Boyz N the Hood

By Richard Corliss | February 4, 2008 | +

Everett

Director: John Singleton

Year Released: 1991

Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Laurence Fishburne, Hudhail Al-Amir

Kids who grow up to become directors do so because they saw movies they loved and want to make them. John Singleton saw Star Wars and found his calling. The trick, for a kid from Los Angeles‚ South Central ghetto, was to survive to adulthood. He did, and by the time he was 21, he’d written and directed Boyz N the Hood. Like many first films, it’s a fictionalized autobiography — a life story that could have been a death warrant. The boys in the neighborhood must wonder if they have any choice but dying poor from drugs or dying rich selling them. Rough in its moviemaking craft, the picture is nonetheless a harrowing document true to the director’s south-central Los Angeles milieu; he paints it black. Boyz N the Hood functions both as a condemnation of the world outside any big-city movie house and as an inspiration to those aspiring outsiders who would change history by filming it.

The movie was also an early clue to Hollywood’s avidity for young black talent, both behind the camera (Columbia Pictures gave boyz-wonder Singleton $6 million to make the picture) and in front. It showcased Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett, who two years later would play Ike and Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do With It, as well as Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, Nia Long and Regina King. The talents of directors (of any shade) may be variable, but the movies will never run out of amazing black performers.

Next: Eve's Bayou

Related Topics: Boyz N the Hood, Crime, Drama, John Singleton

Eve's Bayou

By Richard Corliss | February 4, 2008 | +

Everett

Director: Kasi Lemmons

Year Released: 1997

Cast: Jurnee Smollett, Meagan Good, Samuel L. Jackson, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan

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From the opening voice-over — “The summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old” — writer-director Kasi Lemmons‚ debut film weaves a spell of magnolia and menace. The 10-year-old is Eve (Jurnee Smollett), second daughter of Dr. Louis Batiste (Samuel L. Jackson) and his elegant wife Roz (Lynn Whitfield). Louis pushes charm as much as pills, and the local ladies swoon at his touch. “To a certain type of woman,” he notes, “I am a hero. I need to be a hero.” Eve and her 14-year-old sister Cisely (Meagan Good) need him to be one too, and when he proves a sinner, they are devastated. His crime may have been that he didn’t dance with Eve or that he danced too close to Cisely. But since Aunt Mozelle (Debbi Morgan) tells fortunes, Eve is a voodoo priestess once removed. Her curse on her daddy could be fatal.

In rural Louisiana in the ’60s, and in the humid swamps of the Southern Gothic imagination, tenderness and terror are first cousins destined to marry. Eve’s Bayou showed writer-director Kasi Lemmons invading Faulkner-McCullers territory and made it her own. This is a woman’s film, and a showcase for superb actresses, with Morgan outstanding as a sorceress whose gift runs away with her. There are a few visual and character cliches, and we wish that, just once in movies, a fortune teller’s dire prophecy would not automatically come true. But the folks here believe in its power, and they compel the viewer to abandon skepticism, to hide with Eve in the Batiste closet, where skeletons whisper vengeance. An indelible tale of childhood wonder and terror, and one of the finest works by a black filmmaker, Eve’s Bayou has a fierce poise that left me grateful, exhausted and nourished. For the restless spirit, here is true soul food.