Director: Jonah Hill
Year Released: 2018
Rating: 1.5
Lil' Stevie (Sunny Suljic), who lives with his single mother (Katherine Waterston) and tyrannical older brother (Lucas Hedges), hangs out with local skateboarding kids who are bored and keep getting him into trouble (they smoke, they drink booze, they run from the police). It's the directorial debut for Hill - a very good actor - and while he's going for this 'natural' feel by casting a lot of non-professional actors and keeping the camera wobbling around, it comes off as amateurish in a not-so-good way, with some of the dialogue sounding scripted and aspects that require further exploration, like Stevie's self-harming (characters start barking at each other and fight because they're told to - it's the same issue with Xavier Dolan's films). It's as if Jonah saw Larry Clark's Kids - which just so happened to come from the mid-1990's - and decided to make a poor simulation that's even more depressing (and no, giving Harmony a cameo doesn't 'make it all right'). My favorite line: "Jesus smoked cigarettes."
