Spectre is a Bond fan’s Bond movie. This is the 24th film in a series spanning over 50 years, and after a talk with an expert in the field (my own editor), I was given a breakdown of the myriad homages the movie makes to its own legacy. If you have only a basic working knowledge of the Bond mythos (like me), or even if you know next to nothing about agent 007, Spectre still works as a thrilling spy-actioner. The film is certainly not without its flaws, but on the whole it delivers on several levels, and if nothing else is two and half hours of spy-movie fun.
Daniel Craig is the sixth actor to portray British MI6 secret agent James Bond and he begins his fourth outing in Mexico City, during a huge Día de Muertos celebration. The skeleton motif – think giant skeleton parade balloons and participants decked out in skull masks and make-up – is a direct callback to another Bond film, specifically the tops-and-tails sporting henchman Baron Samedi from Live and Let Die. It’s a great signal right at the start to let the initiated know that this is a Bond film steeped in its franchise’s lore.
For audiences who don’t know or care about any of that, this virtuoso sequence directed by Sam Mendes is still amazing on a purely technical level. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s camera magnificently swirls around the parade and up several floors of a hotel in a tracking shot that remains unbroken for almost five minutes. The tension that is created in the shot doesn’t just remain intact after the first cut, but actually ramps up with a fist-fight on a flying helicopter that is dazzling. Even if the rest of the movie was a disappointment (it’s not), the opening would be enough to redeem the whole film.
The Daniel Craig Bond films resurrected an aspect of the franchise that has been long dormant. From the early 1980s through 2002’s Die Another Day, each film has been a self-contained unit. Each villain and plot is disconnected from the others. With this latest series, the writers and producers have revived the oldest foe MI6 and Bond have ever faced: the shadowy criminal cabal known as Spectre. It’s a throwback that links the very first 007 adventure with the latest one, and fans of old-school spy craft movies, especially the Bond series, should love it. Simply put, Spectre is the Bondiest Bond film to come along in forty years.
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“What exactly does it mean to be an asshole?”
That was how New York magazine writer Mark Harris boiled down Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for The Social Network in a 2010 piece on the movie and its screenwriter. Sorkin’s past work is littered with characters that are intensely driven, successful, and can charitably be described as “difficult.” In writing for TV – most notably NBC’s The West Wing – Sorkin knew how to soften the edges of these overachievers. Yes, they could be hard to deal with, but they realized it (usually by the end of the episode), and cared enough about those around them to make amends for their behavior.
Then along came The Social Network, and Mark Zuckerberg. While ostensibly about the creation of Facebook, the movie is actually an intense character study of the website’s founder. Sorkin’s Zuckerberg was an asshole who knew it, but only cared enough to feel a little bad about it – making amends was not that character’s style. After another stint on TV with the similarly fractious Will McAvoy of The Newsroom, now Sorkin gives us Steve Jobs. From Zuckerberg to McAvoy to Jobs, something of an asshole evolution is evident. This time the asshole genius knows what he is and he doesn’t give a damn. The result of Sorkin’s writing is as compelling and multi-layered a character study as he delivered with The Social Network, with a dramatic structure as tight as Citizen Kane.
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Bridge of Spies is a tale of two films. The second half of Steven Spielberg’s newest historical drama is a good representation of the high level of quality associated with the director’s work. The finale is dramatically tense and emotionally powerful while remaining understated in the message it conveys. The first half stands in stark contrast to all of that; it’s hindered by its rote execution and the way it delivers moral lessons as subtly as an atomic bomb. Bridge of Spies could be leaner and more effective if Spielberg and screenwriters Matt Charman and the Coen brothers had concentrated solely on the second dramatic arc of the story. As it is, the film gives the overall impression of being unfocused.
