1917

Have you ever had a friend try and talk you into doing something that wound up being a lot worse than they originally let on? The answer is yes, I’m sure but there’s a huge difference between someone getting you to try a cream cheese filled cupcake and you fearing for your life. Well, when it came to me being bamboozled by my girlfriend, the latter came into play. Recently, we went to Marfa, TX to celebrate our birthdays and while we were down there, she thought that it would be a great idea for us to go hiking in Big Bend.

She let me know that it was only a four- or five-mile hike and considering the fact that I run four miles a day, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal for me. Keep in mind that I grew up a sheltered black boy in the South, so the only hiking I was accustomed to was hiking to the grocery store to get more oil for the weekly fish fry in my dad’s backyard; so needless to say, I had no idea what I was in for.

We get to this mountain, and I do mean mountain, and I thought to myself, there’s no way in hell we’re going all the way to the top, it’s like 20 miles straight up. But I couldn’t let my girlfriend see the fear in my eyes, so I pressed on. Sadly however, as we kept walking, I told her that I needed a break, we had to be at least 2 miles in…we had only walked like a half mile at that point. And it was at this point that I noticed the signs all around us that told us to hide all our food and to beware of bears and mountain lions. Fucking bears and mountain lions?!?!? This was never presented to me in her pitch!

So now I’m forced to make a choice, if as were climbing Mt. Everest, I see a mountain lion jump out and attack my girl, do I jump in and help her out or do I use what little energy I had left to escape? Well I am not ashamed to admit that I chose the escape option. Sorry baby, the mountain lion already had white meat, there’s no need for me to jump in and give him a buffet with dark meat too! I’ll post our trip on Instagram, you’ll live forever in my memories or at least until the next Instagram comes along. I’ll be single by the time she reads this.

Anyway, that’s pretty much the premise of writer/director Sam Mendes’s (Skyfall, American Beauty) latest offering in 1917. When I first saw the title of this film, my initial thought was “Oh great! More people reminiscing about the ‘good old days’ that weren’t so great for my people”. But when I realized that it was a war movie about white people shooting other white people, I was immediately onboard! I’m kidding, I’m kidding of course, for all you super sensitive people. Well, sort of anyway. I did think that Mendes had it in him to give us a fresh perspective on WWI and as it turns out, I was right.

The story starts off by a random commander walking up to Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman -Tommen from Game of Thrones) and telling him to grab someone to go with him to headquarters. He of course grabs his buddy, Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) who’s sleeping and has no idea what he’s about to get into. Well once they get to headquarters, they are surprised to see that the General is there to task them with an important mission that could save over 1,600 lives; including that of Blake’s brother.

The British army is about to walk into a German trap and they have less than 24 hours to get the message over to them. And the General feels as though Blake will obviously risk life and limb to get this message over to the commanding officer in time as his family member’s life is on the line. So off he goes with his friend, who is now unwittingly in the shit with him, to walk in the middle of a war zone to save hundreds of lives. What makes this film more engaging and moving than that of a similar film in Dunkirk, is that while no backstory is given for these characters either, Mendes employs a filming trick to make it seem as though the entire movie is filmed in one shot. So, you get up close and personal with these characters and it feels as though you’re the first player in an RPG (role playing game for all my old peeps out there). You feel every bomb that goes off near them and are dodging every bullet that whizzes by them. And as you go through these experiences together, it feels as though you’re getting to know these characters on a personal level. You’re suffocating along with them as they’re being buried in falling rubble or are falling into a raging river. You’re leery as you’re about to come to the top of a hill with no idea if an ambush is awaiting you or not. And you start to think to yourself, if only the colonel had the new iPhone 11, we could simply send him a text message about the upcoming ambush and go hit up the nearest pub for a proper pint and some footie (that’s my attempt to be British). But then you realize that it’s only 1917 and that the phone was only invented just a few decades earlier, so you settle back in and continue this journey with your newfound brothers in arms.

And what else is so great about this filming style is that it puts the production design on full display. Dennis Gassner (production design) and cinematographer Roger Deakins should run away with the Oscar in both categories as what they were able to accomplish added yet another level to the storytelling. They were able to show the atrocities of war without ever really zeroing in on a specific item or a singular happening. Instead, as you embark on this journey with Blake and Schofield, you can’t help but notice the maimed bodies of fellow soldiers you’re crawling over in the mud or the innocent animals that are caught in the barb wire you’re trying to avoid. Every dark corner or shattered home could be the hiding place of a German soldier just waiting to take you out. The whole film is super intense and you cannot wait until you reach a safe place where you can finally catch your breath. But then it’s in that moment that you realize it’s just a matter of time before they send you off with Blake and Schofield on yet another dangerous mission even if you are successful in this one. And that’s the beauty of this film, it says and accomplishes so much without beating a preachy message into you.

I clearly loved this film as Sam Mendes once again proves that he’s one of the best directors in the game. I suggest that you go see this film, especially since we are a country that’s on the brink of war. I give this movie a rating of very FRESH!

Just Mercy

You would think that in my old age I would recognize a setup when I see one but sadly, I keep getting seduced by tasty drinks, loud music, and BBQ. What can I say, it’s in my genes! This past weekend I got frat boy drunk. But not in the annoying and sexually assaulting way you would normally associate with such a statement, I was Black frat boy drunk which is something totally different. What do I mean by this? Well this weekend was Free Week, meaning that there were a ton of venues that offered free music; so if you walked into a spot and the music sucked, you could easily walk right back out and hit up another spot  with little to no investment on your part. But of course, you cannot do all this bar hopping without at the very least sampling the drinks they offer in each establishment.

Well suffice it to say that I didn’t realize how many bars I popped into and how many drinks I had until it was too late. It was at the point that I was eating pizza and shouting the lyrics of Ice Cube and Dr. Dre’s Serial Killer that it occurred to me that this was the confession Austin PD had been waiting for all along! This is all they needed to incarcerate yet another Black man. I ran as fast as I could while throwing away my hoodie and shouting “I have asthma” (I don’t have asthma btw) to anyone in sight to ensure that I made it home safely!

Once I made it home, I figured I was finally in the right mindset to see the latest drama Just Mercy, the story of a Black man who was on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. Now I know that I just tried to make light of what life is like for a Black man in America but you must do these types of things to keep from crying. And sadly, you will do plenty of that while watching this film. Trust me, I had the same questions and concerns you have when I walked into this film. What makes this any different from the dozens of court room dramas we’ve seen on racism before? Well when you come to the realization that there are dozens of stories out there about mafia life and white girls having sex in NYC, it’s totally okay for you to listen to yet another story about racism, legalized slavery, and an unfair justice system.

What makes this story different is that most of it doesn’t occur in a court setting. The reason for that is because most of the cases social justice activist and death row public defender Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) takes on don’t have enough evidence to even make it to trial. But as Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx) points out to Bryan, it doesn’t matter because the second you’re born with this skin color in Alabama, you’re guilty of whatever they want you to be. That is unless you play football for Nick Saban, then you exonerated for at least four years (my personal commentary not Walter’s). This is the world we live in.

Bryan is a young Harvard graduate who recently passed the bar. He decided to take on cases like this because while he was an intern, he met and connected with an inmate who was on death row who happened to be the same age as him. And it was in that moment he realized that most of these people don’t get or can’t afford proper representation. Now there are one or two moments that, on the surface, appear to be a bit preachy, especially if you’re pro death penalty, but as they tell their stories, you realize that this movie accomplishes what good movies should accomplish; and that is to tell the stories  that rarely get heard. Trust me when I tell you that you don’t need to hear about how Lena Dunham banged yet another hipster in Brooklyn at least for a week. For just a moment, take a look at the world through the eyes of someone from a different culture and background.

There are quite a few gut-wrenching moments in this film; from Bryan witnessing his first execution to listening to the heartbreaking story of how an inmate’s childhood tragedy was used to manipulate not only him but the outcome of Walter’s trial. But what’s truly scary is how natural being a racist is to some of these actors. It’s great to see Rafe Spall go from being the annoying teenager in Shaun of the Dead to the unscrupulous district attorney in Oscar worthy films but boy it sure seemed like a seamless transition for him. And I know that’s a credit to his acting ability but man, you could at least see Leo struggling with his role as Calvin Candie in Django Unchained. But for Rafe it seemed like he was being his natural self, much like Samuel Jackson in Django as the race betraying Uncle Tom, Stephen. I can still hear Sam as he shouted “We have to get these mf’n n’s off the mf’n Underground Railroad as fast as we mf’n can! And yes, they deserve to die and I hope they burn in hell!”

Anyway, if you want to open your mind and take a look into how the justice system is flawed, see flawless performances by actors at the top of their game, and be taken on an emotional ride, I strongly suggest that you see this film. I give this film a rating of FRESH!

American Animals

A few years ago I went on a date with this girl who told me she had just graduated from Transylvania University. At first, I thought that she was just pulling my chain (outdated phrase) but when I noticed that she never started laughing and simply continued on with the conversation as normal, I finally came to the realization that she wasn’t. Now I get that I will never be confused with being the smartest cookie in the batch (yes, I just called that metaphor into existence) but I can’t be the only one who has ever thought that she was referencing the same place that once gave us Dracula from the classic film Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School. Is Dracula really real? Do they study blood at this university? Is everyone required to eat Count Dracula cereal in the morning?

