I am already falling behind.
I am 100 days into college and I have more freedom than I ever have. They say that eighteen is the pinnacle of youth, but I have yet to feel the cosmic shift and teenage bliss I was promised. I feel old but not grown. I have no idea who I am or who I’m supposed to be and I am running out of time. I want the arms of childhood to swallow me and for time to stop chasing. I want my time back.
It’s difficult to come to terms with the fact that I am no longer just good for my age, that I am no longer the impressive novelty that exceeds standards and defies expectations. I am no longer the best at anything. It’s not like I’ve stopped trying either — I am trying harder than ever, actually. Nothing is effortless anymore. There is so much to do. So many assignments to make up and readings to skim and papers to write and finals to cram and rooms to cry in. I am already running out of time and my time has just begun.
If you are being hit with the first-year scaries like I am, then what better way to cope than to procrastinate more and watch some great movies! It can feel difficult to articulate exactly what you are feeling in this transitional period of your life, and that’s when art can be a necessary form of solace. Art can make you feel seen in ways you can’t express; it can tap into that one part of you that has never quite been able to be put into words. Here are some movie recommendations for those feeling scared for the future and lost in their lives:
“Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013) dir. The Coen Brothers
“I’m tired. I thought I just needed a night’s sleep but it’s more than that.”
“You don’t want to go anywhere, and that’s why the same sh*t’s going to keep happening to you, because you want it to”
Inside Llewyn Davis (aka my favorite movie of all time) poses the question: what is the difference between living and simply being alive? The film is about a folk singer struggling to make a name for himself in the music world traveling from Greenwich Village to Chicago for his big break. There is a profound sadness permeating every frame — Oscar Issac communicates a myriad of emotions through his eyes. He makes you feel Llewyn’s deep loneliness as if it’s your own. There is a high cost to living an unfulfilled life and dwelling on what could have been. The pain of wasted potential can sometimes be too much to bear. I love how the film explores the cycle of self-sabotage and how we unwillingly act on the worst parts of ourselves despite desperately trying to escape our own habits; we are confronted with the uncomfortable truth that we are the thieves of our own happiness. The cinematography is gorgeous and nostalgic, the direction is impeccable, and the music is genuinely lovely. All in all, this movie is perfect for me, and Carey Mulligan might be the most beautiful person to ever exist.
“Frances Ha” (2012) dir. Noah Baumbach
“So, what do you do?”
“It’s kinda hard to explain”
“Because what you do is complicated?”
“Because I don’t really do it”
This is the perfect comfort movie. The perfect coming-of-age movie. The perfect rewatch movie. This is just a perfect movie. It is for the annoying and insufferable and hopelessly romantic people who constantly overthink their future and feel as if their life is falling apart after every minor inconvenience. Some lines of dialogue feel like a personal attack (“I’m so embarrassed, I’m not a real person yet.”), and some scenes feel like Noah Baumbach has somehow infiltrated my mind and cloned me on screen. “Frances Ha” is about Frances, a dancer who moves to New York City and has absolutely no idea what she wants to do with her life. This is the quintessential lost-in-your-twenties movie and simultaneously captures the youthful bliss and crippling fear for the future — Frances is woefully optimistic, yet self-aware that her life isn’t what she wants it to be. However, she always has faith that everything will turn out alright in the end. This movie is full of hope. Sometimes we don’t have to have everything figured out, and that is okay! We are all going through life and experiencing this feeling of lost-ness and confusion together. This is one of my favourite films to rewatch when I’m pretending I’m a character in a TV show and a new season of my life is about to begin — it always leaves me feeling so whimsical and excited for whatever’s to come.
“Sh*thouse” (2020) dir. Cooper Raiff
“You don’t get to just turn back into a teenager when you need a hug from your mom to get through the day.
“There’s nothing wrong with needing hugs to get you through the day”
Embarrassingly relatable. Aggressively embarrassing. The friend group problems, the yearning for a campus crush you’ve never had a conversation with, the crying the second you get off the phone with your mom, the internal yelling at yourself because you can’t muster a single normal social interaction. The film follows Alex, a lonely college first year, who attends a fraternity party and meets someone special. A lot of college films can feel really cheesy or pretentious and just unable to capture the bleak, uncomfortable reality of the college experience. The feeling of being lonely in a crowded place, the longing for real friendships, the ranting to your stuffed animals, the apologizing far too much for being annoying until your apology itself becomes the annoying part. There is something very endearing about this movie, and you can tell that it was created with a genuine heart and from real lived experiences. It’s a simple story that still has so much to say, all while giving you a glimmer of hope and making you laugh until your ribs hurt.
“Adventureland” (2009) dir. Greg Mottola
“What are you majoring in?
“Russian literature and Slavic languages”
“Oh wow, that’s pretty interesting. What career track is that?”
“Cabby, hot dog vendor, marijuana delivery guy. The world is my oyster.”
A lot of the inspiration for “Sh*thouse” can be seen in “Adventureland.” There is a great ease to this film — the youthful naivete and waywardness we experience as young adults is effortlessly integrated into the tone and mood Motolla conveys. The film follows a college graduate who is excited to finally go on a trip to Europe, but instead needs to take a job at his local amusement park due to money problems. Great soundtrack (perfect use of “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure), great performances, and it is just awkward, horny, and bitter enough about working a run-down job and screwing up friendships. It’s sensitive, authentic, and visceral. Though this film was marketed as a comedy upon release, there is a deep sense of melancholy that palpates within every frame. Everyone kinda sucks and hates each other. Everyone is stuck in the void of a suburban hellscape and is all screaming to get out. Everyone is numbing the pain of youthful angst and wondering when their life will truly begin. Nevertheless, this film was made by the director of “Superbad,” so the bleakness is peppered with bits of comedy that make it so delightful. It’s just like real life. The horrible parts always come with something or someone that reminds you that life is worth living.
