Tag: kids

Mid90s

Posted on by victor@dmovies.org

The most telling moment in Mid90s, Jonah Hill’s foray into directing, comes around halfway through. As fourth-grader Stevie “Sunburn” comes home from a day out skating with his new pals, a bunch of super cool dudes modeled on Poochie from The Simpsons, a man emerges from his single mother’s bedroom, zipping up his fly. It’s Harmony Korine. The enfant terrible of American cinema and writer of Kids (Larry Clark, 1994) appears as a nod to a film to which Mid90s is painfully indebted to.

So we have a set of Cali bros who skate, party, and hang out on the streets soaking up a perfectly Instagrammable time. If only they had smartphones. The production design goes far out of its way to remind you that this could only be the 1990s. Every t-shirt is a graphic tee with a cartoon or rapper from the era. Posters, sneakers, and cars are lingered upon, while any suggestion of the political context is non-existent, because this aesthetic nostalgia informs so many current trends.

Most of the cast are Supreme models, for crying out loud! Hill is too busy having fun with this stuff to worry about the reality behind his low-income characters. He’s putting together his dream soundtrack, a bunch of entry-level hip-hop tracks straight from his Spotify playlist. You can see him nodding along in the editing bay as he matches the beats of Herbie Hancock to each cut around a party scene.

In that extended sequence, when boys finally talk to girls, it’s little more than a set of Q&A moments with the boys as the respondents. Perhaps Hill didn’t want to take the focus away from his central crew, but the women are looked at with the same confused, reverential gaze as the objects, brushed over. They are like artefacts. It feels unclear as to whether Hill is adopting the viewpoint of his characters, or revealing his own inability to craft people unlike himself. In general, one is left wondering what motivates the camera here. What effect does Mid90s have beyond replicating a generic vibe from the titular decade? It’s not that Hill is useless with the camera, but he’s too mannered, inorganic. Removed from the super 16mm aesthetics, it might even resemble the Jude Apatow comedies from which he emerged. Hill leans into production company A24’s aesthetic with such aplomb that the movie even begins with an indent made of skateboards.

Internet Boyfriend Lucas Hedges is a funny tough guy, appearing as Sunburn’s older brother, who can’t quite shake off his softy persona. That’s a large part of his tortured, Trump mask-wearing character, and it largely works to ground us within the A24 universe. The world of coming-of-age movies. But Lady Bird’s (Greta Gerwig, 2018) nostalgia was without affectation. While Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade (2018), still yet to be released in the UK, is an effort to actually get inside a world that’s unfamiliar and understand the psychological motivations of its teens. Hill is satisfied with after-school special preaching, and reconciliations.

Not that it’s entirely without its pleasures. It’s at its best when it’s funny, hanging out with these genuinely charming characters. They have a great group dynamic and the images can be arresting when Hill rests with them. But attempts to tackle serious themes like domestic abuse and masculinity are cringeworthy, especially when Skate Kitchen (Crystal Moselle, 2018) and Minding The Gap (Bing Liu, 2018) deliver pretty much the same goods without the need to gesture towards authenticity.

When movie stars become directors, the results can go either way. Hill has a great comedic voice, and surely a way with these young actors. But he seems like Steve Buscemi walking in with a board on his back, “Hello fellow kids”. If only he’d trust his instincts rather than leaning for the cool factor, he might actually pull it off.

Mid90s is playing as part of the Panorama section at Berlinale in February, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in cinemas on Friday, April 12th. On VoD on Monday, August 26th.

The Escape

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Tara (Gemma Arterton, also executive producer) is married to Mark (Dominic Cooper) with two small kids Teddy and Florrie (real-life siblings Teddy and Florrie Pender). He has a secure job and they’re living somewhere in a housing development in Gravesend, Kent. Her life consists of responding to his sexual advances, which no longer satisfy her the way they once did, getting him to work and the kids to school in the mornings, keeping the house tidy during the day and playing with the kids after school. She has her own car but doesn’t get out much except to do the household shopping. If her life ever possessed any significant meaning, it’s long lost in the humdrum of a housewife and mother’s everyday married routine.

Something needs to change, and judging by a pre-title scene where Arterton wakes up alone in a house with framed art prints on the wall and walks alone to a park, it’s about to do so. The first hour after that charts the gradually worsening situation of her relationship with her husband and kids, punctuated by a trip up to London and the purchase from the Southbank’s second hand book market of The Lady And The Unicorn, a tome about six medieval tapestries which hang in Paris and represent the five familiar senses and an unfamiliar sixth one which represents something like our moral judgement. Which is what the film is about: taking stock of one’s life and making any necessary changes if and where it seems less than satisfactory.

The remainder sees Arterton take off to Paris, visit the museum with the tapestries and get picked up for a one-night stand in her hotel room by charming French photographer Philippe (Jalil Lespert). She tells lies to redefine her identity, saying she works for a London commercial company and she’s not involved with anyone. When it turns out he has a wife and kids, she tells him what he did was wrong and turfs him out, which seems a little bit two faced to say the least given she’s done much the same to him. After that, will she be able to go back to her husband? The pre-credits scene, which also closes the film, suggests not.

The whole is light on dialogue and heavy on improvisation, especially in the family scenes with the two kids, with writer-director Savage opting for a fluid, handheld camera approach to capture the potential of open-ended performances. He’s helped by his decision to use a small crew which allows for great versatility in shooting. If it sometimes feels like not that much happens in its 105-minute running length, there’s an intensity to events as they unfold in the moment on the screen.

Long after viewing, most of the domestic scenes fade but the memories of the trip to Paris and the one-night stand remain, as will Cooper’s hurling her tapestry book across the kitchen in a moment of rage and Arterton’s losing her composure and swearing at her kids. The highly effective music by Anthony John and Alexandra Harwood cleverly adds a sense of longing in the domestic senses and a feeling of satisfaction when Arterton finally gets away. Ultimately, it’s a clever little film which, through a mixture of script prep, strong casting and improv, achieves its aims. So, worth seeing.

The Escape is out in the UK on Friday, August 3rd. It’s available on VoD from Monday, December 3rd.