‘C oolness is not a renewable resource,” says a contributor to this documentary about Vice magazine’s rise and fall. In the late 2000s and 2010s Vice grew from a punk magazine into a digital media empire by telling the world what was cool (more specifically by telling millennials, then in their cool-seeking prime). By 2017, it was valued at nearly $6bn; in 2023, Vice filed for bankruptcy. A man who saw it from the inside is TV chef Eddie Huang, the director and frontman of this film. He had a long-running show on the Viceland TV channel and says he’s still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties.

Huang is also an advert for the best of Vice: fast, funny and authentic. The film begins with plenty of “you had to be there” stories about Brooklyn before gentrification, and intervi

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