THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN Review

We all lead complicated lives. This is the simple lesson Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) takes away from her experiences as documented in the directorial debut from Kelly Fremon Craig who also has the sole credit on the screenplay for The Edge of Seventeen. We all lead complicated lives and unfortunately, having problems isn't what makes Nadine special despite the fact she thinks it does. Given Nadine is a junior in high school who has little to no social life outside of her best friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson), who doesn't get along with her mother, and who is the younger sister of all-star older brother Darian (Everybody Wants Some!!'s Blake Jenner) there seems valid reason for her amount of self-loathing. Of course, the main idea in Edge of Seventeen is for Nadine to come to the realization her problems aren't singular to her life, but that there are in fact always those who have it worse. That type of hackneyed advice isn't what teenagers want to hear though, and Edge of Seventeen isn't here to serve as a lecture for those who can associate with its protagonist. Moreover, Craig's film feels very much like a personal essay or even more, a love letter to her own formative years that, despite feeling like hell in the moment, she couldn't be more thankful for now. This is a difficult task. Capturing the essence of what you were feeling throughout a certain time in your life without spelling it out in the dialogue is one thing when writing the screenplay, but when actually attempting to do so through execution of that written word it becomes clear how critical tone is and if the tone isn't right, the themes and ideas won't translate and you end up with a final product as foreign a feeling as popularity is to Nadine. To say that Craig excels in overcoming these obstacles would no doubt make the writer/director chuckle as she likely questioned herself and her abilities on a daily basis, but what has come out of what I have to believe was a slew or re-writes and re-calculations to make sure that not only was the essence of her youth captured, but also a character arc that rings true for a number of us is a high school movie for the ages, a close relative to those John Hughes movies that captured all the angst and innocence of adolescence, but with the natural edge of the current culture.

EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! Review

"There's a party down on the corner, do you want to go? They got rhythm, a little blues, and a whole lot of soul. I don't care what you've got to say,  you're comin' with me anyway. We're not here for a long time, we're here for a good time." So go the words of Huey Lewis and the News' 2001 song "We're Not Here for a Long Time (We're Here for a Good Time)" and while Richard Linklater's latest film takes its name from the more appropriate Van Halen track from 1980 the writer/director is echoing the same sentiments as Lewis and his News were in their song. One of the many characters in Linklater's entertaining ensemble even throws out the familiar saying at a moment when we're discovering the drastic steps he's taken to recapture his more idyllic past. An idyllic past is mostly what Everybody Wants Some!! is really about, though. The ability to escape and live in an existence, at least for a period of time, that feels like the perfect mix of being care-free and celebrating that freedom by partying as consistently as possible. This window of unattached existence is what Linklater seems to have deduced brings out the most natural form of who we are meant to be as human beings. In experiencing this type of freedom by simply existing we are allowed to pine for that period of time the rest of our lives as most will go on to conform with the societal structures expected of them. Thus, our idyllic past is created with the key being it must remain that idyllic high point without any attempt to recreate such memories because we all know real, genuine fun can't be commonplace. It can't happen every night and the same thrills remain intact. If humans were to live forever as the characters in Everybody Wants Some!! do over the course of this three-day weekend we'd likely live half as long and grow tired of the emptiness drinking and promiscuous sex with many anonymous partners would eventually bring. And so, what Linklater is slyly conveying is that of a cherished time in his own life; memories that inform the man he is today with the added acknowledgment that it can't last forever, but it's beyond critical to drink in when that time arrives.