These were all of the burning questions that immediately sprung up in my mind after she said that and I so desperately wanted to ask her these things. Now a normal human being would have simply waited until she went to the restroom and then Googled these inquires before breaking them out on their date but not me! I couldn’t wait, I had to know! Well as you can imagine, she thought I was a moron for asking her such ridiculous questions and we never went on a second date. I personally thought that it would be cool if one of your school’s prerequisites was that you had to eat sugar covered ghosts every morning but maybe that’s why she’s now rich and traveling the world and I’m stuck writing grade school level movie reviews for free. Oh well, my broke Winona Ryder is out there somewhere; she’ll laugh at my terrible jokes. That was a true story by the way.

Who knew that Transylvania University was actually a real school in Lexington, Kentucky and that it had an average enrollment of around 1,000 students? And an even lesser known fact is that it is also the home of some of the rarest books on Earth, all of whose value is worth millions of dollars. And that’s where the film American Animals comes in. Just when I thought my moment of embarrassment was forever behind me, Hollywood had to stick it in my face one more time!

Well as you can imagine, life in Kentucky gets pretty slow at times and you run out of creative inspiration rather quickly. You can only paint so many portraits of Rick Pitino with black prostitutes before it’s time to move on to the next thing. And trust me, painting Black women’s booties can be stimulating but it’s also an all day job and it’s something that’s not easily handled by the faint of heart. So Spencer, who actually attended Transylvania University at the time, decided to team up with the University of Kentucky’s Warren, a free spirit whose ideas on challenging the status quo wound up being a negative influence on Spencer and ultimately led him down the wrong path in life.

One day after touring the library and being introduced to the secure location that houses these books, Spencer sort of casually brings it up to Warren who immediately sees it as their opportunity to never have to work for the man again. So they begin to devise a plot that, in their minds, required minimum risk and led to a quick payout. But as they gathered more information and realized the difficult task that was before them, they decided to recruit two more Transylvania students to help with reconnaissance (Eric) and the getaway driving (Chas). Will they actually go through with it? Or will one of the many signs that this is a great idea on paper but a horrible idea in real life finally make them come to their senses? I’ll let you guess what direction they wound up taking.

Part of what makes this film so cool is the fact that it’s a mix of standard storytelling; characters living out the plot as it happens, and the actual people who attempted this crime in real life recounting their versions of story. And as the latter happens, you get to see how the movie’s characters act out the varying versions of the story. Did some things actually happen or were certain events just a fantastical tale to help keep the others interested?

The involvement of the actual people was a bit annoying at first, simply because it felt like you were watching Season 1 of Parks and Rec, a season that’s universally hated by everyone. But as the story got darker, you noticed an eerie chill creep throughout the entire theater as you watched these people relive these moments in their minds. The raw emotion that this situation evoked is something that I won’t soon forget. One moment you’re just looking at kids act out what was essentially a research assignment and the next you’re watching them become the low level and scrubby versions of Val Kilmer and Robert Deniro in Heat.

I have to say that I was a bit skeptical of this film at first because Movie Pass kept hyping it up to me in their stupid app of their. But as it turned out, they took my $10 a month and delivered a solid film. Now if we could only pay Rian Johnson ten bucks to go back and remake The Last Jedi, we’d be on to something. I give American Animals a rating of FRESH!

 

Hostiles

Cedar season is once again upon us and as you can imagine, it has absolutely floored me! I can’t see, breathe, smell, or feel anything but pain! And because it has completely incapacitated me, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the past; most of which has brought back some pretty sad memories. I looked back and realized that most of the people that I considered to be my heroes in life have either turned out to be complete scrubs, creeps, or in some cases both! And it was upon this realization that I immediately became angry and refused to acknowledge any positive contribution they’ve made to society. But as is always the case with me, I, for whatever reason, cannot hold a grudge! I start off on fire but I inevitably cave in and wind up forgiving them after simply sipping on a beer or two and listening to an old school Radiohead album.

We all know what allegedly happened between Michael Jackson and those kids at that ranch of his but after thinking about it for a bit, I figured if something awful like that really took place, there’s no way in hell a Macaulay Culkin would have ended up with Mila Kulnis. After an experience like that, you either turn into Pee Wee Herman and get caught jerking off in a porn theater or you end up married to Oprah Winfrey and wind up jerking off in your own private theater, while Gayle watches of course; there really is no in between. And while neither of those actually sound all that bad, they are still a far cry from the Russian beauty that is Kulnis!

Bill Cosby is yet another hero of mine who let me down but he also gave me Lisa Bonet so that automatically gives him a free pass. Now Christian Bale’s antics on the other hand, took quite a bit longer for me to forgive and forget. Is it simply because he’s a pompous white male? No but that certainly is a fair question for you to ask. It took me longer to forgive Bale because he played the role of Batman, yet another childhood hero of mine. Was he the best Batman ever? No but The Dark Knight is easily the best Batman film to ever grace the big screen and you certainly expect someone who is a part of something that big to carry themselves in a respectable manner. You can’t be caught on camera berating the behind the scenes people who helped you get your $15 million per movie. Now is this the same as getting little kids drunk or serving women roofi coladas just so they’ll have sex with you? No but neither of those actions led to the making of Terminator Salvation! How can you ruin the Terminator franchise with just one film?!?! It’s an American treasure; the Sci-Fi version of Huck Finn! This is nearly an impossible feat!

Well once I ran into Bale at the Austin City Limits Music Festival and witnessed just how awesome he was being to a little kid who simply wanted to meet Batman, I immediately forgot about his tirade and forgave the guy who also ruined Michael Mann’s (Heat, Last of the Mohicans) career with his performance in Public Enemies. And this is what the movie Hostiles is all about; facing those who have done you wrong and trying to find it in your heart to forgive them. In Hostiles, writer/director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Black Mass) gives us a Western that is not only beautifully shot but is also reflective and atmospheric. And instead of simply copying some of its genre’s most world renowned classics, he instead uses those films as inspiration to build off of.

In it, Bale plays Captain Joseph J. Blocker, a Union soldier who is visibly worn down and almost defeated after years of war and corralling hostile Native Americans in the Western United States. He has become a legend of sorts for both his acts in the field of battle and for taking down some of the country’s fiercest tribal leaders, one of which happens to be his biggest rival, Chief Yellow Hawk. Hawk has killed and scalped some of Blocker’s closest friends while also brutally murdering anyone he and his tribe considered to be invaders of their land. Now some would argue that they had every right to do so seeing as how this land belonged to them in the first place but for Blocker, political reasons didn’t play a role in his feelings at all. All he witnessed was the death of his friends and the savage murder of innocent women and children. So this is purely personal for him. Well as fate would have it, his final assignment as a member of the U.S. army is to escort Yellow Hawk and his family back to their homeland so that he can die in peace. This is strictly a P.R. move for a country that is facing its fair share of scrutiny for the way it has handled Native Americans in both the taking of their land and the treatment of them after their capture.

Well as you can imagine, the icy relationship that exists between the two almost comes to a head on many occasions but once they run into Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), a recently widowed woman who had to witness the brutal murder her entire family by an Apache tribe, Blocker is forced to reconsider his view of Hawk. This blood thirsty tribe is still out there and they have proven that they don’t live by an honorable code of any sort; so they will kill anyone who gets in the way of whatever it is that they want. Does Blocker continue to treat Hawk like a dangerous prisoner who can kill him at any moment or can he trust him and his family to help him fight off these wild Apaches?

Now keep in mind what I mentioned earlier, this is not your traditional Western; it takes its time in telling its story and sometimes it simply uses shots of the landscape to help in doing so. There are some killer shootout scenes in it but there are also quite a few moments where the film seemingly creeps its way to a slow halt. Perhaps a better editing team could have helped in this regard but it’s not like you’re watching the four and half hour long Dances with Wolves or the 10 hour long Wyatt Earp; you’re watching a wonderfully told story of love, family, regret, and forgiveness all wrapped in one!

I must admit that it’s refreshing to not see a Western that has Johnny Depp playing the role of an Indian with a stupid dead bird on his head! I mean, seriously, I think he had one too many go rounds with the peyote out there at The Joshua Tree. So once you take into account the fact that Hollywood didn’t force any of its typical racism in this film, you can’t help but give Hostiles a rating of FRESH!

I, Tonya

Everyone always talks about how weird the 80’s were but I think that’s only because we were so full of anger and angst during the 90’s that when bizarre stuff actually went down during that decade, we chose to immediately condemn it rather than simply appreciating it for its beauty. For instance, I was one of the few who actually appreciated the awful but awesome RnB group, Color Me Badd! And yes, that’s Badd with two D’s because their music had that much of an effect on the ladies; if you know what I mean. This group had everything you could ever want in a young professionals boy band, including amazing song titles like I Wanna Sex You Up and I Adore, Me Amore. They also represented the very best of America at the time. They had the Black guy with dreads who looked like a bigger version of Chappelle’s Jamaican stoner in Half Baked, "I’m from the beach, booooooy!" They had the Don Johnson look-a-like with the permanent 5 o’clock shadow, a wannabe reject from the hip hop group 3 ^{rd Base, and of course a pasty white guy who rocked a ponytail and a pirate shirt.}

Now while most people hated on the dude with the pirate shirt, I had to give him mad props. Do you know the kind of balls it takes to rock a ponytail AND a pirate shirt?!?! I’ve only seen one other man come close to such greatness and that was when MC Hammer rocked the greasy Jeri Curl mullet and Hammer pants; his personal ode to Patrick Swayze when he paired the OG mullet with tight sweat pants in Roadhouse.

