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Colors (1988)
It's aite, holmes.
It's mi barrio, Holmes.
Colors has an obvious, heavy-handed message. Set banging is a nihilistic, empty way of life where the primary driving factors of action and consequence are irreversible and irreparable moments of raw human behavior. The ultimate irony, of course, is that all of this life-shattering violence is spurred by belief in a personal, unconditional love for the set and mi pueblo.
But that's not all it's trying to say. Subtelty isn't this Colors's strong suit.
The second constantly-in-your-face-and-impossible-to-miss modicum of truth of Colors' true purpose is to show that Crip and Blood aren't the only flags flying on the field of play. Cops are putting it down for their own set, the blue and gold (uniform and badge). And their interference and method of response is essentially no different then the bangers they hunt every day. They're trying to catch their ops lacking, and 9 times out of ten there will be a body bag or lives ruined when they finish making their moves.
It's a supercharged depiction of a live action chess game with human pieces, except none of the sides are really thinking 3 steps ahead or actually outsmarting their opponents enough to win despite their small victories and celebrations when they finish riding on their enemies.
It's a halfway decent piece of 80s crime drama that you can spend 2 hours watching without feelingnlikw you wasted your time. Duvall and Penn bring their usual penchant for excellence in their roles, however a lot of the interactions are driven by an insanely toxic level of Dirty Harry machismo that has a very abrasive way of taking you out of the reality of a lot of moments in the movie. Excellent, realistic scenes like Duvall cultivating CI relationships with striped-up set members while working his corridors during the day quickly crumbles when interspursed with Sean Penn's psychotic inability to employ any sense of de-escalation or feigned empathy while confronted with potential hostage situations, warrant sweeps or even extremely short foot chases. It's almost like a constant carousel of extremely cliched good cop/bad cop tropes. He'll, maybe that was actually intended in retrospect.
The last problem I had with the movie is the almost certainly unintended but still brush-painted bigotry in the way nearly every gang and gang member is depicted. These are Bloods and Crips, most of whom are born and raised in their respective Los Angeles hoods. Yet not a.single soul except for some black gang members actually sound like they're from any hood in LA. Nearly everyone's dialect is some ghastly, grating inauthentic form of cholo-speak or other South American gangster accent. While such people definitely bang these sets in LA, it's usually the formative members of a gang (ie. OGs and the big homies) who came from those places or had family that came from them in the 60s/70s. It gives the depiction of gangcrime and set life as being an essentially immigrant-only thing, which is some heavy handed politicking for a movie trying to make you empathize with each color/flag in play.
Maybe you'll agree with, maybe not. The only real reason to watch this movie though is for Robert Duvall's excellent role. And the Easter egg bonus of a young Damon Wayans rocking a full head of close-cropped waves while playing a J-cat in one of the County barracks scenes in the last third of the movie. He made me.imagine what life would be like if Boomhauer from King of the Hill were black and he happened to be your bunkie during barracks life. Regardless of what's probably slightly unintentional comic relief from Wayans's character, he brings the J cat to life practically flawlessly
Anyone who's had to deal with that experience will no doubt feel a strong sense of familiarity with Wayan's character portrayal.
6/10 for me. I liked South Central, American Me and Blood In/Out more personally. If you want a good Cops versus Bangers in Los Angeles popcorn flick, I'd recommend End of Watch over this. The machismo and crafting of the story (plus editing and cinematography) are much more engaging and enjoyable IMO.
Beavis and Butt-Head (2022)
Better than the Original
Yeah, I said it.
The reboot is better than the original. You can tell that Mike Judge has matured over the years, it definitely shines in this newest reboot, and it gives me a LOT of hope for the planned King of the Hill reboot coming out sometime soon on Paramount+ too.
That's not to say the old show wasn't good, or a classic. Of course it was. It's an iconic 90s household name and it delivered the goods--it brought the raunch that The Simpsons couldn't bring, since MTV used to actually flirt with counter-culture ideology in its formative years unlike the monstrous trashbin it's evolved into today--a death by a thousand cuts, as they say.
