FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE William Friedkin - Cruising 

The film leaves the most important question unanswered (and a bit disappointed): How does the New York cop (Al Pacino) really stand about homosexuality? Does Friedkin lack the courage to answer this question in the film? Or did I miss something? Is he perhaps even involved? Who is in truth the murderer? Cruising doesn't tell us that. Friedkin's film is controversial. He dives into the New York S&M gay scene and is accused of misrepresenting their lives. It almost seems as if the discussion about the film has displaced the open questions Cruising doesn't dare to answer. As a crime thriller Cruising has gotten mightily confused; a chaos! Or is it chaotic because Friedkin simply didn't dare to clearly assign Pacino's character to the S&M scene? How can we understand the last scene when the cop's girlfriend covers his leather gap and the canvas fades black? But at least: Friedkin's film looks outstandingly visualized, holds out a high tension from the very beginning and explores an alien milieu for us. That must be enough.

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Rob Reiner's second film is a small miracle. It's not about "Sure Thing", a willing woman without an inner life, but about how two teenagers fall in love. Everything begins in a classroom: John Cusack as Walter falls in love with his classmate, but behaves so clumsily that she advises him to leave her life better. Thereupon, at the invitation of a friend from L.A., he plans a trip across the country by passenger, because there the girls are supposedly willing and do not ask long. But also his classmate wants to visit L.A., her friend, a future lawyer... A road movie and on the way both argue, gain common experiences, laugh and suffer. Both talk and think like real teenagers, they are shy about sex and yet eager to experience something. But that sex only becomes beautiful in connection with love and respect is the simple and equally revolutionary message of Rob Reiner's film! When they meet in the end, it's the same for us viewers! To discover: The best teen comedy of the 80s!