Film

Street knowledge

Straight Outta Compton

I watched the entirety of Straight Outta Compton, the thrilling new N.W.A. biopic, not knowing that Ice Cube’s son was playing Ice Cube. It’s not like the guy is named Ice Cube Jr. He’s actually named O’Shea Jackson Jr., his dad’s birth name with a Jr. tacked on to the end. Jackson Jr. is the No. 1 reason to see Compton, a blast of a film that chronicles the rise of rap group N.W.A., the eventual infighting, and the birth of some gigantic solo careers and record labels. Along with Jackson Jr., Jason Mitchell is a revelation as Eazy-E, while Corey Hawkins provides a nice anchor as Dr. Dre. The film works best when covering the early days and the creation of the legendary album that shares the movie’s title. It also spends plenty of time on the band’s management problems with Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti in a moderately distracting wig), and Eazy-E’s eventual death from AIDS. At a running time of 2 and a half hours, plenty of ground gets covered, and covered in a way that never gets boring. Jackson Jr. is the spitting image of his dad, in physicality and especially in the way he talks and raps. This lends an invaluable level of authenticity to Compton. It’s a real blessing that Ice Cube’s kid is a supremely capable actor in his film debut, because he blows up the screen in a way similar to Ice Cube’s own Boyz N the Hood film debut back in 1991. The movie’s music is a mixture of original N.W.A. and the actors doing their own vocals. Watch and listen closely, and you’ll catch the moments where the likes of Jackson Jr. and Mitchell prove they

are more than capable of recreating the N.W.A. sound. According to Rolling Stone, the actors re-recorded all of the original Compton record as an exercise, and that’s an exercise that pays off. Also adding to the party is Aldis Hodge as MC Ren, Neil Brown Jr. as DJ Yella, and Keith Stanfield, who totally embodies by Bob Grimm the part of Snoop Dog. R. Marcos Taylor is quite fearsome as the cigar-chomping Suge bgrimm@ Knight. (The real Suge Knight currently sits newsreview.com in jail awaiting trial for a hit-and-run death that occurred during a promotional shoot for 4 the movie.) There is one brief scene featuring Tupac Shakur (Marcc Rose) laying down a track and hearing the familiar refrain of “California Love” for the first time. The scene feels tacked on and obligatory, and probably should’ve been relegated to the cutting room floor. The depiction of cops in this film is borderline cartoonish and always evil, but what do you expect? This is a movie about the creation of the gangsta rap group that sang “Fuck tha Police.” I didn’t go to this one expecting to see any warm and fuzzy cops scratching their heads and protesting their fellow officers while the likes of Cube, Dre and E are unjustifiably face down on the pavement. Save the good cops for another movie. This is about Compton in the late ’80s and early ’90s, a war zone where nobody was doing anything right, and the likes of Ice Cube were definitely not feeling the love from the boys in blue. The real life former members of N.W.A. had a hand in producing the movie, and I think they’re perfectly OK with the depiction of bad cops in this movie. This movie isn’t about the good ones. Compton was directed by F. Gary Gray, who worked with Ice Cube two decades ago on the original, very funny Friday. Compton actually has some good laughs to go with its drama. Gray has stumbled a bit with some bad films (Be Cool, Law Abiding Citizen) since his last time with Ice Cube, but Compton shows he still has plenty to offer. Straight Outta Compton is a solid cinematic time capsule that gives some deserved glory to an influential group that forever changed the landscape of hip-hop and brought much needed attention to a very troubled part of the world. It does the band, and the biopic genre in general, proud. Ω

"Don't quote me, boy ..."

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3Ant-Man After a shocking directorial exodus and a series of rewrites, Marvel’s Ant-Man makes it to the screen as a reasonably enjoyable piece of summer fare thanks to the total charmer playing the title character. Paul Rudd is Scott Lang, a wisecracking professional thief given a new lease on life when Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) shows him the wonders of his incredible shrinking suit. Rudd was given the job by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World), who left the film as its director after working on the project for years. While Wright still gets an executive producer credit and some writing credit, Peyton Reed (Yes Man), a virtual stranger to big budget blockbusters, wound up at the helm with a script rewrite from Adam McKay and Rudd himself. Reed does a good—although not outstanding—job in Wright’s place. The framework for the movie plays it mighty safe, with an emphasis on family viewing and very little of the offbeat touches that are the hallmark of a Wright affair. Still, Rudd is great as the title character, and some of the shrinking sequences are a blast.

1Fantastic Four Director Josh Trank’s take on the Fantastic Four is an epic, discombobulated cinematic mess. It’s as if the people who wrote, directed and edited this thing never talked to each other about what they were doing with the material. It wastes the talents of Miles Teller (Reed Richards/The Stretchy Guy), Kate Mara (Sue Storm/Invisible Woman), Michael B. Jordan (Johnny Storm/The Human Torch) and Jamie Bell (Ben Grimm/The Thing) in an origin story with no sense of wonder or pulse. Trank made a recent public statement implying the studio hijacked his film, and the movie we’re seeing is not really his vision. Given how disjointed this film feels, I’d be inclined to believe him, although his Chronicle was nothing to get all that excited about. I’m not of the belief that, had Trank been left untethered for the entire production, the movie would’ve been any good. I do believe it might’ve been less heinously awful. Apart from the terrible acting, dung heap dialogue and plot problems, this movie possesses some of the worst special effects and makeup you will ever see in a modern big studio picture. For terrible makeup, look no further than Toby Kebbell’s Victor Von Doom after he transforms on Planet Zero. He looks like a seventh-grader who tried to make a C-3PO costume out of melted silver Crayola crayons and then, while mushing the thing together, was introduced to low-grade meth.

