Generations of Americans can still remember a time when parents and their kids could go to the multiplex and enjoy original youth-oriented films that weren’t either animated, part of a billion-dollar superhero franchise, or adaptations of overwrought young adult novels. While elaborate, big-budget movies like the Hunger Games series and Marvel films might be creative and loaded with special effects, they don’t compare to the youth movies produced during the 1980s: a decade that saw an extraordinary crop of pictures whose like hasn’t been seen since.

Read the whole article