What American Honey Catches Beautifully About the Kids: They’re Not All Right

“American Honey” is a movie that takes the temperature of youth culture in a way that no movie has in years. It tells a good story, about a girl named Star (Sasha Lane), 18 years old, with Rasta Barbie braids and a skeptical smirk, who joins a wolfpack of kids in their late teens and early twenties who live on the road, traveling from one cookie-cutter motel to the next, making money by hustling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. They don’t sell their bodies, but in a way they do: Most of them are striking-looking in a trashed-runaway vagabond skate-punk way, and they use their pierced-and-tattooed street charisma to evoke pity and awe. They flirt and charm their way into selling a product that no one really wants… read more >