My Brat Pack quest is almost complete.

The Movie: St. Elmo's Fire, directed by Joel Schumacher
Recommendation: Dee
Reason: "You need to see all of the brat pack movies."

So I'm not a complete pop culture fool. I have heard of the brat pack (though I doubt I'd be able to name all of them). As a kid in the 80's, I didn't see many of their movies, though as time goes by I've been correcting that. I've seen seven out of eighteen, which is...alright, I suppose. I'm a fan of Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy in particular, though as a kid I adored Emilio Estevez. I like the John Hughes films more than the others. I'm getting into Bret Easton Ellis more and more (that's the fault of Rules of Attraction, though).

But I'm off track. St. Elmo's Fire is a pretty decent film from the middle of the Brat Pack era, made while they were on the rise. The casting is decent-I particularily believed in the realism of Rob Lowe and Demi Moore's characters, though rumor has it that Demi was engaged in a bit of 'method acting' in her part. The story was interesting, well constructed, and the filming techniques were unobtrusive.

I think the real victory for this film were the genuine moments of great, spontaneous sounding dialogue. I'm not sure Joel Schumacher's done as well since then-in fact I know he hasn't. He's responsible for two of the worst superhero movies ever made. The writing he did on St. Elmo's Fire, however, was really great. The realism of the characters' speech really helped build an excellent feeling of comraderie, in turn improving the movie.

-92/365 down, 273/265 to go