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The 8 best coming-of-age movies of all time
From the whimsical “Mermaids” to heartbreaking “Moonlight,” the best dramas about growing up are timeless
In his 1960 novel “Rabbit, Run,” John Updike wrote that growing up means joining, whether you like it or not, a “sky of adults” that hangs over the next generation. The messy, confusing, glorious process of becoming an adult has been the backbone of countless wonderful films, some of them, like the underrated 1986 drama “Lucas,” currently lost to the streaming world. While everyone surely has their favorite, these eight beautiful films capture the highs and lows of moving from one phase of life to the next.
‘Breaking Away’ (1979)
Breaking Away (1979) Trailer | Dennis Quaid | Daniel Stern - YouTube
In “Breaking Away,” Dave (Dennis Christopher) is a recent high school graduate in Bloomington, Indiana, who becomes obsessed with becoming an Italian cycling champion and passes himself off as an exchange student to his crush, a college student named Kathy (Robyn Douglass). He convinces his townie friends, including Mike (Dennis Quaid), to join him in an informal cycling competition against a group of privileged University of Indiana students.
The friends, all in the process of figuring out who they want to be, spend their last summer together training for the thrillingly staged race. A “treasure,” the film is a “wonderfully sunny, funny, goofy, intelligent movie that makes you feel about as good as any movie in a long time,” said Roger Ebert at the time. (Prime Video)
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In “The Breakfast Club,” a group of suburban Chicago high school malcontents from rival cliques, including a bullying John (Judd Nelson) and the stuck-up Claire (Molly Ringwald), are forced to spend a long Saturday detention together, supervised by vice principal Mr. Vernon (Paul Gleason). They are tasked with writing an essay about who they think they are, which they delegate to the group nerd, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), and over the course of the day everyone, including the overbearing authority figure, gets a chance to share and humanize their struggles. Director John Hughes’ “simple, one-location talkie” brings Generation X’s “submerged angst to the surface” in a movie that is “still the definitive ’80s teen movie,” said Simon Crook at Empire. (Netflix)
‘Stand By Me’ (1986)
STAND BY ME (1986) - 40th Anniversary - Official Trailer (HD) - YouTube
The beloved “Stand By Me,” based on a Stephen King novella, follows 12-year-old Gordie (Wil Wheaton) and three of his friends, Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman) and Vern (Jerry O’Connell), as they take an unauthorized hike searching for the body of a missing teenager. Narrated by a grown-up Gordie (Richard Dreyfuss) decades later, director Rob Reiner’s film is a masterclass in atmosphere and character-building. Met with underwhelming reviews when it was released, “Stand By Me” has “aged into a staple of youthful nostalgia for its deft straddling of the line between childhood and adulthood,” said Charles Bramesco at Rolling Stone. (MGM+)
‘Mermaids’ (1990)
Mermaids (1990) | Official Trailer | MGM Studios - YouTube
Cher plays Rachel Flax, a single mom raising two daughters, 15-year-old Charlotte (Winona Ryder) and her younger sister, Kate (Christina Ricci). Rachel is a free spirit who has moved her kids around every time a relationship goes south, and the film opens with a move to a small town in Massachusetts.
Rachel dates a shoe store operator named Lou (Bob Hoskins), while Charlotte nurses a crush on her handsome young school bus driver and flirts with Catholicism to the chagrin of her Jewish mother. Narrated by Charlotte’s “droll inner monologue,” it is a “fun, heartfelt, well-directed film that still holds up pretty damn well” decades later, said Nadine J. Cohen at The Guardian. (MGM+)
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Adepero Oduye is Alike, a 17-year-old girl whose conservative parents’ marriage is falling apart around her in their Brooklyn apartment. Alike knows she’s a lesbian but hasn’t told anyone, including her father, Arthur (Charles Parnell), a police officer, and her mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans). Her best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), is already out, and helps Alike navigate the minefield at home, as Alike explores her identity and ultimately faces a heartbreaking choice.
A tremendous turn from the then-unknown Oduye helps carry this quietly powerful film. It’s a “tender, sporadically goofy, yet candid examination of emergent identity,” making it the “finest coming-of-age movie I've seen in years,” said Ella Taylor at NPR. (Netflix)
‘Boyhood’ (2014)
Boyhood | Official US Trailer | IFC Films - YouTube
There may never be another film like director Richard Linklater’s stunning ‘Boyhood.” Linklater followed the same group of actors over the course of 12 years, with a total of just 39 days of filming. Mason (Ellar Coltrane) is 6 when the film begins as his dad (Ethan Hawke), a musician, splits from his college professor mom (Patricia Arquette). Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter, plays Mason’s older sister, Samantha.
In a series of vignettes, we see Mason growing up, his dad stumbling toward maturity and a more consistent presence in his life and his mom moving around Texas and seeking stability and happiness. Through its unique structure, this “beautiful, simple and ambitious film” lovingly “creates the closest thing to a real experience as few motion pictures ever have,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (Netflix)
The haunting masterpiece by director Barry Jenkins (“The Underground Railroad”) follows a young Black Miami man named Chiron through three distinct phases of his life. As a lonely, bullied elementary student he’s played by Alex R. Hibbert and goes by Little. His mother, Paula (Naomie Harris), is a drug addict and Little falls under the tutelage of a drug kingpin named Juan (Mahershala Ali) and his girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monáe).
Ashton Sanders plays Chiron as a high school student who develops a taboo romantic relationship with Kevin (Jharrel Jerome); Trevante Rhodes is Chiron as a fully grown man who goes by Black, who follows in Juan’s drug-dealing footsteps and reconnects with Kevin (André Holland). A “moving and mysterious” film, it is “about masculinity, the wounds and crises of which are the same for all sexualities but conditioned by the background weather of race and class,” said Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian. (Hulu)
‘Eighth Grade’ (2018)
Eighth Grade | Official Trailer HD | A24 - YouTube
Director Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” stars Elsie Fisher (“The Bear”) as Kayla, a shy 13-year-old who produces a YouTube show whose only fan seems to be her awkward single father, Mark (Josh Hamilton). Anchored by an extraordinary performance from Fisher, the film’s centerpiece is a pool party thrown by the popular Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere), where Kayla sees her crush, Aiden (Luke Prael).
It is both a universal story about trying to fit in and also a quietly searing commentary about the Gen Z milieu, including active shooter drills and ubiquitous smartphones. Burnham’s film “reflects arguably the worst stretch of growing up in America’s education system,” said Andy Crump at Paste magazine, but is nevertheless “compassionate, radiating retroactive kindness for the children we all were to soothe the adults we are now.” (Prime Video)
David Faris is a professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of "It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics." He's a frequent contributor to Newsweek and Slate, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic and The Nation, among others.