Well the point of all of this is that we didn’t truly appreciate all that Tonya Harding brought to our lives when her idiot associates decided to break Nancy Kerrigan’s knee just outside the skating rink on that unbelievable day. Their hope was that this would give Tonya a free path to competing in the Olympics in the event’s most watched sport at the time. I know that it’s hard to believe now but everyone loved figure skating at the time; watching young women skating to the sound of symphonies while dressed up in half bathing suits/half formal dresses was the highlight of your winter. It was a sport for high society and only people of a certain ilk were allowed to be a part of it on this level. And this is why everyone was in awe when Harding and her bat shit crazy family tried to literally bully their way in. It was like the white trash version of Goodfellas but on ice! But once the video of Kerrigan was on the television of every household in America, it was a wrap for poor Harding; she was instantly hated by everyone and at the same time became the butt of every comedian’s jokes.

Well in I, Tonya, director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) tells the side of Harding’s story that no one ever cared to listen to back in the day. He shows you how her crazy mother (played by Allison Janney) almost turned her love for skating into a nightmare by pushing her too hard and practically sabotaging every relationship she tried to form, including her relationship with her coach and her first ever boyfriend, a boy who eventually became her husband.

You also see how she fought to overcome her socioeconomic status to even be considered on the same level of skaters who weren’t nearly as talented as her but fit the overall profile that American judges were looking for at the time. It was a little heartbreaking really because all she ever wanted to do was skate and feel some sense of normalcy but that’s hard to do when your father had you hunting for rabbits so you could make your own fur coat or when your mother’s best friend is a parakeet that literally lived on her shoulder like she was the female version of Popeye.

Gillespie does an amazing job of capturing just how odd, tragically funny, and surreal this whole ordeal was. And I’m talking about everything that happened in her life before the incident. Things went up another notch after the knee breaking episode. The fact that she was still allowed to compete, that she missed the Opening ceremonies, her laces broke while trying to compete, and that her bodyguard went on national television and claimed to be an international spy makes it seem as if this was nothing more than some dark Saturday Night Live skit on a random weekend. But sadly all of this actually happened and reliving it made me feel like an idiot for not truly appreciating what I was living through at the time. However I must admit that I also felt like a sheep for falling in line with the rest of the world and instantly hating Harding mainly because I was told to do so. Now I’m not saying that this film will make you become a Harding apologist but I am saying that it will at least make you hear the other side for a change; something I think this country is in dire need of at the moment.

Margot Robbie is a bona fide star and her performance alone makes this film worth watching. I give I, Tonya a rating of VERY FRESH!
 

Molly's Game

I am so thankful that my gambling days are finally behind me. I’ll never forget the day that I got hooked; it was like something out of one of those crappy After School Specials. I’m not quite sure how any of us really knew this guy because he didn’t go to our school or hang out in any of our circles but it was as if he just magically appeared out of thin air in our living room one day like some greasy Guido genie. He sat in the Lazy Boy chair of our apartment in between our classes (he somehow knew our schedules), and started reading off the lines of the coming weekend’s games. Next thing I know, I have $50 of my hard earned college money on Ricky Williams and UT to cover a 10 point spread against UTEP. Well wouldn’t you know it; I actually won! And after that I found myself betting every weekend and making shady calls into some random number while placing bets with a guy who I’m 100% certain looked like Drax from The Guardians of the Galaxy. But as I’m sure you’ve already guessed by now, it was just a matter of time before I wound up losing every weekend.

My lowest point came when I was in Vegas betting on my favorite team, the Dallas Cowboys, a well-known no-no in gambling at the time, and they not only lost the game but didn’t cover in the most improbable of ways. So there I was already drunk in the early morning, laying in the middle of the giant floor of the sports betting area as people literally stepped over me while laughing on their way to collect their winnings. And it was in this moment that I realized that I should probably just go back to my days of playing drinking games with my roommate while blasting random RnB artists like Barry White from our stereo. What can I say, we were pretty weird back then.

Well seeing Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut in Molly’s Game brought back all of those terrible memories for me. This film is the real life story of Molly Bloom, a single woman who wound up running two of the nation’s biggest and most exclusive high stakes poker games in history. She found her way into this shady underworld after failing, in of the most painful ways, to qualify for the Olympics. And after experiencing what she considered to be the lowest point in her life, she decided to take some time off before going to law school. And while she worked as the personal assistant for one of the biggest douchebags in L.A. she found herself running one his underground poker games which included some of the biggest names in Hollywood. It wasn’t long before she learned the ropes of the poker world and decided to break out on her own with of the game’s best players, Player X.

At first, things were going well until one day Molly found out that Player X was up to some shady antics. And after confronting him about it, his ego took over and he ultimately took the game away from her. But Molly was determined to keep her new lifestyle, so she decided to take her skills and her game to New York where she’s dealing with businessmen and Russians who turn out to be linked to the mafia. And this is where things started to take a turn for the worse.

Idris Elba plays Molly’s lawyer who is working the court system to the best of his ability to help get her off with as light of a sentence as possible. He reluctantly takes the case but eventually does so after realizing that she wasn’t as awful of a person as the tabloids were painting her out to be. Or at least that’s what writer/director Sorkin wants us to believe. If you’ve ever seen a Sorkin film (A Few Good Men, The Social Network) then you know going in to expect a lot of preachy and snappy dialogue; and Molly’s Game turns out to be no different. He doesn’t quite paint Molly as a slightly misguided saint but he comes pretty damn close. And to her credit, Jessica Chastain does an amazing job of showing you the real woman who was behind some of these questionable decisions. Was she an enabler of one of life’s most addicting habits? Yes but at least she never sold out her clients for money.

The acting and the intrigue of seeing some of Hollywood’s elite turn into complete jerks (Player X is actually Tobey Maguire in real life) is what makes this movie stand out. Elba and Chastain have great chemistry and Michael Cera actually nails the character of Player X. He’s the scariest kind of evil because to him, treating people badly is the same as eating a bowl of cereal in the morning; it’s really just a part of his mundane daily routine. And again, it’s Sorkin, so you know the writing is on point, even if it does sound like you’re attending one of those traveling revivals in a tent in the middle of the country somewhere.

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed this film and I give it a rating of pretty FRESH!

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

I’ve had some pretty low moments in my lifetime but few beat the early morning or late night moment I had recently when I seriously spent 20 minutes looking for the piece of pizza that I had just eaten. Apparently I passed out after attempting to convince my friends to come over and keep the party going at 3 in the morning and in the process had forgotten that I had just engulfed the last slice of Via 313 in my fridge. Now in my defense, Via is the Chick Fil-A of pizza; it’s crack that will have people lining up for it a 2 in the afternoon on a Saturday! So I couldn’t help but crave it seeing as how my body was going through withdrawals! But alas, I just had to let that and any prospect of hooking up go as I decided to once again pass out and call it a night.

Well this is what poor Mildred (Frances McDormand) had to be feeling over the tragic and horrific loss of her daughter in Martin McDonough’s latest, Three Billboards. And yes, I know that on the surface the two seem like a ridiculous comparison but you’ve never had Via 313 before!

In Billboards, Mildred is dealing with the grief of losing her teenage daughter after someone raped and killed her while she was burning alive. As I’m sure you can imagine, just losing your daughter is bad enough but to lose them to this type of heinous act is unconscionable. Now I’m sure there are a few of you reading this who are thinking to yourself that this storyline already seems over the top but you forget that Ebbing, Missouri is in the title and that the country is a weird, weird place! I have a buddy who was the assistant D.A. in country Colorado and I’ve heard stories that I’ll unfortunately never forget, so to me this story is anything but far-fetched.

But this kind of dark material is the norm for McDonough as he always finds a way to put life’s darkest moments on screen. Thankfully for us, he does so in a rather digestible manner as he also incorporates quite a bit of humor in his stories. And while this isn’t as funny as In Bruges or Seven Psychopaths were, it still has a decent enough balance to keep you from subconsciously slitting your own wrists while watching it.

Mildred can’t get over the fact that it’s been a year since her daughter was killed and the local police don’t seem to have any decent leads on who the killer was. She feels as though it has become a forgotten case at this point and that she will never have any closure in her life. So she decides to rent three billboards on a little used highway to voice her displeasure over their apparent lack of progress. The billboards specifically call out the town’s Chief of Police Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) who is loved by almost everyone town. I say almost because there are a few minorities who have an issue with him employing the racist hothead Dixon (Sam Rockwell) who not only abused a Black man who was in his custody but is also just a general asshole to anyone who doesn’t look or act like him. More on him later.

The billboards cause quite a stir as people, including Mildred’s son and ex-husband, are once again reminded of something they are trying to forget. And tensions rise as the town feels the need to defend Willoughby, who at one point really did try to solve the case. But the stubborn and determined Mildred will not back down at all as she’s a walking, talking bull in a China shop. And she will not let anyone or anything deter her from lighting a fire (in one case, literally) under the police department until she finds justice.

McDormand is as solid as they come playing the tough as nails mother who is trying her best to hold it together as she attempts to find a resolution by any means necessary. It’s a seemingly perfect marriage between her and McDonough as she spits out his dialogue with such rapid fire and fury that she makes you want to take on the police department yourself. And every time she confronts anyone who tries to get in her way, it’s like you’re rooting for your favorite underdog WWE wrestler. Sure she may go a little overboard at times and she may even do a few things you as an outsider may think twice about but her daughter’s dead and she wants answers; something I’m sure we can all identify with.

Sam Rockwell however is the wild card in this story. If Mildred is the wrestler that you’re rooting for, he is assuredly the villain that you’re rooting against. He’s a momma’s boy who gives in to every impulse that pops in his head and his actions do nothing but make matters worse for Mildred and the community as a whole. Will Willoughby’s blind loyalty to him be he and Mildred’s downfall?

