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Reviews
I Will Follow (2010)
One of the Best African-American films of 2011
Ava Duvernay's I Will Follow is a breath of fresh air in a stale period of African- American cinema. A beautifully crafted film that features multidimensional characters, and an thought-provoking plot I haven't seen a Black film made with this level of quality in over a decade. This is one of the best films of 2011.
Salli Richardson-Whitfield gives one of her finest performances as Maye, the niece of Amanda, a background drummer for some of the most popular musicians of the70's and 80's. After taking a year off to care for her dying aunt, she has one day to pack up all the belongings in the home she shared with her and we watch as twelve strangers help her pack her belongings into a truck and help her move forward with her life.
I Will Follow is a great movie. It's rare that we get to see these slices of African- American life presented on screen, a film where we see African-Americans as multidimensional people, expressing themselves as human beings, not like caricatures and stereotypes. This is the kind of story about Black life we hear about all the time, but it's rarely ever shown on screen in the media. It's very rare that Black actors are given material of this quality and an opportunity to perform playing multidimensional characters like this in today's media. This is the kind of African-American film I want to see made, and if I made films this would be the kind of film I would make.
The writing on this film is top notch. Many say Duvernay's story is slow, but I have no problem with the pacing of this movie. The storyline is very subtle and nuanced showing us those little things in life so many of us take for granted. It's the kind of story that can easily go over people's heads.
I've always enjoyed Salli Richardson Whitfield's work. But she takes her craft to another level in I Will Follow. Richardson effortlessly carries the film from fade in to fade out giving a powerful performance as Maye, a woman who has to hold it together in the face of so much. It's the little things in Richardson's performance that are great to watch in I Will Follow, the looks on her face, the way she carries herself with a quiet dignity, the way she conveys kindness and compassion as she handles a stressful situation. Richardson has great chemistry with every actor on screen and makes us feel a connection to all the people who she interacts with throughout the day.
The supporting cast is also very strong. Beverly Todd gives a dignified and elegant performance as Amanda, a woman who wants to end her life on her own terms. Michole Briana White is very strong as Fran, the Daughter who had a strained relationship with her mother, but is angry about the close relationship Amanda had with Maye. You feel her jealousy and anger at Maye throughout her time on screen. When she and Richardson are on screen there's intensity and tension. Dijon Halton is solid in his role as Raven, a good kid who sticks around to help Maye. I love the conversation he has with Maye about Nas and Jay-z; it's the kind of conversation people have in real life. I also loved Richardson's scenes with Omari Hardwick. There are so many great performances here, like the two Goodwill guys who add some humor and the Cancer Survivor who takes down the satellite dish. I wish I could mention everyone, because the entire cast does an amazing job of supporting this film.
I really appreciate this film and what it represents historically for Black Cinema. I Will Follow was independently financed and independently produced. More importantly, it was the first Black film independently distributed to theaters by a black distributor. Made for just $50,000 and shot in just six days I Will Follow looks like a film that cost over $40 million minimum. The cinematography on this film is beautiful with serene shots and powerful visuals that tell a strong story the viewer will never forget. Duvernay tells a great story with her camera, and her first film has me eager to see more of her work.
I Will Follow is a Shawn James Five Star Essential Video. Pick this up today!
