Suburbia

The only weak point here is that some of the acting really sucks. It doesn't stand out too much though, because of the feel of the movie and everything else makes up for it. This is a gritty look at a bunch of street kids rebelling against suburban life in the 80's and it does a great job of creating real people not just out of the kids, but out of the suburbanites they interact with. Yeah, they're all a little cliched, but they're fleshed out cliches with positives and negatives. It's

A movie that feels real while also being clearly curated for an audience. I appreciate how it shows the bad and good side of punk rock: the sexual assault, violence, racism, homophobia AND the ACAB, anti-status quo, fuck capitalism, fostering sense of community for kids who have nothing. That lesbian couple is goals

A diamond in the rough. There is a certain juvenile tone and style of writing which complements the portrayal of a delinquent subculture very well, but seems off when the film describes adults. Sometimes it feels as if the film doesn't comprehend the gravity of what it shows any more than its protagonists do. Conversely, that very innocence renders the funeral scene, for instance, quite powerful. It's as if realism is sacrificed for authenticity. The finale seems a bit excessive.

Watch this *before* Decline of Western Civilization, or the acted version will suffer some; not so much the very arbitrary acting as Spheeris' insistance that every other scene must carry a Message, which feels a bit at odds with the nihilism brush it tries to paint the others with. That said, the band performances alone are easily worth the price of admission, and then you get a quite effective story on top of that too.

MVP: Flea

My second favorite movie of all time.

I remember absolutely nothing about this film. It hit me that hard.

I saw this film a few years too late but it still brought back a lot of those feelings of angst. See this one.