While I thoroughly enjoyed this film, it’s definitely a punch to the gut. There’s so much pain these characters have to deal with that at some point it almost becomes too much. But the story and the acting in it are so good that I believe it’s almost required viewing at this point. It shows both the wrong and the right ways to deal with loss and grief and that no matter what you’ve done in life, there’s always a chance for redemption or resolution. I rate this movie as FRESH and I hope that McDormand, Rockwell, and Harrelson all get Oscar nominations for their performances.

The Shape of Water

"I am human and I need to be looooooooved! Just like everybody else does!" For those of you who have never heard The Smith’s song How Soon is Now, do yourself a favor and check out what my friend calls the most uplifting yet depressing song ever recorded. Most of the music in the song makes you think of a fun time but the crying guitar and the lyrics that accompany it make you want to sulk in a dark corner with a razor blade and a chocolate bar. "There’s a club if you’d like to go, you could meet someone who really loves you. So you go and stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home and you cry and you want to die"

Now naturally this is my favorite song of theirs; not because I never get any love in the club like Ice Cube but because I grew up a decade too soon. And this is important because anyone who has ever read any of my reviews knows that due to the transcendent acting skills of the Cinemax softcore porn queen Shannon Tweed, I have an affinity for white blonde girls with big boobs; it’s just a part of my DNA now. But growing up in the 90’s and in Texas, it was still a little taboo for a black man and a white woman to hook up. I mean, you could do so on the down low but when it came time to finally meet the parents, you would always hear that slow gospel music playing in the background while walking up to a house in the country that had a burning cross and dudes in white sheets standing in front of it. That’s why I never felt sorry for Ben Stiller in that stupid movie of his, if he thought Bobby Deniro lost his cool over him losing his cat while it was in his possession, then there’s no way he could handle how Jethro Tull felt after he saw his daughter lose her virginity while it was in my possession! I must admit though that I wanted to Crypt Walk every time I saw their faces. "That’s right son! Pay back for slavery!" And yes, I know that Jethro Tull is British but it’s such a country name that works here. And no, I don’t really think I own a girl’s virginity, these are just jokes…for the most part.

What was really sad was the fact that no matter how much we loved each other, her parents never saw me as an actual human being. Oh, if I was holding a football for their favorite team or working for their construction company while going home to my Black girlfriend, then everything was fine but once I crossed the proverbial line, so to speak, all bets were off!

Well this speaks to why I and anyone who has ever felt rejected by humanity can connect with Guillermo’s del Toro’s The Shape of Water. In it you meet Elisa Esposito, who was played by the wonderful Sally Hawkins in an Oscar worthy performance. Elisa is a mute janitor who works in a secret government facility. For the most part she goes unnoticed by most of society with the exception of her neighbor and in the closet gay friend Giles (Richard Jenkins) and her coworker and de facto translator Zelda (Octavia Spencer). Every day she goes through the same boring routine finding simple pleasures where she can in musicals, daydreams, or early morning masturbation (you’re sold now, right?). She seemingly has accepted the fact that she will never be seen as normal but strives to help her neighbor Giles finally achieve his dreams and become comfortable in who he is. Life is just hard for them and Zelda as they live in the middle of Cold War America where if the color of your shoes are too red you could be brought up on charges, let alone date someone of the same gender or of a different race or even species. Species, you ask?

Yes, one day the overly ambitious bully Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) brings into Elisa’s secret lab a mysterious amphibian man who is instantly classified as dangerous. Is it a potential weapon or is it simply a scientific experiment? Either way, this thing must be kept from the public until they know what to do with it. Well little did Strickland know that Elisa would be the one to finally strike a connection with the creature while cleaning the lab at night. And in doing so, she finds out that he can not only communicate but is also able to express humanlike emotion. She finally has found someone who sees her for who she really is! This not only lights a fire in her but once again gives her hope for what life has in store for her. The problem lies in Strickland, will he destroy the Amphibian Man or even her if he finds out about the two of them?

Now I know this sounds like an odd children’s story gone awry, and to a certain extent it is as that’s del Toro’s MO, but this love story is a metaphor for humanity’s struggle to overcome societal norms. We all have to fight to become comfortable with the things that make us unique in life and we will always face someone or something that wants to destroy or get rid of anything it doesn’t understand. Are there some scenes that will make you uncomfortable? Well yes, but that’s the point as del Toro wants you to force yourself to get past what you consider normal and open your mind to new possibilities. He just goes to what can be considered extremes by using another species. True love can be found in many forms and in the process can make you and those around you better people.

I really liked this odd film and I think you will too! I give it a rating of FRESH!
 

Lady Bird

Let me first start off by saying that I’ve loved Greta Gerwig for close to a decade now! No, I don’t happen to be a pale skinned white woman who lives in Brooklyn and dates a hipster indie director to up my street cred but I do totally identify with her lust for life. She’s an artistically inclined butterfly that was forced to grow up in a small cow town that would rather deep fry a butterfly than appreciate its beauty. And if you know anything about me, then you’d know that I also grew up in a cow town that would deep fry someone like me in a second if they could legally get away with it; but I’m sorry to break it to V-town, the 60’s were a looooong time ago. And as you can see, just talking about Greta has me already making references to artistically inclined butterflies and beauty; normally the kind of stuff I’d break out when quoting Thom Yorke lyrics from his weird side projects.

But I have to admit that when I first saw the trailer for her directorial debut in Lady Bird, I said to myself "That may be a just a little too white for me." But it’s Greta so I had to pop in! And of course I was the only black male in the theater outside of the janitor who was sweeping the floors and even he looked at me puzzled and said "Yo dawg, Tyler Perry’s Madea Boo 2 is showing at the theater ACROSS the street; not here!" Ok, so maybe that last part didn’t actually happen but that’s only because I wore a hoodie over my head so no one would recognize me or see my face on the way in. But once I finally settled in and got comfortable with my inner white girl, I was able to enjoy what I saw.

Everyone remembers their senior year and how difficult it was. Sure, the parties were fun, you no longer cared about getting good grades, and you finally got that hand job from Jessica in Art class but your home life was a mess. You couldn’t wait to get out of the house and be on your own, especially if you lived in a small, nothing town. But just getting out of the house wasn’t enough, you also wanted to go to the college of your dreams, one that probably cost a ton of money to go to and was nearly impossible to get in; especially when you consider the fact that you didn’t start caring about standardized tests until those rejection letters started pouring in. So naturally your stress level was high.

Well your parents were also stressing during this time because they were about to lose their baby; one who seemingly showed no appreciation for all the sacrifices they made for you over the years. They worked hard to provide you every advantage possible in the world and in the process probably gave up on their dreams to do so. So they had to be thinking to themselves, is this what life is all about; stressing over bills, college tuition, and having fights about being out of touch?

Well this is what Lady Bird is all about; capturing all of these moments that nearly every one of any age can identify with. Christine aka Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) is a senior in high school who wants to get as far away from boring Sacramento as humanly possible. She feels like she cannot truly live and become the person she was meant to be as there’s no true culture or life there and there certainly isn’t anything that will let her explore her artistic side; that is until she finally discovers that there’s a drama club at her school (more on this later). Her mom (Laurie Metcalf) wants her to stay in state because it’s cheaper to go to school and she will still be able to see her on a regular basis. This, as you can imagine, creates tension between the two especially after Lady Bird’s father loses his job in a community that’s not exactly a hot bed for thriving new businesses.

And the fact that they are struggling financially makes it hard for Lady Bird to fit in at her school because she goes to a rich private school where everyone is for the most part walking around with a silver spoon sticking out of their mouths. Her only connection lies in her heavyset best friend Julie who is also in a similar situation. Now I only mention her weight because that’s the only thing that’s keeping her from fitting in herself as she’s one of coolest and nicest girls alive; in the fictional world anyway. And things are great between the two of them, that is until Lady Bird falls for the head drama nerd in Danny O’Neill. At first things appear to be normal and good for her but their relationship takes this weird turn and causes Lady Bird to go off the deep end; affecting not only her life but the lives of everyone she comes into contact with. Now I’ll let you discover the rest for yourself but just know that this film will make you, as my friend described it, "ugly cry" in public. Now I personally didn’t cry but as I mentioned earlier, I totally found a connection with this film.

All of the acting in it is on point and to help keep it from being the Precious of 2017, Gerwig thankfully injects quite a bit of her trademark hipster humor in the film. So there is a healthy balance of drama, humor, and self-discovery in this heartwarming story. In a time where everyone is seemingly at each other’s throats on a consistent basis, it’s refreshing to take a 90 minute break and be reminded of the fact that we are all the same when it comes down to it. I give Lady Bird a rating of very FRESH.

Murder on the Orient Express

For some odd reason whenever I’m hanging out with my female friends, I always get overly protective of them. It’s nothing creepy or anything like that, it’s just that I feel the need to make sure that some tall jerk doesn’t stand in front of them at a show or that they text me when they get home to make sure the Uber driver didn’t murder and stash them on the side of the road after taking their innocence and their loose change. But in addition to that, I even do dumb things like hunt down loose cigarettes for them; all of which occurred this past weekend when my nerdy friend couldn’t find anyone to bum a smoke off of. So me being me, I went out on a quest to find one of these filthy things even though I hate cigarettes and normally the people that smoke them. And when I finally did find one, the guys I bummed it off of thought it was for me and even lit it while I stood there. And I, for whatever reason, was too embarrassed to tell them that it wasn’t for me, so I sat there puffing on it like it was a blunt. Naturally that drew a few weird looks as I’ve only smoked weed like twice in my life and that was centuries ago, so I’m sure that I was even doing that wrong.