I watch the original B&B (or at least, what's available of it on Prime) all the time. You can tell that the original was created by a very young Mike Judge, there's no real nuance or creatively intelligent use of the duo's slapstick raunchiness. It's just a non-stop barrage of stupidity for the sake of stupidity (I'm not complaining, since that's kind of always been the duo's original raison d'etre), but it's not couched in any real finesse or true wit.
The reboot is a whole different story. The avalanche of idiocy is still here in droves, but it's crafted with witty deft and really brings the side-splitting laughs instead of the original show's low-volume chuckles. One of the show's biggest upgrades in this regard is its variety. We now have old B&B where they live on welfare, alternate universe intelligent B&B where they're interdimensional aliens who are still stupid but just the smartest versions of their kind of stupid (and it's easily some of the reboot universe's most hilarious content), and more involvement from tertiary characters that really gives the show a lot more content to digest then just their traditional grunts and bathroom/sex humor.
The slapstick is still here, the toxic virginity and inability to score is still here, and the bumper content where they annihilate modern media content (mainly viral youtube videos) is still here and honestly better than it's ever been.
I can't believe the reboot has less than 2K votes here on IMDB and that it isn't more widely watched or mentioned in pop culture. This reboot is built to last and it will be a true loss if it were to be prematurely cancelled; I've been anxiously awaiting Season 3--hopefully we get it as quick as we got Season 2 after Season 1 aired (it was only like 5 or 6 months between seasons).
Also, if you haven't seen the newest B&B film Does the Universe than you need to watch it, now. Mike Judge and his brainchildren are in top tier form right now and better than they've ever been. Really on top of their game(imo Does the Universe was better than Does America).
I'm off to go eat some nachos.
White Noise (2022)
A massive shot of 80s to the veins
I've never read the source material, so I can't speak to the faithfulness of the movie's adaptation of it to the screen. Besides, I'm sure plenty of reviews have done that already, and my guess is that the result is just like every other screen adaptation ever made: probably not that great.
However, that doesn't mean the movie isn't great. While I'm sure a majority of the viewership will find the film ultimately confusing, especially when factoring in the film's chronology and breaking up the plot on screen into three separate acts, I do think that everyone will find the singular continuous theme of death and existentialism extremely relateable and all too human.
Sure, the characters are quirky but that's definitely part of their charm. And the techno-pop synthpunk aesthetic of the 80s along with the various filters and excellent set dressing + costuming really bring the era to life, albeit in a supercharged fashion that speaks more to our obsession of 80s culture and how everyone looks at the decade through rose tinted glasses today.
One thing I must commend, however, is the cinematography. I am in love with the camera work in this film. There are some beautifully expressive and creative shots captured here, one of the most memorable that I can think of being a brief sequence of the view of the side of a freight train as it moves through a pitch-black tunnel and quickly exits to the outside world in a burst of magnificent, blinding sunlight. It really felt like a strong visual motif for birth and genuinely jarred the senses a little bit because of how unexpected it was. I also found the entire evacuation sequence to be quite impressive, especially when we finally see the storm itself from a distance and it looks like a gargantuan, h.p. Lovecraftian kind of terror from some far off intergalactic dimension--it was horrifyingly beautiful and utterly mesmerizing.
Adam Driver definitely drives the entire movie with some strong support from the legendary Don Cheadle. The best scene in the whole movie (IMO) is a sequence that involves each of these titans of screen riffing off one another during a lecture on Elvis Presley that really gets the blood going. Adam Driver paints the story of Hitler's rise and reign, and the nature of evil via the magnetic force of demagoguery and how it can so easily control society with such a masterclass performance that you feel like you're watching one of the great scenes of Cinema in the modern age. It's a brilliant monologue that also employs a beautiful command of language to create an extremely vivid and highly memorable scene. There's also an amazing scene with a German nun riffing on the truthfulness of religious faith and how civilization needs to have believers, or individuals who pretend to believe, in order to help keep society civilized. It's actually a very poignant and challenging idea that ultimately makes sense, although it feels like an extremely nihilistic and depressing viewpoint to hold.
