Tag: Steve Harris

I may be the only one excited about this film.

I heard about Chi-Raq a few months ago, and like most people, I assumed it would be some sort of Iraq spiritual movie. Chi. Get it?

No, it is Chicago. Okay, a movie comparing the violence and unrest in Chicago to Iraq. After all, Spike Lee is directing it, and that sounds like something right up his alley.

But nothing I have said should make me excited about the film. I hate Chicago (Hockey reasons), and I’ve only seen like three of his films: He Got Game, Inside Man, and of course, the shitty Oldboy remake. However, it is also a modern retelling of the Greek play Lysistrata. As an Ancient History major on my spare time, and lover of Greek plays, the idea became immediately intriguing and something I knew I had to see.

SLJ wearing snazzy suits was reason number 2.

Chicago, the land of death. More people have been murdered in that one city than the American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars have started. That should be a big deal, but it is ignored. That is why residents of the South Side have started to call it Chi-Raq, because it is a war zone out there and every body is dying.

In this fictionalized version of the city, the war is between two main gangs, the Spartans (purple) and the Trojans (orange). The leader of the Spartans is a rapper, whose stage name also happens to be Chi-Raq (Nick Cannon, don’t get lost on me yet), who people love. The leader is of the Trojans is a guy nicknamed Cyclops (Wesley Snipes), who only has one eye of course and a sexy studded eye patch.

But they aren’t the stars. No. Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris), the most attractive woman in Chi-Raq who also happens to be dating Chi-Raq. They will make beautiful babies some day. But Lysistrata starts to get tired of all the gang violence. She has to watch a mother grieve (Jennifer Hudson) over her dead 6 year old daughter who was accidentally hit during a drive by. She has to live with the fact that her boyfriend might have done it. And thanks to the same sage advice from a neighbor, Miss Helen (Angela Bassett), she realizes she has her own weapon that she can use to sway public opinion.

Yeah. We are talking about her body. No peace? No pussy. Lysistrata gathers her friends (Anya Engel-Adams, and more) and gets with Indigo (Michelle Mitchenor), the main lady friend of Cyclops. She wants them to put their differences aside and fight for change. They don’t allow any sex until the gang violence is over. They will get all the women in Chi-Raq involved. They will even get the prostitutes. They are doing it to protect the babies and their future. And hell, fuck it. They want World Peace, while they are it. And to prove their point, they also will take over a national guard armory in their city to show they fucking mean business. By not fucking.

Sex.

Also starring a lot more dudes. Harry Lennis is the police chief, D.B. Sweeney the mayor, David Patrick Kelly a general, John Cusack the main local priest, Steve Harris the leader of the Knights of Euphrates, Dave Chappelle a strip club owner, and Samuel L. Jackson our narrator and in the “Chorus” role.

Booty booty booty booty rockin’ nowhere.

Spike Lee might have out Spike Lee’d himself, as Chi-Raq is potentially the Spike Lee-iest thing he has ever created. It is so out there and original while being a modern retelling of a Greek play. It is amazing that I can say something like that and it totally make sense in the context in the film.

A majority of the dialogue in this film flows like poetry, complete with rhyming words and just being so fucking smooth. It was full of music and full of style. I want to have a copy of the script immediately, just to read some of the word again. I will buy this movie in the future and always watch it with subtitles, just to get the full impact and appreciate the cleverness of it all.

I hope beyond everything that Teyonah Parris gets nominated for a Best Actress award for this film. She owned the shit out of it, her presence on camera made you always focus on her and she nailed it. Some people might write off this film as just some “Sex movie” but it is a sex appeal film and not just one giant soft core porno. Parris is not afraid of anything from this film, tackling the hard subject matter in all the different ways.

Chi-Raq has all the same messages from Dear White People, but in a way that strangely makes it more relatable (not on a college campus). It is also incredibly modern, including references to every Black male shot that made political news, but also the Charleston shootings (which was in June this year) and Sandra Bland (July this year). Typing it makes me realize how long ago that was technically, I could have swore they were only two months ago. But eh, still modern as shit.

Original. Fun. Serious. Spike Lee.

4 out of 4.

Well, Dexter had its series finale a week ago today and it was pretty much shit. Seriously. One of the worst series finales ever.

In honor of that, I decided to watch Quarantine for the day!

What…? Well, look at the main star, that is why. Quarantine itself is a remake of [REC], a Spanish horror movie, that has made at least four films on its own. Quarantine was only given a sequel, and that one has nothing to do with the rest of the [REC] films. So it must be lamer.

Quarantine is also famous for being a horror film that decided to spoil the ending in basically every format possible. The trailer, the tv spots, the poster, the dvd film cover. Every single way. Later The Apparition decided to try this method too, but no one watched The Apparition.

