Jonah Hill’s Mid90s excels at enveloping its audience in the grain of pre-digital American filmmaking, drawing on the work of Gus Van Sant and Gregg Araki to capture natural performances.
During a long, hot summer in 1990s Los Angeles, 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic) finds belonging and acceptance among a group of older street skaters as his body changes and his need for independence grows. Stevie is desperate to escape the shadow of his aggressive and conflicted older brother, Ian (Lucas Hedges), and his loving yet distant working mother, Dabney (Katherine Waterston). As Stevie’s bond with his new peer group increases, he finds himself taken on a rollercoaster journey of self-discovery, sex, adventure and tragedy.
Jonah Hill’s Mid90s excels at enveloping its audience in the grain of pre-digital American filmmaking, drawing on the work of Gus Van Sant and Gregg Araki to capture natural performances. Hill primarily employs an unknown young cast to evoke realism and documentary-like precision, but Sunny Suljic stands head and shoulders above the rest of the ensemble. Suljic reflects not only the joy and discovery of early teenage life but also the anger, naive experimentation and the need to belong at any cost. Here, the role of the peer group as a found family is delicately unpicked through Stevie’s growing social confidence, burgeoning masculinity, and his slow, painful separation from family.
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