My point was less about jock grades than about there being more interaction and respect between them and nerds than movies generally seemed to depict. 80s teen movies were not monolithic however. Lucas depicts a friendly relationship between a jock and a nerd.
I think I came of age a bit later than is normal. My self-actualization happened mostly in college, not high school.
S: Before Sunrise, Singles, Good Will Hunting
A: Spiderman 2, Almost Famous
I’m right there with you.
Fully endorsed.
Not 100% on this order but these are some of my favourites. Thankfully my girlfriend and I keep a list of movies we enjoy and only very recently we created a Coming of Age category.
S: Dazed and Confused, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse
A: Ghost World, Superbad, Boy, Mean Creek, Easy A, Moonlight, Girlhood, Submarine, The Way He Looks, The Way Way Back
B: Booksmart, Dumplin’, Dope, The Edge of Seventeen, Lady Bird, Juno
We watched Everybody Wants Some a couple of months back and it was alright. The hyper-competitive alpha sports males talking sex and baseball was amusing for a while but ultimately I didn’t feel the movie really went anywhere.
Haven’t seen Stand By Me in a looong time.
I was a lot later: university!
I’ve never seen it somehow, put it on the list thanks.
I try to incorporate some Dingus-isms. He knew how to… put things ;)
Same, I never was a part of a tightly knit group or anything.That’s why coming of age movies also have some educational component for me I think .
Awesome, cool picks!
Cinema Paradiso
Hughes was the first person to nail this real and existing dynamic in coming of age movies. Of course it wasn’t universal; different people had different experiences but there was a lot more peer friction/alienation than media had tended to depict before this (for that matter, highschool movies just didn’t do it at all). That Hughes did it in a stylized/exaggerated fashion doesn’t really matter. That’s movies, but there was truth there that a lot of people recognized.
Coming of age stories are usually high school (or just before high school), but in reality that’s a period that often extends into college. My high school class had some significant stratification, and that even extended into jocks vs jocks in some case(I played soccer in the American South, and there was a lot of derision and hostility openly directed at me and the team). That was a specific pattern that was not unlike what the previous few classes had experienced. But we had plenty of other friction between other groups (we even had a period of theater group on theater group violence), and an almost comic book like clique of mean girls. A significant portion of my class didn’t have time for anyone outside of their immediate circles or older people in similar circles. I invited everyone to my parties. I mean everyone. The grade above us found it off putting at first, but they adapted and were showing up to more later in the year than at first (they had a clique of mean girls whose reputation was overstated, although not outright false). Senior year we had gaggles of freshman roaming parties (and there were people in my grade who wouldn’t come to my parties specifically because there were freshman and sophomores there). But our football players were probably the least hostile to the soccer team as a whole in a couple of years. Two grades below ours was a very tight knit and generally well regarded group that mostly got along with each other (and the other grades around them) great. They legit lacked mean girls whatsoever (god knows my grade’s mean girls were mean enough for a generation of highschool students). Although they had far fewer football players that were cool about people doing things like playing soccer (but the ones that were cool about it were terrific). Go figure.
I saw a good bit of it again in college. But it didn’t play out in the way a lot of people seemed to think it would. The small university I attended had a thriving greek community but 90% of them didn’t have their heads up their own asses about it and I mostly found people to not be assholes (post high school Peacedog is not a joiner, so he merely passed over and through that scene as whims dictated). The large university I attended which also had a thriving greek community had a larger percentage that had their heads so far up their own asses it really was the bad parts of high school all over again.
I think a coming of age movie with a dead pet probably needs at least one letter grade bump. Old Yeller, Kes, Terminator 2…
You know what movie should be on everyone’s coming-of-age movie list?
The Man in the Moon.
It’s a 1991 movie, the last one that Robert Mulligan (who directed To Kill A Mockingbird) directed. It stars this cute little girl named Reese Witherspoon in her very first acting role ever. And Reese, as a 15-year-old in her first movie not only shows off some amazing acting chops, she actually is up to the task of being the main character in the story and carrying the plot along. The rest of the cast is great, too, in a “:Why didn’t Emily Warfield get more movie roles?” kind of way. (And also: why didn’t Jenny Wingfield get more chances to write screenplays?)
I’d have never watched this or noticed it, but Roger Ebert gave it a glowing, 4-star review when it came out and I had to see it. And I’m glad I did. I sometimes forget about this film because I watched it so many times back in the day…but it really is a fantastic film, start to finish.
When this movie was over, I sat quietly for a moment so that I could feel the arc of its story being completed in my mind. They had done it: They had found a way all the way from the beginning to the end of this material, which is so fraught with peril, and never stepped wrong, not even at the end, when everything could have come tumbling down. “The Man in the Moon” is a wonderful movie, but it is more than that, it is a victory of tone and mood. It is like a poem.
“The Man in the Moon” is like a great short story, one of those masterpieces of language and mood where not one word is wrong, or unnecessary. It flows so smoothly from start to finish that it hardly even seems like an ordinary film. Usually I am aware of the screenwriter putting in obligatory scenes. I can hear the machinery grinding. Not this time. Although, in retrospect, I can see how carefully the plot was put together, how meticulously each event was prepared for, as I watched the film I was only aware of life passing by.
(Also, if you are going to watch “The Man in the Moon”, do NOT read anything else beyond what I’ve said here. Even Ebert’s review is slightly spoilerish. You do NOT want spoilers for this.)
Huh. JustWatch says this is streaming on Prime until September 30th… That’s might be movie night tomorrow…
I was going to get Prime on Oct 7th when my Netflix expired. But now I want to get it early so I don’t miss this movie. Thanks for the heads up!
If you get a chance to see it in the next week, let me know what you think of it!
Speaking of Ghibli, My Neighbor Totoro is also a great coming-of-age movie. Really, most of their output probably qualifies.
Yeah I was just thinking the same.
It is explained up toward the top.
If you want to feel good
We Are the Best
If you want to feel miserable
Kids
Just watched this last night, it’s a bit of a weird one but I think it counts as a coming of age movie.
I Lost My Body
Oh we loved that movie!
I’m not good with tiers but:
The Sandlot (but also a period movie, and a baseball movie)
Mud
Jojo Rabbit
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Donnie Darko
City of God
Weird Science
Superbad
Moonrise Kingdom
Little Women
Slumdog Millionaire
A Brox Tale