3The Gift Joel Edgerton writes, directs and stars in this capable thriller about the perils of bullying and moving back to your home state. Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall play Simon and Robin, a married couple returning to California where Simon has a new job. While shopping for throw pillows, they run into Gordo (Edgerton), a high school pal who Simon doesn’t seem to remember at first. Gordo goes out of his way to welcome the new couple, dropping by the house uninvited, stocking their pond with fish and basically creeping out Simon. As the film progresses, more is revealed about Simon, his past with Gordo, and his current dishonesty. Bateman, who usually opts for more comedic roles, is very good as a man who thinks he has control of his domain, and thinks he can get away with habitual fibbing. Hall is terrific as the wife who can’t help but feel a little sorry for Gordo. Edgerton is creepy and somehow sympathetic as the strange man of the past who wants Simon to remember him in the worst way. Edgerton shows that he can write a screenplay with some good twists, direct it so there are plenty of surprises, and act it so that it’s good and scary. A true triple threat.

3Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Tom Cruise is back as Ethan Hunt. This time around, he’s hanging from airplanes, performing overly long tasks underwater, and riding a motorcycle again. Everything he does is in service of a convoluted plot involving some sort of evil syndicate of international agents. All sorts of nationalities are in on the evil, but the United Kingdom is especially nasty in this one, giving the whole thing a little bit of a James Bond vibe. Simon Pegg’s role is increased this time out, his computer analyst guy becoming Hunt’s sidekick. Newcomer to the series Alec Baldwin gets a couple of good scenes as the CIA guy trying to eradicate Hunt’s agency. Rebecca Ferguson is impressive as an English agent who may or may not be a villain and, yes, is quite decent-looking in a bikini. Jeremy Renner is around to crack wise as he messes with Baldwin’s character, while Ving Rhames still gets to collect a paycheck. As for Emilio Estevez, sadly, he’s still dead after his elevator accident in the first film. This is my least favorite M:I yet, but it’s still a good film. Things feel a little by-the-numbers, but Cruise is a crazy bastard willing to go all out for his movies, and this installment is no exception. The dude is nuts, and we, the movie-viewing public, benefit from this.

4Mr. Holmes Ian McKellen is shockingly good as the infamous Sherlock Holmes in this decidedly unorthodox twist on the sleuth’s story. McKellen plays him as an aging man in his 90s, fighting memory loss and struggling to recall the details of a case that caused him to walk away from the detective life. He does this on an estate accompanied by his housekeeper (a typically wonderful Laura Linney), her son (the charming Milo Parker) and his bees. The film features flashbacks to 20 years earlier (which has McKellen playing somewhere in the vicinity of his actual age), with Holmes trying to remember the circumstances involving a beautiful woman, her husband and a Japanese man. Things are a little slow-going at first, but when the pieces all get put together, it’s a nice payoff. Director Bill Condon (miles away from his pitiful stint on the Twilight series) has made a film full of sumptuous visuals, splendid acting and good humor. McKellen plays Holmes as a dignified, if sometimes nasty, older man who never wore that silly hat or smoked that huge pipe. In an interesting twist, his character is actually world famous and the subject of movies he considers garbage. The year has been a little light on great performances so far. McKellen’s is certainly one of them. His interactions with Linney and Parker are classically good. Condon and McKellen worked together before (Gods and Monsters). This stands as a much welcomed reunion.

3Southpaw This is one of the better boxing movies in many years. Jake Gyllenhaal transforms himself as Billy Hope, a boxer at the top of the world with a beautiful wife (Rachel McAdams) and daughter (Oona Laurence). He loses everything, Rocky V style, and must fight for redemption and the custody of his child. Forest Whitaker plays Billy’s unorthodox trainer, reminiscent of the role Burgess Meredith played in the Rocky films. Yes, I’m comparing this movie to Rocky in many ways because it is clear director Antoine Fuqua draws much of his inspiration from that series. Gyllenhaal, like Robert De Niro in Raging Bull before him, put himself through a rigorous training process to become a convincing fighter, and he certainly looks the part in the ring. Out of the ring, Billy mumbles a lot, which makes sense considering the amount of blows he’s taken to the head. It’s a typically great performance from Gyllenhaal, who rises above the moments where the script becomes a little too conventional. Laurence, who’s reminiscent of a young Natalie Wood, does strong work as the daughter who has to put up with a dad who can’t seem to get his act together.

3Trainwreck The hilarious Amy Schumer gets her first starring vehicle with a screenplay she wrote under the directorial tutelage of Judd Apatow and costarring Bill Hader. I would say this movie signals the arrival of Schumer as a cinematic force to be reckoned with. She plays Amy, a magazine writer playing the field in New York and doing it rather sloppily. When she’s assigned a story covering a sports medicine doctor (Hader), she unexpectedly falls for the guy, which puts into flux her whole plan to just fool around with a lot of people. Schumer has crafted a pretty run-of-the-mill romantic comedy plotline with her screenplay, peppered with sometimes beautifully shocking profanity. She shows that she has the ability to nail the laughs, but she can also bring the emotional stuff, too. She has a funeral scene that is, dare I say, sublime. Hader is his always-terrific self as the shell-shocked boyfriend just trying to bring some stability into Amy’s life, and Colin Quinn is terrific as her retirement home-dwelling father. The story is a little weak and predictable, but Schumer and Hader are awesome together, so that makes this very much worthwhile.