as they pass a football stadium, Antonio sees a bike just laying against the wall, ripe for the taking. He tells Bruno to go wait at the bust stop, and goes after the bike. Of course, when he takes a bike, the police and an angry mob are right there to grab him. As they carry him to the police station, Bruno watches from a safe distance and begins to cry. The bike owner sees Bruno crying for his father, and convinces the police to let Antonio go. As they walk through the hostile crowd, Bruno takes his father’s hand.

Sad, isn’t it? On the one hand, Antonio is back to being jobless and hopeless by the end of things, but on the other hand, he’s still alive and not in prison. The ending’s ambiguity may irk some people who want closure, but it keeps the film from falling over the edge of the cliff of saccharinity – something that films from other countries don’t usually run into anyway, but when you grow up on a lot of Hollywood productions, it’s hard to not expect it. Also, I don’t know if this needs to be said or not, but this is an Italian production, about Italian people, in Italian. That means subtitles for us English-speakers. But I wouldn’t recommend the film if I didn’t think it was worth it, and Bicycle Thieves is a powerful masterwork that deserves attention.

Bonus Review: Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure

The following was taken from a full-length review I wrote on this website on 08/02/2023. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is basically a modern Bicycle Thieves with a happy ending, anyway.

It feels weird, reviewing a movie that’s been with you since your childhood, and there’s a certain fear that comes with that: Is the movie as good as you remember it? More often than not, you go back to a movie from your past and you stare at the screen in horror over the idea that you ever enjoyed such a thing. And what’s worse, you told people recently that you liked that movie, before you sat yourself down to rewatch it. You have to hang your head in shame, now, around some of your friends because you spent several hours heatedly defending Space Jam. Life, as you knew it, is now over.

But there are other instances, where you return to a film through the eyes of your adult self, and it’s just as good as you remember it. Sometimes better. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is one of those movies. With the recent passing of Paul Reubens, a rewatch of the 1985 classic felt necessary. And I am thrilled to say that this film remains one of the best cinematic tales of young love, between a boy and his bike.

Pee-Wee Herman is your normal, everyday acid-trip-induced man-child version of Mister Rogers. He lives in a house with his dog, Speck, covered in gadgets and knick-knacks that overcomplicate the simplest tasks. His entire kitchen is rigged to where you can light a candle and your breakfast is made while you’re off doing something else. As a boy, I always wished for something similar in my future, but the logistics of having such a house seem insurmountable. But above everything else he owns, there is his most cherished possession: a red bicycle with a tiger’s head on the front. And there ain’t no one gonna come between him and that bike.

Paul Reubens saw Tim Burton’s original short, Frankenweenie, and personally requested that he direct this film. His fingerprints are all over the film, too. There are multiple dream sequences, some involving claymation, with black and white, German Expressionism-style set design. There’s a beautiful sunrise seen through the open jaws of a large T-Rex sideshow attraction, complete with jagged teeth framing it. There’s a fun, bouncing score from Danny Elfman, his first music-related project post-Oingo Boingo and his first collaboration of many with Burton. Burton’s style and attitude toward filmmaking are a perfect match for the character of Pee-Wee Herman.

The plot of the movie is hard to describe without sounding absolutely ridiculous, so I might as well just lean into it. All is wonderful in Pee-Wee’s world until he runs into the rich “kid” down the street, Francis Buxton. Buxton wants Pee-Wee’s bike more than anything at the moment and, to get it, he hires a greaser to steal it while Pee-Wee’s out doing a little bit of shopping. Pee-Wee soon realizes that no one is going to help him find his bike (after all, it’s “just a bike”) – not the police, not his friends – so he is on his own. With nowhere else to turn, he meets a fortune teller who tells him his bike is in the basement of the Alamo.

Pee-Wee hitchhikes to Texas with the help of a convict on the run for tearing the tags off mattresses, and a woman truckdriver named Large Marge. Although, this Large Marge lady may not be all that she seems to be. He gets dropped off at an unnamed diner in an unnamed part of the world, and he meets a friendly waitress named Simone. Simone encourages Pee-Wee to keep searching for his bike, and he encourages her to follow her dream of traveling to Paris. Simone’s boyfriend Andy is less understanding of her friendship with Pee-Wee, especially after he overhears them talking about her big “but”. He chases Pee-Wee with a dinosaur bone through a cornfield, forcing Pee-Wee to escape by jumping onto a moving train. He sings old songs with a hobo until he reaches his destination, San Antonio.

