Film looks at teen angst
Boasting six festival wins, and sporting a 98 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, we present “Eighth Grade” this weekend for your viewing pleasure. For several weeks it scored a perfect 100 per cent — that is quite the accomplishment given the criticism that prevails in our day.
This little indie gem is a coming-of-age tale of an introverted teenage girl trying to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth grade year before leaving to start high school. It is rated 14A and has a running time of 94 minutes. It will play daily at 4:25 and 9:45 p.m.
“In his feature film directorial debut, comedian Bo Burnham deftly encapsulates the awkwardness, angst, self-loathing and reinvention that a teenage girl goes through on the cusp of high school. Given that the 27-year-old standup comic achieved fame as a teenager himself through YouTube by riffing on his insecurities, he is uniquely capable as the film’s writer and director to tell the story of Kayla, an anxious girl navigating the final days of her eighth-grade year, despite creating a protagonist with female instead of male. Like Burnham did more than a decade ago, 13-year-old Kayla turns to YouTube to express herself, where she makes advice blogs in which she pretends to have it all together. In reality, Kayla is sullen and silent around her single father and her peers at school, carrying out most of her interactions with her classmates on Instagram and Twitter. Her YouTube videos are a clever narrative tool that provide insight into her inner hopes and dreams, much like an ... eighth grader!” — A24 Films.
Summer, at least for the film industry, is all but over. It has been a banner year for Hollywood after a dismal 2017 that saw ✦headlines
predicting the end of moviegoing as we know it. As is often the case with Hollywood, the product goes in cycles. There are up years, and then there are down years. People, for the most part, still enjoy an outing to the theatre — to be entertained and for an often much-needed escape from day-to-day reality (they especially enjoy it when it is truly entertaining and original!). Next week we will examine the winners and losers that filled the screens of summer 2018.
Please feel free to contact me with your comments or feedback — even an idea for an article — at len@moviemill.com. Hope to see you at the movies!