Say Anything...(1989): review: 7/10

In the final days of high school in the 80s, a nicey nicey super intelligent girl (who alas is something of a wet sock and who has an excessively close relationship with her widowed father) meets a smooth uninteresting kickboxer with limited intellectual capacity: after many exhausting conversations they fornicate in a motor car.

If the characters are dull, the film is not: Cusak has a certain charm, and portrays the nervousness of early adulthood in an intelligent, understated way.

Do the Right Thing (1989): review: 8/10

Set in a lower class Brooklyn neighbourhood during some hot summer days, this film focusses on a pizzeria and local racial tensions, primarily between blacks and Italians, but also including hapless Hispanics and Koreans.

Though the film is well acted and lively in style, the script is pedantic in its relentless tracing of the racial issues. It presents a very unsympathetic image of blacks, who are shown variously as envious, promiscuous, sloppy, hostile, irresponsible, lazy, argumentative, drunken and destructive.