We Are Your Friends (2015)

Aspiring DJ Cole and the same friends he's had since childhood are living in a kind of in-between state, hoping Cole will make it big and take the crew along. When Cole steps outside to smoke and winds up sharing a joint with a well-known DJ, he gets his foot in the door and a possible chance at getting heard.

I'm not sure if this is a great movie, but it sure felt great to me. There were a few scenes with animations and voice-over to explain how the body reacts to beat-driven music, and I don't know. It just really worked. But it wasn't just the music scenes that grabbed me -- it was also the recognition of that time in life when you realize you've got to make a change, but you don't like the options in front of you. The film captured that perfectly.

And, man. The festival scene. I'm not a dancer, but I was involuntarily moving -- just one of the crowd of fans bouncing along to Cole's beats.

A-