. It’s the look of the sunset, the little freedoms the main characters luxuriate in on the last day of school and the first night of summer. It’s a celebratory movie, but not one that gazes at high school or the past through rose-colored pot smoke: Melancholy hangs at the edges of the film, in characters who don’t know what’s waiting for them around the bend of the next school year, or in the unacknowledged, unknown disappointments that have been visited upon the character who’s most famously not in high school. depicts the dawning of a season, but it reminds me more of the way I used to feel at the end of the summer, driving around my hometown at sundown with the stereo turned up. The keg is cashed, the party ends, real life (in the form of various authority figures) is breathing down your neck—but the car keeps rolling on down the road. (Did I mention that I don’t like summer all that much?) [Erik Adams]
