Addicted to Love (1997)

Deeply flawed rom-com. 

Photographer Maggie (Meg Ryan) and astronomer Sam (Matthew Broderick) team up to spy on and torment their former lovers, who have become a couple. This unlikely and mean-spirited premise sees the pair squatting in a New York City apartment opposite their exes and watching them by using Sam’s astronomy equipment for surveillance. 

The story doesn’t work for a number of reasons, but mainly because it’s built around cruelty. Are we really meant to relate to them destroying the lives of the people who wronged them? 

There are so many silly aspects:

1. Maggie is a revenge-crazed grungy biker/artist with perfect make-up. The film can’t decide how we’re supposed to feel about her. 

2. Neither Maggie nor Sam have anything else they need to do, such as earning a living. They can spend all of their time dismantling other people’s lives. 

3. The Frenchman Anton (Tchéky Karyo) who steals Sam’s sweetheart Linda (Kelly Preston) doesn’t sound French at all. I kept thinking that the plot would reveal him to be an American, but no, he was just acting badly. 

4. There’s an absurd scene in which a bunch of kids are persuaded to spray perfume on Anton via water pistols. This sort of thing just doesn’t ring true.  

It’s fascinating in a way, but the tone is all wrong and it’s simply not funny. You wonder why Ryan and Broderick ever got mixed up in something so misjudged.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

Imaginative student Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) pretends to be ill so that he can skip high school. He spends the day with his best friend and girlfriend instead, despite his sister (Jennifer Grey) and the Dean of Students (Jeffrey Jones) catching onto his elaborate range of tricks and deceptions to make them believe he’s still at home in bed. 

This is the best of the John Hughes teen films, probably because it’s much funnier than the others. But I find it fascinating that even his comedy film has to have some serious “self-discovery” drama. This is played out as Ferris’s best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) learns to face up to his fears after trashing his father’s sports car. 

The fourth-wall device works well – especially since it’s only Ferris, the narrator, who talks to camera. 

The music is prominent, as always. You get songs by Yello, Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Big Audio Dynamite. There’s also an especially memorable sequence in which Bueller mines "Twist and Shout" by The Beatles from a carnival float. 

Like all Hughes’ films, adults are represented as one-dimensional authority figures to be scorned. And like The Breakfast Club, it mourns the passing of youth as the kids simultaneously want to join the adult world yet view that world with mistrust and contempt.

You Can Count on Me (2000)

Absolutely brilliant drama written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan.  

Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo star as Sammy and Terry, a sister and brother who lost their parents in a car crash when they were young. Sammy has stayed in her home town and her family house, living as a single mother with her son Rudy (Rory Culkin). Terry is a troubled drifter who has spent some time in prison. When he comes to stay with Sammy, you see Terry form a bond with his nephew and Sammy’s increasing confusion as she tries to resolve her complicated love life – including a fling with her boss (Matthew Broderick) as well as wrestling with being a mother and a sister to a complicated brother and son. 

It’s tender and extremely moving. There’s gentle humour, and the script is perfectly judged. Linney and Ruffalo deliver astounding performances that feel incredibly real. Ruffalo in particular has such an expressive face that you can’t take your eyes off him.

Election (1999)

Excellent comedy set in a high school in Omaha, Nebraska. 

Matthew Broderick plays a popular school teacher whose life unravels when he gets involved with running the election for the student body president. Reese Witherspoon plays the ambitious Tracy Flick, who is determined to win it – whoever the cost. And Chris Klein and Jessica Campbell are the siblings who run against Flick. 

It’s fresh and funny, and you can easily relate to the characters and their predicaments.

WarGames (1983)

Genuinely exciting thriller about a teenager (Matthew Broderick) who accidentally triggers the countdown to nuclear armageddon by hacking into US military computers. It’s fascinating to watch now, given how things have changed in terms of technology.

There are some unbelievable moments – hacker left alone in a room in a high-security military installation with access to a computer – but overall the story is surprisingly timely and plausible. In 2019 we are at the mercy of automated systems. And with Donald Trump as president, this sort of crisis seems all too possible.

It’s highly entertaining, with more of a nail-biting escalation than most James Bond films. The pacing is excellent too: it never lets up.

Apart from Matthew Broderick’s distinctly odd parents, the film is well cast. Ally Sheedy is appealing as Jennifer Mack, the hero’s school-chum-turned-girlfriend, and John Wood is effective as the eccentric, damaged Dr. Stephen Falken, who invented the WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) supercomputer.

There’s a happy ending, of course, but not before the moral – the futility of mutually assured destruction – has been firmly established.