|
>yeah, we're gonna take it there.
a couple lesser films that ebert hypes like the second-coming with black stars/directors attached.
this is not stay he gets on his knees for every flick. he gave "girl 6" two stars, which still may be two too many.
all i'm saying is what the original okayplayers said themselves, "there's something going on . . ."
The Player's Club-3stars
"The Players Club," written and directed by hip-hop star Ice Cube, is a gritty black version of "Showgirls,'' set in a "gentlemen's club" where a young college student hopes to earn her tuition. Rich with colorful dialogue and characters, it's sometimes ungainly but never boring, and there's a core of truth in its portrait of exotic dancers.
Thirty years ago, this material would have been forced into the blaxploitation genre--dumbed down and predictable. But Ice Cube (who also co-stars) makes "The Players Club" observant and insightful; beneath its melodrama lurks unsentimental information about why young women do lap dances for a living, and what they think about themselves and their customers.
The movie doesn't preach, but it has values . . . I liked Ice Cube's ambition in writing so many colorful characters and juggling them all at the same time. The movie is sophisticated about its people and places.
Barbershop-3 stars
If nothing significant gets settled in the rambling barbershop conversations, at least many issues are aired, and by the end, in classic sitcom fashion, all problems have been solved. The talk is lively but goes into overdrive when Eddie is onstage; Cedric the Entertainer has the confidence, the style and the volume to turn any group into an audience, and he has a rap about Rosa Parks, Rodney King and O.J. Simpson that brought down the house at the screening I attended.
The film is ungainly in construction but graceful in delivery. I could have done without both of the subplots--the loan shark and the ATM thieves--and simply sat there in Calvin's Barbershop for the entire running time, listening to these guys talk. There is a kind of music to their conversations, now a lullaby, now a march, now a requiem, now hip-hop, and they play with one another like members of an orchestra. The movie's so good to listen to, it would even work as an audio book.
Bait-3 stars
"Bait" is a deadpan action comedy with a little Hitchcock, a little Bond and a lot of attitude. It's funny and clever . . . Just last week, in my review of "The Watcher," I was complaining about killers who spend more time devising elaborate booby-traps for the cops than in committing their crimes. Now I forgive Bristol for the same practice. It's all in how you do it--in the style.
Booty Call-3 stars
In a world where vulgarity is the new international standard, where everyday speech consists entirely of things you wouldn't want your grandmother to hear, ``Booty Call'' nevertheless represents some kind of breakthrough. Did I laugh? Sure. Did I recount some of the more incredible episodes to friends? You bet. Is the movie any good? Does goodness have anything to do with it? One of the movie's positive qualities is its hearty equality of the sexes.
Blue Streak-3 stars
"Blue Streak" ranks in the upper reaches of the cop buddy genre, up there in "Lethal Weapon" territory. It has the usual ingredients for a cop comedy, including the obligatory Dunkin' Donuts product placement, but it's assembled with style--and it's built around a Martin Lawrence performance that deserves comparison with Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, with a touch of Mel Gibson's zaniness in the midst of action.
House Party-3 stars
"House Party" is first of all a musical, and best approached in that spirit. To call it a teenage movie would confuse the characters with the subject. Yes, it's about a crowd of black teenagers who go to the same school and hang out together, and it's about their loves and rivalries and a party that one of the kids is having at his house.
In the case of "House Party," the musical is a canvas used by the director, Reginald Hudlin, to show us black teenagers with a freshness and originality that's rare in modern movies. We hardly ever see black teenagers at all in films, and when we do they're painted in images that are either negative and threatening, or impossibly clean-cut. His teenagers are neither: They're normal, average kids with the universal desire to go to a party and dance.
School Daze-3.5 stars
Spike Lee's "School Daze" is the first movie in a long time where the black characters seem to be relating to one another, instead of to a hypothetical white audience. Lee's "She's Gotta Have It" was another, and then you have to go back to films like "Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song" in 1970. Although the film has big structural problems and leaves a lot of loose ends, there was never a moment when it didn't absorb me, because I felt as if I was watching the characters talk to one another, instead of to me. In its own way, "School Daze" confronts a lot of issues that aren't talked about in the movies these days: not only issues of skin color and hair, but also the emergence of a black class, the purpose of all-black universities in an integrated society, and the sometimes sexist treatment of black women by black men. There is not a single white person in it. All of the characters, good and bad, are black, and all of the character's references are to each other.
Jungle Fever-3.5
Jungle Fever" is Spike Lee's term for unhealthy sexual attraction between the races - for relationships based on stereotypes. Too often, he believes, when blacks and whites go to bed with one another, they are motivated, not by love or affection, but by media-based myths about the sexual allure of the other race. Lee has explained this belief in countless interviews, and yet it remains the murkiest element in his new film, which is brilliant when it examines the people who surround his feverish couple . . .It contains humor and insight and canny psychology, strong performances, and the fearless discussion of things both races would rather not face.
Get on the Bus-4 stars
For the men on the bus, quite simply, ``this march is not about Farrakhan.'' We expect that the Nation of Islam member will speak up to defend his leader, but he never does, and his silence, behind his dark glasses, acts as a powerful symbol of a religion that none of the other men on the bus seem to relate to, or even care much about.
Then, in Tennessee, the reason for the march comes into sharp focus when the bus is pulled over by white cops. They bring a drug-sniffing dog on board, and treat the men in a subtle but unmistakably racist way. When the cops leave, Lee gives us a series of closeups of silent, thoughtful faces: Every black man in America has at one time or another felt charged by the police with the fact of being black.
|
Printer-friendly copy 
Email this topic to a friend
Pass The Popcorn 
.jpg)
