Straight Outta Compton review

 NWA were a raw force in the music industry and helped popularize what would later be known as ‘gangster rap.’ The band’s break-up also resulted in the influential and successful solo-careers of Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Eazy-E.  With “Straight Outta Compton,” director F. Gary Gray makes a statement about the plight of underprivileged African Americans through the gauze of a traditional rock and roll biopic, and manages to do so with a certain amount of style and competence. 

One could say history repeats itself or one might prefer to say that there’s never really been a break in the depressingly familiar pattern of police brutality and the unfair treatment minorities are given by law enforcement. Either way, without having to make broad or obvious symbolic gestures to draw the connection, this movie mirrors the history of what was happening in South-Central LA  in the late-80s and the early 90s, with how  these modern tensions with police have expressed themselves today.

In what is probably the best sequence of the film, Gray introduces us to each character by their surroundings and their lives in the hood. Dre (Corey Hawkins) is a struggling DJ at a club, looking to further his own career in hip-hop, while Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) is a fresh talent and an ambitious lyricist who’s also trying to find a comfortable fit. Eazy (Jason Mitchell), on the other hand, is the only member of the group who actually lived the life of hustling and dope dealing to survive on the streets, but is looking for a way out.  When the three find each other in Dre’s studio, magic is almost instantaneous as their message and their aggressive attitude reflects the frustration within culture they represent. 

Their independently produced album sells well beyond expectations, their tour becomes a growing success, and their explicit messages about the police and the world of violence they come from attracts a ill-informed warning from the FBI. Yet, things only become complicated when their local manager, Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti), begins to play favorites among the group and refuses to share contractual information with all the members. 

The movie’s strengths come from its world-building and its authentic sense of time and place. Gray and his wonderful production designers do a great job of keeping things period; down to the cars, the real south-central locations and the now-embarrassing jerry-curl hairdos.  All of these details play into the narrative to help a modern rap-friendly, suburban audience understand the genuine sense of shock and surprise white-America had towards the group’s assaultive artistic approach.  The cast of mostly unknowns are totally believable and commit fully to the personas of their real-life counterparts, especially O’Shea Jackson Jr. who fearlessly takes on the risky task of accurately playing his movie-star father.

The film falls short during its extended second act, where it feels the need to include all the West-Coast’s greatest hits before coming back to the heart of the story. After the events of the LA riots, the script’s political drive is simmered. In its place we get a tangential story about the Dr. Dre’s successful solo career and his struggle to run Death Row Records with his intimidating manager Suge Knight (R. Marcos Taylor).  This plot builds in the wrong direction and causes a fifteen to twenty minute lag that seems more concerned with salacious Behind the Music gossip than it does the history and legacy of NWA.

Nevertheless, “Straight Outta Compton” is a must-see this summer and contains a contagious passion and vigor to get its story out there. Very few biopics have as much energy and youthful appeal as this one does and even when it delves into pandering references or easy TV-Movie story-telling, the strength if its performances and the weight of its cultural relevance insists a sense of vitality upon the piece as a whole. 

Grade: B+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal - Aug/2015

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation review

The “Mission: Impossible” franchise has become low-stakes cannon of summer-fluff films, and I mean that in a good way. Unlike the Bond franchise, which means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, or the superhero movies that always come with an unfair amount of fan-pressure and canonical expectations, nobody is that invested in the integrity of Ethan Hunt’s continued misadventures in espionage. With that in mind, filmmakers are now allowed a certain amount of freedom to let the movies exist for their own sake and to reinterpret their appeal for newer generations, as most younger fans have not seen the earlier films and practically none of them have watched the 60s TV show in which they’re based.

The last two films in particular have become less about characters realizing anything new about themselves and more about setting up a loose framework for directors to show-off their set-piece skills, upping the ante with new exotic locations and complicated stunt coordination. 

In the first scene of “Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation,” Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is framed for the murder of a fellow agent and forced to go into hiding from his own network. While on the lam, he discovers a shadow cell of spies known as The Syndicate who are organizing global terrorist acts, using trained spy techniques. Hunt must then clear his name and convince his friends to help him take down the mysterious Syndicate leader known as Solomon Kane (Sean Harris). On the way Hunt runs into another British spy named Isla Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) who may or may not be working for or against Kane, and he is forced to decide if he trusts her enough to get close to the core of The Syndicate or to keep her at a careful distance.

