The thing about most of the movies playing at AFI´s 80s film series is that at any point of time, if you ARE blessed, or cursed, with cable, you can see them on your own TV. Some may even say they are a cliche.
And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT.
Endlessly quotable, shamelessly mainstream, each with an undeniable theme song, more than occasionally sneakily subversive, they have become part of the American subconcious for a reason.

The series goes on till September, and while you and we did miss both Goonies and Girls Just want to have fun this weekend, here is a guide to the rest of the series (which, unlike last year’s set, features a slightly bigger variety of everything from John Cusack and Molly Ringwald (times 2, naturally) to David Cronenberg) and a clip of Orbital Be Bop to ease the pain.

Print this.
Bring a date.
Buy some popcorn.
And get your quotables on.

THE BREAKFAST CLUB
Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois: A brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal spend the day in detention, forced to ponder the question, “Who do we think we are?” posited by blowhard principal Paul Gleason. United in their contempt for him, they begin to reveal what landed them there in the first place and their uneasiness about themselves and the future. This quintessential Brat Pack movie set the standard for the coming-of-age genre and remains one of John Hughes’ most beloved films.

Friday, July 11, 7:00; Saturday, July 12, 7:00, Thursday, July 17, 7:00

SIXTEEN CANDLES
“Can I borrow your underpants for 10 minutes?” Establishing herself here as John Hughes’ teen queen and muse, Molly Ringwald is a girl in love with the dreamiest guy at school. Unfortunately it’s only geeky Anthony Michael Hall who shows any interest in her, with his constant shadowing and incessant chatter. Add to that a weird exchange student, a forgotten birthday, and the impending nuptials of a superficial sister and you have one of the funniest teen films ever.

Friday, July 11, 9:10; Saturday, July 12, 9:10; Thursday, July 17, 9:10

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS
“I don’t put out,” sneers punk-rock teen Corinne Burns (a very young Diane Lane), and even though she can’t sing or play, she rises to rock stardom on sheer force of charisma-plus a few tunes nicked from boyfriend Ray Winstone. Music producer turned movie director Lou Adler outfits the film with a better-than-passable pop/punk original soundtrack, and while the humor is often hokey, it’s also prescient: the not-yet established MTV video style of the mid-’80s is pretty well imagined, and the way Corrinne’s fans adopt her signature two-tone hairdo and lingerie-centric getups prefigures the Madonna wannabe craze that would follow.

Friday, July 11, 11:15 ; Saturday, July 12, 11:15

BETTER OFF DEAD…
“I want my two dollars.” This immensely quotable black comedy finds John Cusack as a high schooler recently dumped by the girl of his dreams for the arrogant captain of the ski team. In desperation he decides he would be “better off dead,” and thus begins a series of misadventures while trying to seal the deal or win back the girl… until a pretty French foreign exchange student changes his mind-and helps him rebuild a boss Camaro in the process.

Friday, July 18, 9:30; Saturday, July 19, 9:45

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ONE CRAZY SUMMER
John Cusack, the Jimmy Stewart of teen comedies, is back in his second film with director Savage Steve Holland. A recent high school graduate, Cusack joins his buddy Curtis Armstrong on a road trip to Nantucket before pursuing his dream of entering art school. In the midst of their journey, the two friends meet up with Demi Moore, an aspiring songstress whose grandfather is about to lose his house to a money-hungry developer. Eager to win Moore’s heart by saving her grandfather from ruin, Cusack puts the house on the line in a boat race against the developer.

Friday, July 18, 11:30 ;Saturday, July 19, 11:45

THE DARK CRYSTAL
Adapted from a story by Jim Henson and co-directed by fellow Muppeteer Frank Oz, this all-puppet magical adventure is set in a dark fantasy world that is a decided departure from the light-hearted realm of the Muppets. The story centers on two young Gelflings-the last of their kind-on a quest to end the dark rule of the evil Skeksis by mending the legendary Dark Crystal.

Friday, July 25, 2:45, 9:30; Saturday, July 26, 1:00; Sunday, July 27, 3:05; Monday, July 28, 5:00, Thursday, July 31, 5:00

LABYRINTH
“Dance, Magic Dance!” Henson’s visionary fairy tale now enjoys a devoted cult following among viewers who grew up on it. Resentful of having to babysit her brother Toby, a young Jennifer Connelly inadvertently casts him into the hands of Jareth the Goblin King, played with haughty relish by rock icon David Bowie. To rescue Toby before he is forever transformed into a goblin, Connelly must navigate the many obstacles-and dangerous puppetry-of the Goblin King’s labyrinth.

Friday, July 25, 11:30 ; Saturday, July 26, 3:00, 11:45 ; Wednesday, July 30, 10:20 ; Thursday, July 31, 9:30

THEY LIVE
They influence our decisions without our knowing it. They numb our senses without our feeling it. They control our lives without our realizing it. THEY LIVE. A rugged loner (wrestler-turned-actor Roddy Piper) stumbles upon a terrifying discovery: ghoulish creatures are masquerading as humans while they lull the public into submission through subliminal advertising messages. Only specially made sunglasses make the deadly truth visible. Equally enjoyable parts action, sci-fi and subversive social commentary, this campy Carpenter gem demands discovery (or re-discovery).

