Jessica Goldstein picks 6 movies to pair with ‘Retro’
In Pairings, artists and creators pick the movies that complement their latest work.
Jessica Goldstein is a writer and journalist whose work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Marie Claire, Vulture, and other outlets, along with her newsletter The Retro Report. Her debut novel Retro is out on June 23 wherever you get your books!
We asked Jessica to pick a few movies that pair well with Retro. Here’s what she wrote about them.
Back to the Future (1985)
Retro is about a struggling, unemployed actress who gets a job as a Time Travel Agent at a start-up that takes wealthy tourists on vacation to the past. When I was figuring out how the time travel would work, I thought, of course, of this modern classic and the iconic DeLorean. I love how it lives in that sweet spot between the familiar and the impossible. I put my characters on a spacetime subway called the Retro Metro, which I’m just now realizing means that where they’re going, they don’t need roads…!
Adventureland (2009)
A big theme in Retro is how it feels to work at a place where guests come to escape work, and the behind-the-scenes relationship employees have with what tourists experience solely as vacation. This movie GETS it: The strange intimacy coworkers share; dealing with weird bosses (Bill Hader and Kristen Wigg!); the sweaty labor of giving paying customers a good time. Plus it’s cast to the edges. Ryan Reynolds is deployed perfectly as a scumbag; Kristen Stewart is sublime. Invite your office crush over to watch this with you this summer <3.
In a Lonely Place (1950)
In Retro, Ash—the struggling actress turned Time Travel Agent—meets Frank, a hard-drinking private detective in Los Angeles, 1937. I watched a ton of great film noir to get into his world and this is the one that really stuck to my ribs. Humphrey Bogart’s character is, like Ash, down and out and failing to make it in Hollywood; like Frank, he becomes enamored with a woman he barely knows. This movie is sultry, dark (but beautifully lit—we used to have it all!), violent and romantic. Watch it on a hot night with a cold drink.
Ex Machina (2014)
Retro is run by a megalomaniacal tech billionaire named Ro, but unlike the real tech billionaires who dominate our lives, Ro is charming, charismatic, and actually appealing, even though he is also strange and kind of terrifying. I love Oscar Isaac’s Nathan in this, and how he both seems like the coolest and saddest guy at a twisted party he is throwing for himself. Worth it for the dance break alone!
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Imagine a medical procedure that can erase an ex from your brain, freeing you to move on with zero baggage but also zero memories of the love you shared. It’s so elegant and cruel, packaged as a dream but practically a nightmare. This is a perfect heartbreaker of a movie about memory, love, regret, what it means to matter to another person, and how the people we love and who love us become a part of who we are and are not so easily vanquished. Tonally, this is the universe where Retro lives; what I would call “sci-fi for English majors.”
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Not to sound like a sicko but I love that Roald Dahl sadism! Like Retro, this movie presents a workplace that is magical on paper—a chocolate factory! Could a child dream of anything better?—and slowly reveals it to be a place of capricious violence and potential horror. I don’t know what was going on in the ‘70s but can you imagine trying to get this made today? Glad we got it in under the wire.