David Vining's Blog, page 2

John Hughes: The Definitive Ranking

How have a handful of teenage-focused films from the mid-80s managed to retain some level of cultural purchase 40 years later? The curious, mysterious mix of writing, improvisation, and editing that was John Hughes’ cinema. It was so mysterious, I’m not sure that even Hughes understood it because the magic obviously got lost after a certain point.

Hughes, though, had the good sense to step away from the camera after that, relegating himself to writing and producing for another decade unti...

Curly Sue

John Hughes’ final film as a director is not good. His least film, maudlin in all the worst ways and not terribly funny, Curly Sue is a limp attempt to recreate the charms of 30s slapstick. Hughes’ inability to write tightly bites him hardest here, losing the ability to focus on what he wants to say through the whole thing. Harmed even further by one of the three central performances that is just all wrong, this is far from a hidden gem and rightfully sits at the bottom of Hughes’ filmograph...

Uncle Buck

John Hughes returns to a concentrated timeline to slightly more successful results with Uncle Buck, his reunion with John Candy (who gained A LOT of weight since Planes, Trains, and Automobiles). However, once again, I feel like the magic of Hughes’ writing has been lost to some degree. His writing, especially in the films he directed himself, always felt like a dance on a knife’s edge, barely hanging on to two conflicting tones on top of very loose structures, and after his Thanksgiving fil...

She’s Having a Baby

I was curious about this film’s box office, so I did a quick comparison over Hughes’ directing career. Every single one of his movies had made money, pretty obviously. They were cheap to make (The Breakfast Club cost $1 million) and made a decent amount of money. With Planes, Trains, and Automobiles‘ success, it seems like Paramount was happy to front a good amount of money for Hughes’ follow up. She’s Having a Baby cost $20 million. The previous film, by contrast, cost only $15 million. And...

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

John Hughes jumps from high school to middle age, and the jump feels natural and almost refined. Hughes is too undisciplined a storytelling to really call anything he did refined, though. The embrace of loose comic structures and improvisation always makes his films feel a bit more gangly than they could be, even when I think the overall packages are very good, even great, because while he may be undisciplined, he also always had a very clear eyed view of the human side of things. And Planes...

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

I do think this is the pinnacle of what John Hughes was trying to do with his cinema: a story about teenagers looking out towards an uncertain future and trying to make sense of themselves. It’s also successfully and alternatively silly and serious with a strong emotional bedrock on which to build the silly antics we witness. Its central conceit about growth actually works well with the antics, and I think Hughes manages to have his cake and eat it to regarding the two tonal thrusts of the f...

Weird Science

Alternatively John Hughes’ tightest film to date as well as his loosest, Weird Science is Mary Poppins but sexy. Apparently, Hughes accepted the job of writing and directing the film as a favor to Universal for funding The Breakfast Club, and it feels like it. I mean, I like the film, but there’s a sloppiness to the writing here that even Sixteen Candles didn’t have. It’s like he didn’t care about the story at all, and all of the connective tissue is perfunctory. At least Hughes was smart en...

The Breakfast Club

It’s weird to think how a film about five high school students talking about themselves could end up being the 14th biggest movie of the year, but that’s what happened in 1984 with John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club. Enduring in appeal, surprisingly touching in effect, and quite entertaining, John Hughes’ perhaps most famous film is quite the accomplishment even forty years after its release.

It’s Saturday, and arriving for eight straight hours of detention are the wrestler Andrew (Emilio Es...

Sixteen Candles

I’d never seen this movie at all before. I had no idea what I was getting into. I assumed it’d be a saccharine look at a girl falling in love on her sixteenth birthday, or something. Instead, John Hughes delivers something that’s really quite silly. Also a big omnidirectional. And random. I get a certain lack of confidence from Hughes in his feature film directorial debut. The story in effect is something of an ensemble piece, but I think the focus was supposed to be on one person. And he ju...

John Hughes: A Statement of Purpose

Going from one John to another, I pick up the directing career of John Hughes, author of a good amount of defining Gen-X popular cinema.

I’m actually not that familiar with the movies, though. The only ones I have any real experience with are Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Weird Science. I’ve never seen Sixteen Candles at all, and I’ve only seen bits of The Breakfast Club on television.

So, he’s been in the back of my mind for a while. He’s kind of important, but his directing career is...