Born in the first half of 1980, I’ve always identified more with Gen X than Millennials. Then I begrudgingly remember that Y2K was over twenty years ago, and the kids that were in middle school when I celebrated my twenty-first birthday (with a keg of Guinness and a keg of Magic Hat Number Nine) are feeling the aches and pains of middle-age just as much as I am.
Xennial is the term created for folks like me, that came of age in the liminal space between ubiquitous landline use and total smartphone saturation.
And without going into great detail about when and how it’s defined, I can comfortably identify with the in-between feeling of growing up on the cusp of the internet age.
With that in mind, I’ve compiled a list of the top ten movies that defined my adolescence, an in-between age in an in-between world, that capture the weirdness of my formative years. They might not be the best movies of the late 80’s-early 90’s, but they’re the ones that made the most lasting impression on my evolving psyche. I rented each of these at least twenty times from the video store before my parents eventually gave in and just bought me my own copy on VHS. To this day, I can still follow along word for word. I’ve made my kids watch them (with mixed results) and often return to them as a comfort when the simplicity of youth seems awfully far away.
- Young Guns 2 – I first watched this movie because of the soundtrack by Jon BonJovi (I do a mean Blaze of Glory at Karaoke), but I stayed for Kiefer Sutherland. In fact, You may have noticed that four of the movies in this list included a character played by Kiefer Sutherland, who was the subject of my pre-teen celebrity crush. (I don’t have to be embarrassed about this any more because I’m all grown up now and it’s totally normal to write fanfic when you’re 12. Right?)
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Before the groundbreaking TV series, there was… this movie. I can’t claim that it’s a work of genius, but I had a favourite outfit based on the main character and every song on the soundtrack brings me back to the backyard swing where I would listen to my walkman at full volume and sing along at the top of my lungs. If that’s not the very definition of adolescent nostalgia, I don’t know what is.
- Beetlejuice – I’ll admit that this is a bit of a cheat, because I never owned Beetlejuice on VHS. But I feel like it would be shameful not to include it here, if not for the impact it had on me personally, for the effect it had on the genre. Beetlejuice was marketed as a family movie, but it was dark and twisted in the exquisite way that only Tim Burton can manage. (And yes, I did write it three times on purpose).
- Wayne’s World – I wish I could claim that I was cool enough to know about Bohemian Rhapsody before it experienced a massive resurgence in popularity as a result of this movie, but no. My best friend and I dressed up as Wayne and Garth for Halloween that year – what turned out to be the last trick-or-treating excursion of my childhood.
- Evil Dead 2 – Ok, so this one came into it’s position of importance in my early teenage years rather than true adolescence, but I was still painfully awkward and horribly uncool. For my 15th birthday party, I held an outdoor screening of Evil Dead Two that stands out in my mind as one of the only time more than a couple of people in high school would have ever admitted to hanging out with me. I still have a deep appreciation for Bruce Campbell’s ability to calculate the exact ratio of camp to horror to produce such alchemy.
- The Lost Boys – Back when Vampires were dangerous instead of sparkly, and lived in a cavern with a giant picture of Jim Morrison (much like the wall full of posters in my own pre-teen den) this movie symbolized the epitome of cool. Even if the scene with the maggot rice still turns my stomach. Also Kiefer Sutherland (see above) with a platinum, buzz cut absolutely screams the late eighties bay boy aesthetic.
- Willow – I’m pretty excited to watch the upcoming series revisiting the world and characters of of this classic when it comes out later this year for streaming on Disney Plus. Val Kilmer will be sorely missed as the rougueish Mad Martigan, and I take some comfort in the fact that none other than 90’s icon Christian Slater has been cast in an adjacent role and plans to honor Kilmer’s performance. This kids hate watching this one with me because I do all the dialogue (with voices).
- Stand By Me – Stephen King is an absolute master of his craft and anyone who claims he’s a hack can fight me. The miniseries IT scarred me for life and gave me nightmares for years. But Stand By Me is still a perfect coming of age movie, and the casting is outstanding.
- The Princess Bride – I read somewhere that this has been demonstrated quantitatively to be the perfect movie, and I can’t really disagree. Packed with so many instantly recognizable one-liners, even my kids all enjoy this one.
- Labyrinth – This film was my introduction to the unparalleled genius of David Bowie, and while much has been written about his bulging tights and the effect that particular costuming choice may have had on the development of a generation’s sexual identity, the soundtrack is what stands out at having gotten me through an extremely awkward time.
Looking back, it seems pretty obvious now that I would be end up writing fantasy novels with a taste for humour and character-driven plot lines. It also strikes me as meaningful that in at least half of these movies, the soundtrack was just as important (if not more so) as the film itself.
Which movies do you remember most from your formative years?