On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age. First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing. Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation .
You never forget your first crush. Life and love grow so complicated as we get older, but those early butterflies, stolen glances, and fleeting interactions are so easily romanticized in the rearview, relics of a bygone innocence and who we used to be. No matter what follows, the first stirrings of a crush are full of promise and excitement — even if you feel a bit like you’re going to explode.
I was on my second or third crush when I first watched Mark Levin’s “ Little Manhattan ,” the story of 10-year-old Gabe ( Josh Hutcherson ) falling in love with classmate Rosemary (Charlie Ray). I was on a plane, in the mood for something light — and I smiled ear-to-ear for the next 90 minutes. Over the course of two-and-a-half weeks, Rosemary and Gabe go from “karate friends” to real friends to something more — something evocative of every magnitude of romantic love a person experiences in a lifetime.
The entire tortuous experience of Gabe’s first love is comically and adorably narrated by Hutcherson, embodying a child but bringing wisdom and weariness beyond his years to the role. Scre.