The 50 Best Teen Movies Of All Time - Page 5 of 5

mean-girls10. “Mean Girls” (2004)
For a while it seemed like no film would ever unseat “Clueless” as the high-school girl-gang comedy par excellence. But the Tina Fey-scripted, Mark Waters-directed “Mean Girls” has (in the decade since its release) started to eclipse Amy Heckerling‘s classic — perhaps inevitably so as the generation who were teens when it came out start to claim a larger share of the cultural conversation. But it’s also because the film is just so damn good — so funny, clever and pointed and so exactly what needs to be said to young girls about how they view and talk about other young girls. Also featuring the role that makes us mourn the subsequent career trajectory of Lindsay Lohan, a definingly brilliant villain turn from Rachel McAdams, as well as Amy Poehler‘s unforgettable “cool mom!” cameo, it’s a snappy treat, with both heart and smarts to burn.

boyz-n-the-hood9. “Boyz N The Hood” (1991)
John Singleton‘s thunderbolt debut defines a raft of cinematic categories, and though it may not seem like one at first glance, it’s also a teen movie, just one in which the coming-of-age stakes are much higher, and the rewards don’t come as gentle life lessons, but as simple survival. Mostly, it feels willed into existence from sheer necessity, with Singleton drawing on his own upbringing in LA to elicit basically incredible performances from Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Morris Chestnut as three young friends clawing their way to adulthood on the streets of South Central. Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne do tremendous work in support as well, but the film is bigger than it performances and even than its director: it’s a clarion call for dispossessed black youth across America and a cornerstone of subsequent black cinema.

last-picture-show8. “The Last Picture Show” (1971)
There are few filmmakers who love the movies as much as Peter Bogdanovich, and many of his later films like “What’s Up Doc?” were tributes or responses to a golden age of Hollywood. But what’s striking about “The Last Picture Show,” his breakthrough and best movie, is the way that, while it’s steeped in nostalgia, it doesn’t feel in thrall to any particular influences. It’s nominally focused on recent high-school graduates Sonny and Duane (Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges), and the object of their affections Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), but it expands out to ultimately paint a picture of their small Texas town, and of America as a whole that was on the verge of changing forever. Given that it was based on Larry McMurtry’s novel, and that Bogdanovich’s background was very different, it’s remarkable how raw, personal and authentic the film feels.

breakfast-club7. “The Breakfast Club” (1985)
A nerd, a princess, a jock, a basket case and a criminal — the genius of teen movie maestro John Hughes’ finest hour is that not that he subverted the teen archetypes he’d so gleefully establish and uphold elsewhere, it’s that he took five of them and made them work together. Perhaps the defining film for the ’80s middle-class white kid, the story of one crazy day of detention and the five mutually hostile teenagers at different levels of social awkwardness and sexual expereince who become friends and even fall for each other as a result, is also kind of the ultimate expression of grown-ups-bad, kids-are-alright complacency. But its so damn ingratiating, so funny, and so earnestly played by its iconic cast (Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson), that resistance is pretty much futile.

if6. “If…” (1968)
As provocative and rebellious a teen movie as has ever been made, and a film that still has a power to shock today (more than ever, perhaps, in a time of school shootings and a Britain run by privileged private school types like Boris Johnson), Lindsay Anderson’s “If…” takes a look into the often alien world of the English boarding school. Malcolm McDowell, Richard Warwick and David Wood play three boys at an unnamed school, bullied by the older kids and persecuted by a cruel staff, who eventually commit an explosive revolt. Uniting the British New Wave vibe of the Angry Young Man that Anderson and others had introduced with the openly revolutionary spirit of May ’68 (which took place while the film was in production), it’s a film bursting with frustration at the old order, which Anderson gives real force of feeling and flair.

fast-times-at-ridgemont-high5. “Fast Times At Ridgemont High” (1982)
Harder, sexier, fresher, more authentic and funnier than the John Hughes movies that came to define the 80s teen movie, Amy Heckerling’s “Fast Times At Ridgemont High” began when Cameron Crowe (future director of “Almost Famous” and co) went undercover as a student at a San Diego high school for a year, writing a book about his experiences. His adaptation of that book (his screenwriting debut) smartly avoids the undercover conceit, instead being a true ensemble piece tracking a group of characters, from Judge Reinhold’s popular everyman to Jennifer Jason Leigh’s younger girl discovering her sexuality (and the shittiness of men), to Sean Penn’s perma-stoned surfer Spicoli (still his best performance), to Phoebe Cates jump-starting multiple future generations into puberty. Heckerling nails the tricky tone — sometimes broad and silly, but with a relatively gritty undercurrent — and few films have captured the breadth of the high school experience, or at least the white middle class one, more successfully.

