The rites-of-passage films that capture the essence of summer.

If there is one genre of film that could be said to have a symbiotic relationship with summer, it’s not the blockbuster; it’s the coming-of-age movie. The coming-of-age trope is straightforward – you go into summer as a boy, you come out as a man. What happens over one gilded season represents the changes that take place over a lifetime. You’ll get bored, fall out with your mates, get closer to your mates, have an adventure and grow up. You’ll develop a greater understanding of yourself, the world around you and your place in it.

So here we are, at the tail end of our actual if not metaphorical summer, reaping just what we have sown, taking stock. And what better way than with the guidance of the best coming-of-age movies of the ages? Because a first or even repeat viewing of the following films can set you on a path towards self-reflection and personal growth. Which is more than you can say for Independence Day: Resurgence.

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The moral here is pretty obvious – a Jaguar E-Type makes for a kick-ass hearse. But if you were after something a little more erudite, it’s probably that you should go at life with the fervour of a 79-year-old woman. Harold is a young man fixated with death; Maude is at the opposite end of the spectrum on all three counts. She teaches him how to live a little (a lot, in fact). It is however fair to say that there is nothing she can tell him about dressing – Harold knows how to rock a shearling coat.  

Lesson learned: carpe that diem, and carpe it well.

When aspiring kickboxer Lloyd Dobler (Mr John Cusack) first calls Diane Court (Ms Ione Skye) to ask her out on a date, he dials every digit but one. He then checks the mirror, rearranges his hair, and presses the final button. So while his aspirations for life might amount to no more than not wanting to “buy anything, sell anything, or process anything as a career”, he still takes pride in his appearance. But the iconic image to take home from Mr Cameron Crowe’s directorial debut is of Lloyd in that trench, the high-tops and the boombox held overhead in an attempt to win back Diane. And while we can’t guarantee the work of Mr Peter Gabriel will score a direct hit if you’re aiming for somebody’s heart – Mr Phil Collins, maybe – an analogue stereo is more direct than a shared link to a Spotify playlist.  

Lesson learned: as Lloyd’s female friend Corey Flood (Ms Lili Taylor) points out: “The world is full of guys. Be a man. Don’t be a guy.”

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If you’re wondering why Stand By Me is missing from this list, it is because Boyz N The Hood covers much of the same ground (down to the rail tracks and dead body), but does it better – and with an actual moral purpose. The sad fact is that many of the injustices faced by South Central LA’s black community in this film are still present in the real world 25 years on, which is why #blacklivesmatter matters. In Furious Styles (Mr Laurence Fishburne), it presents a father figure who we can all look up to – and his take on gentrification today sounds prophetic. His advice to his son Tre (Mr Cuba Gooding Jr): violence is never the answer. But Furious knows that the only person who can make those big, life-changing decisions – in this case, whether to take that ride with his brother’s gang seeking vengeance or not – is Tre himself.  

Lesson learned: know when to get out of the car (as Tre ultimately does).

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Mr Richard Linklater’s reaction to the Mr John Hughes films of the 1980s, here the overcharged dramatics of American high school are swapped for a more nuanced, realistic, possibly even anthropological approach. Played out over the last day of term in the suburbs of Austin, Texas, of 1976, the point here is that there isn’t a point. Sometimes all that life-or-death decision is is whether you should go see Aerosmith or not. As with Mr Linklater’s sublime Boyhood, you’re kept waiting for something awful to happen that never does, almost as a statement on what we have been trained to expect from a film. And all the while, the haze of pot smoke is so thick, the kids can’t see how great their lives really are: “The Seventies, my God, they obviously suck.” Not from where we’re sitting.

Lesson learned: keep L-I-V-I-N. Until hanging out with school kids gets a bit creepy, that is.

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There have been better coming-of-age films released over the past decade (The Way, Way Back, The Spectacular Now and especially the aforementioned Boyhood), but there have been few antagonists sharper than François Dillinger, the rebellious Gallic alter ego of Mr Michael Cera’s dorky suburban Francophile Nick Twisp. Created, inevitably, to impress a girl, Dillinger appears in a puff of Gauloises smoke, wearing a pale blue Oxford shirt with rolled-up sleeves, a pair of aviators, a wispy moustache and a laissez-faire attitude with regards to rules. Usually, such a figure should introduce just enough mischief to shake the central character out of a funk; as a result of Dillinger’s penchant for being an enfant terrible, the Mr Albert Camus-reading and Mr Jean-Luc Godard-watching Twisp ends up in juvenile detention. C’est la vie.

Lesson learned: be more French.

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Boyz N The Hood is set to be rereleased this October as part of the BFI’s Black Star season

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