Now and Then takes on being a teenage girl in a thoughtful and sweet way…

Now and Then, is one of those movies I was obsessed with when it came out. I had the soundtrack and I listened to it constantly. The soundtrack is a fucking banger, just hit after hit from the 60s and 70s. The cast is phenomenal. Every single one of the main cast, older and younger, are fucking killer. It had Devon Sawa and Christina Ricci in it and between the two of them my sexuality was confused for the next 30 years.

Even though it didn’t do super well when it came out and it doesn’t have great reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (though, who cares), it still stays with me. I remember when Roger Egbert, he did all the movie shite in the 90s, said it was ‘Not good.’ and kept comparing it to Stand By Me. I just remember the phrase it wasn’t ‘psychologically sound’ that somehow, the pathos of the (male) characters in Stand By Me was more believable than that of the young women in this movie, which A: Fuck you B: You have no idea what is to be a thirteen year old girl, you don’t know what you’re talking about and never will and C: it actually is just that, ‘psychologically sound’. Having just been in Dance Nation, and I can’t believe I’m just making this connection, it is four girls over a summer on the cusp of girl to womanhood, in a world where the Vietnam War is going on, women’s liberation is really taking off, gender roles are getting reexamined, kids are rebelling in different ways and these girls are just trying to figure it out. Their friendships are changing, their bodies are changing, it’s just such a sweet and wonderful movie and it’s written and directed by a woman.