; Movie
Reviews
The Show
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY
About a decade ago, Run-DMC was
chanting rhymes about sneakers. Com
pared to today’s gangsta acts like
Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose profanity
and violent imagery rattle the cages
of Congress, those old-school rappers
are as quaint as Mother Goose.
Both acts show up in The Show (***
out of four), a rapumentary that
couldn’t be more timely. Neither con
demnation nor apology, it’s a must for
fans and anyone wondering about
these supposed corrupters of youth.
Grainy and tinny, it still exudes an
infectious, raw energy and allows the
performers to speak for themselves.
The camera hip-hops about from
studio to limo to hotel. In between is
black-and-white footage of a concert
heavy on groups associated with
Russell Simmons, the Berry Gordy of
rap. A telling image: the menacing
Wu-Tang Clan showering the audience
with champagne.
The Show doesn’t shrug off the pit
falls of success. It opens with Simmons
visiting a contrite Slick Rick at Riker’s
Island, where the rapper is serving
time for attempted second-degree mur
der. But many exhibit positive virtues.
Simmons still has a lot of street in him
(he can’t help but call women
“bitches”), but he talks sense about the
ugly side of the biz. Dr. Dre, who has
had his own brushes with the law, is
quite erudite. Members of Naughty by
Nature refuse to forget their roots.
Baby-faced Warren G cleans his own
tour bus. Humor is rampant, especially
whenever fleshy mound of sound the
Notorious B.I.G. is around. It’s price
less when his mom hauls out his baby
picture. (R; drug use, profanity)
Dead Presidents
By Mike Clark, USA TODAY
Older, maybe wiser, but hardly
wizened, twins Allen and Albert
Hughes are back two years after Men
ace II Society with their 23-year-old
muscles re-flexed. Messy but mesmer
izing, Dead Presidents (*** out of
four) has a crowded agenda, an
epically ambitious Bronx-Vietnam-
Bronx trajectory, and ^ least one of
the year’s great movie scenes.
With its ’60s setting and incendi
ary title, one might expect a political
assassination tract. In truth. Dead
Presidents alludes to currency in an
armored truck,
the kind that’s
knocked off dur
ing the movie’s
payoff (in both
senses). A run
down of the heist
participants hints
at the intended
scope of the story: one veteran Bronx
lowlife, one female Black Power ac
tivist and four messed-up Vietnam
buddies.
Specifically, Michael Henry
Brown’s script follows the downfall of
a middle-class black youth from a
straight-arrow family: petty crime,
out-of-wedlQck fatherhood, a violent
tour in the Marines and no glory back
home. Scene for scene, the movie is
powerful and accomplished, but we
never fully grasp why an agreeable kid
(Society’s Larenz Tate) so automati
cally rejects his family’s values, or why
someone who wants to call his own
shots enlists when college is an option.
Connective tissue is not a Hughes
Brothers strength.
And yet, they have a lot more on
their minds than their more dazzling
Coen counterparts (Raising Arizona),
and only a little less craft. Presidents’
mosaic approach does have a cumula
tive emotional effect - more so at the
end than in its unprecedentedly graphic
Vietnam scenes.
If the Brothers haven’t foiled the
sophomore jinx, they’ve dodged it.
(New York and L.A.; R: violence, pro
fanity, sexual content)
Clockers
First off, for those that don’t know,
and are not from New York, “clock
ers” are hustlers and I have two words
to describe Clockers, the movie: “cold
blast!” To my pleasant surprise, this
was a great
I have two words to
describe Clockers, the
movie: “cold blast!”
“Spike Lee
Joint.” One
thing that was
unusual about
this Spike Lee
movie was his
choice of ac
tors. The cast
included ail “no-names,” or actors that
haven’t proved themselves.
The picture started with a gross
realization of our time; the frighten
ing number of African-Americans be
ing killed by handguns. Lee opened the
picture by showing photos of theses
atrocities, Clopkers depipts a, youag ,
black male in his twenties suffering
through the hardships and temptations
of the ghetto. His mother and father
are not around, so his only parents are
the streets. The person that he looks
up to is a drug king pin in New York.
So to please his boss, the young man.
5ronco«' Voice ^
October 1995
known as “Stripe” (Melvin Phifer),
shoots a person.
Through the course of the movie.
Stripe has many confrontations with
New York City’s finest, “homo-cide,”
and of course Lee touches on some of
the cops’ racist attitudes.
In all of Spike Lee’s movies, he
always has to have a cameo, so you
shouldn’t expect anything less from
Clockers. In the past, I have criticized
Spike’s camera angles, but I must say
Spike has come a long way. Of course
he always has to have the camera angle
where it appears someone is walking
faster than the camera (which has the
same effect as being on an escalator).
I was particularly impressed with how
he used the camera angle to produce a
mirror image in an eye ball (it sounds
strange, but you’ve got to see the
movie to know what I’m talking
about). Spike Lee is truly a genius of
camera angles.
The only problem that I have with
this movie is that it was too long. I
don’t know why Spike has to go for
the movie marathon award. Overall I
did enjoy the movie, though, and it was
true to urban life. Many movies only
show the guns and drugs and not the
whole urban life. Thanks Spike for
once again keeping it real.
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