cinehunch
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
01
Why this pick
Like Better Luck Tomorrow, it watches high-achieving adolescent pressure curdle into self-destructive behavior, with an unvarnished, intimate indie style and volatile friendships rather than easy moral lessons.
02
Why this pick
It shares the collision of academic ambition, identity performance, and sudden criminal stakes, balancing sharp humor with genuine anxiety about how one reckless detour can reshape a teenager’s future.
03
Why this pick
For the alienation beneath Better Luck Tomorrow’s polished student lives: a visually lyrical but emotionally bruising study of adolescence, peer cruelty, and the private worlds teenagers build to endure pressure.
04
Why this pick
Its disaffected boys turn routine school life into escalating rituals of dominance and risk. The film has a similarly fatalistic interest in how group dynamics transform youthful boredom into violence.
05
Why this pick
A lighter, more playful companion in its portrait of young men testing freedom through a tight-knit clique; beneath the comic energy, it retains the messy loyalty and identity searching of late adolescence.
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01 / THE STORY
Ben Manibag and Virgil Hu are stereotypical overachieving Asian-Americans whose singular goal is to gain acceptance into highly prestigious Ivy League universities. Ben engages in perfectionistic pursuits including learning a new SAT word daily, and trying to best Calvin Murphy's record for free-throw shooting percentage. Ben reveals that his perfectionism cloaks another side of his life, including toilet-papering houses with Virgil and other petty crimes including the theft and return of computer equipment with Virgil and his cousin Han Hu to earn easy money. Ben is involved in many school clubs, mainly to pad his college application. He makes the basketball team, though he ends up receiving only token playing time. At the same time, Ben develops a crush on his new lab partner, Stephanie Vandergosh, a girl of Asian descent adopted by a white family.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
Ben Manibag
Virgil Hu
Daric Loo
Steve Choe
Takashi
Kenny Vandergosh
Han
Biology Teacher