Friday, August 1, 11:45 ; Saturday, August 2, 11:45 ; Wednesday, August 6, 10:20

CAN’T BUY ME LOVE
Nerdy Patrick Dempsey, sick of being ignored and mistreated by his fellow high-schoolers, uses his hard-earned lawn mowing money to buy his way into the popular clique by paying pretty cheerleader Amanda Peterson $1,000 to pretend to be his girlfriend for one month. Given a New Wave makeover and sporting Peterson on his arm, he fools the popular kids into accepting him. Caught up with his new identity, he alienates his nerd friends and fails to see that Peterson has genuine feelings for him. When his ruse finally gets exposed, he loses everything-until he rediscovers his real identity.

Saturday, August 2, 9:50; Tuesday, August 5, 9:20

THE THING
More than 25 years after its release, John Carpenter’s THE THING still boasts some of the most shockingly grotesque-and fiendishly inventive-monster makeup effects ever put on screen, courtesy of master makeup artist Rob Bottin, putting to shame today’s all-too bloodless CGI. Carpenter mainstay Kurt Russell leads a rapidly dwindling and ever-more paranoid group of Antarctic-based scientists against an alien life form that can assume any animal form, at times combining different species’ parts into some gruesome improvisations. Stylish and suspenseful, Carpenter and company’s lunatic vision demands to be seen on the big screen.

Friday, August 8, 12:00 midnight ; Saturday, August 9, 12:00 midnight ; Wednesday, August 13, 10:20 ; Thursday, August 14, 9:40

POLTERGEIST
“They’re heeere.” Directed by THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE’s Tobe Hooper, but overwhelmingly bearing the stylistic fingerprints of writer/producer Steven Spielberg, POLTERGEIST represents an unholy marriage of family film and intense horror cinema. The haunted house genre moves to the suburbs, as a family discovers that the mysterious occurrences in their new tract home-at first amusing bits of mischievous telekinesis, later more terrifying acts of deadly violence-may have something to do with the Native American burial ground underneath their southern California subdivision.

Saturday, August 9, 9:45; Sunday, August 10, 7:20; Thursday, August 14, 7:20

FLASHDANCE
Welder by day, exotic dancer by night, Jennifer Beals is a girl with a dream-to gain acceptance into the prestigious Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance. Lambasted by critics upon its release, FLASHDANCE would go on to become the third highest-grossing film of 1983 and launch a pop culture phenomenon in the process. Join us as we salute this campy classic in its 25th year!

Friday, August 15, 9:30; Thursday, August 21, 9:15

VIDEODROME
“Long live the new flesh!” Is TV bad for you? In this case, very. Sleazy cable TV head James Woods catches a pirate broadcast of an ultraviolent show called “Videodrome” and thinks he’s found an edgy new hit to bring to his station. Girlfriend Debbie Harry likes it so much she wants to audition to be on it. But the show’s origins are masked in secrecy, and the production company is vaguely cultlike. The more Woods watches, the more hallucinatory side effects kick in.

Friday, August 15, 11:30 ; Saturday, August 16, 12:00 midnight

DIRTY DANCING
“Nobody puts baby in a corner.” Indeed. Jennifer Grey is ‘Baby,’ a plain-Jane daddy’s girl, poised to enter the Peace Corps before going to college and marrying a doctor in the 1960s. But her life is thrown into a tailspin one summer when she goes on a family trip to the Catskills and falls in love with hunky dance instructor Patrick Swayze. With his regular dance partner on ice, Baby steps in. Let the dance montage begin!

Saturday, August 16, 9:45; Tuesday, August 19, 9:45; Thursday, August 21, 7:00

PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE
Tim Burton’s feature debut represents the improbably weird beginning to his improbably weird mainstream career. Paul Reubens makes the leap from cabaret theater to major studio movie with his sui generis Pee-Wee Herman character, along with his toys, gadgets, colorful friends, and of course, his beloved bike. Its theft sets Pee-Wee on a cross-country quest, ending on the Warner Brothers’ studio lot. Co-scripted by Reubens and later SNL-star Phil Hartman.

Friday, August 22, 10:00; Saturday, August 23, 10:00; Thursday, August 28, 10:20

ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING
Elisabeth Shue is stood up by her boyfriend on their anniversary, so she takes a babysitting job for the neighbors-a horny teenage boy, his 9-year-old sister, and the brother’s equally randy best friend. When she gets a fearful call from neurotic best friend Penelope Ann Miller to pick her up at the bus station in the city, she hauls the kids on a rescue mission. But when her car gets a flat, these suburban kids are in for a night of zany misadventures.

Sunday, August 24, 8:30; Tuesday, August 26, 9:40; Wednesday, August 27, 9:40

ALIENS
Nominated for seven Academy Awards, this second film in the ALIEN series finds our heroine Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) back on earth after drifting in space for 57 years. Her friends and family long deceased, she agrees to help the Company when they lose touch with the colonizers of the alien’s home planet. With a squad of Marines, an android, and a Company man in tow, she returns to the scene of the crime to find her motherly instincts awakened by the sole survivor-a young girl-but to get out alive she’ll have to face another mother who has instincts of her own.

Friday, August 29, 9:30; Saturday, August 30, 9:30; Sunday, August 31, 9:45; Wednesday, September 3, 9:05; Thursday, September 4, 9:05

NEAR DARKFriday, August 29, 12:00 midnight ; Saturday, August 30, 12:00 midnight ; Sunday, August 31, 7:45

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