The movie begins in 1957 as the FBI arrests Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) on suspicion of being a Soviet spy. The evidence against Abel is quite damning, but the U.S. government wants to show the world that everyone, even those accused of espionage, is afforded the same protections under the law. This protection boils down to having access to competent legal counsel. To that end, the FBI convinces James Donovan (Tom Hanks) – an insurance settlement lawyer with criminal trial experience – to represent Abel. Donovan believes in the American justice system, so he provides his client with a zealous defense, even moving forward with an appeal when Abel is convicted on all counts. He does this to the chagrin of his colleagues at the firm, the judge in the case, and even his own family.
It would be one thing if the writers stuck to the maxim of “show, don’t tell” to illustrate the moral superiority of treating even the worst criminals with the same dignity and humanity granted all U.S. citizens. After all, the case can be made that it’s a lesson worth re-learning since the war on terror began – especially for those in positions of power. But Charman, Spielberg and the Coens don’t just show. They tell, and tell, and tell. Tom Hanks is one of the finest actors of his generation, and his performance in Bridge of Spies is as good as you would expect. But by the fifth or sixth time he explains the importance of due process to those who want blood, the point becomes excruciatingly belabored.
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There’s a lot wrong with Ridley Scott’s Legend. But instead of writing it off as an outright failure, it’s deserving of admiration because Scott and his creative team made a movie completely devoid of cynicism, which is commendable. The filmmakers set out to make pure fable come alive through the magic of the silver screen. There are too many problems with the final product to warrant calling it a success, but the effort of all involved is worthy of respect.
The first sign of trouble comes with the opening text crawl. The most famous example of this device, those floating columns of exposition from the original Star Wars films, set the scene quickly. That’s not the case with Legend. The informational paragraphs here are interminable and artless. So much information is crammed in, it’s like a nervous studio executive worried that audiences would be confused by the lack of explanation in the rest of the film. We’re told Darkness ruled the universe before light came to the world. It was the light, protected by unicorns, which drove him into hiding. To protect the light, only a true innocent can find the unicorns. The rest of the movie makes all this abundantly clear, calling into question why the opening explanation is needed at all.
The movie itself concerns the innocent Lily (Mia Sara) as she unwittingly puts the unicorns in danger when she touches them. She does this in the presence of goblins sent by Darkness (Tim Curry) to catch and kill the sacred protectors of light. Jack (Tom Cruise), a forest dweller, brings Lily to the unicorns because he loves her, not realizing that she will endanger the creatures. The rest of the movie is an uneven mix of boring plotting, awkward comic relief, one performance that is particularly mesmerizing, and incredible make-up and special effects.
Ridley Scott has had a long and varied career as a filmmaker. His latest two releases are great examples of the range possible in his output. Produced within a year of each other, Scott climbed dizzyingly high peaks in The Martian and crawled along depressingly low valleys in Exodus: Gods and Kings. Scott is a visually striking and inventive director, but his talents can’t compensate for a poor screenplay. So, when he gets his hands on a script as strong as Blade Runner or Alien, his masterful visual flair perfectly enhances the story. With a substandard script, like the aforementioned Exodus, the movie turns into a muddled mess.
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If the Oscars nominate Sicario for a best picture award next January, it will be one more example against the argument that “Hollywood” is nothing but a bunch of looney liberals who promote a far leftist agenda. A few handicappers currently have it as a top tier contender. The film is about the U.S. government’s escalating tactics to stop narcotics from crossing the border between Mexico and the States. It is Zero Dark Thirty for the war on drugs, playing like Dick Cheney’s wet dream. The movie is a perfect representation of how neocons like Cheney and his ilk envision prosecuting not only the war on terror, but all wars. They alone get to decide what the rules of engagement are. Sicario is a reactionary, far-right fantasy that’s all the more depressing because it’s probably not that different from reality.