dazed-and-confused4. “Dazed & Confused” (1993)
The release of this year’s “Everybody Wants Some,” a spiritual sequel to “Dazed & Confused,” served as a reminder of the alchemy that Richard Linklater pulled off with the earlier film. ‘Everybody’ is a good movie, with a fine cast, the director’s usual impeccable filmmaking and a great soundtrack, and yet it doesn’t come close to the magic of its predecessor, a film that you could describe as perfect, except perfect suggests something other than the breeziness and charm that it shows. Set on the last day of school in Austin as a group of seniors and incoming freshmen (a starry selection including Jason London, Adam Goldberg, Milla Jovovich, Parker Posey, Ben Affleck, Renee Zellwegger and, as the leery older dude, Matthew McConaughey) prepare for the year ahead. It’s indebted to films like “American Graffiti” and “Fast Times,” but has a loose, very Austin-ish energy all of its own, coming across as much an anthropological study of the high schooler as a species as it does a teen comedy.

rushmore3. “Rushmore” (1998)
It’s oddly easy to forget that “Rushmore” is a teen movie — its characters are precocious enough that they feel older, and Wes Anderson’s films, even his second, feel like they exist in their own genre sometimes, sealed off from the rest of cinema. But among the many other things that “Rushmore” is, it’s very much a classic coming-of-age teen movie, despite the rather different surroundings. Centered on an unusual love triangle of a sort, between ambitious academic underperformer Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), his wealthy pal Herman Blume (Bill Murray) and widowed teacher Rosemary (Olivia Williams), it’s one of the best reminders that as confident and bright as a kid can seem, he’s still a confused, hormonal mess inside. Max’s coming of age tale isn’t quite like any other — inventive, hilarious, always surprising and, eventually, unexpectedly affecting. It might still be the most human, and best, thing Anderson’s made.

y-tu-mama-tambien2. “Y Tu Mama Tambien” (2001)
Alfonso Cuaron was already seen a talent in the 1990s, but it was “Y Tu Mama Tambien” that rebooted his career and led the way to the visionary director of “Gravity” and “Children Of Men.” Something of a throwback to his debut “Sólo Con Tu Pareja,” it’s concerned with two sex-crazed young Mexican teenagers (Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna) who end up on a spontaneous road trip with an older woman (Maribel Verdú). It could feel like a sort of juvenile wish-fulfillment comedy, but the film’s youthful, New Wave-ish energy combines with an incisive feel for male friendship and competitiveness and a laid-back assuredness that elevates it far above the familiar setup. It’s a reminder that it’s all in the execution: In the hands of a master filmmaker like Cuarón, something as seemingly modest as this can become a classic.

heathers1. “Heathers” (1988)
You can tell a lot about a person by the type of teen movie they’ll put at number one on a list of greatest ever teen movies. So read what you will into us choosing the magnificently morbid and macabre “Heathers,” which, for our money, represents the finest hour not just of director Michael Lehmann, but of lead actor Christian Slater and lead actress Winona Ryder. (And also Shannon Doherty but we’re grading on a curve there.) Unlike other black comedies that dabble in the shallows of questionable taste, “Heathers” dives right in at the deep end, satirizing the unsatirizable — teen suicide — in a way that feels genuinely subversive and not a little sick. It’s also very, very funny, though, as Veronica (Ryder) finds that her bad-boy boyfriend JD (Slater) will go to extreme lengths to rid their dysfunctional high school of its “popular” clique — the titular, tyrannical Heathers. Most admirably of all, in the final reel, where so many satires lose their bite, “Heathers” doubles down — it may ultimately preach tolerance, anti-conformity and respect for all different walks of life, but it does so via Ryder lighting a cigarette off the self-immolating body of her teen boyfriend, which is, in the parlance of the film, just so very.

Even when you consider that we disqualified some films as not being purely teen movies — sci-fi or horror fare like “Scream,” “Chronicle” or “Donnie Darko,” which have placed in some of other genre lists, or a film like “The 400 Blows” or “Picnic At Hanging Rock” which are technically a teen movie, which deals with early adolescence in a way that doesn’t qualify — there’s still a lot of good or great films that we didn’t have the space for here.

Among them are Richard Ayoade’s charming and stylish “Submarine,” Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ funny and heartfelt “The Kings Of Summer,” beloved but trashy “Dangerous Liaisons” re-do “Cruel Intentions,” sex comedy classic “American Pie,” Andrew Cividino’s underseen “Sleeping Giant,” Kid ’n’ Play vehicle “House Party,” John Duggan’s “Flirting,” LGBT cult classic “But I’m A Cheerleader,” 80s fave “Some Kind Of Wonderful,Sidney Poitier starrer “To Sir With Love” and Tom Cruise in his underwear in “Risky Business.”

There’s also the powerful “Dead Poets Society,John Hughes faves “Pretty In Pink” and “Sixteen Candles,” the sci-fi tinged “Weird Science,” Elisabeth Shue in “Adventures In Babysitting,” millennial weepie “The Fault In Out Stars,” riot-inducing 50s groundbreakers “Blackboard Jungle” and “Rock Around The Clock,” Alan Parker’s musical “Fame,” Gia Coppola’s underrated “Palo Alto,” the seminal “Grease,” John Waters’ “Hairspray” and its pretty good musical remake, River Phoenix in the uncompromising “River’s Edge,” Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” (another movie which is sort of a teen movie but also not) and Gina Prince Bythewood’s “Love & Basketball,” which spans more years than just the teens.

There’s plenty more beyond that — any other you really miss? Let us know in the comments.