As this series has progressed Ethan Hunt has become less and less interesting on an emotional or psychological level. Cruise plays him with confidence and still performs the stunts in a way that looks deceptively effortless, but we are no longer expected to follow hunt as a hero with wants and needs that reflect our own--and sometimes that’s okay. Christopher McQuarrie, who wrote and directed this installment, gives all the movie’s needed humanity to Cruise’s costars like Simon Pegg’s Benji who gets to deliver the best dialogue and Jeremy Renner’s William Brandt who’s slowly transitioning into becoming the franchise’s new lead. With the charisma now in place by the satellite cast, McQuary can concentrate on wowing the audience with gracefully shot and delicately edited sequences of spy verses spy.

In one of the finest pieces of visceral filmmaking all year, McQuary sets an extended set-piece in an opera house, cross cutting between Hunt on the lookout for a group of saboteurs while he is also unknowingly being followed by the cat-like Faust, all while Benji is working behind the scenes in the electrical room. Not unlike Michael Powell’s complicated sequences in films such as “Tales of Hoffman” or the “The Red Shoes”—yes, I really am making this comparison—this scene is beautifully composed to the diegetic opera being performed in the background and reminds us that a good action scene structurally has more in common with the classic movie-musical than some fans might care to acknowledge. We’re also treated to a very thrilling underwater sequence and a smoothly edited motor-cycle chase that’s largely shot from the first-person point-of-view.

I can’t say that I ever cared about the film’s story because most of the plot points are unforgivably lazy and familiar, but “Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation” proves that some films can coast on stock genre tropes and skeletal character motifs, so long as the visual filmmaking is as skillfully executed as it is here.

Grade B -

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal Aug/2015

Trainwreck review

Amy Schumer has become the unlikely voice of a new generation in stand-up and sketch comedy. Her work is thoughtful, brazen and cleverly funny, taking on all kinds of relevant subjects like feminism, ageism, body-shaming and race, while still retaining just enough gleeful locker-room filth to make it palatable to the masses.  After receiving awards attention and praise for her ambitious and subversive sketch comedy show, Schumer has teamed with producer/director Judd Apatow to tell a more personal story that exists somewhere between the detachment of her ironic wit and the pain that it masks.  “Trainwreck” is a conflicted and sometimes frustrating film where Amy shines as a performer and a burgeoning writer, but lacks the narrative consistency and the truth of convictions that we have come to expect from her point of view.

Amy’s character Amy is a hard drinking, sex-starved city girl who enjoys her life the way it is, much to the displeasure of her family and her pro-wrestler boy-friend (John Cena) who breaks up with her after discovering her multiple hookups. Later, after her magazine editor boss (Tilda Swinton) has her interview a sports doctor named Aaron (Bill Hader), the two develop a wholesome relationship and Amy finds herself unable to reconcile her fear of commitment with her newfound fondness for the nice-guy surgeon. This personal struggle is augmented by the mounting tension between her and her sister played by Brie Larson and their father played by Colin Quinn who’s struggling with the early stages of Parkinson’s disease and needs to be put into an affordable facility.

Every actor here has their moment to shine, including, and especially, Amy Schumer. Because much of the comedy derives from her stand-up as well as her real life issues, there’s definitely a vulnerability presented in this film that Schumer usually tries to avoid on stage, which is refreshing and revelatory too see from her. Compared to the broad characters he’s become known for playing on Saturday Night Live, Bill Hader dials things way down and functions more as a graceful support for Amy’s louder screen persona and the movie’s surprisingly conventional romantic comedy plot.  Side characters and cameo performances such as Tilda Swinton as the venomous editor, Ezra Miller as the weird-quiet intern, Dave Attell as the friendly bum, and Labron James playing himself to great affect keep every scene activated and entertaining even if the movie as a whole runs about 20 minutes too long—a typical Apatow problem. 

As I’ve alluded to already, “Trainwreck” suffers from a strange double standard. When it comes to how women who openly enjoy sex are viewed in society, Amy uses her persona as an outspoken satirist to build her character and set up the movie’s sense of unexpected laughs. This is then contradicted when the story reinforces the traditional rom-com values of waiting for ‘the one’ to come in and set her straight. It’s clear that her character is irresponsible with other people’s feelings and for dramatic purposes she would need to express some sort of change , but the choice to have that change occur through a familiar Hollywood romance is somewhat disappointing, if only because it’s coming from her.  The gender roles of this romance are swapped and the film makes a point to show how it changes the perspective of the archetypal narrative structure, but turning a male sports doctor into a white-knight cure for promiscuity undercuts the entire point of the experiment.

All that aside, this movie’s funny. Schumer’s comedic voice is present throughout and the satellite performances constantly jolt the audience with a surprise laugh. Directorially, this is also one of the stronger efforts from Apatow in a while, even if he’s too generous with his actors and still doesn’t know when to say cut. If the worst thing we can say about “Trainwreck” is that it’s traditional, then I suppose we can chock that up as a moderate win for Schumer as a first time screenwriter.

Grade: B

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jul-2015