mid90s (2018)
Directed by Jonah Hill
In 1990s Los Angeles, a 13-year-old spends his summer navigating between a troubled home life and a crew of new friends he meets at a skate shop.
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There are also shades of Larry Clark’s Kids, but the difference here is that Hill is careful to never be moralising or overly sensationalist, choosing instead to treat his protagonists with a great deal of tenderness and understanding.
Viewers who were around back then might remember Larry Clark’s “Kids” and other prurient, ostensibly cautionary tales of adolescent misbehavior.
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.
Notably, there are elements of Kids, Larry Clark and Harmony Korine’s gritty exploration of 90s teenage life.
Hill’s story suggests equal parts “Freaks and Geeks,” “Kids,” and the adolescent-focused narratives of British director Shane Meadows, but Hill cribs from these precedents with a confidence that injects this lively snapshot of skateboarding reprobates with fresh confidence.
Hill has noted that he was inspired by harsher pics like Larry Clark’s Kids (scripted by Harmony Korine) and Shane Meadows’ This Is England , and the non-judgmental perspectives of those films are carried over here, meaning that we watch uncritically as a bunch of uncomfortably young lads get up to all sorts of particularly LA-type mischief.
Someone like Linklater can carry off intelligent teen dialogue without it seeming forced in films like Dazed and Confused and Everybody Wants Some!! , but in Mid90s the sincere moments, like the one where Ray sits Stevie down and has a heart-to-heart about his family, come off as scripted and trite.
“Mid90s” is like “Dazed and Confused” (1993) crossed with “Kids” (1995), “Freaks and Geeks” (1999), “Dogtown and Z-Boys” (2001), and “Slackers” (2002), with a sprinkling of this year’s “Eighth Grade.”
In the end Richard Linklater seems the most obvious inspiration for this lo-fi but artistically ambitious indie focusing on a group of Los Angeles skateboarders, with Hill channelling Dazed and Confused and Slacker and Kevin Smith's Clerks .
Mid90s eschews the larkish qualities of a 1980s teen sex comedy or the fondness of Richard Linklater films such as Boyhood or Dazed and Confused .
À la fois un jouissif « hang out movie » à la Dazed and Confused et le meilleur film que Xavier Dolan n’a jamais réalisé, on sent surtout que Mid90s est du pur Jonah Hill.
Films like American Graffiti and Dazed and Confused try to explore the past with youthful eyes and a determined lack of nostalgia.
In the end Richard Linklater seems the most obvious inspiration for this lo-fi but artistically ambitious indie focusing on a group of Los Angeles skateboarders, with Hill channelling Dazed and Confused and Slacker and Kevin Smith's Clerks .
His directorial style is naturalistic, containing echoes of Larry Clark’s Kids (writer Harmony Korine makes a cameo appearance) and Richard Linklater’s Slacker ; every scene feels as if he started rolling the moment the boys showed up and started hanging out.
Shot on 16mm film with a retro 4:3 aspect ratio by Christopher Blauvelt, it’s grainy and naturalistic – a kind of cross between Richard Linklater’s Slacker and Larry Clark’s Kids , but with added profanity.
Hill has noted that he was inspired by harsher pics like Larry Clark’s Kids (scripted by Harmony Korine) and Shane Meadows’ This Is England , and the non-judgmental perspectives of those films are carried over here, meaning that we watch uncritically as a bunch of uncomfortably young lads get up to all sorts of particularly LA-type mischief.
If anything, the heart of the film strikes closer to Elephant, where every moment is captured in rapid fire constant motion (not to mention both films feature cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt), or This is England, where the cast comes across as a random group of people rather than a gaggle of well trained actors.
Hill has spoken of the influence of both Shane Meadows’ This Is England and largely forgotten kids flick The Sandlot Kids as his inspiration.
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It’s as if Hill took his familiar sly humor and sneaked it into a segment from Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood.”
A similar cinema of nostalgia worked for Richard Linklater’s Boyhood .
While the coming-of-age of male adolescents has been robustly explored (not least by Linklater himself in the tricky to top Boyhood ), as a writer-director Hill doesn't exactly play it safe.
Compare Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” which “Mid90s” is certainly trying to evoke in microcosm (just compare the posters).
Mid90s eschews the larkish qualities of a 1980s teen sex comedy or the fondness of Richard Linklater films such as Boyhood or Dazed and Confused .
Imagine a latter-day, West Coast “Clerks,” but filmed in color and not quite as desperate to prove how clever it is, and you’ve got an idea of the easy, embraceable tone of “Mid90s.”
In the end Richard Linklater seems the most obvious inspiration for this lo-fi but artistically ambitious indie focusing on a group of Los Angeles skateboarders, with Hill channelling Dazed and Confused and Slacker and Kevin Smith's Clerks .
Hill’s debut has drawn a lot of comparison to the no-filter styling of director Larry Clark, and it also easily calls to mind Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park.
He tips his hat here to Van Sant’s dreamy 2007 skateboarding drama “Paranoid Park,” borrowing the boxy aspect ratio and attempting similarly lyrical interludes while studiously avoiding that film’s sinister undercurrents.
Ebiri points out the Scorsesian strain of “bodily mortification” in the film, referencing “Raging Bull” and “Wolf of Wall Street” as influences (Hill nabbed his second Oscar nod for the latter).
The idea of bodily mortification — through rage, through shame, through hedonism — runs through many of Scorsese’s films, most notably Raging Bull and The Wolf of Wall Street (which co-starred Hill).
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Yet Hill’s take on coming of age is nowhere near as prurient or sinister as Korine’s, and its portrayal of carefree teen mavericks recalls something more like Andrea Arnold’s American Honey or Crystal Moselle’s Skate Kitchen.
With other films like American Honey , A Ghost Story , and First Reformed embracing the archaic, once television-friendly frame it would appear that A24 knows something that we do not.
Juxtapose all of this with something like Andrea Arnold’s American Honey or Sean Baker’s dual whammy of Tangerine and The Florida Project , and for all its narrative passion and visual eloquence (vaunted cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt shoots things with a magnetic attention to detail that’s riveting) Mid90s almost can’t help but come up short.
It lacks the authenticity of Catherine Hardwicke’s Los Angeles-set Lords of Dogtown (2005), whose story about hopeless boys was, unexpectedly, even more convincingly empathetic than her female-puberty debut Thirteen had been.
It’s true that Hill pulls from the great dramatic skate movies — Larry Clark’s Kids and Catherine Hardwicke’s Lords of Dogtown come to mind — and that his film comes amidst a revival of the genre, with films like Skate Kitchen and Minding the Gap pushing it to the forefront of the film industry, but that’s hardly his fault that a trend coalesced before he even screened the thing publicly.