Keeping It Reel

Does Hip Hop Have Heart?

There are certain directors who's work I follow just as I do with actors/actresses.  Even more so if they are a writer/director.  Spike Lee for instance.  Another who falls in that category is this cat that few people have heard of named Christopher Scott Cherot.  Ever since I checked out his first joint "Hav Plenty", I've been a fan.  Even if he hadn't had any new work in a while.  That movie alone was enough for me to give him a chance for any of his future efforts.

Well along comes "G".  It's the tale of a hip hop mogul, played smartly by Richard T. Jones, who's not totally at ease with the world that he's created.  It doesn't help matters much that he runs into a former love from college, portrayed by Chenoa Maxwell, who's now married and still has his heart. 

Love triangles seem to be Cherot's specialty.  This one has Blair Underwood as the husband scorned.  He's also the husband with issues.  What's up with him playing against type lately? First "Madea's Family Reunion" and now this.  I guess you could really say it started in "Just Cause".  It's like he's going out of his way to play down his pretty boy image.  I suppose a lead in the remake of  "The Elephant Man" is next.

As for the other pieces of the triangle, Chenoa and Richard, I admire both of their talents.  My only issue with Chenoa here is she doesn't look good in the Halle Berry-esque short hairdo.  And Richard deserved more chances in movies ever since he first starred in "The Wood".  Omar Epps and Taye Diggs both blew up from him yet his career kinda stalled.

What I like about Cherot's work is how he uses a play on names much like Spike Lee did in his earlier work.  With Cherot, it's the connection that the two characters who should be together have.  In "Hav Plenty" it was Havilland Savage and Lee Plenty.  In this, it's Summer G and Sky Hightower.  Subtle yet at the same time, painfully obvious.

I really hate comparing an artist's work to his previous work.  I fell into that trap with the Madea movies.  However, when there's only two bodies of work from that artist to choose from, it's rather hard not to do.  Does the artist avoid that dreaded sophomore jinx?  No, it's not as good as the classic and also overlooked "Hav Plenty", but that wasn't an easy task to accomplish.  It is an admirable attempt.  Definitely not a jinx yet not the success it could have been.

My rating:  B

Silent Hell

We all have our own quirks about certain things that may freak us out.  What it comes down to is how much we allow those things bother us and/or what type of effect they have on us when they do.  Take Elijah for instance.  For some reason, he has a phobia about clowns.  Zeke has a phobia about people in large cartoon costumes.  Well I would say mine would be that creepy kids in movies freak me out.  Wouldn't you know it, along comes another movie that finds a way to incorporate that.

E called me at home today to tell me he and B had just checked out the new flick "Silent Hill" last night and he was still shook about it.  He can try to be all macho and say that wasn't the case but essentially, the movie bothered him.  I was going to wait for it to hit dvd before I checked it out but knowing that it had that profound of an effect, now I had to check it out right away to see what the fuss was all about.

"Silent Hill" is the latest in the parade of movies based on video games.  This one was along the lines of the horror video game genre that "Resident Evil" first made famous.  I remember playing this game when it first came out but I didn't get very far in it.  It was yet another mystery-type game that I couldn't solve so I got too frustrated and didn't finish it.  Too bad I didn't because now I can't accurately say if the movie stayed true to the game or not.

Basically, it's the story of a couple of parents with an adopted child who has some issues.  The kid sleepwalks and talks in her sleep about this place called Silent Hill.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that they picked up an orphan with baggage and would have been better off to hold out for a different one when they were picking out their new kid.

The movie had some truly disturbing scenes.  Of course it had the usual blood and gore things that every horror movie today leans on, but there were some images in there that were just too much to even describe in words.  The best way to put it is you literally feel like in a couple of scenes, it has to be what hell would be like.

E described it as one jacked up movie.  I would have to be inclined to agree.  There are some horror movies that I will watch and vow not to ever watch them again because they just messed with me too much. I not that long ago finally came to grips with being able to watch "The Ring" and "The Grudge" again.  It may be a while before I can view "Silent Hill" again though.  If I ever do at all.

My rating:  A-

The Enron Comedy

Jim Carey has gotten knocked recently by several critics for his on screen antics just not being as novel as they used to.  He is still a tremendous talent, but I'm starting now to see what they are referring to.  It seems that in his last few movies, it was his supporting cast that made them fun to watch when it used to be he could carry an entire movie by himself.

That wasn't entirely the case with "Fun with Dick and Jane".  It was a good movie and could have been funnier if it wasn't for the fact that the best parts had been spoiled by the trailer for the movie.

What it is is basically a satirical look at the fall of businesses in corporate America.  It focuses on one family in particular and how they deal with the situation thru outrageous scenarios.  I wish I could have seen the original to compare it to, but then again, I'm not sure if it may have hurt this movie even more by then suffering by comparison.

