At the risk of remaining totally on-brand, I have to go with the anime choice: FLCL. It’s weird and funny and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but you know what else is all of those things? Growing up! The show centers on a kid named Naota who—much as it annoys him—develops a crush on a super cool and outgoing older girl named Haruko who (literally) crashes into his life and starts throwing his calm and boring world into disarray. She’s actually from space and is using Naota to tap into his ability to summon powerful robots from a portal in his head, but it only works when the shy Naota is willing to open himself up emotionally. What’s more coming-of-age than becoming so overcome with emotions that you channel cosmic power into a pair of guitars, get into a superhero fight with your crush, and then tell her you love her even though she definitely doesn’t feel the same way? That’s literally what being a teenager is like. [Sam Barsanti]
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The Star Wars Prequels!** “It’s so dense. Every single frame has so much growing up in it.”
The OT. Luke leaves the nest, kisses a hot chick, trashes the place with his hoodlum friends, and lucks into a job fighting The Man.
I mean who hasn’t ethnically cleansed an entire village to deal with a loss?
Wow, Blue Velvet is a hell of an answer.
Harold and Maude [1971] Directed by Hal Ashby. Starring Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon, & Vivian Pickles. Screenplay by Colin Higgins.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_and_Maude
I posted the same. I love this film more than words can say. I can’t listen to any Cat Steven’s songs in company because I might break down.
Your choice of ‘Rushmore’ was also an excellent pick.
I discovered Hal Ashby before Wes Anderson and when I encountered Rushmore for the first time it was like having Hal Ashby back at it.
Harold and Maude, Freaks and Geeks, Dazed and Confused — they all hit the nail on the head for me, but Harold and Maude was the first. Cat Stevens’ music has been a deep love of mine ever since i was a kid, but seeing that movie for the first time cemented him in my life. i got to see him on tour a few years ago — something i never expected to have happen, since he stopped touring shortly before i had ever seen Harold and Maude — and it was one of the best concerts i’ve ever seen. i cried and sang along to every song, and i didn’t care who knew it.
This is one of my favorites, but during one of my annual viewings it dawned on me what an unbearably cruel thing it is that Maude does to Harold.
Hear, hear. I saw it when I was seventeen and found it amazing. Thirty years later I showed it to my son when he was seventeen, and it was even more amazing.
Totally underrated and underwatched. A must.
Boyhood! Lady Bird! Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire!
Lady Bird for sure!
Yea, the whole Harry Potter saga is great coming of age stuff, especially for kids growing up at the same time as the films. My favorite book is Azkaban, but my favorite movie is Goblet of Fire, which is just… so delightfully British.The Quiddich World Cup, The dragon task, Mad-Eye Moody, the Yule Ball, the debut of Lord Voldemort… Goblet of Fire is so so good
Goblet of Fire is the best one. The last track is so bittersweet:
The lack of Boyhood love is disappointing! Was the 12-year shoot written off as a gimmick after it lost Best Picture, because if so, that’s a damn shame. It really makes fine art out of the boundless and awkward idiocy of the grade school years.
I guess I think Boyhood works better as a portrait of the mother than as one of the son. Certainly I think her emotional life resonates more than his does.
Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, where young and naive Teresa Wright learns not to define herself through other people, especially a namesake uncle who turns out to be a serial killer.
Nice call. This was apparently Hitchcock’s favorite Hitchcock film, so you’re in good company!
Stoker (from the guy who brought you Oldboy and the guy who was on Prison Break) is a great companion piece to Shadow of a Doubt. Also a great coming of age tale.
Your post inspired me to watch one of the few Hitchcock films that I hadn’t seen. I love the construction of the film itself, but it always startles me how much we, as an audience, have grown in respect to sophistication of story and character. That dang movie has plot holes all over it, and the acting is just silly.
I’m glad that whatever I wrote inspired you to watch Shadow of a Doubt but am sorry if perceived pot holes and silly acting prevented you from fully enjoying the film. I can’t speak to the plot holes but acknowledge that Macdonald Carey and even Henry Travers are pretty corny. That said, I will defend Patricia Collinge’s performance as Charlie’s mom as wonderfully eccentric. Same with Hume Cronyn as Herbie, the neighbor who shares the dad’s fascination with the perfect murder. Also, Joseph Cotten’s twisted and misanthropic soliloquy to Charlie about the inherent corruption of humanity rivals Orson Welles’ justification of selling bad vaccines to sick kids in The Third Man. What may seem silly to us watching the film today I think adds a profound tension when combined with the main character’s amorality and psychosis.
