Posts Tagged ‘Charlie Murphy’
Monday, June 7th, 2021
June 7, 1991
JUNGLE FEVER is five films and five years into the career of Spike Lee. You have the financed-on-credit-cards debut SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT, the polished studio debut SCHOOL DAZE, the explosion of DO THE RIGHT THING, the follow up MO’ BETTER BLUES, and then this. Like all of his movies it’s interesting and bold and full of greatness but in my opinion, especially in retrospect, it’s his first fumble. That’s fine. He did MALCOLM X next.
It is the story of possibly the most only-Spike-Lee-would-ever-name-a-character-this character of all time, Flipper Purify, played by Wesley Snipes, who had been in Lee’s MO’ BETTER BLUES and was coming off of the success of NEW JACK CITY. He’s an upper class architect, living in Harlem with his wife Drew (Lonette McKee, BREWSTER’S MILLIONS, ‘ROUND MIDNIGHT), and things seem to be going well from the hot morning sex that opens the movie (the sounds of which greatly amuse their daughter Ming [Veronica Timbers]). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Annabella Sciorra, Brad Dourif, Charlie Murphy, Debi Mazar, Frank Vincent, Halle Berry, John Turturro, Lonette McKee, Michael Badalucco, Michael Imperioli, Ossie Davis, Queen Latifah, Ruby Dee, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, Stevie Wonder, Summer of 1991, Terence Blanchard, Tim Robbins, Tyra Ferrell, Veronica Webb, Wesley Snipes
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 21 Comments »
Wednesday, November 21st, 2018
I don’t know why there was a Wes Craven movie that I didn’t bother to see in the theater and then didn’t bother to see on home video for over 20 years. Granted, everyone said it was terrible, and it seemed to be an Eddie Murphy comedy vehicle, not a real horror movie, and he started wearing fat suits and shit right around that time.
But these days you can’t take fresh Wes Craven movies for granted, so I decided the moment had come to watch VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN. The verdict: it’s not an unheralded gem. But it’s also not what I had pictured. It’s a mildly interesting failure.
Murphy (DOLEMITE IS MY NAME) plays Maximillian, the only survivor of a tribe of Egyptian vampire who “traveled south through Africa and over the Atlantic to a beautiful island hidden deep in the Bermuda Triangle,” where they lived for centuries before the vampire hunters found them. There’s a certain parallel to COMING TO AMERICA, because he’s this confident, exotic visitor from another culture, looking for a woman. In this case it’s a specific woman, Rita (Angela Bassett, PANTHER, BLACK PANTHER), a rookie NYPD detective who doesn’t know there are vampires, or that her dad was one, or that she’s the last descendent and only hope to revive the race. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Allen Payne, Angela Bassett, Charlie Murphy, Eddie Murphy, Joanna Cassidy, John Witherspoon, Kadeem Hardison, Simbi Khali, vampires, Wes Craven
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 34 Comments »
Wednesday, January 4th, 2017
After DO THE RIGHT THING made Spike Lee into a major cultural force, he set his sights on a few subjects he thought were important. Before he made his MALCOLM X movie with Denzel, and before he didn’t make his Jackie Robinson movie with Denzel, he tackled a broader topic: a jazz movie with Denzel.
It was a subject near and dear to Lee’s heart. His father Bill Lee was a jazz bassist and composer for his first four films (this being the last), and he’d befriended Branford Marsalis on DO THE RIGHT THING, so The Branford Marsalis Quartet (plus Terence Blanchard on trumpet) plays the music here. I seem to remember Lee being publicly hostile toward Bertrand Tavernier’s ROUND MIDNIGHT and Clint Eastwood’s BIRD for focusing too much on drug addiction, a complaint possibly aggravated by his annoyance at reporters asking him why DO THE RIGHT THING didn’t deal with drug addiction.
Can you imagine? “Wes Anderson, don’t you have a responsibility to your community to show that rich people use coke?” “Makers of SWEET HOME ALABAMA, where is the meth?” Fuck you. Just for the sake of my blood pressure I’m gonna assume every reporter who asked that has since sent Spike flowers and a card with a long, heartfelt, handwritten letter of apology.
