Mystic Pizza (1988)

Two sisters (Julia Roberts and Annabeth Gish) plus their best friend (Lili Taylor) work in a pizza restaurant in a small Connecticut fishing town named Mystic. Each of them experiences a relationship that challenges and changes them in some way.

It’s a funny and emotional coming-of-age drama. The script is absolutely spot-on. The characters are extremely well drawn and so entirely believable that you laugh when they laugh and weep when they weep.

The three stories are so expertly woven together that it feels like one plot. And in fact there’s a fourth story, which is about the way of life in the town, and this too is handled brilliantly. There’s a strong sense of place, and you really feel drawn into this small community.

There’s nothing you could cut or add to make Mystic Pizza work any better. It’s a mini-masterpiece.

The Ice Storm (1997)

Superb drama directed by Ang Lee and adapted from Rick Moody’s novel. It details the interwoven fortunes of two neighbouring families in Connecticut across the Thanksgiving weekend of 1973. They are members of the wealthy middle-class, with designer homes and seemingly everything they could wish for, but somehow they have lost their way.

The cast is superb. Kevin Kline plays Ben Hood, a father of two who’s having an affair with his friend and neighbour’s wife (Sigourney Weaver). Bored and restless, the two couples have troubled children too – perhaps unsurprisingly. Everything comes to a head on one dramatic, frozen night, as the fractures in their marriages and issues relating to the children’s insecurities seem to point towards a horrifying and inevitable conclusion.

It’s harrowing stuff – more so than I remembered from seeing it at the cinema in 1997. 

Another disturbing thought: in 2021 we are as far from 1997 as 1997 was from 1973.