Whatever

Ignore the slacker title: This sharply observed coming-of-age story (nominally set in the '80s, though it's hardly an issue) isn't about slinging slack-jawed attitude. It's a clear-eyed, phenomenally well-acted slice-of-life look at high-school friends whose lives are diverging at a frightening rate. Aspiring painter Anna (Liza Weil), whose ambitions seem almost ludicrous in the context of her depressed Jersey hometown, is waiting on word about a scholarship to a prestigious New York art school the way drowning men grasp at life preservers. Her divorced mother is one step ahead of a flock of bill collectors and consumed with the thought of giving Anna a better life...