Surprisingly, Lee’s jazz movie just replaces heroin with other vices. Washington’s quintet-leading trumpeter Bleek Gilliam is some kind of womanizer who tries to have two girlfriends at the same time, med student Indigo Downes (Joie Lee) and aspiring singer Clarke Betancourt (Cynda Williams in her first role). His childhood friend/terrible manager Giant (Spike himself) has a dangerous addiction to sports gambling and is in debt to his bookie (Ruben Blades, SECUESTRO EXPRESS, COLOR OF NIGHT). But these troubles are kind of woven into a casual and down to earth story about Bleek’s fairly minor struggles doing shows at the Beneath the Underdog jazz club, during a slow-brewing musical and love rivalry with his saxophone player Shadow Henderson (Wesley God Damn Snipes, BLADE). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Nunn, Branford Marsalis, Charlie Murphy, Cynda Williams, Denzel Washington, Giancarlo Esposito, jazz, John Turturro, Joie Lee, Nicholas Turturro, Robin Harris, Ruben Blades, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, Steve White, Terence Blanchard, Wesley Snipes
Posted in Drama, Music, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Monday, August 10th, 2015
CB4 is the comedic story of a fictional West Coast gangsta rap trio out of not-real Locash, CA. They exist in the same world as N.W.A (Ice Cube and Eazy E both appear as themselves in documentary style interview segments) but also they’re kind of supposed to be N.W.A. They dress like them, they have a similar “world’s most dangerous group” image, their videos are shot-for-shot imitations of N.W.A videos, and their hit song “Straight Outta Locash” is done over the music from “Straight Outta Compton,” but nobody accuses them of being a rip-off. Their song is not as good, in my opinion. They copy Cube’s line “Straight outta Compton, crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube” not just once, but before each verse. Watering it down.
One of the more brazen boasts is “I fucked your sister, I fucked your cat / I would’ve fucked your mom but the bitch is too fat,” which is absurd enough, sure, but it’s not as deviously clever as Eazy’s actual line, “Straight outta Compton / is a brother that’ll smother your mother / and make your sister think I love her.”
One difference from N.W.A: they don’t have an exploitative white manager from outside the world of hip hop. They have Trustus (Willard E. Pugh, THE COLOR PURPLE, ROBOCOP 2).
Another one: these guys aren’t exaggerated characters based on their real lifestyles. They’re straight up phonies dressing up like gangstas as a gimmick after their corny Native Tongues copycat act didn’t catch on. And they, uh, pretend they were in prison, which they weren’t , and that gets them into some awkward situations. Hmm. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Allen Payne, Art Davis, Charlie Murphy, Chris Elliott, Chris Rock, Deezer D, Eazy-E, hip hop, Ice Cube, Ice-T, Nelson George, Shaquille O'Neal, Tamra Davis, Theresa Randle
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Music, Reviews | 21 Comments »
Friday, September 28th, 2012
When I did my NATURAL BORN KILLERS retrospective a little while back there was one last piece I meant to write, which was about this short film directed by Dr. Dre. I could swear I read a long time ago that Oliver Stone wanted to play the short before NBK but the studio wouldn’t let him. I don’t know, I might’ve imagined it, because it’s not mentioned in the Killer Instinct book and all I can find on Google is references to Stone giving the short “props.”
MURDER WAS THE CASE comes form a song on Snoop’s first album Doggystyle, but it also spawned a hit soundtrack, and it’s on a DVD padded with other videos and various interview and performance clips, all poorly non-anamorphically transferred, but that seems to fit the material.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Art Evans, Charlie Murphy, Dr. Dre, hip hop, Ice Cube, John Amos, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur
Posted in Music, Reviews | 24 Comments »
Thursday, November 17th, 2005
This is one of those movies that on the cover should have a big quote from Roger Ebert or somebody saying “Seriously, not that bad!” I’m not gonna try to convince anybody that ROLL BOUNCE is great but it is actually very well made and watchable for a movie about kids rollerskating. You can face that fact or not, I don’t give a fuck, but there it is. ROLL BOUNCE is kind of good.
Now if you are new around here you may not be familiar with me, I should probaly specify that I am not some pedophile or somebody, and personally I have never reviewed a movie about kids rollerskating before. ROLLERBALL was strictly adults and so was DERBY. I’m a first timer here for this type of material is what I’m saying, and don’t worry I won’t make it a habit. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bow Wow, Brandon T. Jackson, Charlie Murphy, Chi McBride, Malcolm D. Lee, Meagan Good, Mike Epps, Nick Cannon
Posted in Family, Reviews | 1 Comment »
