FOR COLORED GIRLS

Written and Directed by Tyler Perry

Starring Kimberly Elise, Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad and Whoopi Goldberg

Crystal: Part of me knows this is happening but part of me thinks I’m dreaming. Am I awake?

Up until seeing FOR COLORED GIRLS, I had never seen a Tyler Perry film. I’m not a fan of men in fat suits dressed up as women and I’m not really the intended demographic either for that matter. Fortunately, despite the title’s suggestion that this film is for a very specific group of people, its emotional impact should translate to anyone capable of feeling period. For while the tapestry of tragedy that Perry weaves may be about “colored girls” and should also give any “colored girl” who watches it something to take away from it, it also invites everyone else who sees it to see the world in shades they maybe never have.

FOR COLORED GIRLS is based on a 1975 stage play by Ntosake Shange called “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf”. In it, a cast of seven African-American women each represent a different color and the qualities that go along with it. They also each bring a different emotional plight to the plot, from abuse to rape to abortion. No, this is not a lighthearted film and the talented cast bare the weight of the material with proud shoulders. My personal favorite would be Kimberly Elise, whose abusive relationship leaves her beautiful face looking like a hollow, heartbroken shell. Perry added an eighth woman to his ensemble (perhaps for good luck) but keeps a key poetic element of the play in place, having each character fall into soliloquy at different intervals. They may all be “colored girls” but there is still a vast range of individuality amongst them and, while grouping together builds bonds between them, it also robs them a little of the painstakingly earned place they’ve made as people. Plus nobody talks like that; it completely stops the action.

Like the lives of the women on the screen, FOR COLORED GIRLS, is far from perfect. Perry has taken on an ambitious project and bits and pieces do manage to get away from him at times. Still, there are several other times when the film’s pace takes on such momentum that it plays like a marathon of hardship, with each woman as a runner, passing a baton of pain from one to the next. Like any race though, the runners lose their stride at times and goes on to find strength they didn’t know they had to make it to the end. For Perry, all his “colored girls” and those watching from the stands, it is an exalting finish that will leave many in tears.

Remembering the year 2005

CRASH
Written by Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco
Directed by Paul Haggis

NOTE: This article has spoilers aplenty and should not be read by anyone who has not seen the movie.


I can still remember the feeling of my stomach dropping when Jack Nicholson announced that the 2005 Best Picture Oscar was being awarded to Paul Haggis’s CRASH, and not the frontrunner, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. I wasn’t the only one either who was floored; you could here the jarred pause in Nicholson’s voice when he announced it. The signs were pointing in that direction throughout the evening. First, CRASH took Best Editing, the only award it won that I genuinely feel it warranted, keeping all those simultaneously told stories in check and well balanced. Then it came along and took Best Original Screenplay. I say took but I really mean robbed considering there were three better screenplays that should have won (Woody Allen’s MATCH POINT, George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s GOODNIGHT AND GOOD LUCK and Josh Olsen's A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE). After those two wins combined with the previous win for Best Ensemble Cast at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, taking it all became a serious possibility. After it happened, the guests at my Oscar party could seriously see I was disappointed, distraught even. I popped Gustavo Santaolalla’s BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN score and began picking up after the mess.



It’s not that I don’t care for CRASH. I was just as mortified when Matt Dillon had his hands up Thandie Newton’s dress and just as gripped when he had to rescue her from her burning vehicle the next day. I was just as devastated when that adorable little girl was shot and just as exalted to witness the man-made miracle that allowed for her to survive. CRASH is not without its merits. Incredibly powerful scenes made all the more poignant by often surprising turns by Dillon, Newton, Terrence Howard and Michael Pena. To call it Best Picture though meant ignoring its condescending and manipulative storytelling techniques in favor of the ignorance it so aggressively draws to the surface. Of course race, prejudice and hatred are just as relevant now as they always have been despite the advances made, but Haggis, and I doubt he did it intentionally, preys on his viewer by using the inherent ignorance in each of us to make the film seem superior and revelatory.


CRASH takes place in a rough 24-hour period. In that period, a handful of Los Angeles inhabitants from all walks of life experience so much suffering that you would think the end of the world had arrived. Now, all that transpires is certainly possible but too darn convenient for me to swallow. Newton and Howard are seriously abused by a racist police officer (Dillon) one night and the next day, she ends up in a massive car accident and he ends up in a carjacking that turns into a run-in with the law. I bet the “Honey, how was your day?” conversation between those two had to be impressive after that. And imagine when Newton reveals that Dillon had to save her from the car and Howard is flabbergasted because Dillon’s partner (Ryan Phillippe) from the night before ended up saving his ass earlier that day. The scene between Newton and Dillon in the car cannot work as effectively if the previous scene they share doesn’t happen first but the odds are too overwhelming for me to accept. If this storyline stood on its own then perhaps it would be easier but taken with everything else, it all just feels as though Haggis is moving the pieces on the board one at a time to make the game play out as he needs instead of how it might.


