High School Comedy I • September 9, 2018
The Edge of Seventeen 🥤
🤗 Happy Monday! Hope you had a great weekend!
I’m going to try out a new schedule for the newsletter this week. You’ll get movie recommendations on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Let me know what you think by replying to this email or DMing me on Twitter!
This week, I’m kicking off a new theme. And since the kids are back in school, I think it’s the perfect time to take a look at the High School Comedy 👩🏻🏫🏫.
The Edge of Seventeen
STREAMING ON NETFLIX
What it’s about: Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) and Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) are best friends mostly because they’re outsiders in their Portland suburbs school. However, when Krista starts dating Nadine’s older popular brother (Blake Jenner) — drama!!! — she starts to spiral out of control in only the way a teen girl can, melodramatically.
Why it’s great: The Edge of Seventeen starts with a bleakly comedic scene where Nadine, clearly having a mental breakdown, admits to her teacher (Woody Harrelson) that she thinks she’s going to kill herself spilling out that she can’t connect with her classmates. He responds with, “maybe... nobody likes you.” It’s sad, hilarious, and gets at what makes this movie so good.
Being a teen sucks — but so often it sucks because you try to control the things you can’t control. The movie explores this conundrum with painful accuracy but also a dry wit and sharp comedic timing thanks to Steinfeld and Harrelson’s terrific performances. It presupposes that everyone is miserable for some reason or another — but some of that can go away with a little humor and a lot of self-love.
The key players:
🎬🖋 Kelly Fremon Craig
🎭 Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson, Kyra Sedgwick, Haley Lu Richardson
The details: ⏳ 104 minutes // 🇺🇸 U.S. // 📺 Trailer
Fun fact: Woody Harrelson improvised many of Mr. Brunner's quips and jokes, to the delight of Kelly Fremon Craig.
In movie news:
🃏 Over the weekend, in a twisted turn of events — just how the Joker would like it — Todd Phillips’ Joker won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.
My take: It’s a shocking choice considering it’s a comic book movie. However, I wouldn’t be so bullish on its Oscar chances just yet. Yes, the last two winners of the prize were The Shape of Water and Roma, but those are the only two Best Picture nominees since 2000 to win at the festival.
🤡 In other clown news, It: Chapter Two led the box office with $91 million domestically and $185 million worldwide.
My take: Some are calling the movie a failure because it failed to reach the lofty $200 million+ gross analysts were projecting. Let’s be realistic, a 3-hour R-rated horror movie grossing that much is astonishing.
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🎉 Have a great week,
Karl (@karl_delo)