Mean Creek

Independent filmmaker Jacob Aaron Estes makes his feature debut with the coming-of-age drama Mean Creek. Rory Culkin, Ryan Kelley, Scott Mechlowicz, Josh Peck, Trevor Morgan, and Carly Schroeder are teenagers living in small-town Oregon. Some of the boys take a boat trip for a birthday celebration. ...more

Of all the films that deal with the slippery morality of youth -- Kids and Thirteen come to mind -- Mean Creek is one of the few that does more in the name of complicated truth than simplistic shock value. Writer/director Jacob Aaron Estes really has something to say here, and thank goodness, it's not that teens left unsupervised become sociopaths. The bully at the center of Estes' captivating debut is alternately annoying and congenial, just like any precocious mid-teen -- and not unlike the ...more