See this film: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles @ the Brattle

Sometimes it's hard to explain why something becomes a pop-cultural phenomenon. Like the chimerical heroes of Steve Barron's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), which - even before this movie and its three sequels - dominated the '80s as a comic book, Nintendo game, TV series, Pez dispenser, and so on. Here, a quartet of average terrapins are transformed into warriors by a chemical spill and are whipped into a fighting unit by a rodent in order to defeat the nefarious Shredder and the Foot gang. And so a legend was born, conquering the imagination of a generation. It screens at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St, Cambridge | Wednesday, November 23 @ 9:30 pm | $9.75; $7.75 students; $6.75 seniors | 617.876.6837 or brattlefilm.org.