Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

Oh my god! That was Vincent D'Onofrio! And Bradley Whitford! And Penelope Ann Miller! Holy crap. Wait, does this mean that I'm a lot closer to their age than I thought? In 1987, I was 15 and Elizabeth Shue and Penelope Ann Miller's characters are supposed to be 17, so maybe they were between 17 and 20 (okay Wikipedia says they're __ and __ respectively). They're only two to five years older than I am? I always thought it was more on the scope of ten. And I had never seen Whitford or D'Onofrio with so much hair, well D'Onofrio's may have been attached to the hat he was wearing. I thought both of them were 10 to 15 years older than me (okay, Wikipedia to the rescue again, they are __ and __ respectively).
This was a totally silly movie. Highly improbably, Blah blah blah. But, it was totally fun. There were lots of doofy and incompetent villains to harass the kids. There were plenty of minor villains with a heart of gold, too. Everybody got what was coming to them, whether they deserved good or bad. It's kind of nice to every once in a while watch a film that is completely predictable, yet still entertaining in it's execution.
If I had seen this film when it came out, I would have had the biggest crush on Elizabeth Shue. Now, it seems kind of wrong. Sure, Shue is my age, roughly, but in this film where she's totally a cute girl, she's way too young. When she and I start dating, we can watch this and joke about how young she was, then it will be okay, or something. No, I don't live in a fantasy world. It's more of a fantasy universe to be precise.
The friend who recommended this to me was quoting it to me this afternoon. I knew that they were quotes from a movie I had never seen, because I'm not totally oblivious, but we did then discuss Thor which I thought may have been flowing from discussing the next Iron Man movie, but now I realize that she was really making allusions to this movie but lacking the context, I plugged them into the other readily available framework. Just when I think I know what's going on, I don't.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I thought the coolest cat in this movie was the car thief, Joe Gipp, who is one of the aforementioned minor villains with a heart of gold. With his long hair pulled back in a pony tail, lack of facial hair (including sideburns) and non-flashy leather jacket, he was very un-80s. He was also cool because he was nice to the kids because it was the right thing to do, and he wasn't an in-your-face-thug like almost all of the other young people met in the city. It's funny the things that you take away with you from a movie.

Adventures in Babysitting on IMDB

The Whole Wide World (2003)

This could have been a brilliant bio-pic. Vincent D'Onofrio as the enigmatic Robert E. Howard and Renee Zellwegger as the school teacher Novalyne Price who befriends him, are well enough cast. But, I felt like I was watching a Hallmark movie of the week. That is not a good thing.
The first time Novalyne goes to Robert's house, there is a continuity snafu. From there it was all downhill. Novalyne goes into the house in early afternoon, stays for a few minutes before Robert offers to driver her around so they can talk. But, when they go back outside and its full dark. Also, in one scene Robert has five o'clock shadow and then the next the same evening, he is clean shaven.
D'Onofrio delivers most of his lines yelling or louder. That was a bit annoying. I have no idea about Howard's life story, but I hope he was more complex than portrayed in this movie.
Oddly, Zellwegger didn't get on my nerves so much, but only because D'Onofrio is annoying enough for both of them.
If you can avoid it, don't watch this movie.