Spike Lee's Chi-raq

This movie reminded me of Christian Marquand's "Candy", another rough literary adaptation about a beautiful woman's sexual agency.

I loved Wesley Snipes. He used to be such a reliable comedic actor. It's too bad he got bogged down with action movies/tax jail.

Two other movies that came to mind were The Great Beauty and, of course, Romeo + Juliet.

even though it made it even more unrealistic, i liked the theater-set-like staging of some of the scenes, and thought it sort of helped half-keep it in a musical tradition.

I don't think realism was a characteristic Lee was shooting for here. This is an extremely stylized film.

I forgot to mention Felicia Pearson, who is sitting down in most of her scenes because she's too cool to dance.

spikes moralizing weighs this down, it's got such heavy feet for what it's trying to do... it's a freaking stinker but im glad spike got to make something on this scale again, watch Clockers again and your mind boggles at the budget he got to make that with, big crazy german expressionist sets and cinematography

wesley snipes is a genius actor

gone from NYC already except for one theater's 11pm shows

Yeah, but it's streaming on Amazon now.

not the same experience i suspect

Gonna be free with Amazon Prime starting February 5.

now out on Blu-ray etc

did u see this Morbz

not yet

seems weird but I guess popovich screened it for his team and flew in spike (to Cleveland) to talk abt it

This was great! The "Oh Girl" sequence was every bit as awesome as "Straight and Nappy" and "Da Butt" scenes from School Daze (which seems to be the film that comes up the most in discussions of this new one), but on the whole this is a much better film, much more confident and tonally consistent--even some of the initially WTF moments (like the one with the old army guy) end up paying off in a satisfactory way once it becomes clear where Lee is going with them. Samuel l. Jackson's greek chorus bits were delightful--I ended up rewinding and re-watching most of them. And who knew that Mariah's (former, I just learned via Wiki) boy toy could act?

And who knew that Mariah's (former, I just learned via Wiki) boy toy could act?

This wasn't his first movie; Drumline at least is reasonably well-regarded, and he was good in The Killing Room, which I don't think anybody but me saw.

I knew that he was in other things that I hadn't seen, but all I really knew of him before now was that he had released some horrible jokey rap records. He's very good here, though.

I can't fault the ambition of this though it's "uneven" -- some of the broadest comedy in it is really terrible -- but I found the climax extremely moving. The veteran actors, Bassett and Snipes, seem to have found the right note that too much of the other cast didn't or weren't able to.

The script was co-written by the guy who made that Confederate States of America film about a dozen years ago that wasn't well liked, so there's presumably no way to know if his input is "the problem" here, or if Spike's ideas helped or not.

The only comic scene that I thought was really broadly overplayed was the seduction of the General. Glad that you pointed out Bassett, though; she's terrific here, and it had been way too long since I'd seen her in anything.

bassett's so good she embarrasses everyone else

i'm sad spike never got to make that james brown movie with snipes

I never read reviews beforehand (and only skim if I do), so this wasn't at all what I expected. (Something like the more majestic scenes in Jungle Fever and He Got Game, I think.)* I don't like broad comedy--broad anything--so not surprisingly I didn't like this. A few scenes, the one with the general especially (what I always figured Myra Breckinridge would be like), I found embarrassing. First time I've ever flat-out disliked Samuel Jackson.

*Occasionally, it felt like this film was trying to find its way out.

i want to see this again to make sure i gave this a fair shot, but i found a lot of the humour in this just distracting. i know most ppl are going to think its crass for a film with this subject/setting, but even so, yes, i did find it too brash and distracting. it is in many ways the ultimate spike lee movie, in terms of being almost like a culmination of every typical leesian move youve seen over the years, and it does it brilliantly, in terms of being pure auteur shit, as barry jenkins called it, but i think he just overpowers it all in doing that, enforcing his style onto something that doesnt need it. its brilliantly made, but this is a film where removing himself somewhat from the film is what was needed. it needed less spike lee ego, and more about the actual gangs. i think it would benefit from being a stage production actually, more than any other lee film i can think of. but i just wish he never decided to combine lysistrata with the setting/issue of chicago gangs, as the latter wasnt explored how it deserved to have been - this is one time where his habit of dovetailing two separate narratives really could have been dialed back (it was also just too jarring for me, putting comedy up against a serious issue... at least in something like jungle fever, he had two serious narratives running at once). i wish he had just made it in a non specific place, rather than set it somewhere IRL like chicago, as it just set him up to fail somewhat. but im guessing he thought no one would talk about it otherwise!