New movie reviews, DVD reviews, interviews, and all things film.

Follow Me

• Ajami ***
• The Girl on the Train ***
• Greenberg **1/2
• Mother
• Repo Men **1/2
• The Runaways
• More

• Armored
• Astro Boy
• Broken Embraces
• Dillinger Is Dead
• Fallen Angels (Blu-Ray)
• The Fourth Kind
• Ninja Assassin
• The Princess and the Frog
• Undead: The Vampire Collection
• Wonderful World
• The 25 Best DVDs of 2009
• More

• 2009: The Year's Ten Best Films
• The Decade's Ten Best Films: 2000-2009
• My 2003 Interview with Brittany Murphy
• San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards 2009
• Richard Linklater
• John Woo
• Jared and Jerusha Hess
• Essential Halloween Movies
• Michael Stuhlbarg
• Jane Campion
• Bobcat Goldthwait
• Hugh Dancy
• Kathryn Bigelow
• Willem Dafoe: The 2009 CineVegas Interview
• David Carradine
• A 2002 Interview with Edward Asner
• Vinessa Shaw
• Henry Selick
• 2008: The Year's Ten Best Films
• The San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards 2008
• The 25 Best DVDs of 2008
• Bruce Campbell
• Darren Aronofsky and Marisa Tomei
• Josh Brolin
• A Tribute to Paul Newman
• Steve Coogan on Hamlet 2
• Manny Farber (1917-2008)
• Bernie Mac (1957-2008)
• Emily Mortimer
• Brad Anderson
• Don Cheadle at CineVegas
• Abel Ferrara at CineVegas
• Tina Sinatra
• My Top 100 Films [Updated]
• My Top 60 Directors [Updated]
• The Top 50 Movies of the Past Ten Years (1997-2006)
• Terry Zwigoff on the new Bad Santa Director's Cut
• Alfonso Cuarón Interview
• Guillermo Del Toro Interview
• Christmas Movies
• Combustible Celluloid's Big Guide to Halloween & Horror Movies
• Cult Movies
• Actress Interview Gallery
• The Top 100
• More Features and Interviews

• Not Quite a Memoir: Of Films, Books, the World, by Judy Stone
• James Agee: The Library of America Collection, by James Agee
• Just Making Movies, by Ronald L. Davis
• Guide to Essential Movies, by Joe Leydon
• Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, by Robert S. Birchard
• Profoundly Disturbing, by Joe Bob Briggs
• A Third Face, by Samuel Fuller
• Dark Lover, by Emily Leider
• Agee on Film, by James Agee
• Lulu in Hollywood, by Louise Brooks
• Negative Space, by Manny Farber
• 5001 Nights at the Movies, by Pauline Kael
• More Books

• Home
• Reviews A-C
• Reviews D-F
• Reviews G-J
• Reviews K-M
• Reviews N-Q
• Reviews R-T
• Reviews U-Z

The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

SEARCH MOVIES / CELEB

Say Anything (1989)

Rating: 3 Stars (out of 4)

In Your Eyes

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Say Anything on DVD

John Cusack has unwittingly become Generation X's romantic screen icon. He's not particularly handsome but he's charming, funny and cool as hell. He can enter a room with John Wayne composure and he can explode with Jim Carrey animation. But we love him best when he's pining away for some cute girl, as he does in Say Anything. He plays a high school misfit who somehow manages to hook up with the most popular girl in school (Ione Skye) on graduation night. Say Anything suffers from a few odd and unnecessary subplots, but it's still a little treasure, and it spawned several pages worth of quotable dialogue, including lines about pens, buying and selling, and kickboxing. Even better, it created one of the indelible images of the 1980s: Cusack holding up the boom box blasting Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes."

In 2009, Fox released a 20th Anniversary Edition DVD. It includes all of the extras from the 2002 Special Edition, including a commentary track by Crowe, Cusack and Skye, a whole bunch of deleted, alternate and extended scenes, trailers, TV spots and a photo gallery. New extras include an interview with Crowe and a little featurette about the film's fans. Also available on Blu-Ray.

Starring: John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney, Lili Taylor, Amy Brooks, Joan Cusack
Written by: Cameron Crowe
Directed by: Cameron Crowe
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 100 minutes
Date: April 18, 2002