ENDEARING, FUNNY & THOUGHT-PROVOKING FILMS about TEENS

All films with Mary Stuart Masterson. She has always
been smart enough never to play dumb.

I agree with you about Mary Stuart Masterson. Not only is she an excellent actress but she also manages to find excellent roles.
"Immediate Family", "Benny and Joon", and of course "Fried Green Tomatoes" come immediately to mind, the last with the equally fine "three namer" Mary Louise Parker. I am looking forward to seeing M.S.M. in the upcoming revival of "Nine" on Broadway.

I was going to say, it seems she has disappeared - is she just concentrating on theater now?

Larry BS-I fear that yours is a logical conclusion since she doesn't seem to be popping up on the big screen. I have seen her in a few things on TV, but I think she is mainly interested in the stage. I know she is closely associated with one of the off-Broadway theater groups, but so are Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Robert Sean Leonard, William H. Macy, and others, and they do not seem to be cutting down on film work. I'm almost certain it's by her own choice; she is too big a talent for it to be otherwise.

As flyboy said: "(January 2003) Set to star in Nine, the Musical with the Roundabout Theater Company at the Eugene O'Neil Theater in NYC." (From IMdb)

3 movies and 3 tv projects since 1999. She got married in 2000, so maybe she took some time off for married life.

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Just watched a very engrossing film which I knew very little about before hiring it: The Virgin Suicides.
Definitely NOT one of the light-hearted teen films! ... But quite atmospheric & mesmerising
Have any of you seen it? I'd love to know what you thought ...

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES / *** 1/2 (R)

May 5, 2000

Lux Lisbon: Kirsten Dunst
Trip Fontaine: Josh Hartnett
Mr. Lisbon: James Woods
Mrs. Lisbon: Kathleen Turner

Paramount Classics presents a film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Based on the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R (for strong thematic elements involving teens.)

BY ROGER EBERT

It is not important how the Lisbon sisters looked. What is important is how the teenage boys in the neighborhood thought they looked.

There is a time in the adolescent season of every boy when a particular girl seems to have materialized in his dreams, with backlighting from heaven. Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides" is narrated by an adult who speaks for "we"--for all the boys in a Michigan suburban neighborhood 25 years ago, who loved and lusted after the Lisbon girls. We know from the title and the opening words that the girls killed themselves. Most of the reviews have focused on the girls. They miss the other subject--the gawky, insecure yearning of the boys.

The movie is as much about those guys, "we," as about the Lisbon girls. About how Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), the leader of the pack, loses his baby fat and shoots up into a junior stud who is blindsided by sex and beauty, and dazzled by Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst), who of the perfect Lisbon girls is the most perfect.

In every class there is one couple who has sex while the others are only talking about it, and Trip and Lux make love on the night of the big dance. But that is not the point. The point is that she wakes up the next morning, alone, in the middle of the football field. And the point is that Trip, as the adult narrator, remembers not only that "she was the still point of the turning world then" and "most people never taste that kind of love" but also, "I liked her a lot. But out there on the football field, it was different."

Yes, it was. It was the end of adolescence and the beginning of a lifetime of compromises, disenchantments and real things. First sex is ideal only in legend. In life it attaches plumbing, fluids, gropings, fumblings and pain to what was only an hour ago a platonic ideal. Trip left Lux not because he was a pig, but because he was a boy and broken with grief at the loss of his--their--dream. And when the Lisbon girls kill themselves, do not blame their deaths on their weird parents. Mourn for the passing of everyone you knew and everyone you were in the last summer before sex. Mourn for the idealism of inexperience.

"The Virgin Suicides" provides perfunctory reasons that the Lisbon girls might have been unhappy. Their mother (Kathleen Turner) is a hysteric so rattled by her daughters' blooming sexuality that she adds cloth to their prom dresses until they appear in "four identical sacks." Their father (James Woods) is the well-meaning but emasculated high school math teacher who ends up chatting about photosynthesis with his plants. These parents look gruesome to us. All parents look gruesome to kids, and all of their attempts at discipline seem unreasonable. The teenage years of the Lisbon girls are no better or worse than most teenage years. This is not the story of daughters driven to their deaths.

The story it most reminds me of, indeed, is "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975), about a party of young girls, not unlike the Lisbon sisters in appearance and sexual experience, who go for a school outing one day and disappear into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Were they captured? Killed in a fall? Trapped somehow? Bitten by snakes? Simply lost in the maze of nature? What happened to them is not the point. Their disappearance is the point. One moment they were smiling and bowing in their white dresses in the sun, and the next they were gone forever. The lack of any explanation is the whole point: For those left behind, they are preserved forever in the perfection they possessed when they were last seen.