Black Dynamite (2009)
Dyno-Mite and Outtasite! One of the best movies of 2009
Black Dynamite is one of the best films of 2009. A hilarious send up of the blaxploitation films' of the 1970's, it surpasses the quality of its 1980s contemporary I'm Gonna Git You Sucka and is on par with the Naked Gun and Airplane! parodies from that decade. You'll be talking about this movie for days and reciting the one-liners verbatim. This is one of the most fun movies I've had the pleasure to watch in a long time. Michael Jai White is Black Dynamite, a former government agent now neighborhood enforcer out for revenge when finds out his brother has been killed by The Man. That's the premise of this movie and that's all you really need to know. On his quest for revenge as he cleans up the streets there are tons of jokes based on the gaffes you'll be talking about for weeks on end. It's a conspiracy that leads all the way up to the White House and the President in a Kung-Fu climax that has to be seen to believed. Black Dynamite was one of the best movies of 2009. Forget that Avatar nonsense, THIS movie should have been nominated for some Oscars! Everything from the set design to the music is the highest quality. For a film costing about $3 million dollars the set design, costumes and cinematography and production values had the feel of a big-budget period film, and the quality was on the screen in every frame. My only complaint about this fantiastic film is there wasn't enough Salli Richardson in it! In their portrayal of the bad acting of those 1970s flicks, the entire cast gives a great performance with several standouts. Michael Jai White is awesome as Black Dynamite. This is gonna be his signature role; he takes his craft to the next level in this one. Tommy Davidson is hilarious as Cream Corn. Byron Minns steals scenes as Bullhorn. Minns feels like he was channeling the spirit of the late Rudy Ray Moore, in some frames it was like Dolemite was speaking through him! His rhymes and his one-liners are unforgettable. Kym Whitley is hilarious as Honey Bee; she channels the late Lady Reed in her portrayal of the character. Nicole Ari Parker disappears into her character and Salli Richardson is a delight to watch as Gloria. Director Scott Sanders crafts a beautiful film that looks like it could have come from the 1970's. Cinematically, there's no distinction between this 2009 film and the classic blaxploitation movies that came from the late Samuel Z Arkoff's American Interantional pictures in the 1970's. Everything here is so period accurate it's not funny! White, Sanders and Minns must have sat down and meticulously studied every blaxploitation film from the 1970's frame-by-frame. I've watched dozens of Blaxploitation films from Dolemite to Foxy Brown to Black Samurai, and all the gags the in-jokes made about the genre and this film are right on the money. Black Dynamite is a Shawn James Five Star Essential Video. I highly recommend you pick this one up NOW!
The Wrestler (2008)
A cinematic Classic we'll be talking about 30 years from now
Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler is a no-holds-barred story about life in and out of the ring. A powerful story that transcends the sports entertainment and makes a powerful commentary about relationships and the human condition, The Wrestler is one of the great films of the 21st century.
The Wrestler tells the story of Randy "The Ram" Robinson a wrestling superstar in the 1980's. Twenty years later, he's a middle-aged man living out of a trailer in New Jersey and working at a supermarket packing boxes on weekdays and independent wrestling shows at V.F.W halls on the weekends. His life is a sad, lonely existence and outside of wrestling he has very little connection to anyone save for Cassidy, an aging stripper he's trying to court. His existence is working and scraping up enough money to pay his rent, tanning sessions, and steroids to maintain his wrestling career, working towards a participating in a match celebrating the 20th Anniversary between him and the Ayatollah, now a used car salesman. He's doing okay until a brutal hardcore match with Necro Butcher. In the aftermath of that match, Randy suffers a heart attack that changes his life.
Years of wear and tear in the ring and drug abuse have caught up with Randy. Told by his doctor he can no longer wrestle, he must figure out a new way to make a life. After begging his surly boss (a powerful contrast from the supportive wrestling promoters who beg him for work), He works at the deli counter at the Supermarket. It's a painful and powerful contrasting visual as he makes his entrance into the Supermarket deli counter, one that symbolizes Randy's entrance into the real world.
Taking Cassidy's advice and tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter Stephanie. His efforts are rebuffed at first by Stephanie, but she does re-establish her connection with her father and promises to have dinner with her. However, when Cassidy rejects his advances and an opportunity at a serious relationship that night, Randy's world falls apart. Feeling lonely and hurt, Randy goes to a wrestling show to reconnect with wrestlers and wrestling fans, the only people he feels care about him, has and wild night with a female fan. As he returns home and falls asleep, he misses his dinner with Stephanie and she cuts him out of his life permanently. Recognized by a fan at the Deli counter and belittled by his boss, Randy not only quits his job, but gives up on life as well.