Far and away my favorite Hitchcock film alongside “Strangers On A Train”. I stumbled across it by accident on TCM years ago and spent the entire movie on the edge of the couch enthralled. This is my favorite period of Hitch, Hitch when he was immersing himself in American society while gleefully exploring its dark underside, the whole time fully appreciating how much audiences would love it. The bit about perfect murders being discussed around the quintessential family dinner table is a wonderful commentary on American pop culture’s long time obsession with crime which Hitch would soon more explicitly and successfully exploit with his “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” series during the mystery/crime fiction craze of the fifties. The hiring of Thornton “Our Town” Wilder and Sally “Meet Me In St. Louis” Benson to write the screenplay was pure genius.Most of the cast is superb with Cotten the standout, expertly twisting his inherent likeability into the personification of pure malevolance. Orson Welles was always baffled by Cotten’s leading man success and insisted he was a character actor but I think he underappreciated his screen presence. Its obvious here though that Cotten himself was keenly aware of it and how exactly to turn it upon audiences to shock them. The way he talks about the lonely old monied women he wooed and slaughtered is icy gold.I would argue that every movie, book, story and play has plot holes. They are pretty much inevitable unless you address them so thoroughly you then suck all the life and momentum out of your material. Many directors and writers have acknowledged this over the years, particularly Hitch who was quite open about how little he cared because it was so much more important to make a movie, well, move. I also think he tuned the romantic subplot and some of the performances up deliberately to exploit and maybe even mock the Norman Rockwellesque conventions of everyday Americans just as David Lynch did later in “Blue Velvet” (as did a lot of other filmmakers in the eighties). I love this movie so much my wife and I once went to Santa Rosa. While much of the downtown was lost to the 1969 earthquake the train station is still there. More importantly the Newton family house remains standing and looks stunning. As a bonus, the house used for Disney’s “Pollyana” is standing right across the street.
Every JRPG ever with a teen protagonist.
No Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? That’s one of the only ones that has enough comedy to me to outbalance the cringe of watching people make all those awkward high school mistakes. I can’t stand watching most coming-of-age stories.In all media, my favorites are Tamora Pierce’s novels. They’re almost all really coming-of-age stories, and together they’re a richly diverse guidebook to becoming a worthwhile, decent member of society no matter your background, skills, or personality. Plus they have sex-positive sex ed, which teenagers need very much!
Ferris doesn’t change, though. His sister does (learns to let go of what she can’t control), and Cameron does (able to stand up to his father), but the purported main character just glides through the day, as he seemingly glides through life.
It’s like he can’t lose! Oh, wait, that was Parker Lewis, the Fox network ripoff version of Ferris (although looking it up, NBC actually had an official Ferris Bueller series, although it only lasted 13 episodes).
No, no Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. We might have allowed it if you hadn’t voiced it as a bratty whine.
Two from the Recency Bias files:
1) Leave No Trace. My favorite film from last year, with the best performance, from Thomasin McKenzie. Both subtle and devastating, with a decidedly non-Hollywood ending.
2) Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy. This is written as a fairy tale, which could easily slide into camp or parody, but it’s nearly miraculous how perfectly Arden carries the tone. I wouldn’t change a word. Absolutely gorgeous writing, with one of the strangest and most compelling love stories I’ve ever read.
Leave No Trace is full of great performances but hers is the best, a child becoming an adult in short order because she has to but being okay with it.
Pokemon Blue. I was just a naive young kid from Pallet Town, didn’t even know enough not to go into the long grass without a Pokemon. By the end, I was the very best, like no one ever was. As my team had grown into an unstoppable killing machine, so had I grown into a Champion.
Then I reset the game so I could start again but with Charmander.
Fire starters are always the best!I love my Level 100 Typhlosion so damn much…
Some good answers up there.
FLCL was the first thing to pop into my head, even though I’m not sure I would consider it the “best ever”. Blue Velvet was the one I was waiting to see on the list, and the one I would probably have turned in as my own answer. Welcome to the Doll House was the one I had completely forgotten about but remembered instantly when I saw the title.
As our daughter’s name is Lyra, you might guess HDM, but actually I think my favorite is “Real Genius”.
And yet you didn’t name your daughter Jordan!
She’s probably happy she predates GOT or she might just be Arya 😉
I literally have a copy stored on the tablet I am typing on. Chris Knight is probably the fictional character that has most influenced, my being. For better or worse, I sometimes see shades on him in the mirror. And I don’t just mean the “Surf Nicaragua” shirt.
Adventure Time.
Yeah, a 10 minute cartoon made for 8-year olds was legitimately one of the best coming-of-age stories ever.
Breaking Away (1979).
The funny thing is how it’s Paul Dooley as the father who really grows in the film. The son’s coming of age isn’t a huge epiphany – just a slight thing that’s not well tempered by wisdom as the ending shows, just enough to get ahead – but his dad realizes what truly matters and acts on it. Lots of great actors in that film, Dennis Quaid you imagine having an awful life coming up.
Paul Dooley sitting in the car in the car lot, listening to the race on the radio, is one of my favorite things ever in the movies. He and Barbara Barrie were wonderful.
Dooley repeatedly screaming ‘Refund!?’ and waking up in a hospital bed might be my favorite part of the whole film. Man, is there anything Paul Dooley didn’t make better?
I happened to be watching the Trailers From Hell for Cold Turkey (1971) earlier and Paul Dooley is in the trailer but he’s not in the movie. Very weird. He made the trailer better.
Dooley trying to push the disgruntled customer’s car off the lot, Dennis Christopher offering the disgruntled customer a refund, and then it cuts to Dooley lying shaking in bed after obviously having had a nervous breakdown, repeating “Refund! Refund!”
By popular demand the Paul Dooley “Refund?!” scene.
Glorious!
“We are poor, but we are honest” in his Indianatalian accent
Dooley Noted!
It was all-in-all a great movie w/ great acting.
oh, yeah!
This showed up on Twitter the other day.
Ha. That’s great. I listened to Barbara Barrie on an old Amazing Colossal Podcast the other day. Paul Dooley did one too.
awww.thanks!
