Diner

Directing from his own script, Levinson revels in detailed observation in this rites-of-passage movie about a college student returning home to Baltimore for the Christmas holidays in 1959, and picking up with the old gang as they try to fend off adulthood and marriage by hanging out at the local diner and talking about football, women, cars and rock'n'roll (Stern is particularly fine as the R&B buff, memorising record label serial numbers with religious awe). Not a lot to it, but the sense of period is acute, the script witty without falling into the crude pitfalls that beset other adolescent comedies, and the performances are spot-on.