"To prove that I mean it when I say “four-way tie,” I’ll start with the last one, Kicking and Screaming, a movie I can recite from start to finish. You know, in case you’re ever in the mood for an hour-long party trick. Actually, I wrote an essay about my love for it for the New York Observer when the Criterion Collection released the DVD and raced to fill out the crossword puzzle like a regular dork. Two words: Broken glass. Meanwhile, Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan is a seminal movie for me and a whole bunch of other people of my generation. Speaking of party tricks, evoking empathy for Upper East Side WASPs is a good one. Same with Barcelona. The reason these four are grouped together is because of their supreme ability to capture the cadence of youth and young adulthood. They display floundering without being floundering. This is the hardest thing to achieve, in any format, and Linklater makes it look easy."

"To prove that I mean it when I say “four-way tie,” I’ll start with the last one, Kicking and Screaming, a movie I can recite from start to finish. You know, in case you’re ever in the mood for an hour-long party trick. Actually, I wrote an essay about my love for it for the New York Observer when the Criterion Collection released the DVD and raced to fill out the crossword puzzle like a regular dork. Two words: Broken glass. Meanwhile, Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan is a seminal movie for me and a whole bunch of other people of my generation. Speaking of party tricks, evoking empathy for Upper East Side WASPs is a good one. Same with Barcelona. The reason these four are grouped together is because of their supreme ability to capture the cadence of youth and young adulthood. They display floundering without being floundering. This is the hardest thing to achieve, in any format, and Linklater makes it look easy."