THE RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS 7

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

Welcome!

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

In 1980, four years before “The Big Chill” addressed baby boomers crossing over into middle age ennui for mainstream (read Hollywood) audiences, John Sayles created the subject’s wryly indelible mold with an independent ferocity inspired by John Cassavetes’ daring approach to cinematic truth.

Born of lower and middle-class New England families, seven (optimistic but seasoned) friends reunite for a weekend of hanging out, skinny dipping, singing songs, and peeking into the uncertain future staring them in the face.

They talk, joke, hook up, and bare their souls to one another in refreshingly honest ways. This film is an exquisite time capsule of New Hampshire culture circa 1980.

Dig the Tretorn tennis shoes.

Financed with money he made from writing B-movie scripts for Roger Corman, Sayles’s episodic storytelling breathes with lumpy authenticity. The reunion crew refer to themselves as the “Secaucus 7” (think “the Chicago Seven”) because of an arrest they endured in Secaucus, New Jersey on their way to a protest in Washington D.C. that they were thwarted from attending.

Rated R. 104 mins.