"The Virgin Suicides" is Sofia Coppola's first film, based on the much-discussed novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. She has the courage to play it in a minor key. She doesn't hammer home ideas and interpretations. She is content with the air of mystery and loss that hangs in the air like bitter poignancy. Tolstoy said all happy families are the same. Yes, but he should have added, there are hardly any happy families.

To live in a family group with walls around it is unnatural for a species that evolved in tribes and villages. What would work itself out in the give-and-take of a community gets grotesque when allowed to fester in the hothouse of a single-family home. A mild-mannered teacher and a strong-willed woman turn into a paralyzed captive and a harridan. Their daughters see themselves as captives of these parents, who hysterically project their own failure upon the children.

The worship the girls receive from the neighborhood boys confuses them: If they are perfect, why are they seen as such flawed and dangerous creatures? And then the reality of sex, too young, peels back the innocent idealism and reveals its secret engine, which is animal and brutal, lustful and contemptuous.

In a way, the Lisbon girls and the neighborhood boys never existed, except in their own adolescent imaginations. They were imaginary creatures, waiting for the dream to end through death or adulthood. "Cecilia was the first to go," the narrator tells us right at the beginning. We see her talking to a psychiatrist after she tries to slash her wrists. "You're not even old enough to know how hard life gets," he tells her. "Obviously, doctor," she says, "you've never been a 13-year-old girl." No, but his profession and every adult life is to some degree a search for the happiness she does not even know she has.

~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Just watched a very engrossing film which I knew very little about before hiring it: The Virgin Suicides.
Definitely NOT one of the light-hearted teen films! ... But quite atmospheric & mesmerising
Have any of you seen it? I'd love to know what you thought ...

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES / *** 1/2 (R)

May 5, 2000

Lux Lisbon: Kirsten Dunst
Trip Fontaine: Josh Hartnett
Mr. Lisbon: James Woods
Mrs. Lisbon: Kathleen Turner

Paramount Classics presents a film written and directed by Sofia Coppola. Based on the novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R (for strong thematic elements involving teens.)

BY ROGER EBERT

It is not important how the Lisbon sisters looked. What is important is how the teenage boys in the neighborhood thought they looked.

There is a time in the adolescent season of every boy when a particular girl seems to have materialized in his dreams, with backlighting from heaven. Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides" is narrated by an adult who speaks for "we"--for all the boys in a Michigan suburban neighborhood 25 years ago, who loved and lusted after the Lisbon girls. We know from the title and the opening words that the girls killed themselves. Most of the reviews have focused on the girls. They miss the other subject--the gawky, insecure yearning of the boys.

The movie is as much about those guys, "we," as about the Lisbon girls. About how Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett), the leader of the pack, loses his baby fat and shoots up into a junior stud who is blindsided by sex and beauty, and dazzled by Lux Lisbon (Kirsten Dunst), who of the perfect Lisbon girls is the most perfect.

In every class there is one couple who has sex while the others are only talking about it, and Trip and Lux make love on the night of the big dance. But that is not the point. The point is that she wakes up the next morning, alone, in the middle of the football field. And the point is that Trip, as the adult narrator, remembers not only that "she was the still point of the turning world then" and "most people never taste that kind of love" but also, "I liked her a lot. But out there on the football field, it was different."

Yes, it was. It was the end of adolescence and the beginning of a lifetime of compromises, disenchantments and real things. First sex is ideal only in legend. In life it attaches plumbing, fluids, gropings, fumblings and pain to what was only an hour ago a platonic ideal. Trip left Lux not because he was a pig, but because he was a boy and broken with grief at the loss of his--their--dream. And when the Lisbon girls kill themselves, do not blame their deaths on their weird parents. Mourn for the passing of everyone you knew and everyone you were in the last summer before sex. Mourn for the idealism of inexperience.

"The Virgin Suicides" provides perfunctory reasons that the Lisbon girls might have been unhappy. Their mother (Kathleen Turner) is a hysteric so rattled by her daughters' blooming sexuality that she adds cloth to their prom dresses until they appear in "four identical sacks." Their father (James Woods) is the well-meaning but emasculated high school math teacher who ends up chatting about photosynthesis with his plants. These parents look gruesome to us. All parents look gruesome to kids, and all of their attempts at discipline seem unreasonable. The teenage years of the Lisbon girls are no better or worse than most teenage years. This is not the story of daughters driven to their deaths.

