Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, 2015)

A socially awkward high school kid with a passion for movies is forced by his mum to befriend a girl with leukaemia, something that then turns into a real platonic relationship. We are very much in American independent Dave Eggers/Michel Gondry country here, with the quirkiness laid on thick just so we know how magical life can be, and both the lead character's incongruously street black mate and the waning, poetic girl serve rather flimsily as mere foils for the stock self-obsessed white middle-class male in the centre, but it is redeemed overall by having a sparkling sense of wit - evident in the film spoofs that the boys make in particular - and a real emotional sensitivity too, even if it falls quite decisively short of saying anything truly insightful.

6/10