Movie Review Saturday Night

Saturday Night 

Directed by Jason Reitman

Written by Gil Kenan and Jason Reitman

Starring Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, and Lamorne Morris

Release Date October 11th, 1980

Published October 11th, 2024

Do not approach Jason Reitman’s new movie Saturday Night as if it is a documentary style recreation of the actual events in the final 90 minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live, then known as NBC’s Saturday Night, went on the air. The film likely will not withstand the scrutiny of historians or those who demand complete verisimilitude. Rather, the correct approach to Saturday Night is as a collective pop culture memory of what that night was like at 30 Rockefeller Center. 

Saturday Night Live, especially the first through fifth season, have been rhapsodized and mythologized for 5 decades and those myths have coalesced into that classic movie born aphorism from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the Legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Indeed, the first night of Saturday Night Live is legendary and the memories of that night have become myths that have been filtered through hazy memories into what is now Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, a flawed but completely fun and watchable take on how we like to think that first episode came to be.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Movie Review Bottoms

Bottoms (2023) 

Directed by Emma Seligmann

Written by Emma Seligmann, Rachel Sennott

Starring Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edibiri, Havana Rose Liu, Ruby Cruz, Marshawn Lynch

Release Date September 1st, 2023 

Published September 1st, 2023 

Queer kids are horny too. This should not surprise anyone but our popular culture, our culture in general has tried to hide from this fact for, perhaps, the entire history of film. Queer kids in movies may have longings, they may have desires and even a love interest, but they are, more often then not, saintly, sexless representations of their community, sanitized for the protection of mainstream moviegoers, even the so-called allies who like the idea of supporting LGBTQ but aren't comfortable actually seeing that representation in its infinite variety on the big screen. 

This makes Emma Seligmann and Rachel Sennott's Bottoms a rather revolutionary new movie. Bottoms portrays a pair of queer, female lead characters whose libidinous desires drive the plot. If that's a problem for you, I suggest you skip movies like the American Pie franchise or Superbad because Bottoms, at least in terms of the frank depiction of horniness, is no different from those teenage, straight, male presentations of sexually active and desirous teens. 

But where those outrageous comedies play everything straight, pun intended, Bottoms starts from a recognizable reality and spins out to a broad story that satirizes the tropes of High School comedies while getting at the heart of the anxieties that drive teenagers, gay or straight. Much like the equally spiky 80s comedy of Heathers, Bottoms presents High School life as violent dystopic, minefield of social expectations while reveling in the catharsis that can come from stepping around the expected into a place that disrupts the norms with gleeful intent. 

Bottoms stars Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edibiri as best friends, P.J and Josie. Outcasts since kindergarten, the queer teens are hopeful that the start of a new school year can be a restart to their High School lives and personas. Both have crushes on cheerleaders that are destined to be unrequited but where P.J is willing to press the issue, Josie prefers a depressing long game that she lays out in one of the funniest monologues of 2023, punctuated by a perfect quip from Sennott's P.J for one of my favorite laughs of the year. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media