Jack and I quite liked this story of a middle-school boy who escapes his unhappy home life by following around bigger boys at an LA skateboard park. At times leisurely, at times hectic, the movie features young Sunny Suljic (played one of the skateboarders in Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot) as Stevie and a trio of professional skateboarders. Na-Kel Smith, in his film debut, is wonderful as the cool-headed leader Ray, and Olan Prenatt, also his film debut, is also very good as the hothead known as Fuckshit. Ryder McLaughlin (was in one other feature, with Suljic, and some TV) is the awkward one known as Fourth Grade.
At home, Lucas Hedges (last blogged for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) is Stevie's violent brother and Katherine Waterston (most recently in these pages for Logan Lucky) his hapless mother.
Actor Jonah Hill makes his directing debut--he doesn't appear on screen--and it's his first script as well, though he's credited with "Story by" on a few projects, including Why Him? The movie is short, running only 1:24, yet there are a few slow auteur moments, with the camera lingering just a bit too lovingly on a reaction shot. We were swept along all the same. Apparently Hill got into skateboarding around the same age, but he's quick to say it's not autobiographical.
Hill handpicked all the songs--I counted about thirty on screen in the end credits. The soundtrack on spotify has thirty tracks, but some of them are Hill commenting on the making of the movie. Others are instrumentals by composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (last blogged for Gone Girl). Here's a short article on the music selection and here's a video of my favorite, Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man.
Rotten Tomatoes' critics are averaging 78% and its audiences 88. This may give you a mild case of Motion Picture Motion Sickness/MPMS, if you are an occasional sufferer.
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