I Like Movies

It is 2003 in Burlington, a western suburb-city of Toronto. High school senior Lawrence is enthralled by movies, and insists on only applying to NYU's film program for post-secondary studies. This is despite the $90,000 U. S. annual cost, not affordable by his single mother on a secretary's salary. So he gets employment in a video store, a develops a relationship with its female manager.

Socially inept, he is tightly bound to his best friend Matt, with whom the share a fondness for Saturday Night Live, but they break up as Matt finds a girl friend / girlfriend film associate, and is tired of Lawrence's undisciplined, self-indulgent approach to film-making, as well as his possessiveness (shades of Close (2022)). Along his journey for that year, Lawrence has to grow up.

I saw this after The Fabelmans, and actually prefer this, a more concentrated film, without the playing out of the family drama. I liked the teenage lead here as well as the one in The Fabelmans. I also liked that fact that it was unabashedly Canadian.