Hacker Cinema
Eighth Grade
2018 · Film · 94 min
Directed by Bo Burnham
Thirteen-year-old Kayla endures the tidal wave of contemporary suburban adolescence as she makes her way through the last week of middle school — the end of her thus far disastrous eighth grade year — before she begins high school.
12 positive3 neutralfrom 15 commenters
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16 comments on Hacker News
> I might be too introverted for that sort of thing in the first place, but that sounds like hell, having to pretend in front of a bunch of strangers just to get clicks, all for clout.
There's an excellent movie called Eighth Grade. The main girl in it, as a pastime, records videos for YouTube or similar in which she delivers nostrums to her audience about confidence and being authentically who you are and that sort of thing. Meanwhile, in her real school life, she's plagued by self-doubt and pressured by peers into being something different, something "better" than who she is.
That movie hit so hard, looking back on my xennial eighth grade experience, and it still injected ancillary commentary on modern social media trends.
I dunno, 2015, I'm a little weak on this year: It Follows, Creed, Ex Machina, Max Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful 8. I'd watch those again with someone any time, and recommend all of them often. Several on my to-watch list most of which I expect to be good, like Queen of the Desert, While We're Young, Slow West, and The Overnight, just haven't made it to them yet. Not an exhaustive list, just gleaned from some titles I have at hand.
2016: Green Room, The Nice Guys, Hail Caesar!, The Neon Demon, Swiss Army Man, Hunt for the Wilder People, The VVitch, Train to Busan, Shin Godzilla, Moana (hey, I like this one), Arrival. Moonlight's on my to-watch and is supposed to be really good.
2017 (I've done OK on catching up with these!): The Lost City of Z, Dunkirk, Low Life, Good Time, Logan Lucky (absolutely slept on, kills it as a feel-good lightweight small-stakes heist movie), Blade Runner 2049, The Death of Stalin (I liked this less than a lot of folks, but given how widely-loved it was, I'm probably the idiot here), One Cut of the Dead, You Were Never Really Here. The Planet of the Apes movie from that year, plus Phantom Thread, and The Little Hours are to-watch for me and come highly recommended.
2018: Annihilation, Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Sorry to Bother You, High Life, Eighth Grade, the Suspiria remake. To-watch that I expect to be good include Champion (Korean arm wrestling movie—there's another movie by the same name that year), First Reformed, BlacKkKLansman, The Favourite, The Wolf House, Climax, and some others.
2019: HUGE year for the particular (small) set I'm seeing on my list, including a ton to-watch but a bunch I've seen. Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Knives Out, Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, Ready or Not, Parasite, Midsommar, The Art of Self Defense, maybe Marriage Story (but if you've seen one Baumbach movie, you've kinda seen them all, and I'm not sure I'd put it above The Squid and the Whale). Midway's a well-above-average war movie and pairs great with Tora, Tora, Tora! as a crazy-long double feature in a really fun way. To-watch list is nuts and I really need to dedicate a month or so to filling out my watched-list for this year: First Cow, The Irishman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bacurau, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Farewell, The Souvenir, Blow the Man Down, The Vast of Night, Her Smell, Funan.
It basically just keeps going like that, year after year, and I've barely even tried to dredge up good movies for most of those years, the bulk of it's just stuff that's risen to my attention one way or another, and I'm terrible at keeping up with foreign film especially. I also left off some that a lot of folks would probably include, like at least one Mission Impossible (aside from MI2, I think these are all pretty good action movies, though quality varies a bit) and Avengers: Endgame which, opinion on the rest of Marvel aside (I think it's mostly kinda lazy crap? But was basically entertained for most of them regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much) was a hell of an event. Also Black Panther, which everyone loved but I was pretty meh on (I hate the entire end fight, and it's looooong)
I think the problem with the US is slow eroding of the rights of youth. We're not treating them as young adults who are fully capable of making their own decisions one day. Instead we're treating them as incapable infants until they leave the nest.
The movie industry is a good example of this. If you're a child in certain places in the US, you'll grow up with violence around you (in real life). There was a movie "The Eighth Grade" that got an "R" rating not because of the violence, but because of the language. PG-13 was in 2018 limited to one "fuck" per film.
https://www.themarysue.com/eighth-grade-is-rated-r/
I don’t usually rewatch movies on my own, so this is mostly a list of movies I thought were special enough to show other people.
