A wonderful examination of the movies I love! Handler Freeman takes a tough, in-depth (and, admittedly subjective) look at the greatest movies from the undisputed golden age of cinema. This book made me want (no, need!) to go back and watch many of these movies again, which, in my opinion, is the highest praise imaginable for this kind of work. If you love ‘80’s movies, or even if you don’t (in which case you would be dead wrong!), you need to read this book!

Enjoyable light-weight slightly autobiographical Marxist feminist criticism of 80's films, including John Hughes, Ghostbusters, Dirty Dancing and The Princess Bride

This is a brilliant book (in fact I liked it so much I went out bought my own cpoy before I'd even finished it, having gotten it out from the library initially): written as though you're having a long and very involved chat with a friend, funny, sweet and informative to boot. (Not unlike the 80s films Freeman describes.) There's much I agree with - yes, Ghostbusters IS one of the best films of all time - and much that I don't - to paraphrase the author's own words, I will defend Grease until at least the point of grevous injury, I also rather happen to like some of the modern superhero blockbuster fare - and even if you only have a cursory interest in film there's plenty here to fascinate, as you see how filmmaking has changed over the years, what's changed it & why, how we've imporved in some areas and in others aren't as progressive as we'd like to think (turns out that everything pre 2000s-2010s wasn't the Dark Ages-imagine that) and that maybe, in some ways, we should be making them like we used to.

This book is so amazing and i really like the way Hadley Freeman writes. In the book she comes with some opinions that I don't share with her but the way she writes makes that feel okay!

It took me quite some time to read it* because my brain can't process numbers and names that fast and she mentions A LOT of numbers and names!

But all in all i relly injoyed to read it!

*I had marked my process on goodreads but because i'm a twat i ended up deleting the book from all my selfs so you won't be able to see it :(

A superbly fun book full of great tidbits on your favourite 80's movies, but paired with some surprisingly in-depth discussion of movie and social critique.

Freeman clearly loves her topic (who wouldn't), and is quite passionate about young James Spader and young Dan Aykroyd (again, who wouldn't be?). Her discussions of Pretty in Pink, When Harry Met Sally, Dirty Dancing, The Princess Bride and Ghostbusters were the best of the book. Her later chapters on social class, racism and feminism were great, but seemed to be missing the aura of fun the earlier chapters had.

A super fun book - highly recommended for everyone who loves 80's movies, and (even though it's only April I'm calling it already) one of the best non-fiction books of 2016.

With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy.