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mid90s At once hard-edged and heartfelt, Jonah Hill’s directorial debut draws knowingly on the banter behind his dudebro comedy persona, the seriousness of his acting work with heavyweight filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Gus Van Sant, and the battle scars of his own knockabout youth as a skater boy in ’90s Los Angeles. “mid90s is the story of 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic), who takes up skateboarding as a way to make friends with the cooler, older boys who run a local skate shop… As Stevie ingratiates himself with the group through his good nature and fearless attitude, finding sanctuary and a sense of identity away from hostile older brother Ian (Lucas Hedges) and loving but largely absent single mother Dabney (Katherine Waterston), the characters’ backstories are fleshed out to poignant effect, all to a catchy era-specific soundtrack curated by Hill… Shot on 16mm film… this is an authentic evocation of a specific time and place, a charmingly scuzzy comingof-age drama that isn’t preoccupied with dispensing hard-won life lessons to its target demographic... [and] has an energy and spirit all of its own.” — Adam Woodward, Little White Lies
Director/Screenplay: Jonah Hill USA 2018 | 85 mins Producers: Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, Ken Kao, Jonah Hill, Lila Yacoub Photography: Christopher Blauvelt Editor: Nick Houy Music: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross With: Sunny Suljic, Lucas Hedges, Katherine Waterston, Na-kel Smith, Olan Prenatt, Gio Galicia, Ryder McLaughlin, Alexa Demie, Fig Camila Abner Festivals: Toronto, New York 2018; Berlin 2019 R16 violence, sexual references, offensive language & drug use
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“mid90s is a beaut. Like American Graffiti and Lady Bird, it has a unique quality of feeling at once deeply felt, textured and personal… yet with enough distance and precise observation to obtain an almost documentary objectivity… If the Wu Tang Clan and Ren & Stimpy references don’t resonate, the portrait of finding your people and them schooling you in the world will. Swear-y and lovely in equal measures.” — Ian Freer, Empire
“[Hill] makes mid90s resonate with universal poignancy and electric energy; his kids are the best, messiest kind of real, and they’re alright.” — Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
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Monos The Guardian called Monos “Apocalypse Now on shrooms” – a fitting description even if there isn’t an actual scene in the movie depicting our young soldier protags being ambushed in the middle of a mushroominduced, ball-tripping stupor. Such hypnotic detours are frequent in the hallucinatory new thriller from Colombian director Alejandro Landes, which owes a significant debt to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in its cutting portrayal of power warping young minds. In this vision, our feral ensemble are not castaways but teenage troops, posted on a remote mountaintop to safeguard both an American POW (Julianne Nicholson) and a milk cow named Shakira. In classic war movie tradition, everyone has swaggering monikers like Rambo, Wolf and Boom Boom. But, initially, there's not an awful lot for these restless youths to channel their bravado into. In the place of warfare are bizarre rituals, horny hook-ups and campfire raves – at least until a tragic accident triggers a sudden, steep descent into chaos. Landes offers us very little context about the surrounding conflict and largely avoids an overarching drive of
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Director: Alejandro Landes Colombia/Argentina/The Netherlands/Germany/Sweden/ Uruguay 2019 | 102 mins Producers: Alejandro Landes, Fernando Epstein, Santiago Zapata, Cristina Landes Screenplay: Alejandro Landes, Alexis Dos Santos Photography: Jasper Wolf Editors: Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Ted Guard, Santiago Otheguy Music: Mica Levi With: Julianne Nicholson, Moises Arías, Wilson Salazar, Sofía Buenaventura, Deiby Rueda, Laura Castrillón Festivals: Sundance, Berlin, New Directors/ New Films, San Francisco 2019 Special Jury Award (World Cinema Dramatic), Sundance Film Festival 2019 In English and Spanish, with English subtitles CinemaScope | R13 violence, offensive language & content that may disturb
plot, instead peppering the narrative with unexpected relocations and role reversals. As a result, the film holds a clammy fever-dream quality, aided by DOP Jasper Wolf’s sensory visuals and composer Mica Levi’s superb score. This is one of the festival’s most thrilling discoveries – a tense, off-kilter deep dive into corrupted innocence that never quite goes where you think it will. — JF
“Nothing short of an aesthete’s dream, a film crammed with visual bravado that echoes Kubrick, Malick, and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.” — Rory O’Connor, Cinevue
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