Pee-Wee is rightfully disappointed to find out that the Alamo doesn’t even have a basement, and so he’s back to the drawing board. While in San Antonio, he sets a national record in bull-riding. He also suffers from brief amnesia after being thrown from the bull. But don’t you worry, my dear Texans. Pee-Wee may not be able to remember his name, but he remembers the Alamo.

From there, he realizes he needs to get to a phone and call home, so he visits a bar that’s the local hangout of the biker gang, “Satan’s Helpers”. After he knocks over their bikes just outside the bar (which happens in any self-respecting road trip movie), Satan’s Helpers hold him down and debate how they’re going to kill him. He asks for a last request, and is granted it, so he borrows a busboy’s platform shoes and dances on top of the bar to “Tequila” by The Champs. As is expected, this wins over Satan’s Helpers and they offer him one of their bikes so he can travel home. He makes it to the edge of the parking lot before driving into the bar’s streetside signage.

Pee-Wee gets rushed to the hospital and sees a news report on TV that indicates his bike is in Hollywood on a film set. He makes his way to Hollywood, takes back his bike, and flees the Warner Bros. studio lot while being pursued by the entirety of the Warner Bros. security team. He travels through a beach movie, a Christmas movie, a Godzilla movie, a Tarzan movie, and a Twisted Sister music video before successfully escaping with his bike. Unfortunately, his freedom is short-lived. He stops to save all the animals inside a burning pet store, and it is there that he is caught and brought before Warner Bros. execs. Lucky for Pee-Wee, his story is interesting enough to where Warner Bros. wants to make a movie out of it! The film ends at the local drive-in, where all of Pee-Wee’s new friends show up to witness the premiere of this autobiographical movie.

Bonkers, right? Absolutely crazy, but it’s so much fun. The script is tight and throwaway lines earlier on make an appearance again later on. Pee-Wee’s retort to Francis (“I know you are, but what am I?”) is quoted by the film-version of Pee-Wee at the end. When making a police report, Pee-Wee is convinced that “the Soviets” are responsible for his missing bike, and in the fake film, Soviet ninjas are the main villains. It’s smart for knowing that it’s dumb and playing it up. Some scenes are terrifying, or at least were to the younger me – Large Marge, the dream sequences, one involving a T-Rex eating his bike, and another one involving three of a child’s biggest fears: clowns, doctors, and Satan. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is a joy to watch. It’s funny, quotable, feverishly ridiculous, and according to my wife, a little creepy, and we have Paul Reubens to thank for all of that.

I’ve got a joke for you. What happens when a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal walk into their school’s library for Saturday detention? You get The Breakfast Club. Not a very funny one, I guess, but maybe it would have been funnier if the punchline was “The Lunch Bunch”? That was the original title of the movie, but I think, for the sake of legacy and longevity, it was a good change. “The Lunch Bunch” just sounds like a bad spinoff of Our Gang or something.

For those who don’t know, The Breakfast Club is about five teenagers who are forced to attend Saturday detention at their school. At first, they believe they have nothing in common, but over the course of the film, they reveal themselves and discover how similar they really are. They all find common ground in their home lives. Brian (the Brain, Anthony Michael Hall) is under so much pressure to make good grades from his parents that his F in Shop class drives him to consider suicide, and his possession of a flare gun gets him detention. Andrew (the Athlete, Emilio Estevez) is in Wrestling to win the love of his father and gets detention for taping another kid’s butt cheeks together to win the love of his teammates. Allison (the Basket Case, Ally Sheedy) is neglected at home and is a kleptomaniac and compulsive liar. She claims she’s in detention because she has nothing better to do. Claire (the Princess, Molly Ringwald) is caught in the middle of her parents’ constant arguments and is in detention for skipping school to go shopping. John (the Criminal, Judd Nelson) is physically abused by his father and has the cigar burns to prove it. He pulled the fire alarm at school. He’s also the most aggressive with the principal, who is there to keep an eye on them, and eventually gets locked in a closet to be kept separate from the others. Over the course of the day, friendships and romance blossom, but will it last when Monday rolls around?

John Hughes was really in tune with his childhood when he became an adult. His short stories about growing up in Michigan were the basis for his screenplays for National Lampoon’s Vacation and Christmas Vacation. A childhood nightmare inspired his script for Home Alone. His directorial efforts in the 80s were only as good as they were because he was so in tune with high school culture (Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). And his love for John Candy, who was basically a really big child, gave us Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck. Unless you’re currently a child, you’ve probably seen at least one of his movies. He knew how to make movies economically, too, which meant significant returns on his work. The Breakfast Club used mostly child actors and was set mostly in a single room, and so it just had a budget of $1 million. It made over $50 million at the Box Office. That’s impressive for anybody.

To explain the impact this film had on pop culture, I have to address the “Brat Pack” (forgive me, Emilio Estevez). The Brat Pack was a group of young actors who collaborated periodically throughout the 80s in coming-of-age dramas. There are many actors who are inconsistently listed as members, including Tom Cruise, Charlie Sheen, James Spader, Robert Downey Jr., Sean Penn, Kiefer Sutherland, Matthew Broderick, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey, and John Cusack, but the core members – the ones who are consistently on every version of the list – come from just two movies: St. Elmo’s Fire and The Breakfast Club. The five kids in The Breakfast Club and Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, and Andrew McCarthy make up the core Brat Pack. Their names and faces were everywhere – on the big screen, on the small screen, on posters and magazines. They defined an entire decade of pop culture.

Anyway, back to The Breakfast Club. Is it outdated? Oh, yes. In multiple ways. Is it cheesy? More often than it probably should be. But does it also transport you to a place and time so specific that you could confidently say, “That’s what it was really like back then”? Also, yes. The Breakfast Club is an important piece of film history for how it changed the way films for teenagers were made and marketed, as well as being the 1980s in microcosm.

Bonus Review: The Outsiders

A precursor to the Brat Pack, The Outsiders featured what would eventually be considered an all-star cast. Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, and C. Thomas Howell make up “the Outsiders” – a group of greasers living in the poor side of Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 60s. Their rival gang, the Socs, are from the rich side and are just waiting to harass to the greasers whenever they have the chance.

Trouble starts when Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell) and Johnny (Ralph Macchio) walk a couple of Soc girls home (Diane Lane is one of them) from a movie. Their boyfriends show up and threaten a fight, but the girls get them to leave, avoiding a conflict temporarily. In the middle of a rough night, the Socs return to do some damage and nearly drown Ponyboy, but Johnny rescues him by stabbing and killing the Soc pushing his head into a fountain. Ponyboy and Johnny flee with the help of Dallas (Matt Dillon), fearing retribution from police. While away, they hide out in a church, but unfortunately it catches fire with a bunch of children trapped inside. Ponyboy, Johnny and Dallas rescue the children, but Dallas and Johnny are significantly burned and are taken to a hospital. Meanwhile, the greaser-Soc relations are collapsing and tensions are mounting until the threat of a rumble permeates the air.

Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather trilogy, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Peggy Sue Got Married, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and a whole bunch of flops you can skip) is a filmmaker that demands authenticity, possibly to a fault, and The Outsiders is no different. They filmed on location in Tulsa, and now, a lot of the locations are sites you can visit, including the house that Ponyboy and his brothers lived in. It’s completely unrelated to value of the film, but it’s too interesting a story to not mention: The house that the movie filmed at was bought in 2016 by rapper and The Outsiders mega-fan, Danny Boy O’Connor (the leader of House of Pain, the rap group that did “Jump Around”). It was in a dilapidated state, and so O’Connor used GoFundMe to take donations for a massive renovation project. Some of the donors include Billy Idol and Jack White from The White Stripes (dude gave $30,000). Anyway, O’Connor received a key to the city of Tulsa for efforts on the restoration and turning the house into a museum. That’s the story. A New York rap artist who dated Punky Brewster has a key to the city of Tulsa. Oh, and an honorary diploma from Will Rogers High School, also in Tulsa. It’s bizarre to the point of being funny.

In conclusion, watch The Outsiders. Better yet, read The Outsiders and then watch The Outsiders – The Complete Novel. And if you already have, revisit it. It’s worth it.

The Little Shop of Horrors is a horror film from 1960 from director Roger Corman. But this is not the movie I’m reviewing. I’m talking about the 1986 movie musical adaptation. Little Shop of Horrors was originally an off-Broadway musical, before it was a movie – the second collaboration from lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken. These two went on to work together on the music for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. They went on to add two songs specifically for the film version at the request of the film’s director, Miss Piggy. The film adaptation comes with a fantastic cast consisting of Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene (who was in the original theatrical production), Steve Martin, Levi Stubbs (a member of The Four Tops, who provides the voice of the killer plant, Audrey II), with cameos from John Candy, Christopher Guest, Billy Murray and Jim Belushi.

Seymour (Rick Moranis) buys this intriguing plant one day and brings it to the flower shop where he works for some window decoration. He names the plant, Audrey II, after his coworker, Audrey (Ellen Greene), whom he is secretly in love with. Audrey suffers from an inferiority complex and cannot leave her abusive dentist boyfriend, Orin (Steve Martin). Audrey II doesn’t respond to regular water and sunlight to grow. It needs blood to live, and so the plant convinces Seymour that Orin’s got more than enough. Besides, Orin is only a job fair away from being a serial killer. However, Seymour doesn’t kill Orin like he intends to, but he does chop him up after the dentist accidentally kills himself on an overdose of laughing gas. Soon, Audrey II and Seymour are the talk of the town, but as far as blood and fame go, when will enough be enough, and can Seymour and Audrey navigate a future together with a Mean, Green Mother from Outer Space in between them?

Originally, the stage show and the film had the same tragic and hopeless ending, but when the movie was previewed for multiple groups in LA, the ending tested so negatively that the studio completely scrapped it. Yoda, the director, wrote a happier ending for the film that was filmed for an additional $5 million, making it the most expensive production from Warner Bros. at that time. That’s honestly a lot of faith to have in a movie that had to have a rewritten ending, so in some ways, it’s a wonder this film ever saw the light of day. Thank goodness it did, because it contains some of the best work from all parties involved. Cookie Monster never made a better film, except maybe Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. This is one of the few Rick Moranis performances that I like. The cameos are all superb, particularly the sequence between Steve Martin’s sadistic dentist and Bill Murray’s masochistic patient. And of course, the music. A musical is only as good as it’s music, and Little Shop of Horrors delivers a blend of doo-wop, Motown, and rock ‘n’ roll from the 1960s that, at the very least, will have you doing your best Ed Grimley. Highlights include “Skid Row (Downtown)”, “Some Fun Now”, “Dentist!”, and “Mean, Green Mother from Outer Space”.

It’s not difficult to get me onboard with a musical – I’d watch a musical on the human birthing process if the soundtrack was decent – but what really sells the film is the likeability of the characters, even when they’re doing unsavory things like chopping up dentists to feed their talking plant. It’s a wonder to find yourself rooting for Seymour, but it’s nearly impossible not to, such is the marriage of horror and musical. In fact, not since Rocky Horror Picture Show has there been such an energetic collision of the two genres, and not until my bonus review will there be another…

Bonus Review: The Phantom of the Opera

Come on, it was either this or Sweeney Todd. For this one, we transition from cult classic to just classic. Originally a serialized novel written in the early 1900s by Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera has been put to screen, then sung, then sung on screen. The film version of the stage musical was announced back in 1989, only three years after the musical was first reviewed, with both composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and director Joel Schumacher attached to it (apparently, Webber really liked The Lost Boys), but was left gestating for 13 years before scheduling could be worked out in 2002.