Oh, and I have decided to spoil that ending here as well. Because fuck it.

Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) is a news reporter, trying to make it big in the world, but stuck so far with side stories. Lame. Like tonight, she is doing a piece on firefighters. I guess it is a fluff piece, because she is just sent to interview the workers, and hopefully follow them on a fire or two, that would be awesome footage. Along with her cameraman (Steve Harris), they eventually get a call out to an apartment complex where there were reports from the manager that a woman has barricaded herself in her room, and she was making a lot of noise. Alright, boring issue, but sure, let’s film it.

OH SHIT WOMAN HAS GONE CRAZY AND BIT ONE OF THE COPS. Bitch has foam in her mouth! They race downstairs, the two fire fighters (Jay Hernandez, Johnathon Schaech), and the other cops to rush him to a hospital, but the apartment complex is boarded up. The fuck? They can’t get out. That doesn’t make any sense.

Apparently the apartment complex is under quarantine now, and they have no idea why. No worries, they will be out shortly, just one crazy man. A local vet who lives in the hospital, (Greg Germann), does his best to stop the bleeding.

This is still all sorts of fucked. Especially when the lady is still going crazy enough that they have to put her down. Apparently, according to the vet, her symptoms appear to be rabies which have no cure once they take over. But the affects of rabies normally take months to occur, this must me some sort of super rabies. Well shit, how did they know to quarantine off the building so quick? Who the fuck started it? How unlucky is it to be Angela?

Super Rabies. Worse than Hitler.

Oh no, a shaky came found footage movie! The end of the world! People tend to ask during these types of movies: Why the fuck are you still recording? Well, there are a few reasons here. 1) Journalistic integrity. This shit is the scoop of a lifetime. 2)That camera has night vision on it, could be helpful. 3)That camera is also the only light source once they knock out the power. So, shit is important.

So how did it do outside of ruining the ending? Well, eh, it was okay. Dramatically different ending from the [Rec] version, I have been told. That one involves religion. This one involves cults and super viruses. I guess religion trumps, since that series has more movies. Oh well, its in Spanish, don’t care.

It was kind of neat watching all the characters at the beginning of the film start out as alive, and then you know, become dead later, so you get to see tore up versions of people who we already met. In a zombie movie, most of the zombies you don’t know. In this film, each person “dies” to the virus, and then has to be killed again with the rabies. I think that made it feel a bit better.

Near the end it got pretty confusing, but I will say I was impressed with Jennifer’s scared shitless acting. Her character did feel different from Deb, and she didn’t just bust out swears every sixth word. It is an okay thriller. Things jumping out of the dark, basically every time you’d expect it. Hooray zombie rabies!

2 out of 4.

12 Rounds is a film that is now a bit older. Okay, 2009, so not too old. But I definitely remember seeing the trailer multiple times in theaters and dozens of TV Shots. You know what I thought of it back then? “Huh, that looks pretty good!”

Yeah, four years ago me was weird. Still, I never heard about it after the fact, but I did see that there was a direct to DVD sequel, 12 Rounds: Reloaded. Huh, so it was good…enough…right? To make a direct to DVD sequel? Something in the back of my mind made me want to watch it though. It could be really entertaining, if not just a bit silly.

YEAH. EXPLOSIONS! Miles Jackson (Aidan Gillen) is a big fancy arms dealer, a big bad guy, who they want to take down. Namely Danny Fisher (John Cena). Well, shit goes wrong. He almost gets away with his girlfriend, but then she gets hit with a car and dies. Shit, who saw that coming. Miles gets caught and he is pissed off.

A year later, Danny gets a phone call…FROM MILES! OH MAN! He has escaped from prison! And he has his girlfriend Molly (Ashley Scott) captive! Ahh! Miles tells him they are going to play a game, a game called 12 Rounds. He just passed Round 1 by surviving an explosion, and if he passes all 12 tasks, he will get the girl back. Sure. Right.

So Miles has Danny running around the city, with the help of the force (Steve Harris, Brian White, more) to get his girl back and also recapture and dangerous man. Also, explosions and death and shit. Lots of that.

Miles looks like a cross of Edward Norton and Josh Groban to me. Let’s just say this movie wasn’t as entertaining as advertised. Wasn’t even silly. It was a very serious faced film. Everyone took it very seriously, and I didn’t care one bit.

Shit, it took TWENTY minutes for the intro to finish so we could get to modern day and start the games. That is a long chase for the arms dealer dude. Who gives a fuck.

This movie literally gave me a headache with its badness. So I had to give it this rating, because I hate headaches. No entertainment value for me. Can’t wait for the sequel.

0 out of 4.