BOTTOMS Review

I wanted to watch this again as soon as the credits (which were intercut with bloopers, I might add) ended. For 92-minutes writer/director Emma Seligman's (Shiva Baby) sophomore effort maintains a level of energy and intensity that shouldn't be overlooked. It's easy for movies to come out of the gate strong, it's admittedly difficult for movies to stick the landing, but one of the most overlooked and undervalued skills in filmmaking as a beginning to end process is maintaining the tone and energy you come out of the gate with through to the end and Bottoms comes out of the gate strong. Fortunately, Seligman and star Rachel Sennott's screenplay seemingly accomplishes everything it sets out to do, but more importantly it excels in doing so. The way in which the dialogue feels so natural, the rate at which the jokes land, and the simple creativity involved in crafting and conveying this hyper-realized version of high school where no one is subtle about or offended by which clique they belong to or where they land in the pecking order is simultaneously so impressive and so wildly funny that those aforementioned 92-minutes feel like nothing, a tease, which means all you can and want to do when the film ends is to watch it again immediately. 

Bottoms is a film as easy to appreciate as it is to be entertained by. It's not hard to spot all the ways in which Seligman and Sennott wanted to put their own stamp on the genre. This is still very much a high school movie in the vein of two best friends trying to get laid their senior year before leaving for college, but with the gender swap bit being only the first layer in their scheme to recontextualize this quest we've witnessed so many times before. Sennott and breakout star Ayo Edebiri are best friends PJ and Josie who are also both lesbians but are not involved with one another romantically. Josie is crushing on head cheerleader Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) who is currently dating the alpha male of the school in Josh (Nicholas Galitzine) while PJ would love to hook up with Isabel's right hand gal Brittany (Kaia Gerber) because she may as well be Cindy Crawford ;). Sounds simple enough, right? It is. Don't fret. Thematically we're not going for much more than some simple, universal truths about how tough it can be in those coming-of-age years, but it is in the attitude and style of how it presents itself that Bottoms really stands on its own.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM Review

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is something we, especially myself and my millennial brethren, have seen done multiple times before, but this time it’s possibly been done the best we've ever seen it. Having been born three years after the first TMNT comics were released and the same year the more brightly-colored animated series debuted the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been a part of my life my entire life and hold a special place in my own sewer of nostalgia. The nineties movies (yes, even the third one) are a cornerstone of my childhood and yet, Mutant Mayhem might just surpass them on the sheer charisma of the cast and genuine camaraderie of our heroes. Not that those live-action features didn't have well-defined characters with interesting arcs, but they couldn't help but to feel a little stiff whereas here things are as natural and effortless as could be if not more so given we're talking about "turtle mutant karate teens". 

Effortless is maybe the key word here as everything in this latest animated incarnation - from the music to the execution of the age-old ideas and of course the animation style itself - feels effortlessly cool and surprisingly fresh. Director Jeff Rowe (The Mitchells vs the Machines) seemingly utilizes every tool at his disposal to emphasize the unrefined quality of our heroes and push that mentality to the forefront of the film. The style of animation will undoubtedly be compared to the Spider-Verse films, but in all honesty they each convey a different energy as Mutant Mayhem’s “rough around the edges” approach simultaneously lends the tone a bit more of an edge while still maintaining a child-like wonder as the turtles long to be part of a world that fears them. We can see the sketch marks, the incomplete outlines, and not only this, but the way the city, the sewers, as well as the people and/or mutants are depicted is far more raw - almost ugly - in a way we haven’t seen before. It’s not that the film itself is revolutionary, but what does feel so is how unconventional and hip they've managed to make a piece of IP and furthermore, the coming-of-age story it’s telling. Like, another TMNT movie could have very well felt played out and tired, but instead this feels very much akin to a "cool kid club" you'll want to be in on. A real statement on how much execution truly elevates.