Empire Records

Retail sucks. Your boss is stressed out. Your coworkers are a disaster. The daily deposit’s gone missing. The shoplifting is rampant. A washed-up pop idol is coming to sign autographs, and you've still got to make time to confess your crush to the coworker you secretly love.  Welcome to Empire Records.

Directed by Allan Moyle (Pump Up the Volume) and written by former Tower Records employee Carol Heikkinen (Center Stage, The Thing Called Love), this gloriously messy cult classic tracks one unforgettable day inside the coolest record store that never existed. When the employees discover their beloved indie shop is about to be swallowed by a soulless music megachain, they do the only reasonable thing: steal thousands of dollars, throw a massive party, air every emotional wound imaginable, all in service of one overriding mantra "Damn the man! Save the Empire!"

An absolute box office disaster when it was released in 1995, the cult of Empire Records almost seems irreplicable now. Buoyed by an incredible mid-90s soundtrack (including Gin Blossoms, The Cranberries, and Edwin Collins) and loaded with future stars—including Liv Tyler, Renée Zellweger, Ethan Embry (Can’t Hardly Wait), Robin Tunney (who shaved her head on camera), Brendan Sexton III (Welcome to the Dollhouse), Rory Cochrane (Dazed and Confused), Debi Mazar, Anthony LaPaglia, and Maxwell Caulfield (Grease 2) as the magnificently pathetic Rex Manning—the film found life on VHS store shelves where it was perpetually rented out.

Thirty years later, Empire Records still stands as a brazen middle finger to conformity and corporate homogenization.  So, throw on the flannel, your dirty ripped jeans, a pair of Doc Martens, pop a cassette tape into a vintage Walkman and ask yourself: "What's with today, today?"

_{1995, 90 minutes, USA, directed by Allan Moyle, Rated PG-13}