Some Freaks

Look, high school sucks - we all know this. Everyone's weird, nobody is comfortable in their own skin, and yet it always seems like the "cool" kids seem to know what they're doing. Some Freaks is a searing look at the relationship between the one-eyed Matt (Thomas Mann from "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl") and the overweight Jill (the effervescent Lily Mae Harrington), two people on the outside just trying to find their way in. If the films of John Hughes were high school in the 80s, then Some Freaks is like "The Breakfast Club" for a new millennium. Always searching for their identity, Matt and Jill find solace in the other's social awkwardness, and the two outcasts form a quick, tight bond. But once Jill moves on to college, leaving Matt behind, their relationship takes a dark turn as Matt's insecurities begin to creep through after Jill loses weight and begins to look (gasp) "normal." Some Freaks is a coming-of-age film that reinvents the genre, challenging norms rather than idolizing them, and director Ian MacAllister-McDonald does a masterful job of providing an unsentimental view of growing up a freak. (Cleveland International Film Festival)