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It’s T-minus three weeks until the hottest indie film of the summer, Red Rocket launches into Australian cinemas. It follows the escapades of down-and-out former adult film star Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) who returns to his hometown in Texas to try to get back on his feet before leaving for L.A. again. The problem is that no one from his hometown – especially his ex-wife and her mother – feels particularly eager to welcome Mikey back.

A silver-tongued and opportunistic hustler, Mikey turns on the charm and smooth talks his way into crashing at his ex-wife’s house for a while. But just as they’re getting their relationship back on track, his attention turns towards the bright-eyed 17-year-old named Strawberry who works at a local donut shop, the Donut Hole.

Red Rocket was directed and co-written by Sean Baker, the resourceful indie filmmaker behind Tangerine (2015) and The Florida Project (2017). He earned acclaim for keeping things low-budget on Tangerine by shooting the film with three iPhone 5S smartphones.

Baker’s films are renowned for their radical empathy and depiction of characters on the margins of society. He routinely casts first-time actors in his films, imbuing them with a grounded authenticity that wouldn’t exist were the cast filled with A-list actors.

While Simon Rex, the lead actor who plays Mikey in Red Rocket, isn’t a first-time actor (you might remember him from the Scary Movie franchise), his casting in the film is a case of art-imitating-life since Rex got his start in the entertainment industry as a porn actor. His performance in Red Rocket fizzes with a manic energy, which is impossible to look away from. He lends his character of Mikey with such an endearing naivety and dogged positivity that we can’t help but root for him, even when he’s getting himself into deeper and deeper trouble.

After leaving the cinema, you’re guaranteed to be gleefully singing the *NSYNC song ‘Bye Bye Bye’ over and over in your head. Red Rocket’s opening scene introduces Mikey riding into Texas on a bus as the song plays, and then it re-appears at several other key points in the story, becoming the film’s unofficial anthem.

Since the film’s premiere at Cannes Film Festival earlier in 2021 (where it was nominated for the Palme d’Or), Red Rocket has gone on to earn several other nominations for the Gotham Awards and Film Independent Spirit Awards, among others. Let’s see if it gets a nod at the Oscars when the nominations are announced in early February 2022.