What I basically saw here is this is what would have happened with the Enron situation from one family's point of view if it were a funny situation.  Instead, there was nothing even remotely humorous about the whole Enron fiasco.  In fact, I would highly recommend that anyone that even thinks about getting this movie, first check out "The Smartest Guys in the Room".  It's amazing how cold-hearted those cats were in dealing with the futures of so many innocent people.  You watch that and you get a new perspective of the comedy version of it.

I'm a firm believer that you really have to be in the mood for certain movies.  It is difficult to watch a comedy when you're not in a laughing frame of mind so maybe that's why I was so hard on "Fun with Dick and Jane".  Then again, it's difficult to watch a 40+year-old-man trying to do the same schtick he was doing 20 some years ago.

Carey is a fine actor and even a better dramatic actor than what he gets credit for.  I'm sure he'll come back again with a movie that can showcase his skills without being his stereotypical self.  This one wasn't bad; it just wasn't as fun as it could have been.

My rating:  B-

So Let It Be Written...

If I'm not mistaken, this is one of Mom's all-time favorite movies.  She makes it a habit to watch this every Easter weekend just like she's makes it routine to watch "It's a Wonderful Life" every Christmas.  Of course I had seen "The Ten Commandments" before but I can't even recall when the last time was that I had watched it all the way thru from beginning to end.  I decided to do that as it was televised tonite and had quite a few observations to share.

It would have been nice to actually have been able to watch the movie in its entirety.  It was getting interrupted at least every 30 minutes with some new thunderstorm and/or tornado warning.  They even had nerve to break in during THE best part in the movie so I didn't get to see the beginning of Moses parting the Red Sea!  But that part did remind me of something...if the Hebrews were smart, they would have grabbed some of the fish out of the walls of water while they were walking thru so they would have had some more food.

So Pharaoh's daughter plucks Moses out of the Nile and no one ever thinks it's suspicious that she was never pregnant and just shows up with a baby?  And Pharaoh had to know it was a Hebrew baby yet he lets her keep it right after he had just ordered all the firstborn Hebrew males killed?  Good thinking on his part.  Good thing God's will be done and He made them ignorant to allow it to happen.

As I'm sitting there watching it, it dawns on me that they really don't make movies like this anymore.  Hollywood tries to do epics and some of them are pretty decent but none are on the scale which "Commandments" was done.  Casts of thousands can now be a cast of one thanks to CGI.  The special effects may have looked like crap back then, but using real actors for all those thousands of people has a much better effect.

For years, I used to slam the original for not using Black actors in the cast.  I actually hadn't seen it in years.  They actually do have brothas and sistas in there playing the Ethiopian ambassadors.  And they even had speaking parts!  Well, the woman did anyway.  Now that I've seen this again, I also never noticed until now that the scene of the presentation of the prince's wife in "Coming to America" was a direct rip off of the Ethiopian entrance in "Commandments".

Still, my biggest gripe with this movie, the remake and pretty much most Biblical movies is the lack of Black folks in lead roles.  During that time and in that area of the world, everyone was much darker than the caucasian actors portraying them.  And of course they would have had Black features.  I will hand it to Cecil B. DeMille for at least trying to get his actors as tan as possible to pass.  Nice try, but no.

One thing that always killed m about not just Biblical movies but all movies set in those times:  their teeth.  Ever notice how everyone has pearly white and perfectly straight teeth?  They had dentists then?  And where were they getting toothpaste?  Oh, and don't even get me started on how all the women had cleanly shaven legs.

Another thing about movies from that era (meaning made in the 40s and 50s)...the overacting.  That was notorious for that age of Hollywood.  Everything was so melodramatic.  It makes for scene upon scene of unintentional comedy even in what should be the most serious movie.  When E was here, we would check out matinees of movies and clown them mercilessly.  Only we could turn "Titanic" into an outright comedy.  We would have a field day with "Commandments".  

Wait, Vincent Price is in this?!  How did I not know that?!  The quintessential face and voice of classic horror films and he plays a villain in here also.  Say it isn't so.

You know they had to be hot in that dessert with the clothes they had on.  They're always sporting long long wool robes and some type of head dress to match.  They didn't have somebody who could have invented the tank top back then?  I would have been walking around shirtless ALL the time.  I don't care what shape I was in.

It's funny how Rameses continued to let Moses come to him talking smack.  Had it been any other Hebrew, he probably would have had him killed  Not Moses though.  He was pretty much allowed to talk all the trash he wanted to with no consequences.  God is good.

It's amazing that after being in bondage for all those years and seeing all the miracles of God, the Hebrews had the nerve to act a fool.  While they waited for Moses to return from he mountaintop, they basically lost they minds.  You would think all that they had seen and experienced would have humbled them.  Apparently not.

