teenage
Lord of the Flies, Matthew Bourne's New Adventures, Sadler's WellsFriday, 10 October 2014![]() New Adventures, the name of Matthew Bourne's company, has a ruddy-cheeked, Boys’ Own ring to it that has – until now – been rather belied by his oeuvre, which includes a dance version of Edward Scissorhands, as well as dark retellings of all the... Read more... |
If I StayMonday, 25 August 2014![]() Beethoven went deaf at 26, we're helpfully informed near the start of If I Stay in a bit of information that pales next to the tin ear on display in this late-summer romantic tragedy, which aims to position Chloë Grace Moretz as the next Shailene... Read more... |
Götterdämmerung, Opera NorthSunday, 15 June 2014![]() These annual treks to Leeds Town Hall on muggy June evenings have become a bit of a tradition. Going to see Opera North’s Ring feels increasingly like attending a fan convention, though instead of wearing tight lycra and assorted helmets, attendees... Read more... |
The DirtiesTuesday, 03 June 2014![]() Two movie-obsessed high-school students Owen and Matt (Owen Williams and Matt Johnson, who also writes and directs) are making a short movie about bullying for their film class. After they show it, to widespread derision from their classmates, the... Read more... |
Jockey School, Channel 4Friday, 04 April 2014![]() Biança Barker's film was broadcast to coincide with the run-up to the Grand National this weekend, although one got no sense of where its subjects fitted into the horse racing world in general. In fact, one got no sense of where they fitted into... Read more... |
GBFFriday, 21 March 2014![]() Anyone who secretly liked High School Musical or is a fan of Mean Girls or Glee will find something to like in Darren Stein's candy-coloured high-school satire, which detonates some teenage culture bombs (albeit some of them years behind the curve)... Read more... |
My Mad Fat Diary, Series 2, E4Tuesday, 18 February 2014![]() By the end of its first series, My Mad Fat Diary had departed far enough from memoirist Rae Earl’s frank, funny source material that the adaptation taking on a life of its own shouldn’t have been a cause for concern. Still, there’s always that... Read more... |
Raised by Wolves, Channel 4Tuesday, 24 December 2013![]() Among all the frank, hilarious bits that peppered Caitlin Moran’s bestselling book How To Be a Woman, it was the early chapters – the ones that dealt with the author’s unconventional upbringing in the suburbs of Wolverhampton – that seemed most ripe... Read more... |
Jeune et JolieThursday, 28 November 2013![]() You wait ages for a French film about a teenage girl's sexual awakening and then two come along at once. Actually who am I kidding? As any filmic Francophile will tell you it's not exactly a rarity. Still, red-hot on the heels of the astonishing... Read more... |
The To Do ListMonday, 30 September 2013![]() In this refreshingly rowdy, distinctly feminist film from debut writer-director Maggie Carey an inexperienced, tirelessly sensible teenage girl prepares herself for college life by taking charge of her own sexual awakening. She does so in a way that... Read more... |
The Way Way BackWednesday, 28 August 2013![]() Coming-of-age films have frequently featured inebriated antics and ill-advised hook-ups, but it's usually the teenagers behaving badly. The Way Way Back sees a family decamp to an East Coast beach house for a summer vacation described witheringly by... Read more... |
Ubu Roi, Cheek by Jowl, Barbican Silk Street TheatreSaturday, 13 April 2013![]() Or, The Lord and Lady Macbeth of the Seizième, as imagined by a bourgeois teenager who fancies himself to be Bougrelas, heir to the Polish throne. That's one way of looking at the concept so dazzlingly carried through by Declan Donnellan and Nick... Read more... |
