Kayla: gucci! 👌
me (through tears): gucci 👌

three (non-spoilery) thoughts from a second viewing:

1) the final scene of this movie is maybe my favorite scene of any movie released this year

2) there’s a scene where kayla is walking around and talking nervously on the phone, shot in a mid-close up with the camera following her as she walks back and forth, passing a big window. when she passes the window, the light shining through is like a sudden, disorienting flash, and when combined with the constant movement and claustrophobic framing, the shot makes you feel a little dizzy and uneasy, the same way she’s feeling. it’s an outstanding, understated shot and a super impressive directorial move from a first-time filmmaker

3) kayla has a cheat code guide for a pokemon game in the bookmarks of her web browser. now that’s a fuckin extremely real detail of 8th grade

the fact that someone shouts "lebron james" more than once in this shows how true to real life it is

my stomach DROPPED when i heard “truth or dare?”

but when will a boy whisk me away to a chicken nugget date complete with multiple sauces, archery skills, and lightsaber utensils?

Once in a while there’s a movie that is so brazen and real and self-reflexive about the way it portrays a topic that, if it’s successful enough, any movie made thereafter about the same topic has a responsibility to meet it’s baseline. Like, The Dark Knight forced superhero movies into a more serious corner, Cabin In The Woods forced horror movies to examine their own cliches and work around them. I think Eighth Grade is that movie for teenagers.

It is so absolutely perfect in the way it gives a voice to its main character and the people in her life that I cannot imagine watching something as melodramatic or saccharine as (name any Netflix teen movie) and not demanding better of it. Eighth Grade is the new baseline.

Rather nervously sat down to watch this with our two teen daughters. I thought it might be traumatizing, too close to home, especially for our oldest, who has severe social anxiety and depression. But we stayed up til 2 AM afterwards talking. There were tears and hugs. They told us stuff they feel now and stuff they’d felt in middle school that they couldn’t say before. They saw themselves onscreen and saw someone knew and someone cared. 

So grateful to  Bo Burnham and the medium of film — my girls felt seen.

Girl in the back of the theatre yelled “THE DAD NEVER HAS A SHIRT ON BUT I’M OKAY WITH IT”

*three photobooth beeps*

Hey guys! Karsten here, back with another video. Can confirm this movie is great.

Gucci!

This movie made me feel a new emotion that can only be described as “happy cringe.”  I was simultaneously smiling like an idiot and cringing internally throughout the entire chicken nugget scene at the end.