“The Worst Person in the World” (2021) dir. Joachim Trier
“I always worried something would go wrong, but the things that went wrong were never what I worried about.”
Julie is frustrated with her life. She is never happy in the situations where she should be and she often mistakes her unhappiness for a deeper, unfixable character flaw. She is scared that she will feel like this forever. This film follows Julie, a twenty-something-year-old woman in Oslo, as she navigates her messy love life, struggles to find her career path, and somehow, against all of this, tries to figure out who she really is. Julie is the perfect unreliable narrator and unlikable protagonist, except that most of her unlikability stems from how frustratingly relatable her decisions are. It’s like looking at a mirror into your own most detested traits. Julie’s life could even be seen as a cautionary tale about the detriments of waiting for our lives to happen to us instead of cherishing the moment we are currently living in, or about how some life lessons can only be learned the hard way through experience. Joachim Trier has this incredible talent for writing painfully relatable and raw dialogue — there are some scenes that feel like a manifestation of emotional catharsis and completely transcend the language barrier. It’s a deeply personal look at being completely and utterly lost in the most beautiful (and necessary) way possible. Being 30 sounds awful, so thank god we’re all still far from that!
“Naked” (1993) dir. Mike Leigh
“It’s not easy, is it? Do you find that? Well, just goes to show ya that no matter how many books you read, there’s some things in this world that you never, ever, ever, ever, ever f*ckin’ understand.”
This is a hard one to recommend. Recommending this movie is like recommending someone to watch a compilation of their most embarrassing moments while sitting in a grey cinder block room while holding their breath for over two hours. It’s a fun time! But while unpleasant on the surface, this is one of the most thought-provoking and starkly realistic films I’ve ever seen. I am fascinated by Leigh’s filmmaking process, where the plot and characters are developed collaboratively through improvisation with the actors before a script is finalized. This naturalistic approach gives the film a scathing rawness and makes the audience feel like they are a fly on the wall witnessing the bleak reality of these characters’ lives. David Thewlis delivers one of my favorite performances of all time as Johnny, able to balance brutal cynicism and anger while conveying such pure melancholy through his eyes. His rapid-fire monologues and guttural screams of anger make us feel sorry for him even though he is an objectively despicable person. The film also captures the mentality of the working class in post-Thatcher England, where many people were wrestling with economic despair and felt like there was no way out. This film is uncomfortable and provocative and pushes us to confront the worst parts of ourselves through these characters, while also critiquing how society can push them to the brink of insanity.
“Kicking and Screaming” (1995) dir. Noah Baumbach
“I’m too nostalgic, I’ll admit it.”
“We graduated four months ago. What can you possibly be nostalgic for?”
“I’m nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I’ve begun reminiscing about events before they even occur. I’m reminiscing this right now.”
Noah Baumbach might be the best writer of our generation — or at least, my favorite writer of this generation. His debut feature captures the aspirations of young adults who simultaneously have a god complex as well as a crippling insecurity that they will never reach their unattainable expectations. This film follows four college graduates who refuse to make a decision on their future. Nobody wants to make any big choices that would radically alter their life, yet none of them want to end up stagnant where they are. Baumbach has a way of writing that somehow makes you empathize with some completely insufferable characters. You hate all of them, yet relate to all of them, and then hate yourself for relating to them. This is a film where nothing happens, yet so much happens. It wanders and lingers and doesn’t really know where to go, much like its characters. It can be argued that this film is aimless pacing that never quite finds what point it’s trying to make, but I think that itself is the point. It’s a manifestation of not knowing what in the world you want to do with your life. It begs the question, why do I want to remain complacent when I hate the life I’m living? Why does it feel impossible to move on even if I’m unhappy? This is a movie about lost, pretentious twenty-year-old men made by a lost, pretentious twenty-year-old man. The rawness is almost painful.
Other recommendations:
Shows:
- “Girls”(2012-2016) created by Lena Dunham
- “Bojack Horseman” (2014-2020) created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
- “Overcompensating” (2025) created by Benito Skinner
- “We Are Who We Are” (2020) created by Luca Guadagnino
- “Normal People” (2020) created by Sally Rooney
- “The Lying Life of Adults”(2023) created by Elena Ferrante
Movies
- “Yiyi” (2000) dir. Edward Yang
- “The Holdovers” (2023) dir. Alexander Payne
- “Dead Poets Society” (1989) dir. Peter Weir
- “Tomboy”(2011) dir. Celine Sciamma
- “All About Lily Chou-Chou” (2001) dir. Shunji Iwai
- “Reality Bites” (1994) dir. Ben Stiller
- “The Sweet East” (2023) dir. Sean Price Williams
- “Columbus” (2017) dir. Kogonada
- “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009) dir. Wes Anderson
- “The Green Ray” (1986) dir. Éric Rohmer
- “Vagabond” (1985) dir. Agnes Varda
- “Happiness” (1998) dir. Todd Solondz
- “Sorry, Baby” (2025) dir. Eva Victor
Art will always be there for you when you need it most, so go seek out some great films and realize that everything you’re feeling right now has already been experienced by someone else. Your emotions are valid and human. You are not alone.
