REVIEW: Summering [2022]

This is our body. It used to be that going to see the dead body was the adventure. Now we have a need to figure out why the body is dead. There’s probably something in this contrast that speaks to the evolutionary shift in technology, adolescent maturity, and genre envelope-pushing that occurred between Stand By Me in 1986 and Summering in 2022, but the latter isn’t necessarily interested in the differences as much as it is in pretending differences don’t exist. The world has changed while our children’s comprehension of…

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REVIEW: The Kings of Summer [2013]

“That’s something my great grandfather would say. He’s a racist.” We’ve all had that urge to runaway when our parents prove too overbearing or too indifferent, but those thoughts disappear quickly once the allure of freedom evolves into a nightmare of self-sufficiency. So we stay at home; deal with the push and pull of personality responsibility, adolescent rambunctiousness, and the hope for a modicum of space/privacy; and either find ourselves accepting our fate or counting the days until escape is agreed upon mutually with the means to support it. Screenwriter…

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