My Girl 2 (1994)

Of course, they always have to ruin everything with a sequel. This isn't as bad as I remember it, but it still feels like a betrayal to my memory of the original.

It's two years later, and Vada is now an angsty teen eager to learn more about her deceased mother, so she hops a plane to Los Angeles where she develops friendly feelings for another boy. It has the same great topical soundtrack of the '70s which transports you to a different era. It doesn't hit nearly as hard as the original film, but it takes you back to an age of innocence long lost past, while also somehow retaining that feeling of being quintessentially '90s.

3 La Brea Tar Pits out of 5

My Girl (1991)

It's 1972, and Vada Sultenfuss is an 11-year-old girl whose mother has died and whose dad is preoccupied by running a funeral parlor in the basement. She's a hypochondriac who is obsessed with death and tries to find meaning by joining a summer writing class and hanging out with her friend Thomas J. Meanwhile, her dad begins courting a new romance which reopens some old wounds.

I suppose a lot has to do with when you were born and your memories of growing up, but this film arrived at a perfect point in my formative years where it affected me throughout my life. To the point where I can almost transpose my own memories of childhood onto this film. Vada represented everything I looked for in a girl and Anna Chlumsky brings enormous charm and heart to her performance. Even now, I can still remember how I felt watching this as an easily impressionable kid. It doesn't hurt that I also saw myself in Macaulay Culkin at that age. This is a movie with real soul which contemplates some deep truths, especially for a coming-of-age film.

4½ mood rings out of 5

Far From Home (1989)

Normally resident in L.A., Joleen (Drew Barrymore) finds herself stranded with her father in a small town near the Nevada desert. It’s a shitty situation for a teen, but it becomes even worse when a few dead bodies turn up. The psycho killer at the trailer park scenario is played out alongside a young girl’s first steps into sexual maturity. She’s not shy but she’s inexperienced, experimenting with finding excitement in danger.
It lays on the menace overly-thick at times, but for a B-Movie it does a decent job at keeping the tension trundling along.
Special mention to Richard Masur, who made his character stand out.

2½ wristwatches out of 5

The Thing (1982)

A team of scientists in the Antarctic, among them Kurt Russell wearing his best Bee Gees beard, encounter a parasitic extraterrestrial life form that brings a world of shit to their remote doorstep.
The Thing presents the perfect scenario for Carpenter who crafted a career making films about something outside trying to get in, and/or something inside trying to get out. It's his masterpiece and ironically his first studio production; everything prior, including Halloween (1978), were independent releases.
Roy Arbogast’s creature effects are superb, proving that CGI is the weaker, stillborn sibling. Spider-head gave me delicious nightmares as a kid.

5 bouts of icy paranoia out of 5