It’s Christmastime in South Bronx. Kenny Kirkland, alias “Double K” (Guy Davis) spends his time in front of his turntables, mixing. His friends all have creative aspirations as well. Ramon bombs walls and subway cars under the tag “Ramo.” Chollie carries a briefcase and serves as Double K’s manager. Kenny’s younger brother Lee (Robert Taylor) is a promising breakdancer.

Life isn’t all fun and games though. Ramo struggles to earn the respect of his father, while trying to find a way to support his girlfriend and infant son. Lee - whose dance crew go by the name Beat Street - frequently brush up against a crew from another block. To settle their hostilities, they break out their best dance steps.

While Double K spins the turntables at a nightclub, Lee is approached by Tracy (Rae Dawn Chong), a dance instructor who asks Lee to show her students some moves they might use for a show she’s choreographing. Kenny accompanies Lee to the rehearsal, but doesn’t appreciate Tracy using his brother. “You just like all the biters. Take a bite and leave the rest.”

Tracy travels to the Bronx to clear the air. Kenny samples some new sounds for her that he’s working on, and Tracy notes there’s not much difference between what each of them does, taking different styles of music and mixing them into something new. The two develop feelings for each other, but Kenny has trouble putting aside his creative ambitions for a relationship.

Journalist Steven Hager visited South Bronx in the early ’80s to document the trinity of break dancing, graffiti art and hip hop that was emerging there. He used his research to assemble a movie script, which was bought by Harry Belafonte. Adapted by Andrew Davis and David Gilbert and Paul Golding, Beat Street followed Breakin’ into theaters, but this is far from an exploitation flick. I was stunned to discover that it’s a real film.

Like Saturday Night Fever, Beat Street is a fantastic social document of a moment in time, a time before crack cocaine infiltrated urban America and hip hop became a business. Guy Davis doesn’t have John Travolta’s charisma, but Beat Street isn’t a star vehicle. It doesn’t really institute hokey melodrama into the mix either. It’s a straight up labor of love on breakdancing, mixing, rapping and street art with barely anything else in between.

There’s something here for any hip hop fan to be excited about. I was interested in the street art, and there’s a terrific running bit about a clean white train that appears like the great white whale, an almost mythic creature for Ramo to pursue. A mystery punk begins defacing Ramo’s murals with his rudimentary tag, and these subplots kept the movie interesting for me.

I dug the creative ambiance of the film and its atmosphere, which feels authentic. There’s little in the movie that’s cringeworthy, not even Rae Dawn Chong’s performance. Some of the dancing and costuming is cornball, but the same could be said of Valley Girl. Another development I liked was an abandoned building the Beat Street crew transforms into the spot for their mix parties.

Director Stan Lathan got his start in public television on a show struggling to find an audience in the early ’70s called Sesame Street. He’s since gone on to direct TV specials for Dave Chappelle and Cedric the Entertainer and work extensively with Def Jam on shows like Def Poetry Jam. Beat Street is his only feature, but Lathan brings a sophisticated credibility to the film, which I really liked.

While contemplating the stars and asking a female party guest “How would you like to have a sexual experience so intense it could conceivably change your political views?” fails to impress, Walter “Gib” Gibson (John Cusack) confides in his buddy Lance (Anthony Edwards) that he’s lost his touch.

Attending a small northwestern college in the fall, Gib’s losing streak with the ladies continues when he fails to score any points with an articulate - but uptight - English classmate named Alison (Daphne Zuniga) who’s put off by Gib’s beer and pizza persona.

Lance attempts to brighten Gib’s spirits by inviting him to Los Angeles for Christmas break. Here, a gorgeous blonde (Nicollette Sheridan) who Lance promises is a “sure thing” awaits him. Gib finds a rideshare, but discovers that Alison is coming along for the trip.

