Extra Credit: Female Coming-of-Age Movies to Stream After ‘Lady Bird’

In the weekly column Extra Credit, Charles Bramesco recommends supplemental viewing for moviegoers whose interests have been piqued by a given week’s big new release.

I’ve always preferred coming-of-age movies about young women to those about young men. Growing from a boy to a man usually means finding confidence and assuming one’s rightful place in the world; womanhood proves a far more complex obstacle course, usually culminating in a colder knowledge of the world’s many, many injustices that women are expected to grit their teeth and smile through. As such, I’m very much looking forward to Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s semi-memoir about growing up in Sacramento during the early ’00s. Early word for Saoirse Ronan’s lead performance as the strong-willed smart-aleck has been somewhere between “glowing” and “effusive,” and Gerwig did wonderful work on Frances Ha and Mistress America, so all signs are positive.

Until Gerwig’s latest makes its way out from New York and Los Angeles, tide yourself over with a selection of other coming-of-age stories about young women that are all currently available to stream: