video review : Ride Along

video review : Ride Along

Ice Cube is cool as detective James Payton, but it’s pseudo partner Ben Barber, played by Kevin Hart, who steals the show. He’s funnier here than he is as an on-stage comedian, so, in a movie with such a hackneyed plot, the jokes are the driving force. This is essentially a loose parody of Training Day, a fact the script is clever enough to acknowledge.

my rating : 3 of 5

2014

video review : Rosewood

video review : Rosewood

The problem with Rosewood, based on a massacre that happened in 1923 after a “nigger” allegedly beat and raped a white woman, is that it goes on for too long. It’s a few days condensed to about 140 minutes, but the plot could’ve rolled more productively in two-thirds the time.

There’s lots of unnecessary filler, including subtle hints of a very unnecessary romance, but the action scenes; if black people being lynched, shot and hung qualifies as such; are generally worth the wait. If it’s not entertainment, it’s at least something interesting to watch.

I’ll just add that the south back then wasn’t only filled with racists; the whites were racist toward the blacks and the blacks were racist right back; but also sexists and ageists as the lives of men were considered expendable in comparison to the lives of women and children.

my rating : 3 of 5

1997
 

Nubian Queen :

racist right back? You’re kidding right-no your not. Lord have mercy, and I ain’t even a christian!