The other writing technique that infuriates me more and more with further viewings of CRASH is the way Haggis delights in playing with his viewer’s ignorance. Larenz Tate and Ludacris walk down a trendy L.A. street at night and debate racial complacency and prevalence in modern society. They look like thugs but everything they’re saying about contemporary attitudes toward race make so much sense to me and must naturally appeal to my white liberal sensibility. It is so obvious that Haggis wants us to sympathize with these poor black guys who can’t get a break. Consequently, we are also supposed to feel disdain for Sandra Bullock and Brandan Fraser as they walk past in their fancy outfits toward their expensive car. Not because their combined acting performances cannot amount to anything more than embarrassment (which might explain why they are the least featured characters in the ensemble) but rather because they judged these fine, young gentlemen by the colour of their skin as they walked past them. They assumed that they look like thugs and therefore must be. Imagine the audience’s shock and disgust with themselves when the thugs actually are thugs and they steal the white people’s cars. Haggis spends all this time exposing the audience’s ignorance in hopes of opening their eyes to it but he finishes by simply reinforcing the stereotypes and insulting my intelligence.



I am aware that I am gay and I am siding with the gay-themed film but BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN had won nearly every major award leading up to the Oscars and was considered a near-lock. The win for CRASH only shows me that the mainstream Academy was not ready to bestow accolades so publicly on a gay-themed film. Not to mention, that as a gay man, I am still a minority, just an invisible one. This can get pretty ugly sometimes when people don’t censor themselves because they don’t realize that we are among them. I suffer prejudice; I am still fighting for some basic human rights because I am still seen as less than human. It is exactly this kind of hatred that makes it impossible for the characters in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN to experience the love they are so obviously meant to. It is also the exact kind of hatred that CRASH tries so hard to bring to light but yet shines no light on the plight of the gays because theirs is not a racial issue. It still sure feels that way sometimes. As for the love that BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN fights so hard to foster, troubled or not, the characters in CRASH still get to have that and don’t even see for a second how fortunate they are for that opportunity. Despite this, they choose to live in their misery and all any of them can seem to do is blame everything bad in their lives on race.



Black Sheep’s 2005 Top 10

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, Directed by Ang Lee
CAPOTE, Bennett Miller
THE CONSTANT GARDENER, Fernando Meirelles
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, Grant Heslov
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, David Cronenberg
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, Luc Jacquet
MATCH POINT, Woody Allen
MUNICH, Steven Spielberg
MYSTERIOUS SKIN, Gregg Araki
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, Noah Baumbach
WALK THE LINE, James Mangold

ROCKNROLLA

Written and Directed by Guy Ritchie
Starring Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton, Mark Strong and Jeremy Piven


(I would ordinarily list a quote from the film that struck me at this point but damned if I could understand half of what the rock n rollas were spouting on about half the time.)

Boys will be boys, even when they’re men who haven’t been boys for a very long time. They like to get their guns out and smack ‘em around in the other boys’ faces, all in an effort to prove who the baddest boy on the playground is. It doesn’t matter to them that the playground has progressed into the entire city or that the guns have gone from plastic toys to the real deal. The game may have gotten heavier and plenty more serious, and the boys may have grown into the more rugged bodies of men, but they’re still bumbling little boys at heart, too scared to do right and even more so to be a failure. This particular London playground that embodies all this manliness plays home to the modern gangster movie, ROCKNROLLA, and the boy at the top of the mountain is none other than Guy Ritchie.


Ritchie has had a rough go at establishing himself as one of today’s big boys as of late. He burst on to the scene in 1998 with LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS. The fast moving action and even faster dialogue grabbed a lot of men by their own sensitive boys, squeezed hard and made them feel like bigger men. (Personally, I couldn’t make out a single word being said and lost track about 20 minutes in so I never made it that far.) Ritchie’s momentum grew into a Hollywood step with his follow-up, SNATCH, but his favour quickly faded after his critical disaster, SWEPT AWAY. I mean, it wasn’t great but critics went in with their own guns blazing. You simply don’t make a vanity project outside of your genre with your superstar wife, especially when that wife (or soon to be ex-wife) is Madonna, one of the most critically panned actresses of all time. No one even noticed his last release, REVOLVER, but now Ritchie is back. The problem is he isn’t really better than ever; he’s just back where he left off before everything was, well, swept away.


Lucky for Ritchie, he’s got a great group of mates along for this ride. ROCKNROLLA’s cast is top notch no matter what Ritchie’s expansive script calls for. Whether you’re watching Gerard Butler dance entirely out of step with Thandie Newton at a party while exchanging brief quips about a heist job or Tom Wilkinson being a right bastard (which he does so well) as the man who runs the streets or Butler dancing yet again, this time in a close embrace with good pal, Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy), before he is shipped off to prison, there is always a sense of playfulness that never loses sight of purpose. The purpose on the other hand is a little too far out of reach. There are bad guys and good guys who are essentially bad guys themselves and they are all involved in some sort of construction zoning law shakedown that touches the junkies of the world as well as the Russian mafia and pivots around this one missing lucky painting, which, with a quick nod to the mysterious contents of a certain briefcase in the modern gangster classic, PULP FICTION, is never seen on screen.


Complicated? Yes. Overly so? Maybe, only time will tell there. A good, fun time? For sure. Ritchie is sharp and has a keen eye for style. He hasn’t quite mastered the balance between sleek and simple yet, as his simpler bits are rendered somewhat puny in comparison with his flare. Still, you can tell he’s having a great time piecing it all together. There are the dirty, dark sets, the driving pulse of the often-obscure soundtrack choices (no more cheeky early Madonna pop tracks to be found here) and the sexy voice-over (a clearly spoken narration that was my personal saviour at times) to provide constant entertainment. My hopes for Ritchie though are that ROCKNROLLA does not amount to he himself being a “Rock n Rolla” – a boy pretending to be living large instead of actually living it. Next time out, I want to see Ritchie one step closer to being a real man.

W.

Written by Stanley Weiser
Directed by Oliver Stone
Starring: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, James Cromwell, Ellen Burstyn, Richard Dreyfuss, Thandie Newton and Jeffrey Wright


George W. Bush: I’m so bone tired of this Saddam. He’s always misunderestimating me.

Considering that at the time that I am writing this and while W. is hitting theatres, George W. Bush is still the president of the United States, is it unreasonable to ask if it is just too soon for a film biography of his life? Do we not need a little space in order to, first of all, get over the trauma of the eight-year long Bush administration, or more importantly, in order to gain some perspective on one of the most unlikely controversial figures in modern history? Lucky for us, the man behind the lens is Oliver Stone – a man who has never seemed to concern himself with objectivity to begin with. And I say lucky for another reason as well. We are lucky this movie has been made now because it actually allows for us to see a side of George W. that we’ve never really seen before – a sympathetic side. Sure the film is an entirely fictional imagining of the man but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make for good entertainment.


Stone’s W. is not a documentary – thankfully because I can’t usually stomach watching the man on television for more than five minutes. Stone is under no obligation to be fair or well balanced. Besides, even documentary filmmakers these days seem to use the truth and objectivity as loose guidelines. Still, when W. opens with a conversation amongst the upper echelons of the Bush administrative staff as to what buzz words and catch phrases would best sell the Iraq war to the American public, you can’t help but wonder whether Stone has zero intention of being fair or whether he intends to lambast the man. In fact, up until the moment the film began, the most intriguing thing for me about this film was trying to understand why Stone was making it in the first place. What was he going to say about him? How was he going to say it? It is right after this opening, which introduces us to most of the key players in this fantastic cast, that Stone, under the structure of Stanley Weiser’s script, takes us back to meet a younger George – a much less presidential George, if you will.


We get to see George as a college boy getting hazed. We get to see George quitting job after job after job with no direction in sight. We get to see George promising ladies the world but giving them nothing but heartache. But then we get to see another side of George. We get to see him face his alcoholism. We get to see him come to find his faith again. And we get to see him fall in love with a young lady named Laura. The manner in which it all unfolds is rather conventional but still also believable, thanks to a fiery Josh Brolin as the big guy himself. Brolin got me to root for a guy I would ordinarily hiss at (not that I hiss at that many people) and he did so by personifying the man as a regular guy with regular guy hang-ups. Weiser’s script does oversimplify Bush’s psychology by implying that all of his decisions in life have been motivated by the need to prove to daddy what a good boy he can be. Still, Brolin brings more to it than that; he brings both passion and compassion to man who is generally considered to be a monster.