I also really enjoyed the dance sequence at the end during the credit roll. I'm still trying to wrestle with the source author's idea that the afterlife is a grocery supermarket with a zillion checkout lines and eager bag boys, but the veracity or even just the effectiveness of the analogy continues to elude me. It feels more like a quirky idea that's implemented just for the sake of quirkiness because everything else in the story has a quirky bent to it. The song that everyone in the grocery store dances to at the end is fantastic, there's no denying that. It is a supersonic love ballad/ode to the 80s that couldn't be more 80s even if it tried. And it's definitely something you can get up and move to if you're the type to be so inclined.
7/10 B+
The Recruit (2022)
"I've been having one long continuous panic attack since 2019"
The Recruit is topnotch intelligence entertainment.
Originally turned off almost completely by Netflix's advertisements (and hover-over previews) for The Recruit for a couple of weeks, I reluctantly decided to give the first episode a watch while sitting in my parked car waiting for my mobile to charge. Boy, am I glad I did.
A vast majority of intelligence entertainment usually revolves around a singular field agent who is seemingly invincible or blessed an infinite amount of times over by all the patron saints and gods of luck in the universe, always escaping harrowing death-defying situations in the nick of time. And if they aren't master David Blaine-esque escape artists with the swagger and braggadocio of Connery's Bond, they're ubiquitous masterclass assassins with veritable Hawkeye accuracy that jump from continent to continent doing wetwork for their relevant Agency as they rid the world of humanity's worst embodiments of evil and villainy so the citizens of the globe can sleep blissfully in peaceful ignorance at night. It's a trite, contrived character dichotomy that plagues literally nearly every title of intelligence entertainment that gets produced in the modern age. I guess the blueprints for genuine spy-dom left behind to the public by real life spies like the famous author John Le Carre will forever go underappreciated and ignored because he prefers a realistic plot arc over some bloated Michael Bay inspired fusion of nonstop action married with ceaseless political and palace intrigue.
Of course the over-dramatization and situational embellishments often make for compelling, gripping bingewatching but just as often at the end of it all it feels vapid, hollow and unrewarding once the credits roll.
Not so much with The Recruit.
I found The Recruit to be an excellent and refreshing experience for an American production. I think the idea of focusing on The Agency's lawyers and what they deal with every day navigating their careers is a brilliant segue from intelligence trope(s) that pepper and douse 'spy' shows and stories about working out in the field.
It helps the show's ability to rapidly induce anxiety in the viewer by having the story shadow a brand new lawyer instead of a seasoned veteran. You can really feel his pain and rapidly onsetting work-related PTSD with every episode, every inter-agency and inter-colleague interaction as he scrambles and blusters his way through the grunt work and tasks shoveled on to him by his boss and his fellow lawyers.
The show itself has a strong air of authenticity. Its situations, jargon and interactions between everyone in the Agency infrastructure/heirarchy do an exquisite job at making you feel the pressure as much as the main character does. It also lifts the veil on just how primal and dog-eat-dog the nature of deciding to live such a career and life actually is. If there's one thing The Recruit doesn't do, it doesn't exalt The Agency and put it on a pedestal as some faultless, omnipotent world police that glorifies the US constitution and spreads the gospel of our capitalist Democratic Republic preaching the letter of the law. To be succinct, it shows The Agency to be a s***-show that resembles the Thunderdome from the Mad Max movies (hence the 'dog-eat-dog' comment earlier) where only the strong and cunning survive ala Darwin.
My favorite character is probably the main character's colleague who works in the office across the hall from him. This colleague (names elude me atm) is a stress-riddled 80-hour-a-week career lawyer assigned to SOG (Special Ops. Group, aka Special Forces) oversight who has to juggle these insane off-the-book Black Operations that are incredibly illegal and would undoubtedly cause any sane, rational and normal human being to turn their hair gray from the ceaseless anxiety in trying to keep everything off the books and away from the prying eyes of Congress' various oversight committees. The show does such an amazing job at making his stress and terror palpable that you can't help but walk in the man's shoes and feel what his character feels. If Agency work as a lawyer entails even 1/10th of what is displayed in The Recruit, then I am amazed that every lawyer who gets recruited to the Agency doesn't age like a two-term president and look 70 by the time they're 35-40. A massive salute to these unsung shotcallers for shouldering the kind of soul and gut-eviscerating stress that the everyday layman couldn't even contemplate juggling on a regular basis. My guess is that the ability to compartmentalize your consciousness, popping pills and having the office shrink at the top of your speed dial is an absolute must-have.
Anyway, I can't wait for Season 2, woe be to Netflix if they decide to axe The Recruit before it has a fair opportunity to finish. The Recruit won't be a show for everyone, mainly people who are looking for some trope riddled feel-good action fests (ie. Gray Man) that suspend your disbelief. The Recruit is more for the individual that enjoys government procedurals, contemporary political/legal thrillers and a healthy dose of police intrigue.
The Recruit is a must-watch recommendation from me, especially for my fellow intelligence fanbois who enjoy the more off beat or lesser-known spy dramas, like Patriot/Slow Horses/The Bureau/Deutschland 83/Deutschland 86/etc. A+ from me.
Welcome to Flatch (2022)
Underrated, underviewed comedy gem
Flatch is a fantastic show that's bingeworthy and feelgood. I also like how, despite the show's obvious satire/parody-based comedy, there's actual facts dealing with the modern issues and problems (ie. Social/infrastructure/healthcare/political) that smalltown or rural America faces and deals with on a regular and continual basis.
The casting for Flatch is perfect, IMO. Apart from the 2 cousins who are the main characters, my favorite supporting characters are easily: Sean William Scott who absolutely SLAYS the screen as the tiny town's onlypriest/father with a somewhat secret past as a former boyband superstar (LOL); Jamie Pressley as Barb Flatch, the sole heir to the Flatch name and legacy of the town's founding father who works during the day as a real estate agent trying to sell property and turn Flatch into a modernized hotspot that will dwarf its neighboring rival city, Pockton; Mandy, a whipsmart larger-than-life lesbian who wears her sexuality and her feelings on her sleeve in a small community that has more conservatives than progressives and who manages to be both the comic relief and the source of conflict in the subplots of plenty of episodes.
Flatch is a definite must-watch for mockumentary comedies, plus it's worth seeing just to watch Stiffler from American Pie play a hoity-toity man of God. Talk about a 180! However, in my opinion, just like Sean William Scott's role in the horror thriller 'Bloodline,' he does excellent work on the screen when he's not playing some nut-tapping foul-mouthed bathroom slapstick juvenile. I mean, he does a fantastic job at that as well but everyone's got to grow up and these newer, more 'serious' roles are a much better color on him. As you can tell, he's easily my favorite part of the show.
Anyway, 5/5 A+ +++ Please watch, don't give Fox a reason to cancel this show prematurely. There's definitely years left in the tank for Flatch, the formula for a long-running sitcom is perfect here (think The Office instead it's about rural living instead of cubicle living).
Corner Gas Animated (2018)
Feel good animation you can binge-relax to
I'm an American and I'm more used to the raunchy adult animated series like South Park, Drawn Together, Family Guy, American Dad!, Brickleberry, Paradise PD, Farzar, etc.
Corner Gas is a nice change of pace. The humor is a welcome change of pace from the usual profane slapstick that permeates most adult animated series. Animated shows geared towards adults tend to lose steam quick if they aren't in-your-face or extreme/taboo with their comedy, so it's really refreshing to experience Corner Gas Animated for the first time ever. I've never seen the original live action show from 2004, but it's next on my list after I finish the animated version (I just finished Season 1 on freevee and still have 3 more seasons left).
There's nothing here that a child couldn't watch, except for maybe 2 or 3 sequences involving some gore (they are dream/fantasy sequences though and don't involve any of the actual characters), but if you're familiar with Itchy and Scratchy from The Simpsons then it's nothing you or your family couldn't handle.
The show itself is rated TV-14 and Amazon lists it as being violent, profane, with smoking and nudity but I have yet to actually see any of these things in the 13 episodes I've watched so far. If any of this stuff IS actually in these episodes, it's so subtle or miniscule that it doesn't even register.
I love the familiarity of the characters and the setting of smalltown Dog River. These people actually feel like real people and the voice acting is spot on. The animation is also some of the best that I've actually seen in an animated series; the expressions and the actual lipsyncing of the characters is spot-on and very realistic comparatively speaking when looking at the show through the lense of other animated comedies.
It's a crime that this show only has 1500 ratings, it deserves to be more well known. I'm thankful that this popped up in my "You Might Like.." queue on Prime, otherwise I'd have never even known it existed. This is some of the best feel-good animation I've ever watched, it saddens me that I only get 4 seasons of it when the Simpsons has 34 seasons. :(
It's a definite high-recommend, must watch from me. Try it out if you want a different change of pace in your animation and actually want to see some characters that are everyday folks you can relate to, especially if you might feel burned out from all of the taboo/extreme/racist humor that permeates all of the other adult animated comedies out there (we get it, you're edgy!). 10/10, Canada is awesome!!
Hellraiser (2022)
Surprisingly good remake despite core changes.
First let me just say that I enjoyed the remake far more than I expected to enjoy it. There are core changes that will undoubtedly rile up the neckbeards, especially the key change that the new Pinhead is an androgynous female now (sure to rile up the anti-PC crowd who will hate the new film on this merit alone, just wait for the flood of 1 star flame reviews).
While the story appears to be completely different on a surface level, it's actually nearly identical to Barker's original when you take a step back and look at the key ploy points and story arcs. This time around, we have a young woman who is unwittingly offering up sacrifices to The Lamont Mechanism this time around in an effort to save her older brother from the Cenobites, while the original film had an older woman who is manipulated into wittingly offering up sacrifices to Leviathan so that her star-crossed lover can rebuild his flesh and be resurrected in order to escape the Cenobites.
What makes the reboot better than the original is plot coherence. The new story uses the wealth of lore made available by the vast array of earlier Hellraiser films and picks little bits and pieces from each of those movies to help create much more accessible and easily understood narrative. The first film had a major issue of being rather convoluted in terms of narrative structure and understanding the motivations behind characters actions, but that can easily be attributed to the shoestring budget Barker was forced to work with.
The Cenobites look excellent. Makeup work is top notch. Even Doug Bradley approves, giving the new films aesthetic and artistic design choices rave reviews on his Twitter account. However, the new Pinhead unfortunately lacks his naturally sinister gravitas on screen, especially Bradley's bone-trembling voice. He is sorely missed here.
The gore is satisfyingly plentiful and doesn't leave the viewer wanting for violence. The special effects are fantastic thanks to cinematic advances allowing for more realistic blood work.
Don't go in expecting God's gift to Barker fans and you'll be pleasantly surprised with Hulu's reboot. I definitely was.
7/10.
Mil Colmillos (2021)
Not for everyone, but arthouse-horror / foreign indie fans will find it orgasmic
Mil Colmillos is a unique experience in a sea of contrived zombie and spectral scares. It doesn't have a consistent pacing, but it has a consistent palpable tension wrought with dread thanks to an excellent direction of photography and sound that really captures the mystery and sense of terror that only being trapped deep within a bloodthirsty wilderness can conjure/evoke. The show's first two episodes will definitely hook almost everyone who watches them, but then there's a definite lull in action sequences until episode 5 when it takes the action / violence of the first 2 episodes and gives it a hormone shot.
There's also the fact that the plot is far from spoonfed. There's actually two separate timelines occuring on screen simultaneously--the modern-day commandos battling the horrors of the bush, and what appears to be conquistadors or some kind of exploration party from the 17th-19th century trying to navigate and escape the tunnel system below the jungle that the enemy forces occupy. Then there's a seemingly immortal cult leader/demigod and a 'sickness' he uses to control people by turning them into frenzied psycopaths (ala 28 Days Later) who transcends both timelines and unites them by being the common enemy of both groups. The best way I can describe this movie is as a mixture of Predator (original), Apocalypse Now/The Heart of Darkness, and that one gore-porn movie by Eli Roth about the airplane crash survivors that are ensnared and subsequently cannibalized by an indigenous population (the movie's name escapes me atm).
The cinematography and dark, moody synth/string-based score for the show are all masterclass and do just as much for building your sense of unease as much as the horrifying, confusing plot does for creeping you out.
I really enjoyed this show despite its various flaws and lack of overall clarity. It's definitely an original twist on the whole plague and zombies cliche niche in survival horror and it definitely left me craving another season. But it's lack of advertising and overall lack of internet presence (and other media presence) has me almost convinced that we won't be getting anymore episodes in the future. One can hope, though!
Inside Job (2021)
Best animated political satire in forever
This is an excellent satire on the contemporary state of the red versus blue division in America post-Trump. It hits both sides with equal punching weight and no one is spared. It's like Rick and Morty meets The Colbert Report with a heavier dash of anti-liberalism, creating a balanced spoofing of current politics that is sorely lacking. It's kind of like Last Week Tonight meets The Drudge Report (if Drudge Report were a show instead of a news aggregation spider).
This is easily my new favorite show on Netflix, and definitely is in the top 5 animated shows available in the NFlix content library.
The only other satire I find to meet its scope and execution in equivalency is Amazon's 'Toon'in Out the News' (I think that's the name IIRC), which is basically an animated version of the nightly news if both MSNBC and Fox hybridized themselves into a singular news platform.
I recommend this to anyone with a sense of humor who doesn't mind having their political paradigms machine-gunned down in a hail of satire-bullets--even Aaron Sorkin gets the business; none are spared from the show's whip-smart dialogue and sniper-accurate dissection of the politico-based day-to-day (sorry for my abundant use of hyphenates :x).
10/10, already rewatching the first season for a second time. Can't wait for Part 2!
Brooklyn Nine-Nine: PB&J (2021)
Friendship transcends career choices
Excellent ending to the show's most complex/controversial character(s) study (career criminal being best friends with a career constable).
What's irritating is how people are negging Jake and how he influenced the ending to this story arc. Jake did nothing wrong. It's not illegal to give your friend a pen in the real world--they weren't in a holding cell or in a visitation room nor were they anywhere near a prison or police precinct. People let their friends borrow pens and pencils all the time.
It was Doug Judy who used the pen to circumvent his police fetters (this is actually impossible with today's handcuffs due to their double-latch design, so it's even dumber that people are getting so emotionally irate over what is quite obviously an extreme fantasy in the show's script) in the civilian world. So get over yourselves and delete the urge to try and string Peralta up by his heels because he gave Judy a pen before the payphone ending scene.
This episode was classic PB&J double-trouble with lots of comical twists, turns, and Judy/Peralta taking turns bending and blasting each others minds with fakeouts and double-crosses. This was a classic 9-9 episode for the OG fans of the show and it was an excellent way to end the Judy/Peralta timeline. It's also in the top 3 episodes of the final season thanks to its apolitical, laugh-only fueled agenda. 10/10 Judy and Peralta 4 life.
Dear White People (2017)
If you're looking for a show complaining about white privilege, this isn't it.
I was originally put off my Netflix's "Dear White People" because I was under the impression that I was going to be force fed some racist narrative about white privilege, how white's are all evil, and how we are perpetrators of victimization upon marginalized groups. What we're given instead is an honest and satirical look at that mindset itself.
"Dear White People" acknowledges the fact that there's still racial tension in certain parts of America. But what it doesn't do, is present it entirely one-sided. It brings a good balance to the discussion by constantly embellishing the point (primarily through Gabe) that white people can't be held responsible for sins of the past; but conversely it also wants to make aware the simple fact that the historicity of slavery is a painful earmark in our nation's history that had a profound cultural and political impact that still affects many cities and different groups of people to this day.
I was originally completely put off by this show and originally decided to watch the pilot just so I could slam it in a review and pick apart everything I thought the show would get wrong. I was actually very surprised by what I watched and ended up thoroughly enjoying the cast (although Reggie was a little too try-hard in his confrontation with Gabe for me) and message the show had (that racial tension is still a prevalent and problematic issue).
If you're white like I am and you had the fleeting thoughts of "hey! reverse racism! bs! i can't believe they are shoving this crap down my throat" when watching the trailer, the show spends a healthy amount of time addressing this and also tries to help the viewer understand where POC are coming from when having a dialogue in the vein of 'dear white people.'
My main problem when discussing racism, however, is something that Reggie says to Gabe during their confrontation when the Black Caucus and everyone are watching TV: "you could never know how I feel." It's a disingenuous argument to constantly say that white people can't experience racism or can't be victims of xenophobic hatred. "Maybe or maybe not, but I want you to help me understand how you feel." This was Gabe's response to Reggie's comment and I thought it was a fair and honest response.
