Saturday Night Fever (1977)

The way John Travolta walks, talks and moves in this film is so effortlessly cool that you can only imagine the entire role was constructed around him. By day he works in a hardware shop in New York. At night, he dances in the local clubs where his astonishing moves have earned him a level of respect he cannot find in regular society, nor in his home life.  

It tackles issues including religion, class, social mobility, gender roles and the state of New York in the 1970s, but never in a heavy-handed manner.

Both incredibly dramatic and desperately sad, in some ways it’s a New York version of the sort of stories told in Billy Liar and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – a young man tries to rise above his background to make his way in the world while negative forces conspire to keep him down.

Fame (1980)

Alan Parker’s engaging drama tells the story of a group of teenagers at the New York High School of Performing Arts. We follow them from the initial auditions through to their eventual graduation, getting to know their personalities and backstories through their social interactions as well as their musical, dancing and acting talents. 

It’s strongest for the first three quarters. The characters are developed well, and – unlike the spin-off TV show version – it doesn’t shy away from depicting the grittier aspects of their lives. The ending left me a little unsatisfied, though, and a few of the threads were left unresolved. 

It’s almost a musical, but not quite. On two occasions, spontaneous music and dancing breaks out (in the canteen and in the streets), but given that they are all performers it just about works within the “realist” framework. 

Performances are uniformly strong. Irene Cara (who sings the well-known theme tune) is Coco Hernandez, Lee Curreri is keyboard wizard Bruno Martelli, Barry Miller is troubled comedian Ralph Garci, Gene Anthony Ray is skilled-but-illiterate dancer Leroy Johnson, and Maureen Teefy is the “ordinary” Doris Finsecker who, inevitably, finds out that she's not so ordinary after all.

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

Funny and moving drama by Francis Ford Coppola. Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) attends a high school reunion and is dismayed when her estranged husband Charlie (Nicolas Cage) unexpectedly shows up. She faints...and wakes up in 1960 – 25 years in the past. 

Trying to come to terms with her bizarre new reality, she spends a few days in her childhood world, with her family and school friends, and faces some fundamental dilemmas. Can she change her life and avoid the mistakes she knows she is destined to make? Should she break up with Charlie, who seems to love her so much but who will later betray her? What can she do differently now that she has all the knowledge and wisdom of her 1985 self and perspective on what really matters? The film explores these questions in a way that’s always humorous and often profound.

The 1980s-to-1950s/60s time-travel plot gives this plenty in common with Back to the Future (1985), but I like the fact that this film doesn’t bother with the technical “rules” about changing the future by interfering with the past. Quite the opposite: at one point, Peggy Sue gives Charlie the lyrics to a song she says she wrote. It turns out to be “She Loves You” by The Beatles (which would be a hit in 1963). 

Given such a warm and intelligent script, Kathleen Turner gives the performance of a lifetime, perfectly conveying all the excitement and confusion of what she’s going through. Nicolas Cage is extremely charming, as the role demands, and he has a strange, goofy appeal that’s a result of his huge charisma. 

It’s incredibly romantic, but that romance is all the deeper and more affecting because of the interwoven threads of hope and regret that run through it.