The film begins with FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) en route to raid a house in Arizona where a Mexican drug cartel is suspected of holding kidnap victims. When the raid is over, Macer and her SWAT team make a gruesome discovery: the cartel hid dozens of bodies inside the walls. The situation gets even worse when several FBI team members are killed by an improvised explosive device rigged in a backyard shed. Macer’s boss introduces her to Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), a mysterious figure who is leading a new task force. The explosion and deaths in Arizona have changed the game, Graver explains, and they need to take the fight to the cartels. He wants Macer to join his team, but she has to volunteer. She does, with the stipulation that she can bring her partner Reggie (Daniel Kaluuya) along. Their convictions are soon put to the test. Witnessing blatant disregard for the rule of law and an invasion of sovereign territory, Macer eventually suspects the use of torture, as well. All in the name of fighting the war on drugs.
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It’s a great feeling when a filmmaker capable of cinematic magic comes in from wandering the creative desert. Ridley Scott has had a rough go of it the past five years. In that time, the director helmed the debacle Exodus: Gods and Kings, the critically lambasted The Counselor, the made-for-TV movie The Vatican, and the disappointing Robin Hood. The uneven Prometheus was also released amidst that flurry but, as a return to the world he created in his classic Alien, is entertaining despite suffocating under the weight of its own mythology. The Martian is a return to form for Scott, almost matching his best work. All that’s missing here is the heavy tone that comes out of exploring themes like what it means to be human, as he did in Blade Runner. But that’s like faulting the stars in the sky because of the view from a light-polluted city. Scott did exactly what The Martian’s source material demands. He made a wildly fun, acerbically funny, exciting ride of a movie.
The film is based on the bestselling book of the same name by first time novelist Andy Weir. The author self-published The Martian in serial format for free on his own website before it exploded in popularity via Amazon Kindle. It’s essentially Robinson Crusoe on Mars, albeit far more scientifically accurate. Weir did painstaking research while writing the novel to ensure as much technical exactitude as possible. The Martian tells the story of astronaut Mark Watney, a botanist and mechanical engineer, who becomes stranded on the fourth planet from the sun when his fellow crew members are forced to abort their mission because of a harrowing sandstorm. The crew believes Watney was killed during the escape, and the scientist’s attempts to survive and to figure out how to contact NASA with no working communications equipment make up the crux of the story.
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Jon Krakauer hates the movie Everest. The author called the film – a fictional retelling of what was, until recently, the deadliest expedition up the world’s highest summit – “total bull.” Krakauer should know. He was there on May 11th, 1996 when eight people died on the side of Everest after they got trapped by a brutal ice and snow storm. The nature writer went on the expedition for Outside magazine, and in 1997 he turned his story into the bestselling memoir Into Thin Air. Krakauer said he was never consulted by anyone involved with this new film, and he takes specific umbrage with one scene depicting him as being unable to help search for one of the lost climbers. He claims no one ever came to his tent to ask for his help.
For his part, director Baltasar Kormákur claims that he and writers William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy had access to several books about the disaster and all of the radio communications of Adventure Consultants, the company leading the expedition. When crafting a dramatic interpretation of real-life events, artistic license is always a factor. The important thing to consider in determining if the ends justify the means of that license is intent. Kormákur says the writers added the scene with Krakauer to dramatize the sense of desperation everyone trapped on the mountain must have felt. He implies the changes he made were in service of the storytelling, and after seeing the film, it’s a convincing argument. Whether you agree or not, Everest is an amazing feat in filmmaking. Kormákur made a film that is compelling, gripping, and at times heart-stopping.
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Roger Ebert called movies “the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts,” and the best ones allow you to live another person’s life for a few hours. Paul Weitz’s new film Grandma allows the audience to see a controversial subject from a different perspective. Weitz, whose previous films include About a Boy and In Good Company, seemingly wrote and directed Grandma with empathy in mind. While writing, he might have also had the second wave feminism slogan, “The personal is political,” taped to his wall. Weitz puts a very human face on some very big political issues, and he does it with grace and frankness.
