The Siskel's Date With The '80s Series Is Totally Tubular

By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on May 15, 2013 3:00PM

Gag me with a spoon. This summer's crop of Hollywood blockbusters is grody to the max, consisting mostly of lame superheroes and bogus "comedy" sequels populated by airheads, dweebs, and narbos. You'd think the Noid was running Hollywood single-handedly. Where's the beef?

Maybe we've got rose-colored glasses, but at their best, the mainstream movies of the 1980s were bitchin'. Fewer franchises and CGI: A kinder, gentler moviegoing experience. That's why we're mega-stoked for the Gene Siskel Film Center's "Date with the '80s," a choice selection of righteous movies unspooling June 1 through July 4 (Independence Day--fuck'n A!)

And, like, oh my God, they managed to corral 35mm prints for the whole series! Except for Raiders on the Lost Ark. But don't wig out or have a cow, because Raiders is being presented in the recent, majorly rad 4K digital restoration. Cool beans. I kid you not, this is one bodacious lineup:

The Breakfast Club
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
The Terminator
Conan the Barbarian
Raiders on the Lost Ark
Back to the Future
They Live!
Repo Man
Dirty Dancing
Footloose
The Right Stuff

Eleven movies, each of them bad to the bone. And try not to spaz, but the Siskel is applying some voodoo economics to schweeten the deal: buy a ticket for the first ‘80s film on any Saturday in June, and get a ticket for the second ‘80s film that day at a discount. That's reason enough to stop being a couch potato and bounce over.

The Gene Siskel Film Center is at 164 N. State.