So far, I'm enjoying it. Understand too that much of the preachy, overt anti-racist monologue in this show IS majority satirical (insomuch as the stereotypes it utilizes to tear those same stereotypes down). Not because it doesn't believe in its own message or take it self seriously, but because (and this is my own personal opinion) the nature of satire and self-deprecating humor helps bolster and reinforce the ideologies it conveys, especially if it can both deconstruct said ideology and also correct/refute said deconstruction in the same breath. Dear White People is able to do just that.
Enjoy a blunt and a couple episodes of this. 7/10, makes for some decent, late night smoke-a-vision.
Chi-Raq (2015)
Thoroughly disappointing--except for Samuel Jackson.
I was really interested in the set up for Chi-raq. Having really enjoyed the remake of Romeo + Juliet w/ Leo DeCaprio and Claire Danes, I was hoping that a movie in the same vein (old literary verse layered on top of a modern backdrop) would be just as enjoyable. Unfortunately, it was a sorrowful disappointment.
A majority of the lyrical content is typical of what you'd find in a Chicago Drill rap song. I understand that this is exactly the crowd that Spike Lee is trying to reach, but unfortunately it doesn't do much to really edify the viewer or educate them about the problems areas of Chicago face--despite that being the central tenant of the movies production. "If you want to hide something from a negro, put it in a book." A Malcom X quote used in the movie coincidentally backfires on Spike Lee's film, because his film is more a comical glorification of the Chicago gangland lifestyle than it is a "we really need to do something about this issue" mockumentary story. There's no real educational subject here to present to the viewer, you'll have to find that in a book. (May I suggest "Gang Leader for a Day" by Sudhir Venkatesh--an incredible detailing about gang life and poverty in Chicago).
John Cusack feels horribly out of place, and he talks like one of those white guys who says "I have black friends too." His attempt at assimilating to an inner-urban accent just doesn't work and falls horribly flat at his attempt at playing Pastor Mike. His presence feels entirely forced and almost offensive, like Spike Lee is trying to make white people happy by including one of them in his film. I think Samuel L Jackson would have made a much better Pastor Mike.
Fortunately, Samuel L Jackson as the main overall narrator of the story really shines. Dressed like an OG pimp from the 80s, he effortlessly weaves the story together with an enjoyable charisma only Sam can bring. His words are saucy as butter and his on screen presence is demanding. He's the only reason I could stomach this film.
Apart from glaring fact omissions (and not to mention Spike Lee's disregard to account for non-American losses during the Iraqi war, as if no one else is of any importance), blatant racism with no logical backing (like Angela Basset's rant on Sandy Hook white baby/black baby murders and no government programs or help), one can't help but be put off almost entirely at the message Spike Lee wants to convey.
The entire movie seems almost like a glorified Drill video. Sexy women everywhere, lots of blunts being smoked, guns being shot, licks being hit, tattoos and jewelry. The oversexualization of Lysistrata I think permeates throughout the rest of the film, and because of this the overall message suffers.
Only really worth watching for Sam Jackson's performance and Lysistrata's amazing ass. Good LORD.
4/10 -- Spike Lee missed the mark.
The Other Side (2014)
Decent B-movie with an interesting twist
Here we have your average campy horror movie: some bad acting, a zombie / "real biblical judgement type s**t" (to quote the movie) cliché, some over-the-top gore, and corny rock/techno that's badly cued and played for far too long. Some people cry way too much (Beware of Aunt Natalie--you may want to mute the scenes she's in) and some people yell the oddest things in situations that they wouldn't yell them in.
A majority of plot devices are rehashed and recycled from just about every movie ever made, but what made up for the poorly executed writing and dialogue was the interesting twist at the end. It was definitely not what I was expecting and in that regard I give the writers a bit of credit for being somewhat innovative; it also let me feel like watching the entire movie wasn't a COMPLETE waste of time. It was actually somewhat satisfying.
I wouldn't say go out of your way to watch it unless you've seen everything else in the horror genre on Prime and are running out of options. It's definitely not the worst movie I've seen (I think that esteemed position belongs to "A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell"), and you might get a chuckle at the campiness of it all. Worth a view if you're bored or have no other flicks to see!