School's out, 4-eva, high school, middle school or college -- here're some rentable recommendations from Flickipedia, capturing or recapturing that tingliest of seasons...

The Graduate (1967) A generational emblem more than a movie, this Mike Nichols classic is about lostness, anomie and social incompleteness as only movies made in the late-60s-early-70s can be. Dustin Hoffman became a star in the unlikeliest of circumstances: as an aimless college grad who cannot get a fix on what he wants out of life. He is seduced by a family friend (Anne Bancroft), and is then pressured into dating her daughter (Katherine Ross); as life gets more complicated, he searches madly for any reason at all to choose one destiny over another. Credit is due to 1967 audiences, who saw themselves in this ambivalent portrait, and dared to ask big questions of themselves and their movies. Picture, if you can, the new millennium’s freshly graduated degree-holders with the same choice.

American Graffiti (1973) The first coming-of-age ensemble comedy in American movies? George Lucas’s sublime evocation of a midwestern 1962 of cars, rock ‘n roll radio and lost sub-adults certainly established the timeless stereotypes of that post-graduation summer night that everyone experiences: the high school sweethearts confronting college and separation (Ron Howard and Cindy Williams), the itchy smart kid who doesn’t know if college is what he wants (Richard Dreyfuss), the hopeless dweeb looking only to score (Charles Martin Smith), the cool dropout hood who cannot adjust to the real world (Paul LeMat). Roaringly funny and bittersweet.

Fandango (1985) A narrow but rueful valentine to the college grads of the ‘Nam era, introducing the world to Kevin Costner, as the larky leader of a motley gang of sullen jerks either embracing the war, running from the draft, getting married or merely remaining drunkenly unconscious. Costner’s energy keeps it afloat.

Dazed and Confused (1993) This is what the beginning of summer, with school a fading memory already a day later, felt like for director Richard Linklater, whose milieu here was Texas in the late ‘70s. Trailing after a dozen or more recently freed high schoolers as they search for a party, contemplate their dubious role in the social order, and inflict/escape from the hazing rituals that may be particular to Austin suburb schools, the film is dense with detail, one-liners, deft performances and astutely observed reality – though it may take two viewings to mesh with the movie’s unique rhythms. It’s also something of The Outsiders of its generation, more or less introducing the world to Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Nicky Katt, Rory Cochrane, Joey Lauren Adams, Parker Posey, etc.

Kicking and Screaming (1995) Here was the late-century’s generational anthem film, except no one seemed terribly interested in identifying with it. Writer/director Noah Baumbach’s debut, the movie is a rueful portrait of four preppy, Ivy League-ish friends living off-campus, suddenly left in the weird afterworld where graduation has marked them as grown-ups but the indulgent, trivia-obsessed allure of college life maintains its grip. Baumbach poured a hundred college careers’ worth of ironic humor into the script, and Chris Eigemann, Josh Hamilton and Carlos Jacott are a dry riot. Eric Stoltz almost steals the movie in an improvised role as a philosophical bartender, but it’s hard not to fall for Olivia d’Abo as an impulsive creative-writing major conscious of her braces.

Can’t Hardly Wait (1998) An overlooked gem among a hundred cretinous teen-party comedies, in which another dozen or so easily recognizable high school types flounder their way through a single night of epiphany, melodrama, humiliation, socialization, and beer. The film’s pulsing, forgiving heart and sharp ear (courtesy of writer/director team Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont) are responsible for the movie’s distinction; the joyous chaos of teenage parties are not easy to depict, but this movie gets it, with a title from an old Replacements song no less. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Ethan Embry are the mismatched hottie-&-nerd, but funnier and more believable are Lauren Ambrose’s quasi-goth cynic, Peter Facinelli’s monster jock, and Charlie Korsmo’s ultra-geek.

Ghost World (2001) The pioneering film portrait of a distinctive, universal and heretofore ignored teenage social class: the bitter, frumpy, snobbish, willfully unpopular "weirdos," self-defined only in disdainful opposition to their peers. It’s a state that often provides for a certain amount of lostness after graduation, which is what the heroines of Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel and Terry Zwigoff’s acerbic movie struggle with: the vacuum left once they’re left to their own devices. Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson are pitch-perfect in what amounts to an act of modern anthropology – rescuing a lovable misfit teen type from obscurity.