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Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986)

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“Madonna can go to hell as far as I’m concerned! She’s a dick!”

If aliens ever came down to Earth and wanted to know what the eighties were like, they could look no further than the time capsule that is “Heavy Metal Parking Lot.” It is, as many have described it, the viral video before viral videos existed. I’d love to see a documentary about this film some day, or perhaps an actual feature made around the events that occur in the fifteen minute documentary. It’s a hilarious and often absurd look at a certain time period where everyone wore mullets, walked around without shirts, bragged about doing drugs, and women were often very proud to admit they wanted to “fuck” certain band members’ “brains out.”

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We Like It Like That: The Story of Latin Boogaloo (2016)

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Director Matthew Ramirez Warren’s “We Like it Like That” is a masterpiece of musical cinema. It’s a long overdue exploration at the beginning and unfortunate ending of Latin Boogaloo, a musical hybrid that helped to shape a generation and has also lived on in the hearts of younger generations. It’s clear by Ramirez Warren’s enthusiastic direction and approach that he love Latin Boogaloo, and he instills within the subject a unique and bold energy that will educate eclectic music lovers on one of the major influences in modern latin influenced pop and hip hop. As a guy who grew up in the Bronx, I spent many parties sitting alongside relatives that grew up with Boogaloo, and it was always a guarantee that music would be played before the night was up.

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Beat Street (1984)

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I liken “Beat Street” to “Saturday Night Fever” in where both films, set in the Bronx, feature very talented youths with troubled home lives trying to fulfill their promise and chase the American dream. While “Beat Street” is nowhere near as timeless as the former film, director Stan Lathan’s drama is an entertaining, if exaggerated look at life in the Bronx, and the culture that would eventually die with the decade. The film produced by Harry Belafonte doesn’t have the same committee constructed, consumer pandering aesthetic that the “Step Up” movies do. But for all intents and purposes it tend to shine the light on actual minorities living in the Bronx, some of whom can barely make rent, but still drive themselves on their love for their work.

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Joe Bob Briggs: Dead in Concert (1985)

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“Dead in Concert” is one of the rare comedy specials starring John Bloom as his iconic character Joe Bob Briggs. Briggs himself is a politically incorrect character who revels in embracing stereotypes for the purpose of ironically mocking them. He mocks religion, race, gender, politics, and even speaks about growing up in a small town where dirt was a way of life. Briggs is not one to shy away from being offensive and has a good time making his audience squirm and laugh at some of the most inappropriate jokes. In one instance he royally pisses of an audience member who gazes at him angrily.

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Love & Mercy (2015)

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Music bio pics are rarely masterpieces, and while “Love & Mercy” is itself a fine movie, it’s not the entry in to the long library in the sub-genre that’s changed my mind about music bio pics just yet. Much like previous films about musical geniuses, the film gets lost in a miasma of pit falls, including the inability to balance the story of the musician and the story of the man himself. So we’re thrust back and forth in to what ends as a flawed, but above average tale about mental illness, and the creation of art. “Love & Mercy” takes the concept of the bio pic above the norm, focusing on Brian Wilson, the founder of the Beach Boys through two stages of his life. One as a young man, and through his perils as a middle aged man. In both stages he’s enduring the horrors of mental illness and is systematically being victimized by someone in his life that he finds incapable of escaping.

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Magic Mike XXL (2015) [Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital]

magicmikexxlAfter the pop culture explosion that Steven Soderbergh brought to screens with 2012’s “Magic Mike,” director Gregory Jacobs does a bang up job of carrying the torch. “Magic Mike XXL” is a mixed bag that sags in the middle but is overall a very entertaining road film. After three years retired from the erotic dance business, Mike receives word that former boss “Dallas” is dead. Shocked to learn that he is very alive and abandoned his former group of dancers, Mike is inspired to rejoin his old team after a serendipitous airing of the song “Pony” reminds him of his old days.

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