SAVED! (2004)
In the Red and Blue State era, America often feels more like a pair of hostile side-by-side nations than a single group of United States, but this scrappy little indie by writer/director Brian Dannelly (and producer Michael Stipe...yes, THAT Michael Stipe!) does its part to bridge the divide by showing that maybe, just maybe, liberal elitists and conservative family values/assault weapon enthusiasts aren’t really so very different after all. Saved! tells the remarkably charming story of a bunch of very nice young people at a Christian fundamentalist high school trying to be as moral and decent as possible while grappling with questions of faith and the harsh realities of life. Naturally, many actual Christian fundamentalists hated it, but the cast (featuring undervalued charmers like Jena Malone and Patrick Fugit, a great comedic performance by Mandy Moore and a surprisingly likeable and sardonic turn by Macaulay Culkin) is the most likeable bunch of adolescents this side of Freaks and Geeks. The story is both highly respectful of religious belief and hilariously perceptive about the frequent disconnect between piety and common decency (not to mention the freshly topical disconnect between abstinence education and elevated teen pregnancy rates).
DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993)
I know, I know: this is a back-to-school list, and Dazed and Confused is the quintessential "last day of school" movie. But you poor souls facing down a whole new year of classes, teachers, schoolbooks and locker stuffings need something to dream on, and there's no better light at the end of the tunnel than the Richard Linklater ensemble comedy that launched a thousand careers. One of the all-time great up-all-night party movies, Dazed is like a favorite rock album; it's stuffed with greatest hits and no matter how many times I've seen it, I'm always up for another viewing. Dazed captures the giddiness of those final hours dealing with teachers' dirty looks as well as the anxieties of those on the threshold, either of high school (and hazing by sadistic seniors) or adulthood ("The older you do get, the more rules they're gonna try to get you to follow.") And unlike most high school movies with their rigid caste systems, Linklater's film finds that rare relaxed groove where the stoners overlap with the jocks and the geeks co-exist with the cheerleaders. And then there's Matthew McConaughey's immortal Wooderson, the cautionary tale/stoner sage still trying to ride that endless summer as far as it will take him. I don't ever want to go back to high school…except when I'm watching Dazed and Confused.
BATTLE ROYALE (2000)
The idea behind Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale – one of the highest-grossing films in Japanese motion picture history, and a stunning achievement in blending artistic elements with balls-out action – is so simple that it would have been an instant winner at a high-concept Hollywood pitch meeting: it's basically Beverly Hills 90210 meets Death Race 2000. Luckily, the movie was based on a hugely successful (if incredibly controversial) novel, and the Toei studio needed no convincing to greenlight it. The participation of the legendary Beat Takeshi – not as director, but acting as one of the schoolteachers – cemented the deal. The premise of the movie is simple: in the near future, economic woes and overpopulation combine to leave Japan facing a crisis: teenagers can't get jobs and so are easily drawn to street crime and terrorism. To thin out their ranks, the government forces all high school classes to participate in an annual kill-or-be-killed tournament: each class is dropped on a remote island with a handful of weapons and orders to wipe out anyone who gets in their way. Some choose not to participate at all; some have friendships tested and torn apart; some try to game the system, and others take to the game – which becomes a national sensation as a televised blood sport – all too readily. The appeal of the movie isn't as simple as the terrific, and often incredibly bloody, action sequences: it's also in the surprising performances (including a near-silent turn by Masanobu Ando as Kiriyama, the demonic villain, and a pre-Kill Bill Chiaki Kuriyama in a juicy role), the relationships that develop between the kids (which range from operatic to heartbreakingly realistic), and the way that, despite the outlandish trappings, Fukasaku never lets you forget these are supposed to be real kids, behaving like kids would behave. It's that element of realism amongst all the sci-fi craziness that makes Battle Royale so memorable.
CLUELESS (1995) & MEAN GIRLS (2004)
Amy Heckerling, director of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, returned to her prime territory a dozen years later with Clueless, which for all practical purposes remains that brief, special moment known as Alicia Silverstone's movie career. Here we have the ideal satirical vision of the sunny side of adolescent girl power: Silverstone's Cher may be too socially adept and fashion-conscious not to seem shallow, but she hasn't got a trace of Heather in her, and she's determined to use her skills to help others and do her part for a series of good causes, from helping the environment to greater awareness of global hunger to getting Wallace Shawn laid, all of which ought to be woven into the Democratic Party's national platform. (Okay, maybe not getting Wallace Shawn laid.) Flip to side B and you've got Mean Girls, where the Heather virus has so thoroughly contaminated high school life that Lindsay Lohan, the home-schooled offspring of zoologists who didn't bring her in from the African bush until she was sixteen, is forced to pretend to be both stupid and bitchy in order to get close enough to her genetic peers in the Chicago educational system to study their strange, exotic ways. These two movies also serve as a double feature illustrating Hollywood's seeming ability to turn any source material at all into a commercial teenpic: Clueless is the least official but not the least (emotionally) faithful of the string of Jane Austen adaptations that flooded theaters in the mid-'90s, and Mean Girls was adapted by Tina Fey from Rosalind Wiseman's nonfiction sociological study Queen Bees and Wannabees.
Click Here For Part One, Part Three & Part Four
Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Leonard Pierce, Phil Nugent