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The Next Reel • Season 11 • Series: Coming of Age • Retake

Retake: Coming of Age Debuts

“What makes up a coming-of-age story anyway?”

We’re done talking about the movies. Now let’s talk about the series.

We have come to the end of our Coming of Age Debuts series, exploring seven films from seven wonderful directors. All told, we covered Salaam Bombay!, Slums of Beverly Hills, Ratcatcher, The Virgin Suicides, Thirteen, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, and Booksmart. So what did we – Pete Wright and Andy Nelson – think about not just the films but the series as a whole? How do you define ‘coming of age’ films and where do each of these fall in that description? And how have they held up in our minds?

Coming of Age films can be heavy.

They’re often dealing with figuring out your own sexuality. There are drugs. Family drama. Finding out how society treats you and your family. We certainly have a lot to cover with this group of films.

And how about the filmmakers?

Every one of these films showed marks of a new director making great art and telling powerful stories. Why are they struggling to get more films made then? It’s a frustrating trend in the industry.

We rank all of the films on Flickchart.

We throw all of these films onto our Flickchart. Hint – our middle film block was very frustrating. We also add our two member bonus films we’ve covered these last few months – Wild at Heart and Lifeforce. We loved this series! So many great films to add to our 11th season and library of conversations. Next up – Sport! The Next Reel – when the movie ends, our conversation begins! Join the conversation with movie lovers from around the world on The Next Reel’s Discord channel!

Film Sundries

Rank the Movies on Flickchart:

Listen to Each of the Episodes:

This is a member bonus episode.

We’d love it if you became a member to support our show, but you’d love it because of everything you get. We have monthly member bonus episodes that only members can access. You also get monthly Flickchart re-ranking episodes, access to members-only Discord channels, and early releases for every episode. We have a special episode we release at the end of each series called our Retake episode – that’s what this is – during which we break down our overall thoughts of the entire season. Plus, you get to vote on the movies we discuss in our members only episodes as well as the movie lists we discuss on the Saturday Matinée podcast! What can we say? It pays to be a member. Learn more about supporting The Next Reel Film Podcast through your own membership — visit TruStory FM.

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When the movie ends, our conversation begins.
We love movies. We've been talking about them, one movie a week, since 2011. It's a lot of movies, that's true, but we're passionate about origins and performance, directors and actors, themes and genres, and so much more. So join the community and let's hear about your favorite movies, too.