One of my all-time favorite coming-of-age movies is by the same writer, Steve Tesich. It was one of those movies that seemed to run on continuous loop on HBO back in the day, and watching it multiple times at the age of 13 had a lasting effect on my taste in movies.
I have never seen that one but I have World According to Garp and American Flyers on DVD.
The one I haven’t seen mentioned yet is Fandango (1985). Costner, Judd Nelson. And Kevin Reynolds directed.
That’s another good one that was on HBO all the time. That was a cool time to be a budding film buff — access to good movies through cable, but not on-demand, so you had to watch stuff you might not have chosen otherwise. Over and over and over.
“Wouldn’t that be great?” Love this movie. Was on heavy rotation at my house when I was a kid, since it was one of my parents’ favorites. Have to show my own kids soon! “Refund?!? Refund!! REfund?”
When I was an undergraduate, I didn’t get Breaking Away because in Madison (where I was) there really wasn’t a strong townie/university divide in culture. When I went to grad school (Urbana, IL not Bloomington, IN as in the movie) I really got it because there were bars and restaurants very much either for the university folk and the townies.
I live in a university town but it’s not that kind of town either.
Always loved that movie. They actually made a TV show of it which I barely remember and which didn’t last long. It is really good material for a TV series, though, with a likable ensemble of characters, and the movie is kind of episodic anyway. They key to making it work would be the actors, and although they did have a couple of actors from the original movie (Barbara Barrie and Jackie Earle Haley), they may not have worked as well as an ensemble.
I only know the TV show from the old ads.
Breaking Away and The Paper Chase were two great coming-of-age flicks that had so-so shows that followed.P.S. Can’t tell you how much it warms my heart that this flick is mentioned here, much less so high up on the list.
I got in early and one of the staff recommended it, so it had good placement.
Oh, and it should be mentioned that the antagonist, player by Hart Bochner, would go on to be best known as the bearded LA douchebag Ellis in Die Hard.
Ha. I didn’t know that. He was a sleazeball in The Wild Life too. It’s a talent.
Even the rich, entitled college jerk had to join the applause and admire the moxie of the ragtag group of townies winning the Little 500 against all odds. I like that.
YES!!!
The moment in Breaking Away that kills me is when Dave’s dad sits down on the bench on the IU campus and says, “You’re not a cutter. I’m a cutter.”
It forces Dave to realize he has options bigger than what his dad had.
I remember when I was a kid I thought the rich college kids called our heroes “cutters” because they cut school. Which they probably did.
Definitely “Dazed and Confused” Such a great movie. Especially following the boy and girl who’ve just become freshmen and how each deals with the peer pressure.
I don’t remember that implication in “Where the Red Fern Grows”, but it’s been a very long time since I read it. Personally, none of the genre have any appeal to me, as I was born old and never grew up.
I don’t remember exactly what the mother says at the end, but something about how, if the dogs were still around, they wouldn’t have brought the main character when the family moved away from their farm.And she says, basically, that it must have been what the good Lord wanted, to not have families be separated.I mean, I guess that you could take the viewpoint that it makes life more convenient, but that’s clearly not where Rawls was going. And the fact that it’s part of the denouement makes me wonder why it was brought up in the first place.At any rate, I really, really do not like dogs, but this book had nine-year-old me sobbing like a little baby during/after the mountain lion scene. I couldn’t imagine being in class with a teacher reading that out loud.
Too on the nose? Undeniable.
Yes! I loved that he had a rival at school in Becky Slater
It is essentially a story about growing up.but if you want a more conventional one…
It IS May the 4th…
Only Yesterday and The Florida Project are up there.
I have a personal love for Japanese slice of life anime, and a lot of it personally deal with coming of age. Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a great anime that combines fantasy with Japanese high school life. So where the fuck is Season 3 goddamnit?Another great anime example is ReLife, which is basically that Zac Efron movie 17 Again except done better. ReLife takes the concept of 17 Again and goes even further on the ethics of getting a second chance on your teenage life, and it resonated with me today because it reminded me of how much I wasted parts of my teenage years on small petty things instead of meaningful things that could’ve changed me in many ways.For a real life example, the best coming of age story I’m currently enjoying is Sex Education. I wish that shows like Sex Education and End of the Fucking World had appeared in my teenage years instead of The OC and One Tree Hill, because the former two have characters that relate more to me than the latter two, especially with the socioeconomic condition I lived in as a teenager. But way before that, I used to be huge into Skins. The show dealt a lot with growing up with depression, manic anxiety, sex and drug addiction that resonated with me. We never got Degrassi here in Asia, but Skins was the hottest shit on Youtube and it was definitely the edgiest form of Degrassi except British. I remember reloading Youtube every Friday just to get the latest episode of Skins uploaded on YT.
The first two series of Skins are SO GOOD – absolutely insane cast, too.(Sid needs to be in more things!)
It’s absolutely insane how Daniel Kaluuya is an Oscar-nominated Oscar when his first appearance as an actor was being a complete side character in Skins with less than 10 minutes of total screetime in both seasons.
10 minutes…which he was fucking hilarious in!The instantaneous code-switch when no one understands him cracks me up every damn time.
The only thing I remember with him is him rapping to DJ Shadow.