And it was in this moment that I started reflecting on all of the wack stuff that I had done in my life to get to this point; like hallucinating after once eating a pot brownie or hating on Missy Elliott’s music for about a two week period in the early 2000’s. But what may have topped it all was reading all of those Agatha Christie novels as a kid. You see, I grew up in a terrible small town and I was a bit of an outsider, so I’d watch a lot of murder mysteries with my mom, you know, stuff like Matlock and Murder She Wrote, just to pass the time. And my mom knew that whenever I went to the library I’d always come home with a mystery novel, so she tried to turn me on to Agatha Christie to help us find even more of a common ground. Well, even as a kid I recognized the fact that her books catered to middle aged women, so to me they were pretty lame but it still beat listening to country music or stealing my father’s dip tobacco to give to my soon to be toothless girlfriend.

But for whatever reason, I forgot about all of this whenever I went to see Kenneth Branagh’s version of Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. Now I will give him credit for staying true to the overall feel and tone of her novel but those books were meant for a different time, not for us twisted freaks of today. Today we want to see weird things like people’s mouths being sewn to someone else’s anus (The Human Centipede) or watch a preteen mow down flesh eating zombies with a shotgun; none of which appeared in this film. This film looked and felt more like a live action Disney cartoon with its almost dreamy backdrop and looney characters who all felt as though they were channeling the evil hyenas from The Lion King. Murder mysteries are supposed to make you feel suspense and even a sense of wonder, not make you feel as though a song and dance number is on the horizon.

Well if you don’t know the story, Orient Express places its focus on the brilliant mind of Inspector Hercule Poirot, basically a lamer version of the Sherlock Holmes we all know and love today. He has a hipster mustache and cracks lame jokes while drinking tea and eating hard boiled eggs. But Poirot can also spot out the evil perpetrator in any given situation faster than any man alive. And it’s because of this that he’s put in a sticky situation while on a train ride to a much needed vacation. Someone has been mysteriously murdered on this train, so naturally the train’s senior conductor turns to him to help find the culprit. And under normal circumstances, Poirot would be able to get to the bottom of this within a few minutes but the person who was murdered had quite a few enemies and everyone on the train is seemingly a suspect. Again, going back to my point about the evil hyenas. Will Poitrot finally be outsmarted or will his talents rise to the occasion yet again?

Now it’s not that this movie is bad, it’s just that it’s not any good either. It is kind of fun to see Poirot match wits with each suspect and eventually put clues together as he gets closer to catching the culprit but there are far too many instances where he makes some pretty miraculous leaps when discovering the truth about someone. And he does so in such a hammy manner that I kept waiting for some fat guy in a three piece suit to stand up and yell "The butler did it!" Sadly that never happened but trust me when I say there was plenty of overacting to help make up for it (see Michelle Pfeiffer). In the end, I couldn’t wait for this film to be over so I could go home and watch some porn to put a little balance in my life but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching. If you’re bored on a weekday night, I’d say it’s worth a watch but I do have to give a rating of pretty WEAK!

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

I fought this moment off for as long as I could but alas it has finally come; I’m old! I thought the fact that I couldn’t get out of my spaghetti filled (long story) bed until 3 o’clock in the afternoon following a long night of dancing my face off to LCD Soundsystem was just an anomaly. But after turning down a late night party invite from two really cute girls who I met at the second LCD show to simply go home and eat pizza because I’m fat and had to get up early for work the next day, just proves that my days of needing Viagra are probably not that far away. Heck, I may as well start practicing throwing footballs through the large holes of tires right now; gotta get my accuracy up! That’s easily the most ridiculous commercial I’ve ever seen by the way.

But the reason I bring all of this up is because age is still undefeated in this old world we live in and you don’t have to look any further than to Colin Farrell to see what I’m talking about. It wasn’t that long ago when this used to be ageless wonder was making sex tapes with Black Playboy bunnies with regularity but now he’s been relegated to playing gray bearded doctors with a beer bellies. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the groupies he rejects will still be way hotter than anything I’ll ever see in my lifetime but my how the mighty have fallen.

Now having said all of that, getting older and a bit chubbier has seemingly made him a better actor as he’s been on quite a roll for the past decade. I thought his performance in The Lobster was one of the best of his career but he easily tops that in director Yorgos Lanthimos’s follow up to that film in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. I know, I know, it’s a fairly pretentious title but after seeing this odd take on a revenge flick I honestly can’t think of another title that would work.

If you’ve never seen a Lanthimos flick, he has his own unique but pretty accurate view on the modern human condition and this film is no different. In Deer, he puts his focus on the weird and borderline inappropriate relationship that exists between surgeon Steven Murphy (Farrell) and the seemingly obtuse teenager Martin, played by Barry Keoghan in what is sure to be a breakout role for him. It’s just a matter of time before Marvel snags him and immediately ruins his career.

Anyway, you soon learn that the reason these two are always around one another is because Dr. Murphy was the surgeon who was operating on Martin’s dad when he died in the middle of an unnamed procedure. At first, you along with Dr. Murphy, believe it’s because the kid is starving for another father figure in his life but you soon learn that it has nothing to do with that at all; even after one of the film’s funniest and oddest moments involving Martin’s mom, Alicia Silverstone. Martin has been up to something this entire time and it’s not until after he’s been introduced to Dr. Murphy’s beautiful wife (Nicole Kidman) and two kids that he reveals what it is.

Channeling what is a perfect mix of Robert Deniro from the classic film Cape Fear and pretty much any character from the brutal Australian crime flick Animal Kingdom, Keoghan is as calculated of a villain as they come. He somehow unleashes this weird curse on Dr. Murphy’s family that causes them to lose the ability to walk, followed by their refusal to eat and eventually bleeding from their eyes which will ultimately lead to their death. It will slowly start to affect each family member of his and kill them all unless he chooses which of his family members will die first. Then and only then will the curse be lifted as this is Martin’s idea of what he considers to be justice.

Naturally, being a doctor, Murphy doesn’t believe in this weird voodoo but as strange things continue to happen he becomes desperate and begins doing whatever he can to save his family. And what’s most interesting is when his family also begins to believe there’s no alternative outcome and starts subtly and not so subtly doing whatever they can to make sure they survive this ordeal.

This film is a dark statement of how we are not that different from animals when it comes to our innate desires to survive no matter how sophisticated we think we are in our societal status. And how evil can come in the most unsuspecting forms. There is quite a bit of dark humor in this film but mainly it’s just dark as Dr. Murphy is put in the positon that every parent considers to be their worst nightmare. How do you choose between your spouse and one of your kids? And is this curse real? Will I make a decision that I will regret for the rest of my life?

All I can say is that I’ve seen literally a thousand movies over the past decade, so many in fact, that I thought it was impossible to impress me anymore; but this movie had me on the edge of my seat. And the film’s final moments rank right up there with anything you’ve ever seen in a Hitchcock or Kubrick film. This is an instant classic and I give it a rating of TIGHT!
 

Mother!

Maybe I’m just officially a part of the older generation but I remember when Boyz in da Hood first came out in the theater and it reminding me, along with every other Black male out there, that if you had a kid before you graduated from high school that your life was basically over! It didn’t matter how smart or how talented you were, society would never fully accept you simply for the fact that you fell right into the stereotype that had slowly evolved over the previous decades. Look at Ricky from that movie, even though he was a badass football player who ended up getting a full ride at USC, he still wound up getting shot in an alley while holding some powdered sugar donuts and a lottery scratch-off ticket. And why was that you ask? Because he had a kid! At least that’s what I took away from it.

But now, in every hip hop song that’s come out the past five years or so, every male rapper out there and their female RnB counterpart talks about either planting seeds in someone or getting seeds planted in them! What in the world happened? When did it become so cool to not pull out? Granted I haven’t seen a porn in quite some time but this can’t be the latest hotness? "Oh, I’m gonna explode so hard inside of you!" I refuse to accept this! Somewhere out there Ron Jeremy is rolling in his fried chicken batter!

Well hip hop may have finally jumped the shark as Russian weirdo Darren Aronofsky seems to have been affected by its charms. In his latest film, he examines the May December marriage between Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence. And in it, you are immediately introduced to what’s at the core of their marital issues. Bardem is a poet who is going through the worst possible writer’s block imaginable meanwhile Lawrence’s entire life seems to be centered on supporting and appeasing him. It doesn’t matter how much patience or love she shows, nothing seems to inspire him, not even the fact that his wife is singlehandedly rebuilding his childhood home from the ground up after it burned to the nothing but ashes.

But one night a stranger in the form of Ed Harris shows up at their random house in the country mistaking it for a bed and breakfast. Bardem immediately takes a liking to him and invites him to stay the night given the fact that it’s so late and he’s obviously lost. The problem however, just to name one, is that he doesn’t ask his wife if it’s ok with her and it’s soon after this that Harris starts ignoring some of her rules for the house; like no smoking inside. Now I know that on the surface that sounds like small potatoes but things start to escalate the second his wife shows up the next day. Not only does she not respect Lawrence’s rules but she also seems to have little respect for her or her privacy. Imagine if your drunk mother in law showed up to your house and had no filter; well that’s Michelle Pfeiffer (Harris’s wife) to a tee.

Now again, at first these seem like they’re just slight annoyances but things soon get out of hand the second this weird couple’s sons randomly show up and someone gets murdered. And yet even after all of this, it still isn’t enough for Bardem to ask the couple to leave. It instead somehow oddly enough triggers a passion inside of him that was nonexistent to this point and he winds up impregnating Lawrence. And it’s at this point that he once again finds the inspiration to write and what he writes is apparently good. So naturally things will get better at this point, right? Well if you thought that then you clearly have never seen an Aronofsky film.