Sage (Julia Garner) is a teen in trouble. She’s pregnant, and her acerbic grandma Elle (Lily Tomlin) is the only person she feels comfortable turning to for help. Sage doesn’t have the 600 dollars she needs for an abortion, so she asks grandma Elle for the money. Elle is having some issues of her own, namely a break-up with her girlfriend Olivia (Judy Greer), that happens just minutes before Sage shows up. Elle tells Olivia that the few months they were together amount to a footnote in her life, compared to the decades she spent with her recently deceased partner, Violet. This breakup opens the film, and it grounds the rest of Grandma in a realism that gives way to delightful comedy throughout. After Olivia walks out in tears, Sage shows up and confides to her grandma why she needs the cash. Elle is forced to admit that she doesn’t have the money either. The two women set out to beg and borrow for enough cash to pay for Sage’s procedure, which is scheduled for five o’clock that afternoon.
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A Walk in the Woods is a rare example of when it’s ok to judge a movie by its poster. Just look at it. Some marketing underling clearly Photoshopped stars Robert Redford and Nick Nolte onto the edge of a cliff. Redford holds his arm up in what should represent exasperation, but his stance, coupled with the expression on his face, screams artificiality; every part of his body looks manipulated to produce an effect. Ditto Nolte’s posture of reluctant explanation. The whole thing looks flat, both photographically and thematically. The image is a perfect metaphor for the film. A Walk in the Woods is a superficial, monotonous mess.
Critical and financial hits like Into the Wild, 127 Hours, and Wild explore the theme of the human struggle against nature, and harken back to the popular German “mountain films” of the 1920s and 30s. Because the genre is experiencing success, it’s time for some poorly made knock-offs. A Walk in the Woods is one of these. The movie is based on the bestseller of the same name by travel writer Bill Bryson. The plan to make the book into a movie began in 1998, but the project continually hit roadblocks until these other films paved the way for its production.
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Holly Martins has the worst luck. The broke writer travels to Vienna shortly after the end of World War II because his best friend, Harry Lime, offers him a job. Within the opening minutes of director Carol Reed’s classic noir thriller The Third Man, Martins walks under a ladder – a harbinger of bad luck – and soon learns that a car struck and killed Lime a few days earlier. Martins is now adrift in a foreign land with no money and no prospects, but things are about to get much worse. Major Calloway, a British officer who is part of the post-war occupying force in Vienna, tells Martins that his childhood friend was a criminal, a profiteer within the city’s thriving black market. Martins decides to clear his friend’s good name and, as a result, he’s pulled into intrigue that challenges his belief in the decency of humanity. Along the way he meets Anna, Lime’s lover, who is ferociously loyal and is devastated by his death.
Because we’re travelling through noir country in The Third Man, the worldview is bleak, practically nihilistic. Made in 1949, the film explores the existential crisis experienced after the most deadly war in history ended. Life is cheap, take all you can while you can, and don’t look out for anybody but yourself.
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Is Sean Connery dressed in a loincloth – ok, it’s essentially a diaper – for 99.9% of a movie all you really need? That was the one burning question I had as I prepared to experience the cult classic Zardoz for the first time, and when it was over, I had so many more. Is it ever a good idea for a studio to give a director carte blanche on their next project, no matter how successful their previous movie was? Did Connery make Zardoz to pay off a bet? Why is this movie so obsessed with genitals? The only definitive conclusion is this: I need more than Connery in an adult nappy for a whole movie. Thankfully, Zardoz offers enough in the way of bat-shit insane storytelling that I didn’t end up caring about its faults. There’s also the fact that Connery has one, and only one, costume change – into a wedding dress.
Director John Boorman was fresh off the huge success of Deliverance, his movie about four friends’ excruciating canoe trip in rural Georgia. Deliverance was the fifth highest grossing film of 1972 and it was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. As a result, Boorman’s agent finagled a deal with 20th Century Fox in which one man from the studio had two hours to read the script for Zardoz, then he had to immediately give a yes or no on the project. (Boorman discussed the parameters of the deal in an interview this year with the now defunct website The Dissolve.) Fox was so excited to work with Boorman that their script reader gave the thumbs up after that single two-hour reading. And so, Zardoz was a go.
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The question with biopics is always what should be included, and what’s reasonable to leave out. Depicting the events of even a few years of a person’s life is incredibly hard to do. The filmmakers have to hone in on a very carefully selected handful of events that will convey to the audience the essence of the people and times the film covers. By that standard, Straight Outta Compton is a frustrating disappointment. It’s frustrating because the shortcomings of the narrative detract from what is otherwise a powerful piece of filmmaking.
Stylish and gritty, Straight Outta Compton will surely become the definitive visual history of the musical revolution set off by artists Easy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, DJ Yella, and MC Ren. Director F. Gary Gray, with the help of cinematographer Matthew Libatique, created a film that’s gorgeous to look at, and has been praised by people who experienced the time and place the film covers – such as Selma director Ava DuVernay in a tweet storm about her reaction to the movie.
The problem with the film is that the winners, specifically Dr. Dre, got to write their own history. Dre was among the producers for the film, and his character is written as undeniably heroic. He’s a flawed hero, to be sure, but he’s a hero who stands up to violence and those who perpetrate it. Unfortunately for him, we live in a time when the people stepped on by the winners can still have their say. As a result, Straight Outta Compton rings hollower than it otherwise would.
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Terry Gilliam has to fight each time he makes a movie. You could write volumes about the director’s struggles in getting his films on the screen. His reputation reaches mythic proportions of being difficult, demanding, and maybe even a little crazy. I see Gilliam as a mix between the sadistic music teacher in Whiplash, and the titular character from his own film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. He’s an intense perfectionist who delights in telling the tallest of tales. Somewhere within him is a little bit of Sam Lowry, Gilliam’s protagonist in his brilliant and singular film Brazil. Lowry starts the film as just a dreamer, but by the end he’s willing to sacrifice his own best interests to pursue his obsessions with reckless abandon.
The setting is “somewhere in the 20th century,” and although it lacks real world developments like the internet, the world of Brazil feels very familiar. Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a low level paper pusher in the totalitarian government’s Ministry of Information. Sam is stuck at the bottom and he likes it that way. Instead of using his time to climb the bureaucratic ladder, he’d rather escape into his dreams, where he saves a mysterious damsel in distress. In an absurdist twist that would make Kafka proud, a fly is ruthlessly killed by a technician one day at the Ministry of Information, and when it falls into the machine that spits out wanted suspects, a typo occurs. The name “Buttle” pops out instead of “Tuttle”, but instead of being responsible for unpaid parking tickets that aren’t his or his house being seized, Mr. Buttle is rounded up as a potential terrorist and interrogated in a most enhanced way. Sam is thrust into the mess when Buttle’s upstairs neighbor, Jill (Kim Greist) takes an interest in his case. Sam spots her at his office, and becomes obsessed with her cause because she bears a striking resemblance to the literal woman of his dreams.
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Almost a decade ago, film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG for short) to describe female characters that exist in movies solely to move the male protagonist forward on his journey of self-discovery. Rabin wrote a piece last year retracting the term because he saw it used to celebrate those characters instead of critiquing the sexist motives of the writers who created them. In his mind, the term gave a sort of power to the idea of the MPDG that he never intended. There are alternatives, though. For every Sam (Natalie Portman in Garden State) and Claire (Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown, the impetus for the term) there is a Clementine (Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) that subverts the idolization of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
Now we have another one.
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Adam Sandler is the perfect star for the near complete disaster that is Pixels. The actor hasn’t had a critical hit in over half a decade, and the box office takes for his movies have been trending in the wrong direction for almost as long. So, a project that looks back to the good old days fits nicely with how the Sand Man might feel personally, because Pixels is steeped in the worst kind of nostalgia. The kind that plays on those false notions lingering at the back of your mind; everything used to be so awesome back in the day. If now could be like then, I would rule the world.
The story is about as high concept as they come. Sam Brenner (Sandler) was a teenage arcade game superstar who became a tech geek when he grew up. He is called to save the world when an alien planet intercepts a space capsule and misinterprets a videotape containing footage from an arcade game tournament as an act of war. Instead of nuclear weapons and ICBMs, they send Pac-Man.
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I need to write about Double Indemnity. True, it’s a movie already eloquently written about by the likes of Roger Ebert, among many others. It was selected in 1992 for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, and ranked in the top 50 of the best American films by the American Film Institute. So, it certainly isn’t in danger of being forgotten.
When I sat down to type, I wondered what I could hope to write that hasn’t already been written about this Oscar nominated classic; one of the most thrilling films noir ever made. I needed to do it because Double Indemnity is a movie that demands to be discussed. I was able to see it in a theatrical exhibition thanks to Turner Classic Movies’ celebration of the film noir genre, called Summer of Darkness. At almost three-quarters of a century old, the film is still gripping. The story of Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), the libidinous insurance salesman who gets in over his head when he meets Phyllis Deitrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), is masterfully executed by director Billy Wilder. See it if you care about watching the best cinema has to offer, or if you just love being entertained.
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Mary Ann Bernard knows how to give the audience what they want. After a quick establishing shot, the editor of Magic Mike XXL cuts to a close-up of star Channing Tatum’s dreamy face for the first ten seconds of the movie. The crowd I attended the movie with (made up of about 95% women) started cheering and clapping as soon as he appeared, sitting quietly in repose staring at a beach at sunrise. Mary Ann Bernard is actually the pseudonym for filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. In addition to editing, he also handled cinematography under his alias Peter Andrews. For this sequel to his 2012 exploration of the male exotic dancing world, he handed over directing duties to his long-time assistant director Gregory Jacobs. Together, the two made a movie – with the help of screenwriter Reid Carolin – that really surprised me.
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If you had asked me for my immediate reaction when I learned there was a new Terminator movie coming out, I would have rolled my eyes and asked why they were even bothering. This is a franchise that had more than worn out its welcome. The first two films in the series are classics. Director James Cameron built an exciting world and mythology in The Terminator, and then exceeded audience expectation in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, not an easy thing to do. When Cameron moved on to other creative endeavors, the property began to suffer.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines didn’t carry anywhere near the weight of its predecessors. The TV series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, was mostly uneven, but at times fairly entertaining. Then 2009’s Terminator Salvation, a completely forgettable mess directed by McG that was mind-numbingly boring. The franchise seemed to be sapped of all creative energy. So, when Terminator Genisys was announced, I wasn’t expecting much. They couldn’t even spell genesis right, for crying out loud! Imagine my surprise when, thirty minutes in, I turned to my partner and whispered, “I am REALLY into this!”
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Many adults love Pixar movies just as much as the actual target audience for their childlike animated films. I’m no exception. The creative minds at Pixar are fond of plumbing the depths of melancholy and nostalgia to create sophisticated features adored by people of all ages. One of their efforts – 2008’s Wall-E – even rises to the level of film art. The movie is gorgeous to look at, and the technique of minimal dialog employed in the first half is gutsy and inspired. It may be unfair to put those kinds of expectations on any movie, but that’s what I do every time Pixar announces a new release. They are victims of their own quality and consistency. That’s why what I’m about to type feels strangely dismissive: Inside Out is a solidly entertaining kid’s movie. It’s well-paced, energetic, and engaging. The trademark characteristic of a Pixar movie, though – being swept up by the emotion, usually to the point of tears – was missing for me this time.
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At some point in our lives, almost all of us feel like outsiders. That outsider status can be alienating enough on its own, but when it can also get you killed, life becomes a harrowing game of survival. That experience is what writer/director Rick Famuyiwa explores in his new film, Dope. What’s really surprising is how funny investigating that premise can be. The movie is a fresh, hilarious, and heartfelt take on growing up in the hood, and what that means for kids whose only familiarity with “dope” is using the word to describe their favorite obsession: early 90s hip hop culture. Famuyiwa uses comedy to explore a unique cultural experience, but he also employs a serious tone, and never lets the latter slip away into overblown melodrama. His talent has produced a coming-of-age story for a new generation.
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