Dayum, someone went with where the red fern grows. That was when I learned what happens when a kid falls on an ax, and what entrails are. To this day that was one of the most brutal books I’ve ever read. It was a bold lesson that sometimes persistence can lead to losing everything, but hey you still saw it through. Yay. Stone Fox is kind of the same. The teacher had a substitute read the dog dying part(stone fox, but I’d love to see a teacher read the entrails part)Another example of bittersweet but this time nobody dies: my side of the mountain
i remember “my side of the mountain!” let’s also give a shout out to “island of the blue dolphins” for the girls!
My Side of the Mountain is straight up empowerment porn for 13 year old boys.Probably turns as many kids into wannabe libertarians as Ayn Rand, haha
I reread Island of the Blue Dolphins a few years ago. It’s very well written and plotted, more so than I remembered from middle school. My copy in middle school was from a mid 80s printing, with a pretty neutral blue and white cover design. The copy I read as an adult was a newer printing (ironically, the one I remember being current when I was in grade school) that was pastel pink and purple with a gauzy pencil illustration. It’s weird branding. Although it’s good that little girls have their own brutal story of genocide, loneliness, and survival.
Between those and Hatchet, I really feel like my elementary school expected us all to get lost in the woods any second
Island of the Blue Dolphins straight fucked me up. I wept for days when that damn wolf dog died.
Stone Fox is much, much better than Snow Treasure, with which I always conflate it.
Yeah, I think it was in 7th or 8th grade that we read Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Yearling, and A Day No Pigs Would Die. My all-boys private school really went all in on the idea that becoming a man is about killing a beloved animal or at least having a beloved animal die.
I always liked The Girl Who Owned a City.
Today I was reminded of where I first read the word “entrails”
Flcl is a good oneAlso nadesico if anyone has seen it, great lesson on propaganda
Personally for me: cliche but the wonder years has to be up there. There’s just something timeless to so much of it.
My coming of age movies are a whole bunch that I could never exactly boil down to 1. It’d be mashup between Nowhere, Trainspotting, Casino, Romy and Michelle, Get Real, Six Degrees of Separation, and like Bjork videos. Being gay exists and it’s nice to see it represented, but also have it not be Queer as Folk represented. I like all this other stuff and it’s more important than whom I choose to date (or fuck). They should like all this other stuff too. I feel like these represent that yeah sex is a weirdly annoying driving force sometimes, but there’s also all this other stuff that’s more important. I’ll recommend Get Real because although juvenile it works for teenage me.
I spent a lot of time watching Trainspotting in high school. It’s weird because I obviously couldn’t relate to the heroin addiction, and the character were all years older than me, but the idea that the world is so drab, dull, and unstimulating that you have to make bad choices or go crazy is like perfect adolescent thinking.
Being a teen in the nineties, spending every waking hour in a cinema, or Blockbuster and the fruits brought home, or soaking in Film Threat, or…what a fabulously weird feast for the senses. I’ve never done heroin, and found Trainspotting to be a greater anti-drug film than anything shown in school. The depravity of diving in THAT toilet for a fix scared me off the usual teenage drug sample melange. Of course that went out the window a year later after taking a deep dive into Electric Acid Tests and Bat Country.
Avatar: The Last Airbender. While all the main characters grew up to some degree, I think Sokka grew the most. From a comic relief character and potential drag on the team to a fully formed fighter and strategist with a kick-ass girlfriend. Not being able to bend, he got overshadowed a lot, but found a way to make himself indispensable.
I mean…Zuko.“I HATE YOU, UNCLE!! YOU SMELL AND I HATE YOU FOR ALL TIME!”
Zuko did learn a lot about himself and change from evil to neutral and finally throw off his father’s toxic influence and his inferiority complex with his sister. But I think Sokka is still the one who matured the most. Iroh is the best though, thanks for reminding me.
Yes. This.
I think Dawn Weiner grew up to be Taylor Swift.
Ok
Harold and Maude. Rushmore. Yes, I am a weirdo.
No, you aren’t, but I can understand why you’d want to tell yourself that.
Pump Up the Volume and Heathers are the ones I relate to most.
I think a lot of it deals with age when you see them though. I was twenty when Pump up the Volume came out and I hated it because the Slater character just seemed like an obnoxious entitled little shit. But if I had been say, 13, I would have thought he was cool.
Oh, I didn’t relate to his on-air persona. I was the anxiety-ridden Slater who could barely speak in school—which explains why I also connect with Heather’s vision of adolescence as a nightmare to survive.
I saw Pump up the Volume when I was a pseudo edgy teen and I thought it was all bad ass. I watched it several years later with older, wiser eyes, and it didn’t seem to age well.Heathers has aged much better.
Agreed. Thought it was fantastic on release, but when I watched it recently for the first time in decades was kinda like…eh. Wasn’t bad, but not nearly the revolutionary film for a generation that young me thought at the time.The soundtrack has aged a lot better, though.
His Dark Materials is an unexpectedly insightful observation from AVClub. Kudos!Treasure Island, The Reavers, Pleasantville come to mind. Can’t say I have a favorite though. The subject seems to various, just like people coming of age, to pick just one.
I was definitely thinking of Dazed and Confused and Welcome to the Dollhouse when I saw this article. Pleasantville is a great choice, but now that Resse Witherspoon is brought up I have to say Election is hands down my favorite high school movie that came out when I was in high school. I don’t really know if it counts as a coming of age story as most of the adults regress in maturity.