Was it Stone’s intention for W. to be a George W. Bush puff piece? Not at all. Without forcing Stone’s hand, the plot does follow through Bush’s election into office and right up until the point where his administration realizes that the Iraq war was going to be a lot harder than they had anticipated. It is in the war room that Stone sneaks in his now signature controversial touch. Suddenly, it makes sense why he made this movie now and why it is being released just a few weeks before the American elections that will see Bush leave office. Once you understand why you’re watching it, you realize that it was actually a lot more enjoyable than you thought it would be and that Stone has crafted a good ol’ American movie at the same time as he sticks it to American government.




GOING PAST THE MOVIE

The good folks at Lionsgate are auctioning off five autographed W. posters this weekend, in order to raise money for Stand Up To Cancer. Simply click on the eBay link below to place your bid for a W. poster, autographed by Oliver Stone, Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn. Remember the auction ends October 20 so get crackin'.

Autographed W. Poster eBay Auction

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS
Written by Steve Conrad
Directed by Gabriele Muccino


As the opening shots of THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS establish San Francisco as the setting for this tale of adversity with the Golden Gate Bridge and hordes of people rushing up and down the steep hills to get to their important jobs, I couldn’t help but begin to worry that I was about to be fed Hollywood’s take on what it means to go through hard times. This is after all a Will Smith picture. My anxiety eased up slightly though when the view dropped down from the indistinguishable faces of the swarm to a face that blended in all too well amongst the masses of determined feet. Throughout the opening credits, Italian film director, Gabriele Muccino, drew my attention away from a race I know all too well and ever so subtly forced me to look at what I am accustomed to looking away from, the homeless. And though Smith’s Chris Gardner is currently employed, he is about to face challenge after soul-depleting challenge until he too finds himself amongst the people he turns away from as hurries about his day as a unsuccessful salesman. THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS is a hollowing drama that drags both its protagonist and its audience deeper into despair than either would have expected. It is a relentless assault on the sense of security and entitlement many of us have as supposed functional members of a working society and by the time I left, I knew that I had absolutely nothing to complain about.

Chris Gardner’s story would be nothing more than one man’s pursuit of the American dream if it weren’t for one very important thing. In this case, that thing is actually a very charming, young boy, Chris’ son, Christopher (played by Smith’s real-life son, Jaden). Watching Will and Jaden quibble and endure provides for some endearing screen time but their plight and performances overshadow their off-screen family ties. If Chris fails, he will not only be begging for his food but he will lose the one thing that gives him purpose. Little Christopher’s future depends on whether his father can successfully overcome his horrible misfortune to beat out nineteen other candidates in a competitive internship for thriving brokerage firm, Dean Whitter. Today, the American dream often symbolizes an unhealthy, greedy amassment of unnecessary material goods but Chris’ fight is for the bare essentials. His son deserves a stable home and regular meals. He deserves these and other rudimentary needs in order to have the opportunity to pursue his own dreams. And while I’m certain Chris wouldn’t mind a bigger piece of the proverbial pie, he knows what he needs to survive and by chasing that, he reminds the audience that the American dream should be spread more evenly. It is not a contest to win out miles ahead while the rest clamor for scraps.


Will Smith is by far the most successful black box-office star of his generation, if not of all time. He has broken barriers around the world and yet manages to find himself facing criticism for not addressing any specific racial issues in THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS. However, not verbalizing the unavoidable prejudices a black man must face competing against a room full of white faces in 1981 doesn’t mean it isn’t there. If anything, Smith’s Chris exhibits his intelligence by pushing his understandable racial frustrations aside in order to appease his potential employers. He becomes the showman who gets his foot in the door by making the white folk laugh, all the while knowing he has the goods to surpass all their expectations once he’s in. In one of the film’s many moments of desperation and impending disaster, Chris finds himself sitting in his first interview at Dean Whitter, splattered in dried paint, wearing overalls and no shirt at all. The men who sit opposite him are all white and not amused. When they leer at him, they certainly aren’t just uncomfortable with his appearance; they see his black skin just as plainly. Not focusing on the obvious showcases Muccino’s subtle grace handling Hollywood and allows Chris to be the smartest man in the room. It also allows for Smith to give a performance where he appears as though he might break at any given moment while he wears the knowledge that closing his eyes for even a second is never an option.

Without confirming whether THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS actually concludes with Chris achieving the happiness he works so hard to get, I can say that it deftly humbling and certainly doesn’t allow for the viewer leaving that happy. Smith’s backwards journey towards the top speaks to anyone who has ever struggled to succeed. What it says to them is to ask themselves if they have ever truly suffered and if so, for what? Have you been fighting to make your dreams come true or fighting to beat out the next guy? More importantly, have you ever tried to be happy in exactly the spot you’re standing?