The Phantom of the Opera is the story of a love triangle inside an opera house in early-1900s Paris, between two childhood sweethearts and their socially awkward third wheel who is so pitied, he gets the movie named after him. In the beginning, Christine Daae is a backup dancer in the opera who has been getting secret singing lessons from her Angel of Music (don’t worry, it’s just the third wheel that lives under the opera house, nothing creepy). Through sheer luck, Christine is reunited with her childhood sweetheart, Raoul, who is the new patron for the opera house. They reignite their romance while the Phantom tries to win her heart by making her the lead in the opera and killing those who get in his way (again, socially awkward). The question becomes how far is the “like a brother to me” Phantom willing to go to get out of the friendzone?

Apparently, this movie could have looked very different from the finished product, as at one point, both Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway were in line to star as the Phantom and Christine Daae. Scheduling conflicts with Van Helsing and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement kept them from filming. I imagine Jackman at least has many sleepless nights over this sequence of events. But Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum do a superb job and makes it easy to forget what could have been.

Before he became one of the most versatile film writer-directors of all time, Billy Wilder was a journalist in Berlin. He changed career paths when he fell in love with screenwriting, and worked on a handful of films in Germany before the rise of the Nazi party forced him to make his way to Hollywood. As far as I’ve read, Wilder enjoyed his time writing for tabloids, so Ace in the Hole feels like it comes out of nowhere.

Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) is a reporter who has been kicked out of every major publication due to his temper and has therefore been reduced to begging for a job with a small newspaper in Albuquerque. A hit story falls into his lap when he and his photographer stop for gas at a station in the middle of nowhere. There, they find out that a man named Leo Minosa, who actually owns and operates the gas station with his wife Lorraine, is trapped in a collapsed cliff dwelling. Tatum does everything in his power to extend the rescue mission so he has a week’s worth of news stories. As people hear about the incident, they come in droves to the cliff dwelling to see the rescue mission unfold, and the whole area becomes a big carnival. However, through time and faulty method, it becomes clear that Leo isn’t making it out of the cliff dwelling and Tatum finally realizes he went too far for a scoop, but it’s too late.

It’s funny to me, reading reviews from the time of the film’s release, how indignant film critics were about the idea of a lack of journalistic integrity. Reviews were scathing and a lot of them focused on how unbelievable the idea that a journalist would have put an innocent man’s life on the line for the sake of a good story was. Since then, critics have reevaluated the film as another gem in the crown of an illustrious career, and rightfully so. Ace in the Hole is more poignant than ever in an age of clickbait headlines and “fake news”. It’s also the most cynical work of a man who was notorious for cynicism. Wilder’s firing on all cylinders, which was clearly too much for critics and audiences of the day. The film didn’t make back it’s budget until it was rentable in the Blockbuster Video age, and was considered a flop in the middle of a strong run of movies, sandwiched between Sunset Boulevard and Stalag 17.

I’m glad it’s getting more respect as time goes on. It’s not my favorite Wilder film, but I love the anger behind it. And maybe I’m on the internet too much, but the plot doesn’t seem too farfetched. Honestly, the most unbelievable part of the movie is that Tatum is the only journalist trying to exploit the situation. Ace in the Hole may not be for everyone. Remember, Tatum is a violent man, but don’t worry, he isn’t unscathed by the end.

Bonus Review: A Face in the Crowd

If you’re looking to make a night of cynical features, look no further than A Face in the Crowd. Andy Griffith’s film debut is a far cry from what would be his well-known Mayberry Sheriff persona…well, maybe not that far a cry. Andy Griffith plays Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, a drifter who comes to a town in Arkansas and gets picked up for a radio station. His folksy demeanor takes the area by storm and he becomes a sensation, growing in wealth and power, but behind the scenes, he’s a vicious, vile man who thinks his followers are morons who will believe anything he says. Sound like anyone you know?

A Face in the Crowd is another cynical film that was ahead of its time, under-appreciated at the time of its release, but is hopefully being discovered by more people as time goes on. The only hang up is whether or not you’ve watched The Andy Griffith Show. If you’ve seen the show, you’re going to fall into two camps: either you can’t see wholesome Andy in such a venomous role or you appreciate the true range he possesses as an actor. If you’re in the former camp, you probably won’t like this movie. Just fair warning.