Straight Outta Compton

Straight Outta Compton ~ I find it hard to believe that this film was so ignored by the Oscars. The #OscarsSoWhite controversy becomes crystal clear for anyone who has seen Straight Outta Compton as it should have garnered multiple nominations for Best Actor and Supporting Actor, as well as Best Film, Best Director, and that's not even mentioning the various music and sound categories. What the hell happened here?

Besides that incomprehensible omission, Straight Outta Compton is obviously the biography of N.W.A., and specifically Easy-E, Ice Cube, and Dr. Dre. Yeah, I know, there are more members of the group, including the one the film completely ignores, but let's face it, if you make a movie about the Beatles, you're really only focusing on John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Big guns only, ya know?

The film is amazing. I can't say enough about the performances by Jason Mitchell, Corey Hawkins, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Ice Cube's son, playing the young Ice Cube, and Paul Giamatti as evil promoter Jerry Heller. The music is fantastic, a time capsule of the 1990s and how N.W.A. changed hip hop and rap into something harder and more real, a sound of the street, and specifically Los Angeles in a time of violence.

Again however, omission seems to be a theme when it comes to Straight Outta Compton. With the real Ice Cube and Dr, Dre, as well as Easy-E's widow as producers on the flick, one might assume they want to sweep any dirty laundry under the rug. There are very few women in the movie, save Carra Patterson, who aren't just there for the party or the sex. And no mention is made of Dre's numerous domestic violence charges against women.

All that aside, this is a brilliant film, must-see for folks into N.W.A. and the music of the time, a true time capsule, and a terrific movie.

All About the Benjamins

A Video Review of "All About the Benjamins"

Copyright 2002 Glenn Walker

Co-written, co-produced and starring Ice Cube. You know, I never considered it, but he's one hell of an actor. Ice Cube is the best thing about "Ghosts of Mars" and he owns "Friday" and "Next Friday." Here, he's a bounty hunter in Miami whose prey loses a winning lottery ticket in the middle of a diamond theft by an evil criminal mastermind.



Michael Epps (Omar's brother maybe?) is quite good. The chase for the diamonds and the lottery ticket is reminiscent of some of those old Bill Cosby/Sidney Poitier flicks from the 1970s and yet it never really tips into the comedy realm but never loses that urban thriller edge either. The ending however was a little too "The Whole Nine Yards" for me.

Great action sequences, nasty villains and good guys to root for. Look for Anthony Michael Hall as a white trash trailer park deadbeat. Not a bad rental.