First let me say that the first two acts were tough for me to sit through as a Black man because anyone who has grown up in a household with a Black woman knows that this film would have been over within the first 20 minutes. The second Ed Harris disrespected her, she would’ve cussed him sideways and kicked him out along with Bardem. And if Bardem had the audacity to say anything back, he would’ve been met with a swift right to the jaw and a not so friendly reminder that he was a shitty writer! "I’m up in here cooking these biscuits every day and your sorry ass can’t even write a Jack be nimble, Jack be quick? I knew I should’ve married Jerome with the good benefits! "

But once I finally got past that, I settled into the third act only to be immediately taken out again. Now anyone who knows me knows that I love artsy flicks but I hate when people are artsy for the sake of being artsy. Look, if your weirdness naturally comes out (see Thom Yorke dancing during Radiohead shows) I’m all for it but when it’s forced, it’s obvious that you’re just trying to get laid by French models who are too dumb to truly understand what’s going on. I get the visual chaos that ensues in the third act, and to be honest with you, some of it worked, but ultimately there was just too much nonsense in it that played absolutely no role in telling the story or expressing the theme behind this visual and visceral experience.

The film’s crowning moment occurs when Lawrence finally has the baby and there’s a stare off between her and Bardem. So much is said about their relationship in this moment that it honestly stands out way more than the infamous and supposedly unforgettable scene that immediately follows it. Everyone talks about that scene but in my opinion, everything that follows the stare down is just filler at that point, but I guess you have to wrap the film up in some way.

In the end, the acting is on point and the overall theme of the film is a clever take on today’s society but you just have to sift through too much trash to get to the payoff. I give this film a rating of barely FRESH!
 

Wind River

As I woke up this past Saturday morning to the look, feel and sound of pounding water hitting my window, I eventually came to the realization that it wasn’t the gin swirling around in my head like a snow globe that was causing this alarming experience, but it was in fact Tropical Storm Harvey announcing its arrival. I had already prepared myself for a long weekend of hunkering down by stocking up on my new favorite terrible beer in Montucky and 2 lbs. of fajita meat so I could relive my days as a Black hick in Victoria, TX. You see, growing up in a town like that, you’re used to doing nothing but getting drunk and watching terrible movies mainly because it beat mudding in your dually truck with other hicks or chasing around the neighbor’s chickens for sport; so I was more than prepared for what these next few days had in store.

But hey, I’m not here to trash Victoria as my heart and my prayers go out to them right now. I instead want to talk about why I have this sudden fascination with the otherwise nondescript state of Wyoming. Outside of Yellowstone Park (and honestly I had forgotten that that was even there until recently), I only associate awful things with this state! My dentist went there to attend a University of Texas football game a few years ago and pretty much never came back! Did he die in the mountains after being exposed to their freezing temperatures in August or did he simply fall in love with a modern day Pocahontas, only to be killed by the locals for being the white R. Kelly? Come on now, everyone knows that Pocahontas was underage!

Well in either case, all I want to say to him right now is "My teeth hurt doc! Leave that peyote behind that you found on the reservation and come hook a brother up! I mean, it’s only a matter of time before you’re eaten alive by a bear or a mountain lion so you may as well come back to the land of shotguns and pretty women so you can live a more fulfilling life!"

But moving on, when the movie Wind River came out recently, I was there the opening weekend; and not just because it’s about the murder of a young girl in the woods of Wyoming but because it’s nice to actually see a healthy Olson girl (Elizabeth) get some screen time for a change. Why hasn’t anyone told her twin sisters that the Kate Moss anorexic look went out twenty years ago? Go get some cheeseburgers girls!

Anyway, Wind River is the story of a young and bright eyed FBI agent named Jane (Olson) who decides to team up with the local game tracker Cory (Jeremy Renner) to solve the mysterious murder of a young girl on an Indian reservation in the middle of snow covered Wyoming. Jane is from Florida, so she has no idea about how to properly dress for this type of weather and nearly dies within the first 5 minutes of being exposed to the air. It’s also a different world as it’s not only a unique culture with colorful characters but it’s an area that still feels like the land that America forgot. They have minimal public funded resources and very few opportunities for locals to escape the world they grew up in, so naturally they still harbor ill feelings towards anyone of the fairer skin.

Well even though he qualifies as someone the community would normally hate, Cory has been in the area for so long that he’s for the most part accepted and trusted by everyone. So naturally Jane relies on him to not only track clues in this rough terrain and adapt to the ways of the reservation but to also simply survive in the sometimes below zero temperatures.

This alone makes this an interesting film but what helps it stand out from other indie thrillers that have come out recently is Cory’s weird connection to the case. He not only knows the family of the girl who was found but the reason he and his Native American wife are separated is because their daughter died in a similar fashion just a few years earlier. So now he’s once again struggling to deal with the memories of this tragedy that have crept back into his life but this time around he’s hoping to find answers of some sort to provide him and his family some closure.

Writer and director, Taylor Sheridan, who also wrote Sicario and Hell and High Water, delivers yet again as he has a way of taking you into the dark underworld of humanity’s worst without relying on the parlor tricks of over exaggeration or the reliance of gruesome shock value to do so. He gives you an in depth look into issues we normally want to turn a blind eye to by helping us find something or someone we can connect with by telling their painful stories. And this is where Renner and Olson shine. We’ve all had to find a way to press on in life even if the absolute worst has happened to us or we’ve all been in over our heads while trying to make a name for ourselves in our chosen professions. And that’s what’s so great about this film, the actors that we normally see in Marvel movies seem like your ordinary next door neighbors, even if it is only for two hours.

This movie will not only scare and depress you but it will also enlighten you about a world that we typically only think about when we want to gamble; and it’s because of this that I give it a rating of very FRESH!

Detroit

As I found myself trying to wrap my head around the tangled web that is the Game of Thrones storyline this season, I realized that I had done about 45 minutes of research into the lineage of most of the major characters and I hadn’t even cracked the surface yet. And while I was reading up on whose uncle banged whose cousin and whose daughter ran away with whose brother, I began to feel this intense pain creep up into my head! Hell, I don’t even know all of my own cousins’ names and they actually buy me gifts from time to time. These white people don’t know me at all and if by some random chance one of them actually ran into me on the street, they’d probably ask me if I was going to host the Grammy’s again this year. That’s an L.L. Cool J joke by the way, and to be fair, I do kind of look like him but I’m also about 100 lbs. skinnier; so there’s that.

The point is, actually getting to know people and who they are and where they come from takes time and effort; two things we as a society refuse to do. Yet if we confidently spew off some random nonsense on social media and get a few likes, along with some clowns who agree with us, it makes us feel as though we are well informed and somehow also justifies our laziness. "Hey, I saw a blurb on whatever network’s website the other day and it reminded me of something I saw in a Tom Cruise movie when I was a kid, so it has to be right."

It’s sad but this is the very reason why we are so divided in this country and why you have people making ridiculous statements like saying the Black Lives Matters movement is no different than the White Nationalist movement. Now I can write an entire book on that alone but that’s for another site and for a far more talented writer than I am. However the reason why I decided to point this out is because movies that give us some actual insight into our country’s real and very dark history go ignored, like the film Detroit was when it was released two weeks ago. If no one has ever been racist to you and you live in a bubble where everything is equal and fair, at least in your eyes, you don’t want to do anything that rocks the boat. You instead just go out to see Spiderman 9 while downloading the latest Justin Bieber album that came out right after he impregnated Kylie Jenner.

Well Kathryn Bigelow gives us a close and gruesome look into the events that occurred on one horrific night in the middle of the Detroit riots. Tensions had been rising for years as Black people moved up north looking for work while the white community decided to move out to the suburbs; taking most of the jobs and opportunities with them in the process. So naturally, as people start to go hungry and struggle to simply survive, anger and desperation begin to set in. And then you add in the fact that the police routinely came around to harass whoever looked at them sideways (Detroit police were known for being super aggressive back then) and you have yourself a ticking time bomb.

Now there were several incidents that occurred over a number of days that were ultimately the cause of the Detroit riots, and yes there were stupid actions on both sides (not to quote our brilliant president or anything) that caused them to go on for far longer than they probably should have, but what took place at the Algiers Hotel should have never happen in any civilized society, no matter what the situation was. Well what set the stage for this awful scene was a whacked out cop’s (Officer Krauss) reaction to what he thought was sniper fire at him and his unit, even though said gun shots were hundreds of yards away. Now his tracking down the shots wasn’t the issue, what was however was his twisted view of how he could personally help the Black community. He thought that gunning down unarmed Black males in the back who were "up to trouble" would rid the community of its dead weight and as a result would leave only the docile animals around to help save the Black neighborhoods. Well his superiors disagreed with him and put him under investigation for murder but that for some reason wasn’t quite enough to keep them from releasing him back on the streets to wreak even more havoc.

And as fate would have it, the sound of these gun shots came from the starter pistol of a resident at the Algiers Hotel who decided that he would finally get some sort of revenge for all of police brutality he and his loved ones had encountered over the years. "How about I give them a quick scare to give them just a taste of what they have done to us for decades". Not the brightest idea he’s ever had, especially considering the fact that he was in a hotel full of Black men and two white girls in the late 60’s as that’s just a recipe for disaster. But that’s still no excuse for what took place once Krauss and his crew came on the scene.

The rest I will let you experience for yourself but just know that the amount of torture, beating, and killing that took place on that night was so off the charts that even the U.S. military, who was brought in into Detroit to help restore order, decided to wash their hands of it and leave the scene. Now there were quite a few subplots that came into play that could have turned this into a four hour epic; like the fact that the lead singer of the up and coming group The Dramatics was one of these hostages or the fact that a recent war hero who had just returned home from battle was another hostage, but thankfully Bigelow chose the route of succinct yet effective storytelling when it came to providing backstory for each of the characters involved.

