Back to the Future (1985)

I was 11 when “Back to the Future” hit theaters. Not yet in high school. (I got called “McFly!” A lot.) But I loved the story and acting, and knew this movie was whip smart. Watching it again with high school long past and looking at 1985 as movie hero Marty McFly looks at 1955, I’m blown away. “Future” is epic. You know the plot: Michael J. Fox -– then a TV star -– is Marty, a skate-boarding 1980s teen who gets zapped back 30 years in a time machine sports car (how genius!) built by an eccentric nut-job scientist (Christopher Lloyd). In 1955, McFly meets the teenagers (Lea Thompson as a hottie and Crispin Glover as an incredible nerd) who will be his parents, and puts his own existence in jeopardy when he crashes their meet-cute. Never mind sci-fi, Robert Zemekis’ film is one of the great comedies, with marvelous turns from the whole cast, especially Tom Wilson as an idiot bully. The script toys with time-travel like a kid in a Lego store and serves up Ronald Reagan jokes so great Ronal Reagan loved them. Fox –so young – defines movie stardom. A childhood favorite improved with age, I love it. A+

House of Wax (1953) and House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Vincent Price, with his abyss of a voice and those dead-stare eyes that play like daggers, remains the King of Horror Movies in my book. He has no successor. Two of his earliest flicks are “House of Wax” and “House on Haunted Hill,” with Price as an oddball NYC artist driven to sinister deeds after his wax museum is torched and he builds anew with a shocking sicko canvas, and then as a rich mystery host to a party at a haunted California mansion that promises $10,000 to any guest who survives a creepy lock-in. “Wax” -– itself a remake remade many times -– is classic with its ghoulish madman taking bodies, alive and not, and how the camera just sits on wax faces as they melt in fire. The then-new 3-D gimmicks may once have dazzled but now only seem silly, but never mind that. Imagine 1950s kids screaming horror at this nasty fun tale. “House” is too wink-wink meta, from its dumb opening to the nudge-nudge fourth-wall-busting asides. Sure it has several scares, and Price struts around deflating every other man within range, but even for corn, it’s all quite lame and forgetful. Not “Wax.” Wax: A- House: B-

The Blob (1958)

Steve McQueen is the world’s oldest teenager in “The Blob,” the corny, campy horror classic that opens with the funniest, catchiest theme song that I can recall. “Beware of The Blob, it creeps/ And leaps and glides and slides/ Across the floor/ Right through the door.” It’s a laugh riot. The movie is too, right from the start with McQueen playing 17 (!) calling a first-date gal named Jane (Aneta Corsaut) as “Jenny,” and getting away with it because he’s Steve Freakin’ McQueen. Anyway, meteor hits, a blob pops out, eats an old guy’s arm, and it’s on  -- laughs, goofy special effects, and punk teen kids saving the world when the cops won’t listen. Classic scene: The cinema! What’s hard as hell to take is the sexism: Every woman and girl is a helpless twit prone to hysterics and less brave than the 7-year-old brat in PJs prone to carrying around his teddy. Actually that’s the gist of the film: Those nightmare fantasies kids have about monsters coming true and no adult will believe them real. So honk the horns, and hold those ladies’ hands tight. B

Knowing (2009)

“Knowing” is forgetting. In 1958 Massachusetts, a frantic girl scribbles seemingly random numbers on a sheet of paper that is then placed inside a time capsule that is dug up 50 years later by another group of children, one of whom is the son of an MIT professor (Nicolas Cage). Widowed, drunk, and sure that God is dead, our troubled hero stumbles upon a code in the numbers -– it marks the date, map location, and death toll of every disaster since ’58 until the end. As in End of Times. Director Alex Proyas (“Dark City” and “I am Legend”) has served up a dark Christian apocalypse thriller with no way out, and if you go for angel starships and religion-heavy films that drop 9/11 tragedy and people burning to death with barely a shrug, and that God naturally only saves white American children, then have at. Not me. This is not deep or knowing, and it does not dare question what kind of god plays this cruel. Stupidity abounds. Dig the scene where Cage uses a magic ID card stamped “Academic” to get by the police. Really?!? Where can I and my wife get that? C-