Welcome to the Dollhouse 100% for me. I saw it in the theater with my college roommate and afterwards I was like fuck, that was pretty much my adolescence, and she was like “it was hard being popular too, I had to think so carefully about my clothes so I didn’t repeat outfits” and I was like hmm … that moment probably laid the groundwork for our current non-friendship.
I just remember Welcome to the Dollhouse getting great reviews and my parents where like “you seem to hate Jr. high, I’d bet you’d love this movie!” It would have totally hit too close to home if I saw it in 1995 in 7th grade. I feel like I had the exact amount of distance to have watched it on snail mail Netflix DVD in 2007.
Saw it in theater while I was in high school, and the Special People’s Club will always stick with me. I definitely would have applied for membership.Of course, PSH’s character in Happiness also helped me feel comfortable in my own skin.
Surprised no one has mentioned Almost Famous yet. Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s speech about the importance of being “uncool” got me through some tough times in high school and college.
Brooklyn is a lively little story. She could have chosen to stay in the life that was easier and, in many ways, better, but in the end she chose the life she built for herself.
Well…Eilis got pushed into the life she had built, because Tony pressured her into getting married before she left and her family finds out when she’s back home.
It was a reminder of how small-minded, nosy, and petty the people in her hometown were, and what her own future might have looked like if she had stayed. The book makes it somewhat clear that she leaves Ireland unsure of whether Tony still wants to be with her. She realizes that she still has to leave because she’s not like the people in her hometown anymore.
Ah, fair enough – I’ve only seen the film, which left things a bit more ambiguous.
I actually prefer the movie to the book, though the movie cleans things up a little. In the film, Eilis doesn’t even kiss Domhnall’s character, and he’s there more as a ghost from a path not taken rather than a serious temptation to stay. In the book, they have a more legit relationship. Her return to the US is initiated by the local gossip, but she has an awareness that the gossip is a result of a life she started somewhere else, and there’s no point in moving backwards.
Napoleon Dynamite is a cautionary tale to all the spaz kids like us: get your act together, don’t be too locked into your worlds or you won’t grow even as your friends do. I imagine Napoleon as an office drone who still to this day dreams of being amazing without doing any real work to get there, and annoys the people around him with talk of the things he did online last weekend.I’d pick Superbad, that movie feels like some honesty sprinkled in between hijinks, and shows that coming of age means different things to different people at each one’s emotional age.
Knocked Up is actually a great one, that manages to be funny as hell at the same time.
“Superbad” was excellent, capturing both the unbearable anxiety and possibilities for growth surrounding adolescence romance.
Not really sure what qualifies as a coming-of-age story (especially not these days as it’s normally not my favorite genre of movie), but I’ll say Dead Poets Society, if for no other reason than just because I love it so much. 🙂 For many reasons.Also, there’s My Life as a Dog… I suppose that one counts.
We’re probably similar ages. It’s interesting how many people I’ve found that don’t care for Dead Poets Society but it came out when I was in 8th grade so it definitely resonated with me for a variety of reasons. Ah, My Life as a Dog is a perfect example. My parents took me to the local arthouse place when I guess I was in 6th grade. I remember it being so exotic and scandalizing to my American sensibilities at the time.
I think the growth of Sally Draper over the course of Mad Men deserves a mention.
I used Sally Draper as a way to view my Boomer parents as they grew up. Feels esp. relevant today as someone who was on the May 4th Task Force at Kent State.
My mother was basically Roger Sterling’s daughter, minus the wealthy parents. I couldn’t believe how spot-on that was.
What the hell, LOL
That show was my childhood.
Almost Famous.
Isn’t the movie “The Night of the Hunter” a coming-of-age story for John? He learns to choose the good over the bad, he joins a society (albeit a society of cast-offs), and he learns the importance of time, as in the last scene of the movie.
The Color Purple.
“his dark materials” trilogy is amazing, really unique. i’d like to add stephen king’s “the body” or the film version “stand by me.” while i wish there was a girl or two in the story, it’s still pretty good.
Book: Elidor by Alan GarnerFilm: Better Off Dead
I never got my two dollars though. And you can wash your hands on your own time!
Elidor is absolutely a work of genius as is The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
Fronch bread. Fronch dressing. And the water is Peru.
Mystic Pizza. Permanent Record (sad, but watched it all the time). Heathers. The Lost Boys. Say Anything. The Goonies. Dead Poets Society. Better Off Dead.I’m realizing that all mine are about teens/young people/kids who felt out of the loop in some way. I don’t know if they really all count as coming of age movies though?
Bless. I preach about this to any of my friends who will listen since it’s slightly before our time (I was 3) and never seemed to pop up in the early VHS days. The trailer alone is an all-timer.
I was tempted to go with an obvious choice like Stand by Me but The Last Picture Show captured the angst, terror, loneliness and awkwardness of my adolescence best.
+1 for Bogdanovich’s Last Picture Show. Forgot about that one.
The only film to be used as an actual character in a Stephen King novel.I truly love this movie.
If I could only have one coming of age story for the rest of my life? That’s easy. Stand By Me. There’s no doubt about it.
No Buffy?
