NOSTALGIA AIN’T WHAT IT USE TO BE: Everybody Wants Some!! and Sing Street

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Warning: SPOILERS

rev 1Two movies have opened recently that take place in the recent past (the 1980’s to be more precise).  Each felt pastelled over with a patina of nostalgia, a painful desire for a sweet past.  But the two couldn’t be more different in their approaches.

Everybody Wants Some!! (with two, count ‘em, two exclamation points) is the most recent effort from writer/director Richard Linklater. Like his previous effort, Boyhood, it doesn’t use a hero’s journey or character arc, nor does it use a plot in which a central character must overcome an obstacle or gain a goal, as the basic structure.

No, rather, like such films as Amarcord and Cleo from 5 to 7, it uses a passage of time to hold its story together.

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