In 2030, the hubbub in America isn’t around the morning-after pill, but the good-morning pill. The drug was developed to cure violent tendencies until its CEO, Addis (Chris Moss), realized the greater windfall stood in having it secretly cause such urges, thus increasing demand. Bwah-hah-hah!

Meanwhile, a former employee named Soul (Daniel O’Reilly) leads a small movement of highly armed revolutionaries against Addis’ greedy, grubby ways. Soul, who looks like John Travolta playing a Ken doll (or vice versa), is so committed to the movement, he initially refuses sex with his hot-to-trot wife (Marnette Patterson) so he can focus.

Like me, Censor Addiction sags in the middle, as each stage of the factions’ ongoing tête-à-tête grows protracted with heavy dialogue. Human action figure Mike O’Hearn (National Lampoon’s TV: The Movie) livens things up for a minute as an Addis fixer who feels no pain, has advanced healing properties and could be the result of entering “bicep but a person” into ChatGPT. Former pin-up model September D’Angelo also livens things up by falling to the ground rather delicately for someone violently plugged with machine-gun fire.

Censor Addiction is basically a reunion of Michael Matteo Rossi’s The Charisma Killers from 2024, right down to the appearances of Vanessa Angel, Vernon Wells, Ana Ciubara, what looks like the same living room, a familiar driveway, and wacko character names — here including Wizard, Pillar and Canvas Jones. The latter is an Addis henchman played by Bart Voitila (David DeCoteau’s The Pit and the Pendulum); he and Moss stand out by acting with the proper sodium level for the ham they’re given. That’s in step with the Addis commercials that open the movie, targeting Big Pharma with satire reaching for RoboCop-style heights. Rossi doesn’t get there, but he should try more of that. —Rod Lott

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The 1980s had their “big” movies dedicated to the dawn of the most extreme of sports, little-seen mainstream product like Rad, North Shore, Body Slam or even The Dirt Bike Kid with Peter Billingsley and half the cast of HBO’s Not Necessarily the News.

But only one movie made me want to skateboard down a “freewheeling boogieman” on the 405, bounce off a “parallel shortbus” at the youth center and bust out with a “360 knapsack” on a “total doogie” — that’s the lingo, right? — and that movie was Thrashin’.

The whole skating craze was more my younger brother’s bag. I’d watch him and his friends doing “ollie-hopnoodles” and “jitterbuggin’ the manatee” in the neighborhood park while I sat in the shade of a tree and read my dystopian fiction novels above my reading level — a sad childhood, to be sure.

In that summer of 1986, though, Thrashin’ was advertised on the back of every Marvel comic book and, man, I was as pumped as a fat kid with no athletic ability could be pumped: I needed to see that movie!

Too bad there were no theaters in my small town. The next year, I rented it on VHS and thought it was okay, but my skating fandom already had died; by then I was obsessed with extreme bike-messengering, mostly because of Kevin Bacon’s Quicksilver.

Since that long-lost rental, I hadn’t revisited Thrashin’ until yesterday. A dated piece of analog flotsam, it’s from a more innocent time when all you needed to be a hero was your absolute will to be the best skater in the Valley.  

Corey (a baby-faced Josh Brolin) is the new kid in town and he’s got that will. Decked out in his loose Vision tee, stylin’ Jams shorts and parent-approved elbow and knee pads, he cruises in the wind toward PG-13 oblivion while a generic “punk” song by Meat Loaf, with lyrics about “achieving your dreams” and “flying high,” plays on the epic soundtrack,

With plenty of sick “flip-kicks,” “Mr. Coffees” and “Gorgonzola dunks,” Corey and his friends call themselves the “Ramp Locals” because, well, they made a ramp. Eventually, they run into the skater punks from the other part of town, led by swarthy Tommy (’80s mainstay Robert Rusler).

While the Red Hot Chili Peppers play a skate party — the band’s second movie of the year, alongside Tough Guys with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster — the Romeo and Juliet vibes take precedence as Corey and Tommy’s sister, Chrissy (Pamela Gidley), spend time playing games at an outdoor carnival, as you do.

Even though the stakes are low, the punks are pretty mad and make a wager to control the whole skateboarding scene, as well as, um, a corporate sponsorship. As you can guess, after a rehabilitation montage, Corey soundly defeats them and you think the punks will be mad … but, instead, Tuff Tommy shakes Corey’s hand and says, “Good game, brah!” or something to that effect.

Aided by a bunch of ’80s skaters like Tony Hawk and Tony Alva, both Brolin and, to smaller effect, Rusler are pretty good in their melodramatic roles. But the real star is director David Winters, a longtime choreographer whose work on Linda Lovelace for President, Roller Boogie and the Star Wars Holiday Special make me think his life story would be a great movie.

In the end, Thrashin’ was a near-wipeout of the whole skateboard craze, schooling me on the fads and foibles that, as a young person in the ’80s, I could often find myself in. At least not until Gleaming the Cube … right, brah? —Louis Fowler

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