By Jake Coyle, AP Film Writer
A year after Greta Gerwig's "Lady Bird" comes another actor-turned-director's memory-inspired California-set coming-of-age tale from the boutique film studio A24. This time, the time period has been dialed back a few years (from the early '00s to the mid-'90s), Dave Mathews Band has been traded for A Tribe Called Quest, and the filmmaking talent is far less revelatory.
Though affectionately and sometimes precisely recalled, Jonah Hill's thinly sketched directorial debut "Mid90s" feels both sincerely personal and highly derivative at once: a pre-digital slice of life that forces contrived narratives onto what ought to have remained a fleeter, kaleidoscopic ride.
Thirteen-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic) is drawn inexorably to the local skate shop near his lower-middle-class, single-parent home. Stevie lives with his loving mother (Katherine Waterston, adding depth to every scene she appears in) and abusive older brother (Lucas Hedges), whose rage goes largely unexplained and whose brutal blows (shown from the film's first scene) are unnaturally amplified to action-movie-level ferocity. Still, he's got a rad CD collection, which Stevie studiously takes notes from when his brother isn't around.
But in the skate shop, and among its older teenage regulars, Stevie finds a refuge. He gradually cozies up to them, trades some video games for a skate board, and soon finds himself a member of the group — or at least its smaller, younger, mop-headed mascot. They are expert skaters, foul-mouthed storytellers, 40-drinking partiers who gleefully disrespect authority. (The movie's best scene is an exchange with a security guard, played by Jerrod Carmichael.) In Suljic's bright eyes, as he thrills to his rapidly widening world, Hill captures that glorious adolescent feeling: fitting in.
Shot in grainy 16mm and a 4-3 ratio by cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, "Mid90s" — which takes liberally from Larry Clark's documentary-styled "Kids" — is first and foremost fetishized nostalgia that delights in nothing as much as period-appropriate, pre-digital minutiae. The soundtrack, from The Pharcyde to the Pixies, often seems more primary than the story. No space that couldn't be filled with a "Street Fighter II" T-shirt, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" bedding or mention of a "Blockbuster night" has gone wanting. (There is also a score by Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor, whose Nine Inch Nails was at its peak in the mid-90s — yet another reminder of how much has changed in the last two decades.)
"Mid90s" is at its best when exploring the group dynamics of its motley skating crew, several of whom are played by professional skateboaders. There's the younger, jealous Ruben (Gio Galicia), the dimwitted aspiring filmmaker Fourth Grade (Ryder McLaughlin), a boisterous, swaggering long blond-haired kid with an unprintable nickname, and the group's unquestioned leader, Ray (Na-kel Smith). Their dialogue is laced with homophobic and sexist slurs, which is surely just as authentic to the period as a DiscMan. But, like so much else in "Mid90s," it goes unexamined.
A pair of other recent films — "Minding the Gap," ''Skate Kitchen" — better explored the camaraderie and freedom of skater culture. But there are glimpses here of a more radiant, lyrical film, like in the loving, unabashedly operatic scene of dozens of riders fleeing police, or the hazy glow of a slow cruise down a thoroughfare's median at twilight.
One of the film's most glaring issues is that Suljic, 11 at the time of filming, is simply too young for the role. That the filmmakers were drawn by his talent and on-screen presence is understandable. But he's a little guy. And when Stevie's coming-of-age leaps into more mature territory, it's just one more incongruity in a heartfelt but crudely made film full of holes.
I kept wishing "Mid90s" centered not on Stevie but on Ray, the group's sensitive and ambitious captain. Smith, a pro skateboarder making his acting debut, has an arresting sweetness. With aspirations for turning his skateboarding skills into something more, Ray's the only one in "Mid90s" looking forward.
"Mid90s," an A24 release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for pervasive language, sexual content, drug and alcohol use, some violent behavior/disturbing images — all involving minors." Running time: 84 minutes. Two stars out of four.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More