#Life moves pretty fast movie

She selects films that she absolutely adores, and bases each chapter around a valuable вЂњlessonвЂќ that she feels that the movie imparts: вЂњ The Princess Bride: True Love IsnвЂ™t Just About the Kissing PartsвЂќ вЂњ Pretty in Pink: Awkward Girls Should Never Have MakeoversвЂќ Steel Magnolias: Women Are InterestingвЂќ. (Though one might add that Pauline Kael, who very brilliantly trashed all of these films, would certainly have needed telling.) вЂњI wanted to write about why the Fun Eighties Movies вЂ“ like Die Hard, Steel Magnolias, Pretty in Pink and Adventures in Babysitting - are also Good Eighties MoviesвЂќ (p.7).ДЄs such, FreemanвЂ™s focus is openly and unabashedly personal. вЂњNo one needs telling that Blade Runner, or Aliens, or Scarface, or Full Metal Jacket are Good Eighties Movies,вЂќ Freeman notes. On the contrary, FreemanвЂ™s tastes (mostly formed, as they were for a generation of us, by a whole lot of time spent in local video rental stores) lie firmly in the (often disreputable) Hollywood mainstream.

As she humorously acknowledges in the introduction, Freeman isnвЂ™t interested in unearthing undiscovered gems of вЂ™80s movie-making, or in offering appraisals of вЂњseriousвЂќ, already-lauded works. That paradox is explored by Hadley Freeman in Life Moves Pretty Fast, a revisionist take on вЂ™80s mainstream cinema thatвЂ™s as funny and sheerly enjoyable as it is subversive and critically insightful. At the same time, itвЂ™s no secret that the вЂ™80s are often viewed as the decade that quality forgot in terms of cinema, the period in which franchises, sequels and lazy, easy money-grabbing by studios took over from the auteur cinema and personal visions that characterised American films in the вЂ™70s. As the near-hysteria that greeted Back to the FutureвЂ™s recent anniversary conclusively proved, вЂ™80s movies are still capable of generating a huge amount of affection in audiences today, inspiring feelings that seem to go beyond mere nostalgia or sentimentality to something much more profound.

Life moves pretty fast