A man with nothing to lose and no connection to anyone or anything, Randy goes on to his final match with the Ayatollah. While Cassidy makes one last effort to reconnect Randy to the real world, he brushes her off. A hopeless and despondent Randy goes on to perform his last match with the Ayatollah. As the screen cuts to black before he comes off the top rope for the Ram Jam, the audience is left pondering if this is his last match or his last day living.
The Wrestler is a classic. I love the storytelling in this film; it gives us a brilliant insight into the wrestling business and how wrestling matches work. The writing in this film is reminiscent of Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling's early work, a social commentary about the human condition wrapped up in an entertaining story. Randy the Ram Robinson isn't just wrestling in the ring, he's a man wrestling with his own mortality and maintaining his connection to a world that has forgotten him. Outside of the ring he's a lost soul; we see how much the world that has passed him by in the scene where he's playing Nintendo with a young boy who talks about Call of Duty 4. It's like his entire world ended in 1985, from his clothes to the beat-up Dodge Ram Van he drives, he's a relic from another era trying to understand a world and people that have changed while he was grappling in the ring.
Director Darren Aronofsky's crafts a cinematic masterpiece filled with beautiful, moving visuals. Utilizing a pseudo-documentary style, Aronofsky's visuals give Randy's story grit, texture and a sense of realism. I didn't feel like I was watching a movie, I felt like I was watching real life transpiring in front of me. There are some shots that are incredibly powerful; the scenes with the old wrestlers at the convention in wheelchairs is one of the most moving pieces of film I've seen in years. We take for granted how much these athletes entertain us, and take no mind to what happens to them when they leave the ring.
The acting here is some of the best I've seen. Mickey Rourke gives the performance of his career in The Wrestler. This is Rourke's signature role, the one he will be known for generations to come. I feel he was ROBBED of an Oscar; Sean Penn needs to pack that statue and Fed Ex it to Rourke NOW. On screen Rourke disappears and becomes Randy "The Ram" Robinson. Evan Rachel Wood steals scenes as Rourke's Daughter Stephanie. Her emotions are so powerful in this film; I could feel her pain and hurt coming off the screen. I'm also wondering why she wasn't nominated for supporting actress Oscar; she was perfect in this film. Marisa Tomei is moving as Cassidy, she adds a graceful humanity to her character making us see the hardworking woman trying to make a living to take care of her family. Todd Barry Gives a solid supporting role As Wayne, the prickly supermarket manager.
The Wrestler is Shawn James Five-Star Essential DVD. It's a 21st Century Cinematic Classic; a film we'll be talking about for years to come like Sunset Boulevard and Marty, and The Hustler.
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
George Lucas does not know how to make movies anymore. perhaps he should buy a pig farm...
Revenge of the Sith should have been The Godfather of the science fiction genre, a powerful human tragedy about a good man corrupted by evil. However, because of George Lucas' inability to tell a compelling story about people, Anakin Skywalker will never be the powerful tragic figure Michael Corleone still is today. It's a shame George Lucas told the stories of the prequel trilogies from a technical/historical perspective and not a human one. What made the Original Star Wars Trilogy so great was the focus on the lives of ordinary people brought together by this intergalactic war. What makes the "Prequel" trilogy so horrible is the focus on major historical events of the war and not the people who defined them. Throughout Sith Lucas sees the intergalactic war of the Trade Federation and the Galactic Republic as something that happened in the past and treats Anakin's story as just one of the events in history. Due to this past viewpoint and historical perspective of the story, Lucas fails to develop Anakin into a three-dimensional character I could relate to. Because the story and the characters are so one dimensional, I have no reason to care about Anakin's story or his relationships with the other