Booksmart (2019)

Every now and then, a new high school coming-of-age film makes its way into our heart and instantly becomes a classic. Recently, thankfully, we've had plenty of female-led ones — just think of Easy A, The Edge of Seventeen, or Lady Bird. Olivia Wilde's directorial debut, Booksmart, is not quite the revelation I was led to believe it'd be, but it's nevertheless a smart, energetic and fun teenage film with a nice twist on the genre.

Short Term 12 (2013)

Whenever someone on Twitter says that Brie Larson can't act there's always someone that brings up Short Term 12 to prove the contrary. Now I love Brie Larson as, to me, she's always proven she can act, but since I had never seen the film, I checked it out. 

The story mainly focuses on Grace (Brie Larson), the young supervisor of a group home for troubled teenagers called Short Term 12, who lives with her long-term boyfriend and coworker, Mason (John Gallagher Jr.). While facing personal issues as she finds out she's pregnant, she has to deal with two difficult kids at the home, Marcus (Lakeith Stanfield), a quiet kid who is about to turn eighteen but doesn't want to leave the facility as he's not ready to face the world out there, and Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), a troubled teenage girl who seems to be deeply scarred.