Film

Duck Season

Name: Duck Season
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 2004
Cast: Daniel Miranda, Diego Cataño, Danny Perea, Enrique Arreola, Carolina Politi

Coming-of-age

A Mexican comedy about two bored fourteen-year-old best friends killing a Sunday in an empty apartment with video games, magazines, and pizza. It's funny and tender without being sentimental, capturing the particular restlessness of adolescence—that strange mix of invincibility and confusion. For anyone who remembers being young and directionless, or who likes films that trust their audience's intelligence.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy deadpan, slow-burn comedy where awkward silences do the heavy lifting and a single apartment on a dull afternoon becomes a whole small world of its own.

Skip it if you need plot and momentum, since very little happens on purpose and the rhythm stays stubbornly unhurried for most of its short run.

What it asks of you: Patience for long still shots and stretches where nothing much is said; at ninety minutes it is brief, but it rewards staying put rather than checking your phone.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Boyhood2014

A three-hour meditation on growing up that moves through time with the same unhurried rhythm as life itself. Like Duck Season, it finds profound comedy and sadness in the ordinary moments between major events.

But Its glacial pacing will feel like watching paint dry if you need constant plot momentum. Some find it self-indulgent rather than intimate.

The 400 Blows1959

Truffaut's masterpiece about a restless Parisian boy adrift between home and school. It has that same bittersweet ache—funny and heartbreaking without ever announcing which is which.

But It's a canonical art film that some approach like homework. The pacing is deliberately slow and contemplative.

My Life Without Me2003

Isabel Coixet's devastating Mexican-Canadian film about a young woman facing her mortality. It shares Duck Season's ability to find dark comedy in impossible situations and make you feel seen.

But The premise is grim, and the film doesn't look away from it. This isn't light viewing despite its moments of humor.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Duck Season

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

24 City2008

Both films are interested in capturing authentic time—not dramatic time, but the real texture of how people actually exist. They trust observation over plot.

Jia Zhangke's documentary-fiction hybrid about an old Shanghai factory becoming a luxury apartment complex. It has Duck Season's interest in how ordinary people inhabit time and space, but through a completely different lens—epic scope, mixed media, the weight of history.

But It's formally challenging and refuses conventional narrative. Viewers expecting a standard documentary or drama will find it frustratingly oblique.

About a Boy2002

A comedy about the unexpected friendship between an isolated middle-aged man and a lonely twelve-year-old. It captures that specific awkwardness and honesty that Duck Season nails—how kids and adults sometimes speak the same language by accident.

But It can feel slight after the film settles into feel-good rhythms. Some find the Hugh Grant charm tiresome.

Rushmore1998

Wes Anderson's film about an eccentric teenager trying to navigate school, friendship, and ambition. It's formally inventive but grounded in real adolescent confusion and longing.

But Anderson's symmetrical, self-conscious style can read as cold or precious depending on your mood. Some find the aesthetic too calculated.

The Breakfast Club1985

Five teenagers stuck in Saturday detention discover they're more alike than they thought. It's manipulative in the best way—a film that believes in its characters and makes you believe too.

But It's iconic to the point of cliché now, and some of its attitudes haven't aged well. The sentiment can feel heavy-handed.

Lost in Translation2003

Sofia Coppola's film about connection between two isolated people in Tokyo. Like Duck Season, it trusts silence and finds meaning in small gestures and conversations that circle around what really matters.

But There's almost no plot. If you need narrative propulsion or clear emotional beats, you'll feel the time acutely.

Dazed and Confused1993

Richard Linklater captures the last day of school 1976 through overlapping conversations and encounters. It's messy and funny and feels lived-in, much like Duck Season's relaxed naturalism.

But The ensemble approach means no single character carries the film. It meanders, which some experience as plot-free wandering rather than authentic observation.

Vagabond1985

Both examine adolescence or a kind of adolescent drift—characters stuck between who they were and who they'll become, with the camera patient enough to let you see them clearly.

Agnes Varda follows a young drifter's final weeks before her death in winter. It sounds bleak but it's both funny and humane, finding grace in vagrancy and human connection. It's a formal masterpiece that never feels like one.

But The protagonist is profoundly alienated and occasionally unlikeable. It ends where you know it's going. The tone refuses to comfort you.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring2003

Like Duck Season, it uses inactivity and simple companionship as its real subject. Two characters, minimal plot, maximum interiority. Both understand that boredom and contentment can look identical from the outside.

Kim Ki-duk's minimalist film about a Buddhist monk and his student living on a floating temple. Almost no dialogue, no plot in any conventional sense—just seasons changing and two people existing together. Meditative and funny and strange in ways Duck Season prepares you for.

But It's slow, cryptic, and demands you bring your own meaning. If you need to understand what's happening, you'll leave frustrated.