Eighth grade
Mother!
The Thing
Rosemary’s Baby
Hereditary
Dead Ringers
Happiness
Synecdoche, New York
The Triplets of Bellville
With those preferences stated (I almost listed Lady Bird!) I'd toss on:
- Nomadland — Lonely older woman clinging to the bottom rung of the economic ladder is pushed into van-living and finds community. Basically positive-but-bittersweet vibes by the end, and with a similar strong reliance on setting and mood to something like a Wes Anderson work (though without the precise placement of every single element in frame), but definitely not "cute" like his are, and not about comfortable rich people. Includes many real people living in vans, blurring the lines between fiction and reality (and deftly almost-entirely avoiding the usual problems that come with including non-actors in a film). Lots of great outdoor shooting and lighting work.
- Red Rocket — Struggling, middle-aged male porn star moves back to his small, blue-collar hometown in Texas. We learn about his still-evolving relationships with the people he left behind when he moved away to LA, and see him make some... choices. Probably the most into archetype and symbolism of anything I've listed except maybe The Green Knight. By the end, is very much about its protagonist as a kind of daemon, if you will, of a part of the American experience and spirit (and also a representation of one or more sorts of real person with whom one may be familiar from one's own experience). Great attention to detail for a certain kind of ordinary setting, in the way that Anderson or maybe Miyazaki pay attention to that kind of everyday detail, but employed to obtain perfectly-trashy environs that aren't at all pretty but are also entirely true-to-life, not caricature. If you've spent time in such places, the clutter, the way trash has accumulated, the way in which the miniblinds are broken just so, and the way the people exist in that space, will feel very familiar.
- Eighth Grade — Bo Burnham's only film (I think?). Akin to something like Gerwig's Lady Bird, I'd say, but less heightened and more "real".
See the movie Eighth Grade for an anxiety inducing exploration of this theme. My personal take is that not having community is devastating, and the issue with social media is that it makes you think you have community in your brain, but your body/heart knows that you are actually just alone in your room. Even worse, it makes you crave a kind of unattainable community, so even people with loving family and friends might feel alone because they are longing for something nonexistent.
To your pet cat, the difference between you scrolling on your phone and you staring at the wall is nothing.
Have you watched the movie "Eighth Grade"[1]? To me it seemed like a pretty insightful look into adolescence in the presence of social media and smart phones. However, not being a teenage girl myself nor having any kids I'm not sure how true to life it is.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7014006/
I've long pondered building exactly this, an anti-recommendation engine. You'd go through and mark some favorite films or genres, and it'd come back with something great but totally unlike your usual picks.
Foreign flicks not your thing? Try Parasite.
You don't remember what it's like to be an awkward pre-teen? Eighth Grade will remind you.
Not a big action movie person? Maybe you need to watch Die Hard.
Kids movies are just for kids? Spirited Away!
You can't connect with female protagonists? You've got to see The Invisible Man.
Don't find food interesting? Try Tampopo.
Sick of movies which try to make a statement and fall flat? Promising Young Woman.
Most dramas feel too contrived? Marriage Story.
Musicals and plays aren't really your thing? Hamilton.
Every era is an era of horrible films. That’s Sturgeon’s law for you.
Looking at the 2010s as a whole, we got to watch some amazing films.
We got great hard sci-fi like Gravity, Arrival, Ex Machina. The coming of age genre saw entries like Ladybird, Eighth Grade and Booksmart. Animation reached new heights with films like Inside Out, Spider-Man into the Spiderverse, and Kubo and the Two Strings.
We got comedies like The Artist, Grand Budapest Hotel, Death of Stalin, and Jojo Rabbit. Dramas like Moonlight, Fences, Spotlight, Parasite, Blue Jasmine.
Even in the ever-popular comic book genre, we got Logan and Joker playing at a very different level.
But also, it was the decade of the MCU. Let’s not underestimate what Disney has achieved with that — one big overarching story spanning over twenty films, bringing much deeper character development and more serious themes than what we’d gotten used to from blockbusters.
