Tex

Their mother is dead and their father disappears for months chasing rodeos. Eighteen-year-old Mason and fifteen-year-old Tex try to run the house on their own. Mason takes on the responsibility and postpones his own hope of college; Tex takes neither school nor rules seriously. When Mason sells their horses the tension between them grows and Tex finds himself in steadily more dangerous company. Tim Hunter's film adapts the novel by S. E. Hinton. The narrative does not romanticise adolescence; its subject is one brother being forced to parent the other, and how that wears both of them down. Matt Dillon plays Tex and Jim Metzler plays Mason, with Meg Tilly also in the cast. It was the first Hinton adaptation and opened the way for The Outsiders and Rumble Fish in the years that followed. Who it's for: Viewers who like 1980s American youth drama, stories about brothers, and S. E. Hinton adaptations. Who it's not for: The pace is low and the plot is loose. Some subplots are also never resolved.