No, no Buffy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pJ4oByVHDM
The 100, especially Clarke and Raven’s storylinesSara Lance’s storyline from Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow
The Chronicles of Prydain is the best YA, sword-and-sorcery coming of age series ever, and I’ll stand on Phil Pullman’s coffee table and say that!The Magicians books are incredible too, but they’re very much targeted at an older audience.Avatar the Last Airbender needs no hype man.The Spectacular Now stands up to just about any high school coming of age story you can name, and has pretty much bought Miles Teller a lifetime pass, in my book.I would quibble with the idea that Lewis portrays kids as somehow “pure” – Edmund’s a traitor and Eustace is a spoiled shithead in their first appearances (and that’s not getting into the kids at Eustace’s school, who make Dudley Dursley, circa book one, seem layered and sympathetic), while Diggory is a good man.I feel like the Narnia books have become a sort of stand-in for people to take performatively “woke” potshots at any YA trope they don’t like, whether or not the criticism in question actually has anything to do with the books’ text.
The Magicians books do such a good job with post-adolescence and disillusionment in a way that’s maybe particularly relatable for a Gen Xer — the characters are self-aware to a fault and too quick to beat themselves up at the slightest lapse of inauthenticity.
I read them after watching and loving the first season of the show…and just couldn’t get into the second season, after how perfect they were.“The hero pays the price.”
Lady Bird and The Goldfinch
H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Tomb.”
That, and Alien
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the high school years of the TV series)
The key moments of season 2 were perfect teen drama.
I was desperately trying to think what mine was and scouring the comments for inspiration.This is, without a shadow of a doubt, my answer too.
I’m surprised it took this long for Buffy to be mentioned.
MY GIRL, which is the movie that has made me cry the most.
Kiki’s Delivery Service, which is all about leaving home, taking on adult responsibilities, and making more mature friendships.
My son went through a phase of watching that movie every day. It was a pretty nice phase. It’s episodic enough that you can just drop in and out, and it’s set in a world where everyone is basically helpful.
ha mine was the Sound of Music- I think my parents much would have preferred Kiki had it been out
1. From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler.
2. My Neighbor Totoro.
Ugh! I read Where The Red Fern grows in 4th grade too. It was so traumatizing.
No support for Boyz n the Hood the week John Singleton died?
Shame, because it’s amazing.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. The book, more than the movie, but both are good.
I have to go with Noah Baumbach’s “The Squid and the Whale.” It perfectly encapsulates more than anything else I’ve seen or read that feeling we all have when we realize as kids our parents are full of shit and flawed like everyone else. All that montaged to Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle” is pure art.
That is such a great movie. It captures the awkward reality of family relationships better than just about any other movie I’ve ever seen. Wes Anderson was a producer, and although it feels nothing like a Wes Anderson movie, what it has in common is a swiftness of pace, and the feeling that you’ve just seen a two-hour movie in 90 minutes (although I think it’s only about 80 minutes) without feeling crammed or rushed. It doesn’t let anybody off the hook, everyone is shown as being as perfectly awful as normal people often are, but it’s also sympathetic toward them. Every time I see it I find a new depth in it.
In my early teen years: Made for TV movies “Sooner or Later” because I was crushing on Denise Miller, she was super cute and was my exact age. Followed by “Buster & Bille” because a the late Micheal Jan Vincent was a bad ass when he was young. James at 15’s first episode (on TV) was pretty good as well. We’re going back some time.In my post secondary school years: Being a fan of John Hughes films – 16 Candles.In my 30’s: Dazed and Confused, cause I’m nostalgic for the 70’s.
1977 NBC promo.
Blue Velvet is a great choice. I’d go with the story of a young teenager named Peter Parker, who’s had a comic book since 1963. I’ve watched him go from dweeby 15 year old just getting bitten by that first radioactive spider, to losing the first love of his life, to sporting a sleek alien costume, to switching brains with Dr Octopus, to today where he’s going for his PhD. You know, all the hallmarks of young adult hood.
“Into the Woods” (the play, not the truncated movie). “Happily ever after” is a lie, your reckless youthful bullshit will have consequences down the line, and even if you get all that grand stuff your young self wished so hard for, it’s usually not all it was cracked up to be.
Galaxy Quest. So much loss of innocence so beautifully rendered.
“Flirting” is so much better than any other coming-of-age movie IMO.
the The Catcher In The Rye movie
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?”
Rushmore resonates with me on pretty much every level. Starting with my name is Max, through putting on wierd plays, to misplaced crushes. Seriously freaked me out when I saw it. Everyones favourite coming of age tale is the one that is closest to their own coming of age.
Damn I wish I recalled the name of the movie that made such a big impact on me in my early life. I believe it came out in the early to mid 80s. It followed a group of Los Angeles teenagers and their drug, sex, and rock-n-roll lifestyle, eventually [Is it a SPOILER when I can’t even remember the name of the movie?] ending in the death of one of the tougher girls in an auto accident when she took a ride with a pervy couple.Anyone?
Foxes?
Damn. that’s it! How could I have forgotten that particular title?Thank you!
It stuck with me because my mom once told me that she and my dad didn’t have cable when they first got married, so she constantly watched her garage sale VHS tapes of Foxes and Little Darlings while she was pregnant with me. So that’s my story about Foxes.
Saw that on this-TV.