characters like Papaltine, Padame, The Jedi Council or Obi Wan. When Anakin turns to the Dark Side it has no impact on me. It's just another insignificant event in the larger history of the Star Wars universe. This type of indifferent perspective is good for a history book, bad for a movie where we need to care about the characters in order to be involved with the story. There are all these great tragic stories about people affected by this intergalactic war in Sith. However, without the three-dimensional human characters to give them depth and dimension, they have no heart and no soul. Sith quickly deteriorates from a tragic movie into a poorly made series of intergalactic history channel documentary reenactments with the artificial feel of a LucasArts PC game. In just two and a half hours, the Galactic Republic falls, most of the Jedis are all killed, Anakin becomes Darth Vader, the twins are born, Padame dies of a broken heart (ridiculous) and Obi-wan and Yoda go into seclusion. Because of Lucas' obsession with only technical aspects of the film, the acting from the humans is horrible in this movie. I won't be too hard on the actors; they aren't the reason Revenge of the Sith is a disaster. That blame falls squarely on George Lucas' shoulders. He micromanaged the actors so much that they couldn't perform well. He nitpicked the way every line was said, they way every facial expression was made; the way every lightsaber stroke was slashed. Having been micromanaged myself in jobs, I can tell you no employee performs well in this type of environment. Someone needs to tell Mr. Lucas that movie projects are a collaborative effort and you have to trust your actors' ability to perform if you want them to act naturally. Due to the micromanaging, Hayden Christensen is wretched in the role of Anakin Skywalker. He says his no lines with any emotion, he has no chemistry with Ian McDarmind Ewan McGregor or Natalie Portman. His "expressions" of anger are sadly a laugh riot. Natalie Portman is just a nightmare as Padame Amidala. She says her lines as if she were reading them off the page. Samuel L. Jackson gives his second worst performance in a movie (see The Man for the first) as Mace Windu. He looks so stressed out in some scenes it's just troubling. Ian McDarmind hams it up as Papaltine taking the character way over the top. Ewan McGregor tries to add dimension to Obi-Wan Kenobi, but the script he's given is too puerile to work with. Jimmy Smits is the only actor to perform well in this movie. In his limited time on screen, he gives Senator Bail Organa the dimension needed to make me care about him. With the exception of Smits, everyone should just take this trilogy off the resume on the back of their headshots. It's just not their best work. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of these three disastrous prequel films is what transpired behind the camera over the past sixteen years. In his isolation, George Lucas, a once hardworking good man has become so corrupted by wealth, greed, and power (The Dark Side of Hollywood) that he no longer understands what human elements make a movie great. ROTS and the entire prequel trilogy will sadly go down in history as just another by-product of today's corrupted movie-making craft that thinks fake looking computer generated special effects are superior to compelling human storytelling and character development. Hollywood filmmakers like Lucas have become so obsessed with what computers can do that the art of movies is losing its humanity. And without a human touch, fantasy movies like ROTS just aren't realistic enough to be compelling to the audience. Some advice to the former gurus of the Science Fiction and fantasy genre such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, The Wachowski Brothers, and the people at Paramount who let the Star Trek collapse into a black hole: Science Fiction and fantasy are stories about PEOPLE. The primary focus of the story is the human characters relate to each other and how they live life in these strange and exotic worlds. The main point is to make a commentary our modern society and the culture of today. All those aliens on the screen and those high tech widgets are secondary to the stories about the relationships of the characters.
Play a Jedi Mind trick on yourself. Episodes I, II and III do not exist. Episodes IV, V, and VI are the only parts of the true Star Wars saga.
