40. “Dirty Dancing” (1987)
It’s hard to divorce one’s own memories from an assessment of a teen movie’s long-lasting quality, but we have tried. Which is why, sacrilegiously, films like “Pretty In Pink” and “Sixteen Candles” have not made the cut here. And yet, controversially, we’re going to stand by this Emile Ardolino 1950s-set romance as not just a foundational film for the tween females of the late ’80s, but a well-made movie that holds up a lot better than many of its John Hughes contemporaries. Making Jennifer Grey carry a watermelon, making Patrick Swayze sexy, introducing a generation to the merengue and Mickey & Sylvia‘s “Love Is Strange,” and ensuring a thousand head injuries in the attempt to replicate that final lift, this movie also scores bonus points for the early signal of the bad guy’s horribleness, being that he’s reading “The Fountainhead.”
39.“Heavenly Creatures” (1994)
Before Middle Earth claimed a decade-and-a-half of Peter Jackson‘s life, the Kiwi director turned in the first sign there was more to him than the braindead, bad-taste excesses of, er, “Braindead” and “Bad Taste.” And it was “Heavenly Creatures,” a gorgeously atmospheric, heady true-crime story that shares an enigmatic fascination with the borderline mystical bond that young girls can share with films like “Picnic At Hanging Rock” and “The Virgin Suicides.” Yet it’s earthier than both those titles, elevated in particular by utterly stellar debut performances from Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey as the central pair whose passionate friendship turns murderous when threatened. Tender, lyrical and deeply disturbing in equal parts, it’s everything that Jackson’s later misfire “The Lovely Bones” should have been, and wasn’t.
38. “Quadrophenia” (1979)
Teen rebellion is far from just an American pursuit, as “Quadrophenia” proves. The Who were always the harder, more rebellious of the British invasion bands, and Franc Roddam’s adaptation of their 1973 rock-opera record of the same name (which smartly avoids being an actual musical, while still capturing the spirit of the band and the album) was a reminder of why. The film follows Jimmy Cooper (Phil Daniels), an early ’60s Mod whose angst and disillusionment finds an outlet on his Lambretta scooter and in the clashes with Rockers, both in London and in Brighton. Coming across like a sort of British, sunny, seaside “The Wild One,” it’s perhaps more about atmosphere than tone, but it captures the thrills and uncertainty of youth beautifully, and has a lot to say about authenticity and tribalism.
37. “The Outsiders” (1983)
The first of two angry-youth movies Francis Ford Coppola made in quick succession in the early ’80s which helped rejuvenate his career after the disaster of “One From The Heart” (and was famously made after a high-school librarian wrote to him and asked that he adapt S.E. Hinton’s book), “The Outsiders” follows a group of ’60s teens in a gang called The Greasers, who are forced on the run after killing a rival. With a cast that virtually helped to define the ’80s Brat Pack era — C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Tom Cruise and Diane Lane — it’s a beautifully executed picture with a deep vein of emotion harking back to classic ’50s teen pics. If it seems that Coppola’s almost avant-garde approach sometimes works against the story, it remains a gorgeous and powerful film.
36. “The Perks Of Being A Wallflower” (2012)
After two decades of high-school movies influenced by “Clueless” and led by sarcastic wit and pop-culture gags, recent years have seen a kind of new sincerity return to the teen-movie genre, with emotion valued over jokes. “The Fault In Our Stars” is the biggest example of this phenomenon, but “The Perks Of Being A Wallflower” is one of the best. Adapted from a 1999 novel by Stephen Chbosky and with Chbosky himself directing, the film follows a young high schooler (Logan Lerman) with clinical depression attempting to adjust to a new school, new friends (Ezra Miller) and his first love (Emma Watson). It’s occasionally clumsy (some of its use of music is a bit on the nose), but it’s sensitively written, beautifully performed (especially by Lerman) and remarkably successful at capturing a view of teenage life closer to the one we actually live than most in the genre.
35. “Pump Up The Volume” (1990)
Ever since the 1950s, when the concept of the “teenager” as we know it was born, part of the popular conception as such has revolved around a kind of anti-authoritarian bent that is both a source of friction with adults and a source of folk-hero adulation in peers. There was no ’80s/’90s star who could capture that directionless “Rebel Without A Cause” teen angst as well as Christian Slater, and “Pump Up the Volume,” more so even than the brilliant “Heathers,” is his movie. The story of a teenage shock-jock who finds an outlet for his pent-up aggression and generational anger in his pirate FM radio show, Canadian director Allan Moyle‘s film treats DJ Happy Harry Hard-on’s outsidery tirades with atypical respect, so that its incorporation of darker subjects like teen suicide feels unusually well-earned.
34. “High School” (1968)
Documentary pioneer Frederick Wiseman‘s cinema vérité experiment “High School” is hardly a typical “teen movie” — it focuses on the students, teachers and administrators in Northeast High School in Philadelphia in the late ’60s, and is as much a study of institutionalism as it is teenager-dom. But at the same time, this riveting collection of black-and-white vignettes speaks directly to the teenage experience then and now. While observational, the film feels scathing in its depiction of conformity and authoritarianism: The principal castigates a boy for not taking an unfair detention by telling him point-blank that the purpose of his schooling is to make him better at following orders, which is echoed in a subtly devastating ending in which a letter from a grateful ex-student about to be shipped out to Vietnam is read aloud to the assembly.
33. “The Spectacular Now” (2013)
On one level, there’s no real reason why James Ponsoldt‘s Sundance hit should stand out in an overpopulated genre — it deals in such genre staples as the geeky girl “getting” the popular guy, and the guy being made over by her less obvious charms in turn. But the quiet, uncondescending approach Ponsoldt takes to this small story makes it feel a lot bigger, especially when it is complicated by the popular guy’s alcoholism, and especially when the leads are as committed and revelatory as Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller are here, and the support is as strong as from Brie Larson, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kyle Chandler. Since the film takes a couple of melodramatic turns and never strays too far off the expected “life lessons” path, it’s a rare feat that it feels so continually fresh and authentic.
32. “Juno” (2007)
A patchy record since from director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody, as well as its self-aware quirkiness, has made “Juno” a fashionable film to hate in the decade since its release. But that is also just the pendulum swing from its immense popularity and freshness at the time — the smartass, pop-culture-referencing, precocious dialogue and idiosyncratic characterizations became retroactively emblematic of the worst excesses of hipsterdom. But the film has heart to spare beneath all the affectations and the twee acoustic versions of Moldy Peaches tracks, and it contends with the central dilemma of an unwanted pregnancy in a laudably non-judgmental manner. And the performances are great, especially Ellen Page‘s breakout turn, Michael Cera‘s defining cute/awkward rendition, Jason Bateman gently subverting his nice-guy persona, and Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons as the parents we all wish we had.
31. “Hoop Dreams” (1994)
Something of a mould-breaker in documentary film (after rave reviews, it took almost-unprecedented nearly $8 million at the box office, though it disgracefully failed to pick up an Oscar nomination), Steve James’ masterpiece following two high-school basketball players after they’re scouted by a Westchester high school is about many things: race, family, class, education, determination, failure, unfairness and love (oh yeah, and basketball). But it’s also first and foremost about two young people, William Gates and Arthur Agee, coming of age as they have to deal with their talent, the sacrifices their families make and the pressure that comes out of that, and their dreams rising and falling. It’s simply a great American movie from top to bottom (and it’s not in the top 5 here because there are other movies that are more quintessentially teen-movie-ish).