MOVIE SUMMER OF 8

Summer of 8 (2016) Orion Pictures MOVIE REVIEW

BY KEANU JOSEPH P. RAFIL

“Who am I? Who will I become? What does it all mean?”

Produced by Steven J. Berger and Michael M. McGuire, Summer of 8 is a day-long-shot movie released on the 26th of April 2016. This Ryan Schwartz masterpiece revolves around a group of eight friends comprising of four girls and four boys, who decided to spend their last day before college together in the sands of Little Corona Del Mar Beach, California. It is an 88-minute film packed with self-discovery, disclosures, emotions, and celebration of youth.

The film connects with both young and adult film viewers alike by giving them fresh acumens as the individual characters decipher realizations among themselves. These realizations range from the subtlety of each character’s young love and ambitions to the rawhefty loads of childhood’s past.

The main role player of the movie, Jesse (Carter Jenkins), starts the movie with a scene where he writes on a journal addressed to his late father along the beach sands of Corona. In that particular scene, he wrote the quotation at the beginning of this review. He was then accompanied by his three friends, Aiden (Michael Grant), Oscar (Matt Shively), and his childhood buddy Bobby (Nick Marini) and mused on how could their last day before college could be spent perfectly. For that day, he also invited over his girlfriend, Lily (Shelley Hennig), and her three friends, Serena (Bailey Noble), Emily (Rachel DiPillo), and Jen (Natalie Hall) to spend the last day with them on their favorite beach strip of the town near the house where Jesse and his mom, Diane (Sonya Walger) stays.

The film’s cinematography is the strongest as to why it is not only intellectually and emotionally pleasing but as well as visually-enticing. This was made possible by the keen eyes of cinematographer Martim Vian and was evident throughout the film, from Jesse’s first dawn by the beach up to his last. Though the film was produced under a low budget and was shot on a single place and setting in time, the film did not fail to satisfy its viewers’ eyes by merging the beauty of a day in one and a half hour.

Ryan Schwartz, the director as well as the scriptwriter of the film, created a shallow but straight-to-the-heart liberation of words from the characters. From a simple question of “What will make this day perfect?” to the substantial notions of asking “Who am I?”, Schwartz processed and resolved his viewers in an unfathomable, meaningful way through the resolutions delivered by each character to themselves.

Their choice of music tracks is also a factor that made the film prodigious by integrating it well on each scene. The track “Growing

Up” by CANVAS perfectly garnished the first few scenes where the eight friends are making their way to the beach, happy and scared but aware of what is to come. The film’s end credits played the track “The Meaning” by Fruition which is a spot-on for what the film wants to say—that every moment of our lives is important and must be welllived. Other tracks include “Wonder If She Knows” by Family Wagon, “Over The Water” by Raphael Pearlman and Jonathan Plum, “Another Story” by The Head and The Heart, and “Me And My Friends” by Tim Myers. One thing that adds beauty to a film is through its musical scoring. These scores help the film penetrate its viewers’ emotions, seeping through deeper down to their spines.

The film does not only focus on the importance of friends or family that surrounds our lives. It also delivers the importance of time and the art of acknowledging the things that we may regret not doing. It speaks more about the inconsistency of things and the consistency of change, the agony of staying behind and the fresh-breath of leaving. It enunciates that our lives are lightnings, and what we do with it is the thunder. That every action we make is subject to either regret or contentment. S