The story it most reminds me of, indeed, is "Picnic at Hanging Rock" (1975), about a party of young girls, not unlike the Lisbon sisters in appearance and sexual experience, who go for a school outing one day and disappear into the wilderness, never to be seen again. Were they captured? Killed in a fall? Trapped somehow? Bitten by snakes? Simply lost in the maze of nature? What happened to them is not the point. Their disappearance is the point. One moment they were smiling and bowing in their white dresses in the sun, and the next they were gone forever. The lack of any explanation is the whole point: For those left behind, they are preserved forever in the perfection they possessed when they were last seen.

"The Virgin Suicides" is Sofia Coppola's first film, based on the much-discussed novel by Jeffrey Eugenides. She has the courage to play it in a minor key. She doesn't hammer home ideas and interpretations. She is content with the air of mystery and loss that hangs in the air like bitter poignancy. Tolstoy said all happy families are the same. Yes, but he should have added, there are hardly any happy families.

To live in a family group with walls around it is unnatural for a species that evolved in tribes and villages. What would work itself out in the give-and-take of a community gets grotesque when allowed to fester in the hothouse of a single-family home. A mild-mannered teacher and a strong-willed woman turn into a paralyzed captive and a harridan. Their daughters see themselves as captives of these parents, who hysterically project their own failure upon the children.

The worship the girls receive from the neighborhood boys confuses them: If they are perfect, why are they seen as such flawed and dangerous creatures? And then the reality of sex, too young, peels back the innocent idealism and reveals its secret engine, which is animal and brutal, lustful and contemptuous.

In a way, the Lisbon girls and the neighborhood boys never existed, except in their own adolescent imaginations. They were imaginary creatures, waiting for the dream to end through death or adulthood. "Cecilia was the first to go," the narrator tells us right at the beginning. We see her talking to a psychiatrist after she tries to slash her wrists. "You're not even old enough to know how hard life gets," he tells her. "Obviously, doctor," she says, "you've never been a 13-year-old girl." No, but his profession and every adult life is to some degree a search for the happiness she does not even know she has.

~~

I know that someone has probably mention "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" already but I see where it'll be showing on TCM and remembered Matthew Broderick's wonderful performance. Ferris was so brilliant, a risk-taker, believed in having a good time, but his character left you wondering if he'd be successful in life or wind up in a federal prison.

eoe

I predict that ferris became very, very RICH .... What a talker! He could persuade anyone to buy or try anything!

Just saw Raising Victor Vargas and really loved this movie. No professional actors, but wonderful performances. Captured the humor, pain and joy of first love.

nextone

Could you tell us a little more about it? A recent film?
Sounds interesting. Do you know if it's available in video?
Might just check it out myself.

Here's the info about Raising Victor Vargas on IMDb:

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0316188

It was at several film festivals in the past year, and opened in the US 3 or 4 weeks ago. It has not yet made it to Houston.

Dang, didn't read every post, but saw quite a few of my faves...Ferris, Welcome to the Dollhouse, Breakfast Club, Dazed and Confused, and the Virgin Suicides...I had read the book before the movie came out, and it was completely faithful to it...a rare commodity in film adaptations. I liked Heathers as well. I would also want to add some more recent flicks, Almost Famous, which was amazing, and Bend it Like Beckham, a truly joyous movie indeed. Also, in an earlier era: Rebel Without a Cause, Giant...always dug James Dean.

Oh, I almost forgot a couple of my all-time faves, although a bit scary: A Clockwork Orange (classic), and Rivers Edge, with a fledgling Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye, and Crispin Glover in a hilarious/scary OTT role as leader of this group of teens who try to cover up a murder. Did I mention Dennis Hopper is in it too? Great flick...and thought provoking.

As macsm11 indicated, it's a new film. Focus is on Victor, his family, Judy (the girl he wants ), her brother and Judy's friend. The setting is NYC's Lower East Side.

The interactions between family members are spot on. Their feelings for each other come through. I really cared about these people in this moving and funny and honest and honorable film.

Thanks for that, macsm11 & nextone. I'll look out for it here. Looks like one I'd like.

cavfancier

You've mentioned a few that I've really liked, A few "must sees", but I can't bring myself to watch Clockwork Orange a 2nd time ... Too misery making & frightening!

Same here msolga. A Clockwork Orange freaked me out too. And not in a good way. I saw it in college a thousand years ago and must have left before it was over. No recollection of how it ended.

To each his own, eh?

In defense of A Clockwork Orange, the movie had a much more negative ending on it than the original novel, as far as I remember. However, a truly disturbing film indeed.

cavfancier

Like eoe, I saw it a long, long time ago ... but the trauma lingers!
It certainly was an impressive film, but completely shocking. I know that was the intention & it worked! The acting was great & I loved the music .... But, but ... no can't watch it again. Once was enough!