And while there are plenty of intense scenes in this film, she does decide to play it a little safe when it comes to making a statement. The officers were ultimately found innocent in real life, so she tries to show how these were sort of good men who had just gone astray but anyone who was involved in that night would tell you a far different story. And I think that is what keeps them very solid film from being a great one; if this is your way of exposing what really happened, then go all the way with it. All of the acting is superb in this film and I do have to say that even though this film does clock in at 2 hours and 22 minutes, it certainly doesn’t feel like it. I give Detroit a rating of FRESH but just know that this is the only way anything that is associated with that city will ever get that rating. Go Stars!

Dunkirk

It took me forever to come to grips with my feelings over Christopher Nolan’s latest offering to the public as he’s had a pretty strong track record over the past two decades. I mean, outside of his ridiculous decision to make Bane sound like Sean Connery on life support in Batman 3, he’s been pretty much on point with his storytelling, his direction, and his ability to move me emotionally. But it’s because he’s been so good at what he does it makes us slow to point out his epic failures whenever we encounter them.

It’s similar to when U2 was on top of the world; when they released War and The Joshua Tree it seemed as if they could do no wrong, that was until records like Zooropa and Pop came around, both of which were clear signs that they had fallen off the whiskey covered throne they had built for themselves. Yet people still flooded to their shows as if their ears hadn’t just been exposed to the Irish equivalent of Gerardo. Rico…Suave! I remember people saying this about that stupid song Stay (Faraway, So Close!) "It’s like, full of emotion and shit" Ok, so I may have made that last part up but I’m sure someone’s stoned uncle probably said that at some point.

The point is, there are ton of people out there who are grasping for straws in an attempt to convince themselves that Dunkirk is actually a good movie. I’ve heard people say things like "Well, you have to pay the $18 to see it in IMAX to truly get crushed physically and emotionally" or "You know what, Harry Styles wasn’t all that bad in it! He wasn’t distracting at all!" Ok, the mere fact that some terrible Brit pop star didn’t distract you from the story should tell you all you need to know about the quality of said story, especially considering the fact that he had the majority of the lines. I love Bobby Brown but the fact that I didn’t think he was the most ridiculous thing I saw on screen during Ghostbusters 2 let me know that it was probably time to put that franchise to bed.

Now don’t get me wrong, technically Dunkirk is a brilliant film as the sound, the always present but minimalist approach to the score, and the actual filming are all on point; and I’m certain that if I paid $18 to see it in true IMAX I’d be even more impressed. That however won’t make me care about anything that’s happening to the people on screen. You never really get to know anyone’s name, outside of some scrubby kid who gets punked after being on screen for like 5 minutes, and everyone seemingly only cares about themselves. And yes, I’m well aware of the fact that this is by design to show that war doesn’t really care who you are when it comes to deciding who suffers or dies. And yes, I get that when your survival instincts kick in, you naturally do whatever it takes to live (the creepy old lady in Minority report taught me that with her weird, biting plants). But if this is a story about scrubs on a beach getting rescued then you should set it up to where you actually care about the scrubs who are being rescued.

The film’s climax fell unbelievably flat mainly because the only character you could find any type of connection with was the shell shocked, desperate, and stranded soldier played by Cillian Murphy. Maybe as an American I’ve been brainwashed by all of our war propaganda films but it seems to me that if you have 40,000 soldiers on the coast of France and Germany is coming for you, you’d be able to come up with some sort of strategy to at least fight back! Yes, Germany had tanks and artillery, and all the British and French soldiers had available to them were rifles, but haven’t these people ever read the Bible or watched the movie Braveheart? There wasn’t one British general who was smarter than freaking William Wallace?

Hell, at the least come up with something better than just duck and cover when planes are dropping bombs on you. You have thousands of rifles, you couldn’t all simultaneously shoot at the plane? It may not have blown it up but it would have at least slowed it down a bit. Just do something! Man the f%&* up and fight! And you wonder why America won its independence and stole Louisiana from you!

Now was this movie all bad? No. The dogfighting scenes were cool and seemingly more realistic than anything we saw in the terrible but awesome The Last Starfighter. And the claustrophobic scene in the grounded boat where they are hiding from Germans who are using the boat for target practice was cool but 20 minutes does not make a movie. In the end, I guess it’s ok that Nolan wasn’t able to deliver on this film as he’s still batting .900 but let’s just admit that this movie sucks and move on with our lives. I give Dunkirk a rating of WEAK!

War for the Planet of the Apes

This week so far has been an awful one for the world of Hollywood; and I say that not because we are yet another week closer to the release of The Emoji Movie, but because in one day we lost two legends in George Romero and Martin Landau. These two were absolute giants in the movie industry as there would’ve been no such thing as The Walking Dead if it weren’t for Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, and because Landau brought an incomparable level of style and grace to absolutely everything he was in. Do yourself a favor and see Tim Burton’s Ed Wood if you haven’t yet as it’s an underground classic that features Landau at the top of his game.

Well, we all know that these things happen in threes, so that means everyone in Hollywood is laying off the sauce and the cocaine until the next person drops. Ok, well maybe not everyone as we all know Colin Ferrell can’t help but keep it raw, but having said that, he’s not my pick to be number three. Sadly, my prediction is that it’s going to be the 90’s action hero, Bruce Willis. I know, I know, but look at the facts! You can only bang so many porn stars after your breakup with Demi Moore and you can only try for so long to keep up sexually with your wife who is 23 years younger than you before health becomes a major issue! But having said all that, I must admit that the man is kind of my idol; getting paid to say Yippee Ki yay Motherfucker and marrying a young British girl is pretty much the life.

But all good things must come to an end as getting old is a bitch! And this is what is happening in the world of the talking apes. We all loved Charlton Heston and the mute vixen so much that we had to bring it back with James Franco and the girl from Slumdog Millionaire. And no I’m not being sexist by not listing the females’ names, I’m just too lazy to look them up right now. Hey, it’s a free blog, what do you want from me?!?! Freido Pinto is her name, I believe, but don’t quote me on that. Again, too lazy but let’s just move on!

In Apes you see a greying Caesar and his troop trying to survive as they are now in a full blown war with the humans after Koba lost his damn mind in Dawn of the Apes. The opening scene feels like you’re watching Platoon as you see the human army sneaking up to attack the apes while wearing helmets that say The Master Species or Ape Killer; which now that I think about it, sounds really racist! Man, f^%$ the humans!

But anyway, the first 30 minutes makes you think that you’re merely seeing an extension of Dawn as it’s an all-out war that’s full of shootouts and mass killings. The height of which happens to be the launching point for what makes this movie so special after Woody Harrelson mistakenly kills Caesar’s wife and son while attempting to kill him. It’s at this moment that Caesar ceases any attempts to be diplomatic and basically goes on a suicide mission to get revenge. Now I can’t move on without noting how awesome of a scene this was as it’s really the first time you see Woody Harrelson in the film, and when you do, his face is covered in war paint and he has this crazed look in his eyes! He turns around after he hears an angry Caesar coming after him, cocks his gun, and unloads on Caesar while jumping backwards off of a cliff in slow motion. Now my limitations as a writer can’t possibly do this scene any justice but trust me when I say that it was epic.

Needless to say, Caesar survived the attack and decides to go after Woody after he encourages the rest of the troop to move on to safer lands without him. And for the most part everyone listens except for three of his most devoted troops in Maurice, Luca, and I believe Rocket who decide to come along and help him. Along the way however, they discover this young mute girl named Nova who Maurice decides to basically adopt as his own as it’s readily apparent that she’ll starve to death without them. And it’s due to this random encounter that they are able to track down Woody because this is also the point where they meet Bad Ape (Scott Zahn). Bad Ape is the lone survivor of a nearby zoo that came under attack after the virus started to spread. He has been living on his own for so long that he’s eager to make friends, even if that means taking them back to the zoo where he nearly lost his life to help them find Woody.

Now the rest of the movie I will let you experience for yourself but just know that it’s centerpiece is the not only the battle that takes place between Woody and Caesar but also the battle the two of them are fighting within. While one is struggling to hold on to his core beliefs, the other has seemingly lost everything that made him human in the first place. And it’s because of this focal point, the movie shifts away from being your typical war film to one where you find yourself having your own internal debate; what’s more important, avenging your family or protecting those who are still relying on you? Do you let personal loss affect how you view the world and those whom you seemingly hold responsible for it?

This seems a little heavy and to be honest with you it is, but thankfully the filmmakers decided to provide some comic relief in the form of Bad Ape; something that was sorely missing in the first two. This film was already solid, and probably the best of the trilogy, but the addition of Bad Ape helped it become also enjoyable. Now I have zero desire to watch either of the first two again because they are almost joyless but I can certainly see myself watching this again due to the amount of thought that went into it. Do yourself a favor and see this film as I give it a rating of FRESH!

The Big Sick

It’s funny to me how certain people luck their way into super stardom while others are basically forced into it. Take Matt Bellamy of Muse for instance, he had absolutely no desire to be a lead singer but because no one else in the band could or would do it, he was basically forced to take over the reins. And now because of his unbelievable range as a vocalist, and of course his ability to shred on a guitar, they are one of the world’s biggest bands. And they’d be even bigger if the Old Face Killah aka Kate Hudson aka Band Killah never came on the scene and tricked poor Matt into planting his seed into her womb of witchery. Come on Matt, you couldn’t find a Kardashian to knock up? Oh wait…the curse is real with them too! Plus, I don’t think any of them have ever seen a white penis in their lives, so that’s basically out.

