Tag: Ne-Yo

Stomp The Yard

I can say with most certainty, that two months ago, I definitely had no urge to watch Stomp The Yard in my life. Ever. I forgot it existed, and my life was fine with that. But then two things happened.

1) One of my students said it was their favorite movie. Out of 48, only 5 students picked a movie that I hadn’t seen before, and that was one of them. Grrr… Kind of have to watch it now.

2) I saw Battle of the Year, made a joke about this movie, and realized I should hurry up and watch it.

I am not expecting really anything, some sort of college dance movie. Let’s do it. I mean, shit, I liked Drumline.

Extreme Flips
Hey, at least we have people doing flips. Like a cheerleading movie!

DJ (Columbus Short) and his brother Duron (Chris Brown) used to be street battlers. They had a crew who would battle other crews in clubs for cash. They also used to be alive.

After the battle at the beginning, they go cocky and accept a double or nothing offer. They win, pissing off the local crew even more, who want revenge. In the fisticuffs, Duron is stabbed and killed (Yes, Chris Brown dies). Well, that kind of puts a damper on things, so DJ quits the crew, moves out of LA and into Atlanta to live with his Aunt and Uncle (Harry Lennix, Valarie Pettiford), who got him into Truth University.

He gets a roommate, Rich Brown (Ne-Yo), and a new group of friends, but he doesn’t care about anyone. He just misses his brother.

Anyways, long story short, Truth University has two fraternities who are on top and great at stepping, both making it to the nationals every year. Unfortunately, one of them has won seven years in a row, and the other always comes up short. Guess who DJ ends up choosing? Well, after he is convinced that stepping isn’t just some pussy dance stuff.

He picks the underdogs, lead by Sylvester (Brian White), mostly because the girl he wants, April (Meagan Good), is dating Grant (Darrin Dewitt Henson), second in command of the other frat, and a total douche.

Then dance movie stuff happens, predictable plot turns like his past coming back to haunt him. You know. Normal stuff. Jermaine Williams is also in this movie, with a face that looks like I have seen him everywhere, but basically just in Fat Albert.

Stomp Stepping?!

This movie is about step team dancing and colleges. Holy shit, why did no one tell me about this before?

I love watching step teams perform. Going to college in NC, I was actually able to see fraternities do this kind of stuff live. Probably not the high quality presented in this film, but it is still cool to see live. Honestly, only mainly black fraternities do this, so if you don’t live at a place with them, you won’t really know much about them. There are zero step teams in Iowa, for example. Just a guess.

As it is a dance movie, I must judge its dancing. Early on, when they were battling? That first part of the movie was horrible, a mess. The camera was all shaky, you couldn’t tell what was going on, just ugly. When they started stepping? Hell yeah. It got good then. But it could have been a lot better. The camera shouldn’t cut away as much, because part of it is watching the unison and everyone working together.

The plot was predictable, and some major drama moments just came up short. The overall story wasn’t too original. Pretty typical of a similar sports movie, about a kid getting off the streets. So there are no bonus points for the story. Only bonus points for the really fun dancing to watch and every once in awhile, a joke that actually made me laugh.

2 out of 4.

Red Tails

I was actually excited to finally see Red Tails. I was hoping it would get me out of this mediocre film slump I have been on. I mean. WAR FILMS GUYS. Think of war films. How many would you describe as epic? Probably a lot of them.

So I was ready for another epic movie, that was based on true events, and George Lucas has been trying to get this movie made since the early 90s. Good, the last film I know about that took a jillion years to make was Avatar, and although not the best movie, it was at least stupidly visually awesome.

Walk that shit

Oh yeah. Racism. Epic War movie and racism. HOW CAN IT FAIL?

Movie takes place in 1944, where after a long training program, a group of African-American pilots are finally deployed to Europe to begin fighter pilot duties! Italy at that, which is clearly the hot bed of WWII action. Unfortunately they are given pretty old planes and only scouting missions where the enemy hasn’t been seen for months.

We enter with Colonel William Mortamus (Bryan Cranston) trying to shut the program down, calling it failed with their poor numbers. Colonel A.J. Bullard (Terrence Howard) is fighting for his team state side, noting their poor numbers is only because they don’t get any real missions.

Also he has to fight a report that they are not fit for combat at all. But eventually, with the help of Colonel Jack Tomilson (Lee Tergesen) they get a real mission! The news gets back to Major Emanuelle Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr.) who is in command while the Colonel is away, and much celebration occurs! They are to assist Allies landing in some part of Italy, where they have to fend of German air fire.

The crew is lead by Easy (Nate Parker, what the hell kind of nick name is Easy?), but the best pilot is Lightning (David Oyelowo), who also is reckless. Easy unfortunately doubts himself a lot and is prone to the drinking. We also have Junior/Ray-Gun (Tristan Wilds) and Joker (Elijah Kelley) who you can guess their tropes. There are also the less important characters of Neon (Kevin Phillips) and Smoky (Ne-Yo).

But enough about that! They are super successful in their mission, even taking out a German airfield in the process. Sure, Junior gets injured and loses the full ability of one of his eyes, but that probably wont effect him later right? Right? He probably won’t be taken as a POW by the enemy, due to Easy letting him fly so soon.

They eventually get to provide support to Bombers, and end up being the most successful escort crew in the war, killing a lot more Nayzees than Nayzees kill them.

Flawless Vicotry
That my friends is the face of a Flawless Victory.

But it wasn’t even flawless. Turns out this film takes a real event and fictionalizes the shit out of it. Characters, events, survivability, and also makes it seem like they never fucked up once they finally got to fight. They were still good in real life, but not so perfect. Even had people in the movie die, much to my surprise. And a love story with an Italian woman hottie!

A lot of the negative press from this movie comes from the fact that it lacked really any character growth, and everyone felt like their own little stereotype throughout the movie. And yeah, well, that was true. The only change you can note is that Easy drunk less eventually, and stopped being a little bitch. But that was barely a change in the movie either.

There is only really three missions we see them go on, and we are left believing that they cured racism and saved the war at the same time. But it didn’t feel epic at all. Plane fights are hard as hell to do, and have always been hard as hell to do. But it doesn’t help that the technology for them felt like the early 90s, when Lucas first decided to make this movie.

For a 19 year project, it sure felt rushed.

1 out of 4.