Their bickering upsets the showtunes singing couple (Tim Robbins and Lisa Jane Persky) in the front seat. Gib accuses Alison of being repressed, and when she takes off her top and flashes a passing car, they find themselves on the side of the road, without a ride to Los Angeles.

Gib gradually endears himself to Alison as he helps her survive on the road, and she decides that rather than take the bus to L.A., she’ll stick with him. Gib’s feelings for Alison cool once he discovers that she’s going west to visit her boyfriend. When Alison learns what Gib’s holidays plans are, she’s not thrilled with him either.

Steven Bloom & Jonathan Roberts were college pals rooming together in L.A. Bloom had an idea for a movie based on his school days, about a guy trying to get from college to a sure thing. Neither had written a screenplay before, but they came to the attention of a young producer named Roger Birnbaum. The writers pitched their script to every studio in town and were turned down by every studio in town.

Birnbaum pleaded his case with an executive at Embassy Pictures and was able to talk the studio into developing the project. They sent it to Rob Reiner, the actor who had just finished his first film as director, This Is Spinal Tap. Reiner saw an opportunity to make a comedy for teens that wasn’t dopey, but actually had some intelligence and wit to it.

Bloom & Roberts could have easily aspired to Porky’s, but were instead inspired to write a teenage It Happened One Night. It starts off exactly like every other horny teenager movie of the day, but as soon as Cusack enters, becomes much more than that; it’s an elegant romantic comedy with a welcome degree of depth.

Cusack was only 17 when cast in this - his first starring role - but is instantly likable. He nails a rambling monologue that’s just as funny as anything he’d ever perform. Tim Robbins flies in out of nowhere and is hilarious. The film’s ending is never in question, but Reiner has terrific sophistication for character and structure, and keeps things moving. It says a lot that The Sure Thing gets confused with Say Anything … This is probably the best Cameron Crowe movie never actually written by Crowe.

Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is introduced trying to clean himself up and make it into work, teaching 8th grade social studies and coaching girls basketball in Brooklyn. One of his brighter students, Drey (Shareeka Epps) lives with her mother. Her brother is in jail and with her father a no-show, the drug dealer her brother is doing time for (Anthony Mackie) looks out for her.

After a basketball game, Dunne is visited by his ex-girlfriend (Tina Holmes), who’s cleaned herself up and gotten engaged to a guy she met in the program. Dunne adjourns to the empty locker room to smoke crack. Drey walks in on him and her teacher falls on the floor. She stays with him until he’s sober enough to give her a ride home.

Neither Dunne nor Drey are a big hit with their peers. Dunne is reprimanded by the principal for failure to follow the assigned curriculum. Drey weighs going to work for her dope peddling surrogate father, the only person she knows who shows up for her games. Teacher and student become friends of sorts, and he tries to keep her away from what he considers to be unsavory elements.

Director/co-writer Ryan Fleck and editor/co-writer Anna Boden met while Fleck was an undergrad at NYU, and Boden was enrolled in Columbia’s film program. Both were fans of the “oddball friendship” movies of the ’70s, like Harold and Maude, and wrote a screenplay about an idealistic, drug addicted teacher and his student, who’s trying to stay out of street life.

Hoping that a short film along with a script might win the attention of a producer, they shot a 19-minute short on video, based on the idea. Titled Gowanus, Brooklyn, it featured Shareeka Epps as Drey, and won a short filmmaking prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004.

Given the opportunity to make a feature film version, Fleck and Boden envisioned an actor in his 30s playing their lead, like Mark Ruffalo. Casting director Eyde Belasco got the script to Ryan Gosling, and though much younger, he wanted to do it. The project was only budgeted at $700,000 and was shot in 23 days, but Gosling’s performance earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

In addition to getting a film made at all, I have to take my hat off to the filmmakers for their casting. Gosling reminds me a lot of Robert DeNiro in his Mean Streets days; he has a similar volatility and improvisational style, and doesn’t look unlike a young DeNiro. The two scenes he shares with Tina Holmes in particular have beautiful, sad texture to them, without either actor even saying much in the way of dialogue.