How U Like Me Now (1992)
Roberts makes an inspiring thought provoking film. Salli Richardson gives an excellent performance
I admit my only reason for buying the DVD of How U Like Me Now as a birthday present for myself is because I'm a huge Salli Richardson fan. I was surprised to learn that Writer, Director and Producer Darryl Roberts has made a very inspired satire about lives and loves of African-Americans in Chicago. After watching this intelligent, hilarious and thought provoking DVD, it has become one of my favorite movies. How U like me now is the story of Thomas, a slacker who spends a lot of time hanging with his buddies, drinking beers and going to work when he wants to. His girlfriend Valerie wants him to do something with his life, but Thomas is too busy feeling sorry for himself to change things. Fed up with him, she starts to date a rich white man thinking he'll treat her better. When she finds out that the white guy treats her worse, she decides to go back to Thomas. However, when she goes knocking on his door, Thomas has taken time to better himself and is seeing a supportive sista he met at work. In this simple story Roberts adds many abstract layers and makes many comments about the black community and how blacks relate to each other. I recommend you watch the film twice to really understand it. How U Like Me now is one of those the rare African-American films that is not only a comedy, but also a social commentary about the state of the overall black community. The film is quite symbolic; each of the characters represents a section of the black community. The main character Thomas represents the black everyman frustrated with the direction of his life in white society and feels there's no way of changing it so he gives up. Valerie represents the educated black woman frustrated by the progress of her black man as compared to White men in American society. Spoony (He reminds me a lot of Quagmire on Family Guy) represents the hedonistic young black male concerned only with physical pleasure. Alex represents the Black conservative Uncle Toms, wanting to be white, perpetrating pretentiousness but in actuality is just like everyone else, struggling to survive. There are two dark skinned females who represent gold diggers and strong women, and a gay character representing black homosexuals. Roberts himself portrays a character that represents intelligent self-aware African Americans striving for self-empowerment and self-fulfillment. He spends most of the movie trying to pass knowledge onto his friends so they'll wake up, but no one listens to him. This rounds out the circle of friends in this Chicago neighborhood and shows us the diversity of viewpoints in the overall black community. Darnell Williams is great as Thomas. Williams expresses Thomas' frustration extremely well I could relate to his struggles because they're the same ones I face everyday. I'm an even bigger Salli Richardson fan after watching this movie. She gives one of her best performances as Valerie. She has great chemistry with Williams and does an amazing job of conveying Valerie's emotions. Watching her facial expressions during and after the film's only sex scene (I am so glad they actually had the characters discuss sex and relationships maturely instead of having people just roll in the hay in a gratuitous romp) made me realize how great an actress she is. She made that scene feel incredibly realistic! Those scenes and the scenes she has while staying at her mother's house are worth the price of the DVD alone; this is ACTING. Darryl Gardner is hilarious as Spoony, stealing every scene he's in. Raymond Whitfield does a great job playing Alex capturing the arrogance of the character. I wanted to slap him. Charnele Brown is great in her few scenes and Roberts himself is quite good as the self-aware brother no one listens to. The guy who plays the gay hairdresser does a great job; I'm so glad he didn't portray his character as a flamboyant cartoonish stereotype but instead played him as just an ordinary man who likes men. I'm sure I'm missing some people, but, everyone involved in this film should give themselves a round of applause. They've done a wonderful job of making these characters into real people who lived in the Chicago neighborhood. The production values on this film are great, considering the low budget. Filming the entire movie on location actually works to Roberts' advantage allowing him to create a movie that feels like real life transpiring on screen. I felt the grittiness of early 90's Chicago in every frame. Shooting out of real shops and homes gives How U Like Me Now a heart and soul most other Hollywood produced black films don't have. Roberts writes a strong screenplay with only a few weak lines of dialogue and has a few story elements missing. In trying to tell the story the Roberts' direction is a little uneven and has some transition and cohesion problems, but the story and the message are easy to understand. My only beef is with Xenon on the crappy treatment they gave this great movie. Xenon printed this disc on the cheap making a bare bones one-sided wide screen DVD with no trailer or any extras. I would have loved to see some extra features and deleted scenes of this film. Better yet, I'd love to see a Director's cut of this movie with the deleted scenes added in. I know there were many important parts of this story cut out to make the 109-minute running time.
Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)
Does not capture the spirit of the book
The Oprah Winfrey Presents adaptation of the Zora Neal Hurston novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is a major disappointment. Winfrey's shallow adaptation barely skims the surface details of Hurston's novel and does not capture the spirit of the great book it is based on. Winfrey says the late Ms. Hurston would be proud of her movie; I don't think she should be so eager to speak for the dead. I doubt any author would want to see their work butchered the way Winfrey has done this novel on screen. Oprah Winfrey's adaptation of Hurston's work strips it of its unique identity by removing all the references to African-American culture of the time. Instead of telling a story that detailed the role of Black women in the 30's, detailed the light skinned/dark skinned intraracial issues, sexism, the dozens, symbolism, and utilized the wonderful Southern dialect that made the characters come alive, we get a pasteurized movie that boils away the black culture away like it was an impurity. Without that culture to show us what life was like in Janie's time the movie lacks a true heart and soul. This makes the characters lifeless and one-dimensional. Stripped of her soul, Janie Crawford in this movie becomes a totally different person than depicted in the novel. Because I never got to see the childhood that would have defined the characters' independent free thinking ways, I saw Janie as a slut when she kissed the boy. When Nanny says, "black women are the mule of the world" the words have no meaning. Her marriage to the old man comes off as a way to preserve Janie's morality not stifle her independent way of thinking. Because Winfrey decided to remove all instances of domestic violence from her movie Janie has no motivation for leaving her first husband. In the book she left the old man because he beat her. On screen she comes off as lazy and irresponsible when she hates doing the work on the farm. When she meets Joe Starks it looked to me like she was a gold-digger wanting to live the high life. When Janie gets married to Joe Starks the movie turns into a bad romance novel. He wants to possess her; she regrets letting him objectify her. He only gets angry when Amos is coveting her. The confrontation Joe and Janie had was supposed to build into a humiliating argument that destroyed him as a man. On screen the fight comes on the porch has no bite because Winfrey removed the dozens game and most of the violence from the movie. When Joe dies the film treats his death with a sense of relief. I really started hating this movie because Janie on screen seemed downright cruel. She barely worked a day in her life and was more anxious to spend her husband's money than grieve his loss. The relationship with Tea Cake in the book is not as loving as depicted on screen. Winfrey subjectively decided to leave out of her movie all those scenes in the book where Tea Cake beat Janie in an attempt to make him a big hero. After a flat courtship, they leave town to go on the road spending money and engaging in some lukewarm love scenes. Winfrey makes Tea Cakes' abuse of Janie seem like it's honorable. When he steals Janie's money to go gambling it's depicted as noble. Janie just forgives him for gambling away their money and car and they go off to live in a village full of hippies. The climatic hurricane sequence has no feeling of drama at all. The scenes where rabid Tea Cake and Janie face off before killing him have no tension and no suspense. Arbitrarily Oprah leaves out the funeral scene in the novel where Janie grieves the loss of her true love. What's really important are those frames showing that Janie is still wealthy in spite of her tragedies. Upon returning to town in the end Janie shows absolutely no sense of remorse about killing Tea Cake, the great love of her life. She goes fishing and frolicking as if nothing tragic has happened in her life swimming in the lake she says smiling that she's watching God. That final shot of her made my stomach turn. The Janie Crawford in this movie doesn't make me believe she comes to the conclusion that she loves herself. I see her as a loose gold digging ruthless woman who takes no responsibility for her actions. The men in her life were just fodder to give her nice things. Inheriting Joe Starks' wealth made her someone. Nice message Oprah. Oscar winner Halle Berry is uninspired in the role of Janie. She makes no effort on her own to add dimension to the character, sleepwalking through her part reading her lines as if she were on autopilot. She has no chemistry with Reuben Santiago-Hudson or Michael Ealy at all. Having watched all of Berry's performances since 1989, I can truly say this is the worst performance of her career. She actually put more effort performing in the terrible B.A.P.S than working on this movie. Rueben Santiago-Hudson is passable as Joe Starks. He does his best with the role but there's no script here for him to work with. Terrence Howard's portrayal of Amos rises above the heartless screenplay. He adds dimension to his role making you see the sleazy man coveting Janie from afar. Michael Ealy is a very stale Tea Cake. He's just here to be the baby oil splashed boy toy showing off his abs, pecs and smiling for the camera. Ruby Dee is strong in her small part as Nanny. I believe if they gave her more to do she would have stolen the movie. If you haven't read the book, please do so. Avoid watching this twisted movie adaptation that perverts everything the late Ms. Hurston wrote about. The values promoted by this movie totally betray the message in the book.