Meet the new kids. Same as the old kids. Having been a teen during the Golden Age of Teen Movies, I consider myself a connoisseur of teen movies. John Hughes would be proud of “Booksmart” (2019). Two nerdish girls who abstained from fun for the sake of high school achievement find out the day before graduation they could have had just as much gain without all the pain. BTW, there’s a big, unsupervised graduation party that night. Cue the hijinks. Director Olivia Wilde creates perfect cinematic stasis, bringing in sudden comic weirdness every time things get serious, and vice versa.
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I feel sorry for the 16-year-old girls who chose to see “The Words” that weekend back in 2012 when “House at the End of the Street” was sold out. (“Let’s just see that thing with Bradley Cooper. OMG! He’s so gorgeous!”) Figuring out this film is a lot harder than any of the politically correct cryptofiction they’re force fed in their high school American lit classes. Hard, but good. It’s a story about a storyteller telling a story about a story. At the end, the movie gives you the finger and sends you off to figure it out for yourself.
When I was a kid, I’d get very upset if a sports movie wasn’t realistic enough to suit me. Heaven forbid if it took dramatic license with actual events. I’m not a kid anymore, so I could appreciate all the melodrama and spectacle that director Ron Howard packs into “Rush” (2013), a based-on-a-true story Hollywoodization of 1970s Formula One racing. The rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda is exaggerated. The race results are embellished. Get over it. It’s a good story with interesting characters, providing a new take on how opposites can bring out the best in each other.
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