Yeah, I was a bit long-winded here, but what else is new?  Plus, this was a 4+ hour movie so of course the post is going to be long.  I usually don't make it a habit to rate movies I have seen before; however, this is a rare exception since it's the first time I remember watching the whole thing.

My rating:  B-

Up the Creek Without a Paddle

I'm usually not one to get into foreign films and/or movies that have subtitles.  It's not that I don't think they'll be good films, I just don't want to invest the effort that it would take to enjoy the movie and have to read at the same time.  One that comes to mind where it didn't seem to bother me was "City of God" but those are few and far between.

"Wolf Creek" could technically be considered a foreign film since it was filmed in Australia.  It should have meant that subtitles wouldn't be necessary since everyone was speaking English.  However, their accents were so thick that if  I wanted to understand what they were saying, I had to turn the subtitles on.  I hate it when that happens.

"Creek" originally came out right about the same time as "Hostel" and it turns out it wasn't that different from it.  Both had a similar theme of a dream vacation that went wrong.  Both didn't get into the actual horror part of the movie until halfway into the movie.  The difference is the first half of "Hostel" was fairly enjoyable.  The first half of "Creek" was almost agonizing.  But when it got to the terror, it did get going.

Supposedly, it was based on real events.  The problem with movies like that is when characters die and no one knows what happened to them in real life (a la "Open Water"), how do they really know how they died?  On the other hand, if they have to make it up anyway, they might as well make it good and this one did that.

The other thing with movies like this is when they put in foreign countries, it does make it more credible.  We tend to think that there are more barbaric people out there in far away lands and they are capable of these things.  Even when they put the events in the remote areas of this country, it could still seem credible if it's far enough away from civilization.

According to the movie, Wolf Creek is an actual place and is home to one of the, if not the largest meteor crater in the world.  The place itself actually looked like a pretty awesome place to visit.  Sort of like a mini-Grand Canyon.  But now after seeing this flick, the closest I care to ever get to Wolf Creek would be this movie.  I enjoy having all my digits attached.

My rating:  C+

Plain Trains and Triteville

I try to make it a habit that once I see a preview for a movie that looks interesting, I won't read too much information on it.  I shy away from reviews because A) I don't want to get any spoilers and B) I don't want to potentially bite their summation of it.  Instead, what I do is read the header of the review and that's usually enough to tell me what they thought of it.  This was one that didn't have very good headers but I still had to give it a shot.

Once again I seemed to pick a flick that had the makings of a winner on the surface but doesn't live up to expectations.  The one star that really drew me to "Derailed" was Clive Owen.  He did his thang in "Sin City" and straight rocked it.  He even kept me interested in "Closer" despite the fact that annoying Julia Roberts was in it.  And I still contend that he would have made a better James Bond than this blonde wanker they decided to get instead.  The jury's still out on that one though...we'll just have to see how the new Bond flick does and see if I was right.

Oh yeah, and Jennifer Aniston's here also.  The only problem I have with her is she seemed to do her best work when she was thicker.  Ever since she's gotten more trim and fit (which would have been right around the final three seasons of "Friends") it seems her work has fallen off a bit.  Her parts in "Friends" wasn't as good and her movie roles weren't very memorable.

Anyway, the problem with this joint is that it lives up to the saying "there aren't any new ideas in Hollywood".  You know right from the beginning that there's a con about to happen and it's painfully obvious that Jen's in on it.  Not because of the way she comes across, but because of the way it's set up.  Your typical "everything's too convenient" scenario.

There's a slight subplot with Clive's sick daughter that they never really develop.  Honestly, I don't know why they even included it.  She could have been just  a regular healthy daughter and it would have served the sorry excuse for a storyline just the same.  It was clear they added that for dramatic effect but it came across more like a blatant rip off of a "Panic Room" scene to me than anything.

And I don't mind that rappers are trying to broaden their horizons by getting into acting, but at least step outside the box a little bit.  Xzibit is here thugging it up as a stereotypical henchman and the RZA gives it his best shot as the typical ex-con turned mailroom guy.

The one gem in this mess is Giancarlo Esposito.  He seems to be gem in everything he's in...even if he does always seem to be playing law enforcement of some type.  I've been a fan ever since his turn as Dean Big Brother Almighty in "School Daze" so I always enjoy seeing him take any bit part and own it.

Again, here's another movie where the ending is pretty anti-climatic. Just when you think it's over, it's not really over.  Thanks to some blatant foreshadowing they do earlier, you clearly see the real ending coming.  The only problem was it couldn't come soon enough.

I hate to give yet another movie this, but they just keep asking for it...

My rating:  C-