“It’s so weird when you see someone you just dreamed about. Like it’s gonna show.”Quotes like this pretty much nailed it during my teenage years. It seemed like everyone I knew who watched My So-Called Life knew someone on it. Or was
someone on it. I found myself in the odd position of being
both someone’s Jordan and someone’s Brian. I have been the oblivious
object of affection, breaking a heart when I know it could have been
helped. And I’ve been the embarrassing dork, pining away at someone out
of their league. That, I think, is the language of My So-Called Life.
There was the big picture stuff, like how this was the first show to
feature an openly gay teen, or how it was the first to have a fan
campaign to save the series. But it was the little things too, like how
characters had actual wardrobes and you’d see them wear the same clothes now and again. And that’s not to speak of the wonderful writing- Angela’s inner
monologues were poetically brilliant in their simplicity; She may have been an unreliable narrator, but
there was always truth in everything she believed, whether it was right
or wrong.
OMG that quote! I’m fucking 45 and still have weirdly embarrassing dreams about coworkers, that I KNOW don’t mean anything except that I’m stressing about a meeting or something, and I still think they’ll be able to tell when I see them! I’ll role up in conference room, look them in the eye and mentally I’m all “Oh shit! Oh Shit! Oh Shit! You know I dreamed about you and I being naked last night! Oh fuck!”Unfortunately these dreams are always about people I never, ever, ever want to see naked. Or start thinking about being naked as I’m meeting with them. GAH!
Angus. Loved it.
HOLY SHIT!
Angus was the only other movie I saw that Jurassic Park girl in. Fun, punky soundtrack, too.
Fuck yeah on the first three, I have that exact Atomsk scene tatted on my forearm. Micaela Cole is a treasure, I adore Chewing Gum. My choice would be My Girl.
Two contemporary candidates that were instantly among my all-time favorites in this general category: Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name (honorable mention to Lean on Pete—which wouldn’t be a favorite since I never want to watch it again).
Not a defining story but an important one fr me:A Wizard of Earthsea. Ged being a complete and total dick was at once repulsive and compelling to me. The fact that he redeems himself by discovering that he is literally his own worst enemy was quite close to home when I was a teenager….Dear me, that was very self indulgent, wasn’t it?
American Graffiti, anyone?
Came across this old TV spot recently. I saw it in the theater but it was the later rerelease in the 70s. Still in grade school.
A little surprised “Say Anything” didn’t make anyone elses list. I was Cusak-aholic overall, but “S.A.” struck a chord that still resonates today. I’ve watched that movie maybe 60 times and it still gets to me every damn time.
While all of you were hanging out with BOB DYLAN, I was mentioning Almost Famous.
Alien
I just watched Francis Ha the other night, so its fresh on my brain. There’s coming of age “making it through puberty” and then coming of age “becoming an adult.” Francis doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing for most of the movie, but finds her niche with a little bit of advice at the right time and it makes all the difference. This is a quintessential woman levels up movie age 25 to 27.
that movie and Young Adult with Charlize Theron gave me the most acute cases of secondhand embarressment. And with Young Adult it was more like this will be you if you don’t get your shit together.
Cooley High (1975). Coming of age films were few and far between for black teenagers in the ‘70s, but this story of two high school friends going down two different paths in 1960s Chicago hit themes race youth and the bittersweet experience of growing up that still feel relevant today.
Yes! Thank you.
Alien
And almost 25 years after Welcome to the Dollhouse came out, I still sit across the dinner table and mouth, “Fuck you!” to friends that are fellow fans of the movie.
My at-the-time sister in law, who was about the same age as the kids in the film, liked to sidle up to her older sister and mutter “Same time, same place. You get raped. Be there.”
Better off dead for me. Nothing else has captured just how fucked life is as well.HMs: Star Wars, dazed, freaks, Foxes.
I feel like I’m missing something key…
Alien
Not one that I will put on the top of my list, but with age, one that I keep coming back to: A Separate Peace, by John Knowles.
Kids definitely felt comfortable with the life and times I was living when it came out, but Larry Clark’s later Bully will always hold a special place with me. The Bobby Kent murder one county away was a few years before my time, but I know the real places, and the latter generation of the kids involved. Wasted Youth was an epidemic in 90s South Florida, with chaos, natural and of man, swirling about.
I’ll fly the flag for 80’s movies about horny teen boys trying to get laid. And like more than a few from that time, my pick was set in the 50’s: Mischief (1985).It was a bit of an underrated gem back then, and has since kind of been forgotten, but it is a lot more sweet natured than movies of this type, and best of all it features Catherine Mary Stewart, Jami Gertz, and Kelly Preston.
Losin’ It (1983). Good cast but Jackie Earle Haley and John Navin Jr. steal the show as the brothers.
I never noticed that photo of Napolean, looks like he is about to splurge during a pornos money shot.
Get it at……. Porkys.
Little did my father know that by taking me to see this, his joy at seeing a reflection of his youth at his actual high school on screen, would be my jumping off point into my lifelong love of hijinks and sleaze. In college at Florida, us Miami boys wore out the tapes watching this and it’s two sequels on many a tipsy night. The Gold Standard of 80s male teenage awakening.
Im 44 and it was ALWAYS on HBO in the 80s. One of the greats. Nostalgic, funny and boobs.
Detroit Rock City.
SLC Punk, Only Yesterday
Real FUCKING Genius FTW! Val Kilmer is effervescent, the cast IS earnest and funny, and the director Martha Coolidge knew when to let the kids go and take over the movie. The idea that Chris grows up as much as Mitch is a great way to subvert the usual overly sweet, boring, by the numbers coming of age story.
