'80s teen flicks back for 'reunion'
By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service
John Hughes' mid-'80s movies "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club" may seem something less than realistic, but in those days they looked something like a revelation. Hughes — soon to vie with Steven Spielberg for most popular director on the planet before becoming irrelevant — seemed completely conversant with teenage emotions.
Remastered editions of "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club" are now collected, along with Hughes' less-inspired "Weird Science" as a set called "High School Reunion" (Universal; also available separately).
Sadly, there are no extras of note, and if there was ever a movie that cried out for a reunion documentary or commentary, it would be "Club," which starred Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall and Molly Ringwald as high-schoolers sentenced to Saturday detention.
Ringwald also starred in "Sixteen Candles" as a birthday girl dealing with visiting grandparents, her crush on an unattainable hunk and the attentions of a hip geek, wonderfully played by Hall.
Released last week but arriving too late for review was the essential "The Simpsons — The Complete Third Season" (20th Century-Fox), a four-disc box containing all 24 episodes of the 1991-92 season. That was the season when the series got serious — seriously hilarious and smart, that is.
Simpsonian symposiums will someday dissect what made episodes like "Stark Raving Dad" — in which Homer gets thrown into the loony bin with a guy who thinks he's Michael Jackson — enduring classics of social import. But for the time being we can just enjoy them and the entertaining commentary that now accompanies every episode, along with other clever extras like Matt Groening's storyboards and a "baby translator" whose function should be obvious.
Charming 'Victor Vargas'
Another of last week's leftovers deserving attention is the low-budget charmer "Raising Victor Vargas" (Columbia TriStar), the best nondocumentary film I saw at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Victor Rasuk plays a would-be Romeo getting a lesson in how to treat girls from the prettiest girl on his Dominican block of New York's Lower East Side. Again, no extras of note, but the English subtitles could help those who find it hard to cut through Grandma's accent.
The success of Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" has inspired a very belated DVD release of 1989's "Roger & Me" (Warner). It follows Moore on his quest to call Roger Smith, then chairman of General Motors, to task for shutting down the GM plant in Flint, thus turning a thriving blue-collar town into what he depicts as abandoned ruin.
Remember 'Wiseguy'?
The first arc of "Wiseguy," the short-lived but long-remembered TV series starring Ken Wahl as an undercover agent who tended to identify a little too deeply with the criminals he was sent to bring down, is collected in the five-disc "Wiseguy: Season One, Part One" (Ventura).
"Alias — The Complete First Season" (Buena Vista) packages the original 22 episodes of the spy-vs.-spy series starring Jennifer Garner as the butt-kicking grad student and CIA spy who discovers she may be playing on the wrong team. Extras include deleted scenes and the now-ubiquitous gag reel, along with previews of Season 2 and the upcoming video game.
For those who like their skulduggery with a bit more finesse, the excellent 1990 British miniseries "House of Cards" (BBC) is now available as a three-disc box or separately as "House of Cards," "To Play the King" and "The Final Cut." Ian Richardson gives a brilliant performance as an amoral Conservative Party whip who not only knows where all the bodies are buried but does most of the digging himself.
"The Outer Limits: The Original Series 2" (MGM) collects 17 episodes — including the original Harlan Ellison teleplay that inspired "The Terminator" and the two-part "The Inheritors," starring the young Robert Duvall and equal to any film of its type made during the period.