Quiz Show (1994)

Directed by Robert Redford and penned by Paul Attanasio, “Quiz Show” details the “TV is God” bubble pop that no one – or not enough people – ever heard. On the well-loved 1950s game show “Twenty-One,” a guy named Herbie Stempel (John Turturro) is winning night after night. But his nerdy, Jewish-by-way-of-Queens persona doesn’t jive for advertisers. Herb is forced out. Enter Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), a Columbia University instructor from a dreamy New England family and with movie-star looks to boot. “Quiz Show” details how this show and these guys came crashing down to earth, because it’s all fake. Redford spins many plates – TV ethics, education, bigotry, the quest to surpass one’s father, and pure corruption of power -- and does so perfectly. The 1950s have rarely been re-created with such loving detail and rhythm, and with such a steely eye on the façade of America as the pillar of truth and success, operated by men who only want money and fame. Best scene: At tale’s end, Stempel looks on with glee and then horror as Van Doren is ripped to shreds, with his parents watching helpless, by angry reporters. Redford’s view of truth on television is timeless. A

Revolutionary Road (2008)

"Revolutionary Road" aims to be a soul-splitting film about the miserable marriage of a couple (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) in 1950s suburban America. He's a salesman who longs for a new, exciting career, but still enjoys screwing the office girls during lunch breaks. She's the wife/mother trapped at home and longing for her sacrificed acting career and a life in exciting Paris. They have two children, and an unplanned third pregnancy instigates a long-brewing fight.

It's a good film for the most part, with director Sam Mendes serving up a beautiful recreation of an America that shimmered on the outside but reeked from within. The film nails the plight of most women in pre-1960s America: When they got married, they gave up living and only existed to serve. Men had choice in their married life with a career. It might not be perfect, but it still was a choice.

The film falls apart with its display of domestic warfare. As Winslet and DiCaprio tear each other apart emotionally and physically, for hours at a time, even during an entire day and night, the children are never around. It's explained the tykes are at a party or the babysitter's ... and it reads false at every turn.

If Mendes, screenwriter Justin Haythe and our two leads wanted to really serve a harrowing tale of a hellish family life, then they needed those children to witness every mental-torture fight of this marriage. It's a huge contrived hole meant to win or give the leads sympathy, and anyone who grew up watching his parents consistently go at it can smell this falsehood a mile away. The film rattles the brain, but it draws no blood. It should cut deep, not slight. B-

Far From Heaven (2002)

Ever see one of those 1950s melodramas where every thing and every person is impossibly perfect? Where mom, dad, son, daughter, house, clothes and mannerisms, even the streets, were scrubbed clean of any blemish? In 2002's "Far From Heaven," director/writer Todd Haynes takes that paradise-like blueprint used in so many WASP films and smashes the dream with notions that "didn't exist" in 1950s America as far as most good patriot consumers were concerned: homosexuality, race discrimination, racial violence and steep economic divides.

I won't give away any plot details except to say the film focuses on three people: WASPs Frank and Cathy Whitaker (Dennis Quaid and Julianne Moore) and African-American Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysebert).

Haynes shows us a portrait of America that must be closer to the truth than what was presented in films of the era. We know the starched clean, perfect America never existed despite the lies (or false memories) of many of our parents and grandparents and a white, straight, Christian-led government. The dream -- or blatant lie -- was the byproduct of an America in love with itself and its potential, one that gladly ignored and denied anyone who spoke different.

It's an unsettling film for sure, and despite its somber ending, "Far From Heaven" celebrates freedom and the smashing of barriers that separate us. Now, that's an American value that can be celebrated. One of 2002's top five best films. Just awesome. A