You Should Watch This: Coming Of Age Films

Announcing our new series, You Should Watch This where we recommend a trio of lessor known films based on a similar theme. This week, we're coming of age.

I’ve been a film nerd since I can remember first watching movies. By late elementary school I had mastered the art of dubbing VHS copies of everything I could get my hands on. I used source materials like HBO, UHF TV channels, other home video formats like laser disc, video disc and Betamax. Once middle school hit, I had amassed a fairly sizable library of odds and ends that ran the gamut from Raiders of The Lost Ark to a stage adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy Of The People, which we had taped off of PBS for my Mom.

In my five plus decades on this planet I have seen a lot of films. Growing up in a household where cinema was sacred, I have essentially been attending a life-long film school since before I could drive. It is easy for me to forget that many, if not most folks out there have not had the chance to see as much cinema as I have. And, even if they have logged as many hours in front of the silver screen, perhaps they have not drifted as far afield into international and u…