Booksmart was the first thing I thought of too when he said, “since 2012, the only successful comedies have been animations aimed at young children.” (edit: I mean to say, you can still see movies with originality even if they're not "successful" i.e. blockbusters)
In 2018 when I originally got AMC A-list subscription, I tried going to 3 movie a week at first, so I went to a lot more movies I was unsure about but they were very original and memorable, but they weren’t super popular (at least I was the only person I personally knew who had seen it).
Sorry to Bother You ($18 million)
Blackkklansman ($93 million)
Eighth Grade ($14 million)
Crazy Rich Asians ($238 million)
Eight Grade has a 15 rating in the UK.
Here's the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) listing for it: https://bbfc.co.uk/releases/eighth-grade-2018
The ratings info says this:
> Language
> There is strong language ('fk'), as well as milder terms (for example, 'dick', 'shit', 'goddamn', 'God', 'Jesus Christ').
> Sex
> There is a scene in which a web search shows a woman explaining a sexual technique, accompanied by strong sex references.
> There is also a scene in which a young teenage girl suffers a panic attack, as well as one in which an older teenage boy tries to pressurise a younger teenage girl into having sex; however, she does not agree to this.
I don't know enough about BBFC to say which of these they place more importance upon.
(Eighth Grade is a very good film btw, and A24 are currently my favourite film production / distribution company).
If you're interested in a movie that explores similar themes of anxiety, social media, and just trying to survive middle school, I recommend Bo Burnham's film "Eighth Grade". Its average review is 90/100 on Metacritic, and is available to watch for free on Amazon Prime:
https://www.amazon.com/Eighth-Grade-Elsie-Fisher/dp/B07FJNMSFN/
Like Bill Bailey, Burnham is known for writing funny, clever songs; he's not some jackass like Jake Paul. He also wrote and directed the movie "Eighth Grade" which shows him to be a smart, thoughtful person.
I assume Sarah Silverman was lumped in with Burnham because of her current show "I Love You, America" but she's 48, 20 years older than Burnham, and a national comedy figure since the early 90s.
> she describes her own humor as "gee did i do that"
By describing her humor that way she's engaging in the very thing she describes, a recursive joke.
Thanks for the response. I will keep your comment with me for next week for a movie night.
To other comments who might be wondering: I do not live in the USA, so I do not think I can find Eighth Grade at the library. I can find many books. So I prefer asking for clarification over spending an hour or more to set something up.
Only you can tell if you enjoy a film or not. I've enjoyed most of the films I've seen from them. You're not going to get such a rigid hollywood 3 act structure with all the beats being hit according to the formula. Some people like this, others find the films aimless and meandering. Here's one example of that: https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/american-honey-cannes-review/5103945.article?blocktitle=The-Latest&contentID=598
> But while American Honey exudes ample energy, this episodic piece doesn’t muster much narrative drive over its daunting running time of two and three quarter hours. There’s probably a stronger, tighter film in here, but fair game at least to Arnold in her commitment to following the winding back roads of filmic experiment rather than the well-mapped highway of storytelling.
Here are three films, but i've watched loads and I like most of them:
A Prayer Before Dawn is a better version of a film we've seen before - westerner goes to a harsh prison in a foreign country. It's not pretentious and the film avoids being too sympathetic to the lead. Metacritic gives it 76. https://www.metacritic.com/movie/a-prayer-before-dawn
Eighth Grade is I think amazing. A really difficult watch of a young person struggling to be a young person. It captures the awkwardness and cliques. The lead actress is brilliant. Metacritic gives it 89, but that has been pulled down by one reviewer who clearly hates the film. All the other scores are over 75. https://www.metacritic.com/movie/eighth-grade
How to Talk to Girls at Parties is a film that I didn't enjoy. But I'm glad they made it and some people do like it. MC gives it 50, but there's a mix of high and low scores. https://www.metacritic.com/movie/how-to-talk-to-girls-at-parties/critic-reviews
The discussion of the movie Eighth Grade has some interesting reflections on how modern kids interact with technology. At least as relevant, though, is hearing how Burnham is trying to break through his early success and continue to find meaning in his work.