Eighth Grade presents the inner world of 13-year-old Kayla as she attempts to navigate the confusing world of boys, friends, parents, social media and sex. A lot of this film is funny, some of it is uncomfortable, some scenes are incredibly touching and there are many moments that may induce an anxiety attack. It covers very familiar teen-film material, and yet the way it presents the awkward phase of being caught between childhood and adulthood is incredibly refreshing and something to celebrate.
In Minding the Gap filmmaker Bing Liu turns the camera on himself and two childhood friends who were brought together through a mutual love of skateboarding, but are now confronting the challenges of adulthood. The resulting documentary is an intimate and sometimes alarming portrait of the way three young men are examining their identities, confronting past trauma, questioning their own behaviour and making decisions to gravitate towards or move away from destructive aspects of masculinity.
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World delivers an exciting, spectacular and emotionally satisfying finale to the impressive DreamWorks Animation trilogy about the village of Vikings who have learned to co-exists with dragons. It concludes the coming-of-age narrative for both protagonist Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) and the community he now leads where the path to adulthood is not just defined by the acceptance of responsibility, but also by the development of empathy.
King Arthur mythology meets contemporary England in The Kid Who Would Be King when 12-year-old Alex and his fellow teenage knights are sent on a quest to prevent the return of Morgana. The talent that writer/director Joe Cornish displayed in Attack the Block for delivering exciting action scenes with plenty of humour and strong characterisation is once more evident in this family film, which also delivers a timely message of the power of unity and recognising that the future belongs to the young.
Glass is possibly M Night Shyamalan’s trickiest sleight of hand yet. By bringing together characters and plot threads from his 2000 film Unbreakable and his 2016 film Split, some viewers might expect a spectacle driven The Avengers-style team-up epic. Instead, Glass is a densely plotted, highly self-aware and low budget film about characters who are made to doubt their sanity and superhuman abilities. Both parody and pastiche, it’s an anti-comic book film that’s equally fascinated and cynical about superhero stories.
Free Solo documents American rock climber Alex Honnold’s preparation and execution of his record breaking free solo (no safety gear or harnesses) climb of the 900metre El Capitan Wall in Yosemite National Park. Honnold is a curious subject as he’s not traditionally charismatic, and a strength of the film is how it attempts to understand his motivation and method, as well as examining the logistics and ethics of filming him. The finale – the climb itself – is exhilarating, overwhelming and completely cinematic.
CINEMA AUTOPSY 