I’m in a snarky mood and I’m thinking about music, so:
See and raise…
No idea what this has to do with the topic at hand, but I loves me some Frank.Not my favorite version of the song, but that video has some great clips.Also appreciate the glimpses of the recently departed Bald Headed John; good tribute.
The narrator comes of age rapidly in a, um, distinctive way….I could have chosen several videos. I chose that one for the reasons you mentioned.
SPOILERS for my pick, Kiki’s Delivery Service.
She goes off to live in a new country, alone. She has to make her way in a world that isn’t what she expected it to be. She loses the ability to speak to her cat, a wonderfully heartbreaking metaphor for the replacement of a youthful worldview where anything is possible with cold, hard maturity. Luckily she has two strong mentors, one who is just on the other side of adolescence and one who is in the thick of young adulthood. Every time I watch it I’m really moved by her journey.
On TV, it’s definitely the Wonder Years. Kevin Arnold may have been living 20 years before me, but him and I were the same grades in school while the series was going on. Who hasn’t had a crush on the girl next door or the summer fling that when revisited, taught you that some things really do a short shelf life? I learned an awful lot from Winnie, Paul, Kevin, and the rest. Book wise, it was A Separate Peace. Kid was so jealous of his best friend his pushes him off a branch and essentially ruins his life? Let’s not forget the friend who goes off to WW II and starts imagining things like brooms as body parts! I haven’t read the book in years, but it’s stuck with me after all this time from reading it a few times in high school.And one of the few books I’ve ever had signed was Looking For Alaska. Though I was WAY past adolescence when it came out, that book is a crash course on how EVERYTHING can go wrong and wreck your innocence and inner peace while you’re making that transition from child to adult. My brother who’s a hardened police officer, would come up to me for DAYS afterward with a devastated look on his face from trying to process the tragedy in that book.
True Grit.
People, what a bunch of bastards. Also, we are all going to die one day.
I’ve never seen this but it has been sitting in my queue for a while (yes, I’m a weirdo who gets discs). This inspired me to move it up.
The Scott Pilgrim books are a pretty good example of a story that, rather than showing a slow change in character and growth as a person, it’s more a slow realisation that sometimes you have to make a conscious effort to grow, rather than just gradually learning to be better.
None of them. Those years were the absolute worst part of my life, and I have absolutely zero desire to re-live them. I literally can’t comprehend why so many people obsess over their high school years. Why? Is it just because it’s the last time you felt significant?
In movies:For the longest time it was probably “My Girl” because Vada was so great. But I also have a soft spot for “Bridge to Terabithia.”In books:I’ll count “Little Women” as one of my favorites as a young reader. When I got a little older, it became “To Kill a Mockingbird”.In television:“Boy Meets World” did it pretty well for a family sitcom. Dramas had a lot to choose (many from WB/CW alone) but I’ll go with NBC’s ”Friday Night Lights.”In videogames:
A genre one wouldn’t think would apply, but recently, teen indie “Life is Strange” was my favorite game of 2015, besting all the big AAA titles that year. I’m currently playing “Life is Strange 2″ and the writing, interactive elements, etc., are overall even better.
Mine is the book The Outsiders, which wasnt a very good movie.
Before Sunrise, 1995, by Richard Linklater. I snuck into that film because, well, I had a crush on Ethan Hawke (I know) and it really resonated with me. Plus, Julie Delpy in that film almost had me convinced I was straight for a while…
Degrassi: The Next Generation. It was pretty powerful to grow up alongside these characters and see portrayals of things like sexual violence, self-harm, coming out, and heartbreak. It’s my ultimate comfort TV.
My personal coming of age stories that mattered in my coming-of-age: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, Bloomability by Sharon Creech, and, most of all: Juno. There’s not enough coming of age stories about the weird kids who have to deal with their weird shit and growing up.
Maybe it’s the two middle schoolers I have at home, but Inside Out and Eighth Grade both hit close to home (despite me never being a 13-year old girl). Scarily enough, though, Big Mouth gets all the raging horniness with nowhere appropriate to direct it almost exactly right. Man, my brain went to some dark places back then, and I was supposedly one of the “good” (read: geek) kids. Teenage boys are awful.
stand by me, goonies and sandlot. that’s what a boys’ youth was…buds.at 71 I often wonder where they are now, if any are still alive. life takes you to strange places, then kicks you in the nads. I feel bad I can remember what we did, where we went, but for the life of me I can’t put names to the faces. sigh.
Book: DUNE. Paul Atreides takes over the Known Universe.
Movie: Opportunity Knocks. Frank Whaley gets the girl (Jennifer Connelly) with best use of a Target in cinema history.
Hairspray – 1988 (not that Travolta pile of shit)
Moonrise Kingdom
16 Candles
Say Anything
Suburbia
The Sure Thing
I think I learned all my major life lessons from Boy Meets World.
The Outsiders. Where the Red Fern Grows. Stand By Me. Lean on Me. American Graffiti. Not a movie, but nothing beats Jack London’s “Martin Eden”.
I think you all know my answer to this:
Clerks. When Randall explains Dante’s assumptions of his own importance to him, I flushed furiously with recognition. Regardless of anything else, I will always be grateful to Kevin Smith for this revelation.
The Warriors.
fight club.