And then there are the super cool and super talented idiots like Snoop Dogg. I just watched the first part of the HBO documentary, The Defiant Ones, and one of the last scenes in that episode involved Snoop’s reaction to being asked about posing for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Here is what the Doggfather had to say at the time "Man bleep Keith Richards and the bleeping Rolling Stones. I don’t know those bleepers. Put me on the cover of The Source bleep! That’s bleeping king in hip hop bleep! Man, bleep Rolling Stone!" And then of course he appeared on Rolling Stone’s cover and the rest is history!

Well thankfully for The Big Sick’s Kumail Nanjani it looks as though his rise to stardom is a nice mix of hard work and unbelievable luck as getting cast on HBO’s Silicon Valley has helped skyrocket his career! I say hard work because he’s been grinding for years now to get where he is but it’s also luck because we are in a country that hates everything brown. The President is brown? Call him a terrorist, accuse him of not being from this country and make fun of the fact that he likes Grey Poupon on his sandwiches! Too many brown people expected to come to the show? Put up metal detectors everywhere and have the SWAT team on standby just in case! Snickers bars are getting a little too dark? Come up with a new flavor called Almond and put it in a white wrapper! Problem solved.

So it’s a modern day miracle that a romantic dramedy starring a Pakistani male was given a wide release. I’m personally crazy excited about this; not because it has the chance to quell any stereotypes people have about Pakistani people but because of what it can do for skinny non athletic black scrubs like me! Sure black guys have been pulling cute white girls for decades now but you either have to be jacked and play sports or have the ability to spit dope rhymes to do so. Now my jump shot can be lethal on a good day and I did get lucky and spat out a cool freestyle flow once but let’s be real, the only thing I really have going for me is the fact that I can make girls laugh from time to time; and even that’s hit or miss. So come on Kumail, take this movie all the way to the Oscars as all of nerdy brown nation is counting on you! Anyway, this is the longest intro to a review ever, so I’ll get to the movie now.

The Big Sick tells the unbelievable story of how Kumail met his real life wife Emily (played by Zoe Kazan) and how they had to battle through their huge cultural differences just to make their relationship work. Kumail, as mentioned earlier, is Pakistani and in his culture you were expected to marry within your own ethnicity. And to ensure that this happened, you were set up with an arranged marriage of some sort. So every family dinner they had, Kumail’s mother would invite a random girl over to meet her son. They would be forced to interact with one another in front of the family and she would drop off her resume’, so to speak, as well as a photo of herself for him to remember her by. Now on the surface, having your mom pimp you out to hot girls sounds kind of fresh but the problem is, if you don’t wind up marrying one of these girls, you’ll be banned from the family forever. That’s obviously a cause of concern for anyone Kumail dates if they aren’t Pakistani; so he decides to hide this from Emily.

Emily on the other hand is a free spirit who meets Kumail at one of his stand up acts. The two of them hit it off right away in spite of Kumail’s lame attempt at a pickup line and despite the fact that she claims to not be looking for a relationship at the time. She tells her parents everything so there’s really no issues on her end that is until one day she finds Kumail’s box of potential wives. Now Kumail is forced to choose between Emily and his family; and he initially chooses his family until one day Emily is put into a medically induced coma. And it’s in this moment that he comes to realize the mistake he made and wonders if he will ever get the chance to win her back. Not to mention the fact that he now must also win over her parents who know what took place between the two of them.

Kumail is his normal and casually hilarious self as he somehow founds a way to inject humor in even the most awkward of situations. I won’t ruin the joke for you but there is a moment when Emily’s dad asks Kumail his thoughts on 9/11 and his response to that ridiculous question is absolutely classic. That moment alone helped him win over Emily’s dad who was played wonderfully by Ray Romano. Now her mother (Holly Hunter) was a little tougher as the only thing that mattered to her was her daughter but you can’t help but love Hunter and everything that she does in this film. And I have been crazy over Zoe Kazan ever since she played Leo DiCaprio’s side piece in the depressing movie Revolutionary Road and she certainly does deliver here when she’s not in a coma (which is over half of the movie).

What I loved most about this film is that never wallowed in the land of depression like so many of Judd Apatow’s productions normally do. They are typically sold under the guise of being a comedy but really the vast majority of his movies are just dramas with people yelling at one another the entire time. And while that does exist in this film, for the most part you are able to laugh as the characters experience pain, love, and loss. And that’s ultimately what we want when we go to the movies, to cathartically deal with our day to day problems but to do so in a pleasurable manner.

This movie will at least be nominated for quite a few awards once that season is upon us and I can’t help but give it a rating of very FRESH!

All Eyez on Me

For the longest time I had the biggest crush on Brittany Murphy from the movie Clueless. While everyone else was focused on Alicia Silverstone, my eyes were squarely set on Brit, as you couldn’t help but tell that she had this slightly dark and dirty side to her. And while she wasn’t the greatest actress to ever grace the big screen, you could certainly tell that she brought her life’s experiences to each and every one of her performances. I recently brought this up to one of my friends at a brewery the other day and I ended my monologue with "Man, gone too soon." And he replied "Or gone at just the right time!" While his cold, callous, and yet hilarious response to my outpouring of emotions hit me right in the heart, I must admit that he was probably right.

Well there’s one artist whose life was taken away from us far too soon and that was that of Tupac Shakur’s. Growing up in a terrible, small country town in south Texas, I only had so many outlets available to me to help me escape my misery; and Tupac was definitely the one tortured soul I identified with the most. No I didn’t grow up in the Black Panther movement, nor did I grow up in the hood with a mother who was hooked on crack; but I did grow up in an environment that couldn’t possibly let me become the man that I knew I had inside of me.

Tupac was an intelligent visionary who used his platform to tell the stories that no one wanted to hear at that time. He was the centerpiece of what was a major turning point for the genre of hip hop. While it was always big in the black community, mainstream audiences started to take notice the second this charismatic actor, poet, and young rapper started appearing everywhere. You couldn’t help be glued to the screen whenever he opened his mouth because he always had something important to say. Now I know there are those out there who only really know California Love and How Do You Want It and it’s those people who think he was only about bitches and money. But they need to do a deeper dive into his discography to really get a sense of what he was all about. I mean, there’s a reason why the Vice President of the United States (Dan Quayle) basically declared war on him in the media when he condemned his records.

Pac was an unbelievably complicated person and what he was able to accomplish in only 25 years on this Earth is unheard of. That’s why it’s impossible to tell his story in just over two hours. I mean Jim Morrison was really only around for 4 years yet it took a 3 hour movie to tell his story. Now I’m not saying they should’ve made a 4 hour biopic on Tupac (although I would’ve been down with that), I’m just saying, either do that or simply focus on one part of his life when attempting to tell his story. And that’s why this film failed for the most part.

You can’t leave it up to Benny Boom to direct a film about the most important figure in hip hop’s life. This is the same guy who directed freaking Next Day Air! Next Day Air?!?! What, were Cheech and Chong too busy? Go wake up one of the Hughes Brothers to make this film. Or hell, why not get Ernest Dickerson to write and direct it! He actually knew Tupac and was a part of one of the most iconic moments in cinema; he directed the scene were Pac officially goes insane in the underground classic Juice. That moment alone took him from being an obscure rapper from Oakland to a legend in the eyes of every young black person in America. Everyone knew who Bishop was. So getting Dickerson could have been a slam dunk for everyone involved as he is still producing good work today by being a part of shows like The Wire, Bosch, Treme, Dexter, and The Walking Dead. But no, why not go get stupid Benny Boom instead!

Well Boom makes the fatal mistake of attempting to cram Tupac’s story in 2 hours and in the process rushes through some of the most important aspects of his life. His growing up around the Black Panther movement is full of overacting, melodrama, and terrible acting by child actors. It completely takes you out of the film and you feel as though you’re watching a bad television show on the CW network. Thankfully Demetrius Shipp Jr., the man who was cast to try and pull off the impossible task of embodying Tupac, comes on screen soon after this; and I have to say that for the most part he does an admiral job. It’s just that Boom once again screws up and gives a half ass effort when it comes to portraying Tupac’s musical performances on screen. Seriously, it felt as though he realized he was fucking it up and just quit mid performance. I’m not joking by the way, the scene would be halfway into a verse of Brenda’s Got a Baby or I Get Around and they’d just simply cut away to another shot. Shouldn’t the producers have realized they made a mistake at the point, fired Boom, and brought in someone to try and save their investment?

Oh well, it wasn’t all bad; the second they decided to put their focus on his early relationship with Biggie and the time his album Strictly for my N.I.G.G.A.Z. came out, they actually slowed their storytelling down a bit and it actually felt like a real film. Some of the most interesting parts were the behind the scenes looks into the incidents that led to his many court appearances and ultimately his incarceration. There you saw the direct fallout from Dan Quayle’s press conference and how those in power changed their view of him. This however was effective mainly due to the story itself and Shipp’s delivering on what was handed to him because the awful Boom once again reared his ugly head by not being able to draw even more out of these scenes.

Now I honestly could write a 5,000 word review on this film but no one would ever read it; so I’ll just end this by saying, if you’re a Tupac fan, go see this film as you’ll be reminded of just how awesome and impactful his music was and how much of important figure he was in our history. This film doesn’t come close to doing him justice but it’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I just wish that Tupac was still alive today so that he could’ve had some input to help give a more accurate portrayal of his life; similar to what Ice Cube and Dr. Dre were able to do in Straight Outta Compton. But sadly, we were stuck with scrubs giving their take on this rapping legend. Overall I give All Eyez on Me a rating of kind of WEAK but it’s Tupac, so go out and see it.