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Best Teenage boy Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of teenage boy cinema — measured across 1,435 indexed frames from 18 films, against a 404,689-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Teenage boy films over-index on teenager, young man and boy — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Paranoid Park (2007)

    Gus Van SantDP Christopher DoyleIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    The teenager and skateboarder Alex is interviewed by Detective Richard Lu that is investigating the death of a security guard in the rail yards severed by a train who was apparently hit by a skate board. While dealing with the separation process of his parents and the sexual heat of his virgin girlfriend Jennifer, Alex writes his last experiences in Paranoid Park with his new acquaintances and how the guard was killed, trying to relieve his feeling of guilty from his conscience.

  2. 2

    Close (2022)

    Lukas DhontDP Frank van den EedenIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    The intense friendship between two thirteen-year old boys Leo and Remi suddenly gets disrupted. Struggling to understand what has happened, Léo approaches Sophie, Rémi's mother. "Close" is a film about friendship and responsibility.

  3. 3

    Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)

    Alfonso Gomez-RejonDP Chung Chung-hoonIMDb 7.7TMDB 7.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Greg is coasting through senior year of high school as anonymously as possible, avoiding social interactions like the plague while secretly making spirited, bizarre films with Earl, his only friend. But both his anonymity and friendship threaten to unravel when his mother forces him to befriend a classmate with leukemia.

  4. 4

    Flipped (2010)

    Rob ReinerDP Thomas Del RuthIMDb 7.7TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    In 1957, when second-graders Bryce Loski and Julianna "Juli" Baker first meet, Juli knows it's love, but Bryce isn't so sure and tries to avoid Juli. By the sixth grade, in 1961, Bryce tries to get rid of Juli by dating Sherry Stalls, whom Juli despises. However, Bryce's best friend, Garrett, takes an interest in Sherry and eventually tells her the truth about Bryce asking her out; she doesn't take it well. From Juli's perspective, Bryce returned her feelings, but was shy. After finding out Bryce and Sherry broke up, she thought she could have Bryce back. But then they reconsider their decisions as time goes on. In 1962, Bryce's grandfather Chet Duncan moves in with the family. Chet has different views about Juli. There's a large, old sycamore tree that Juli loves which no one else understands. One day, it's cut down by a group of landscapers so a house can be built there, despite Juli's opposition. She becomes very depressed afterwards, as the tree let her see the world in a more enlightened way. Her father gives her a painting of the tree.

  5. 5

    Wildlife (2018)

    Paul DanoDP Diego GarcíaIMDb 6.8TMDB 6.6See in full on FrameThrower →

    Set in 1950s Montana, "Wildlife" shows and tells the drama and angst that a teenage boy, Joe, goes through, witnessing both his parents split up in his presence. His father, Jerry, loses his job. And though he was offered his job back, he refuses to take it back because he "won't work for those kind of people anymore". So instead, he takes a job fighting a forest fire, which his wife, Jeanette, is dead set against, both for safety reasons, and because she's convinced that he will be unfaithful while away. But he leaves anyway. And yet, without anything happening to him, or any evidence of hanky-panky on his part, she acts the way one would expect her to act had he perished in the fire, or if she had found out that he had been unfaithful while away. This fact causes Joe to acquire uneasy feelings toward his mother. His father does return however. But the three are no happier for it, as Jeanette has taken up with a new significant other in her life. And Jerry reacts furiously against this. The parents wind up separating as she moves to take up a teaching job in Oregon, while Joe continues to live with his father. And then, she suddenly announces that she's taking the bus to visit over the weekend. Perhaps in an odd way, this movie combines both a satisfactory and unsatisfactory ending.

  6. 6

    The Perks of Being A Wallflower (2012)

    Stephen ChboskyDP Andrew DunnIMDb 7.9TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →

    Based on the novel written by Stephen Chbosky, this is about 15-year-old Charlie (Logan Lerman), an endearing and naive outsider, coping with first love (Emma Watson), the suicide of his best friend, and his own mental illness while struggling to find a group of people with whom he belongs. The introvert freshman is taken under the wings of two seniors, Sam and Patrick, who welcome him to the real world.

  7. 7

    Call Me By Your Name (2017)

    Luca GuadagninoDP Sayombhu MukdeepromIMDb 7.8TMDB 8.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, the new film by Luca Guadagnino, is a sensual and transcendent tale of first love, based on the acclaimed novel by André Aciman. It's the summer of 1983 in the north of Italy, and Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a precocious 17-year-old young man, spends his days in his family's 17th-century villa transcribing and playing classical music, reading, and flirting with his friend Marzia (Esther Garrel). Elio enjoys a close relationship with his father (Michael Stuhlbarg), an eminent professor specializing in Greco-Roman culture, and his mother Annella (Amira Casar), a translator, who favor him with the fruits of high culture in a setting that overflows with natural delights. While Elio's sophistication and intellectual gifts suggest he is already a fully-fledged adult, there is much that yet remains innocent and unformed about him, particularly about matters of the heart. One day, Oliver (Armie Hammer), a 24-year-old American college graduate student working on his doctorate, arrives as the annual summer intern tasked with helping Elio's father. Amid the sun-drenched splendor of the setting, Elio and Oliver discover the heady beauty of awakening desire over the course of a summer that will alter their lives forever.

  8. 8

    The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

    Marc WebbDP John SchwartzmanIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Peter Parker (Garfield) is an outcast high schooler who was abandoned by his parents as a boy, leaving him to be raised by his Uncle Ben (Sheen) and Aunt May (Field). Like most teenagers, Peter is trying to figure out who he is and how he got to be the person he is today. Peter is also finding his way with his first high school crush, Gwen Stacy (Stone), and together, they struggle with love, commitment, and secrets. As Peter discovers a mysterious briefcase that belonged to his father, he begins a quest to understand his parents' disappearance - leading him directly to Oscorp and the lab of Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans), his father's former partner. As Spider-Man is set on a collision course with Connors' alter-ego, The Lizard, Peter will make life-altering choices to use his powers and shape his destiny to become a hero.

  9. 9

    Youth In Revolt (2009)

    Miguel ArtetaDP Chuy ChávezIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.1See in full on FrameThrower →

    At 16, Nick Twisp is wry about his teen funk: he lives in Oakland with his sex-addled mother; his father's child support is her meal ticket. While camping in Ukiah, Nick meets Sheeni: for him, it's love at first sight. Nick has to figure out how to get his father a job in Ukiah, then how to get sent to live with his father, then how to get close to Sheeni, whose religious parents may want her sent away from temptation to a boarding school. There's also Sheeni's all-American boyfriend to contend with. Overwhelmed by the challenges, Nick's about to give up when he conjures an alter ego who whispers revolt into his ear. Nick is not altogether hapless, but can this end well?

  10. 10

    Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)

    Richard LinklaterDP Shane F. KellyIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    In Texas in the fall of 1980, college freshman Jake Bradford, a hotshot pitcher in high school, moves into an off-campus house with other members of the college baseball team. He meets several teammates, including his roommate Billy, who has been nicknamed "Beuter" because of his Deep Southern accent. He joins Finnegan, Roper, Dale, and Plummer cruising the campus by car, looking for women..

What teenage boy films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a teenage boy frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — teenager is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • teenager13.6×
  • young man8.2×
  • boy4.1×
  • baseball cap3.3×
  • house3.2×
  • backpack3.0×
  • t-shirt2.6×
  • hoodie2.6×

How teenage boy films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate teenage boy from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 85%eye levelvs 69% baseline

What breaks the pattern

Death In Venice (1971) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 1,435 frames from 18 films carrying the teenage boy label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (404,689 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/teenage-boy

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