The inspiration for an ddball friendship flick and the basic setup here were good, but Fleck & Boden don’t seem like they were up for writing a screenplay. The film is oblique and self-consciously arty. Shot almost exclusively on handheld camera, it just sort of floats in and out of focus as Gosling’s character goes through his benders.

The musical cues - many provided by the Toronto band Broken Social Scene - are bombastic and out of place. The classroom scenes are pretty good, but I would have appreciated a lot more in the way of content and depth to the movie, which I really can’t recommend, except to say that Gosling is definitely an actor to keep an eye on.

While driving leisurely through Portugal, James Bond (George Lazenby) comes across a woman drowning herself in the surf. He rescues her, and is attacked by two thugs. He fights them off, but the mystery woman disappears. Bond later recognizes her at a hotel casino. She is Tracy Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) and after an evening of frolicking - and another fistfight with a thug - she vanishes on him again.

Bond is taken before a construction magnate and gangster named Draco (Gabriele Ferzetti). In a long exposition, Draco reveals that he is Tracy’s father, and that what his wild daughter needs is a man to dominate her and make her love him. Bond doesn’t feel he’s the ideal candidate for this position, but Draco insinuates that he may know the location of criminal mastermind Ernst Blofeld.

Returning to London, Bond’s superior M (Bernard Lee) tells him that after two years of hunting for Blofeld, he’s calling the operation off. Bond resigns in disgust, but with the intervention of Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), he’s given a two-month leave of absence instead. Bond returns to Portugal, and accepts Draco’s offer. Quickly and unexpectedly, he finds himself falling in love with Tracy.

Learning that Blofled has employed the College of Arms to establish claims of a royal title, Bond impersonates a genealogist and gains access to a mysterious mountain facility in the Swiss Alps. There, he discovers that Blofeld (Telly Savalas) is conducting allergy research. With the assistance of a dozen attractive female test subjects, Blofeld has hatched a biological plot to threaten the world’s agriculture.

After immortalizing Ian Fleming’s super spy in five hugely successful films, Sean Connery had grown tired of playing James Bond, particularly the constant media attention surrounding the character. Producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli initially considered casting Roger Moore - who was busy doing the TV series The Saint - and Timothy Dalton, who at age 23, felt he was too young to take Connery’s part.

Instead, an Australian model named George Lazenby - who had never played lead in a film before - was selected to assume the role of 007. During production, Lazenby’s manager convinced the actor that Bond was out of touch with the liberated ’60s, and by the time the film was released, Lazenby announced he would not return. The movie turned out to be a hit, and the studio lured Connery back for one more turn in Diamonds Are Forever.

Despite Lazenby’s notoriety as a one-hit wonder, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is noted for being one of the most faithful adaptations of Ian Fleming’s books. Director Peter Hunt and screenwriter Richard Maibaum closely adhered to the story Fleming laid out in his 1963 novel. There are no gadgets, and the twist that 007 falls in love and gets married have prompted some to suggest that if Connery had appeared, this would have been the best Bond film of all.

Relative to the spy movies of the day, this one isn’t bad. The film looks fantastic. The lighting, editing, and the second unit action directed by John Glen are all top notch. Diana Rigg - taking a role Brigitte Bardot turned down - is fun to watch, and the portions of the film set in Switzerland had a certain ambiance that I liked. There’s no title song, but Louis Armstrong provided vocals for a good love theme, “All The Time In The World.”

That said, Lazenby is stiff and uncharismatic as 007. Rigg more or less plays a trophy bride, and the speed at which Bond “falls in love” with her is unbelievable, almost as unbelievable as Blofeld’s plot to take over the world. All that may have worked in the early ’60s, but can’t help but be laughable today. The pace of the 144-minute film could be considered “leisurely” by some, but I found much of it boring. I think this for Ian Fleming purists only.