Eddie Murphy is 0utta Sight in My Name is Dolemite

By Steve Evans “I believe in America.” That’s the opening line in The Godfather (1972). It’s also a sentiment I share. Because of that belief, I’ve always rooted for the underdog and embraced rags-to-riches stories. I’ve also been a fan of the late comedian Rudy Ray Moore since before I was old enough to buy and listen to his records legally. Rudy told absolutely filthy jokes in a wild, rapping rhyme style while wearing fluorescent tuxedoes and flaunting a gloriously defiant attitude. Rudy was a poor black dude who escaped Arkansas, made it to Los Angeles, and eventually recorded some top-selling comedy albums and shot a few films during the 1970s heyday of Blaxploitation cinema. We’re talking films with improbable titles like Disco Godfather and The Human Tornado and Dolemite, the name of Rudy’s signature character.
Dolemite was always persecuted by whitey and harassed by vicious drug dealers in the ‘hood. But he knew how to street fight and had an army of fabulous Kung Fu bitches at his beck and call. Plus some retina-burning fashions and an ungodly vocabulary. These movies were made on the cheap and are among the most entertaining motion pictures you’ve probably never seen.
Eddie Murphy transforms into this self-made entrepreneur in the new Netflix film, Dolemite is My Name. It’s dynamite. I have sorely missed Eddie Murphy doing what he does best – balls-to-the-wall street comedy. Having seen all of Rudy Ray Moore’s films, I can tell you unequivocally that Murphy nails the character and the man behind him. This is Oscar-worthy stuff. Also extremely foul-mouthed and hilarious.
Funnier still, the spot-on script about 1970s black culture was written by a couple of white boys: Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, perhaps best known for writing the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon (1999). They totally capture the era of urban cinema, of hustlers and hucksters, and give Murphy, Wesley Snipes, Snoop Dogg, Chris Rock and others some of their best material in years. This is a great film. Would make a terrific double feature with The Disaster Artist -- stories that reinforce the notion that determination, not talent, is often the greater key to success.
God, I love this country. I believe in America.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve B. Evans. All rights reserved.

Walking the Walk

By Steve Evans

When I was 10 years old, in 1973, I experienced the heart-stopping fear of vertigo during a visit to the observation deck of the Empire State Building in New York City. That terror of heights stopped only when I cured myself 12 years later by skydiving from the first plane I ever flew in.

It is nothing compared to tonight’s double feature, the Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire (2008), which chronicles the death-defying tightrope stunt of Philippe Petit, and The Walk (2015), a fictionalized account of the same event. And what was this event, you ask?

Petit and several accomplices in 1974 rigged a cable between the Twin Towers in NYC under cover of darkness and at dawn he crossed that thin umbilical on foot multiple times some 200 feet between the skyscrapers, back and forth, at a height of nearly 1,800 feet over lower Manhattan, stooping on one knee to salute the cheering crowd far below and laying on his back along the cable minutes later, without benefit of safety equipment. He pranced on the wire for about 45 minutes before high winds and a police helicopter threatened to knock him off his precarious perch. So he returned to the north tower.

The police handcuffed the aerialist and read him his Miranda rights. Petit was taken to a hospital for psychiatric examination, then booked for disorderly conduct and criminal trespassing. Under details of the complaint, the arresting officer wrote only “Man on Wire.” The same afternoon, Aug. 7, 1974, Manhattan’s district attorney dropped all charges in return for Petit’s agreement to give a free aerial performance in Central Park, this time only a few feet off the ground. He did.

The Twin Towers are long gone. Inspiration, though, is forever.

I share this not so much in enduring astonishment at Petit’s titanium balls and divine madness in pursuit of an artistic vision, but because life is beautiful, great art should be breathtaking and fear is only a state of mind to be conquered.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Tarantino's Greek Chorus

By Steve Evans

Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino understand how to use songs in a film like no other living director. Take your pick: Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Casino, Jackie Brown, The Departed, Django Unchained. Brilliant music in every one. Great song selections underline the storyline without bludgeoning home the point.

Both men have new films coming out this year. Tarantino’s lands first. The full trailer for Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood dropped today and it promises amazing entertainment. A film about lost innocence along the boulevard of broken dreams. I encourage you to check out the new trailer on YouTube.

Back on point, one of the tunes he’s using on the soundtrack is by the obscure band Los Bravos. It’s a typical Tarantino choice: all but forgotten, catchy as hell, contemporaneous to the film’s setting and brimming with sly commentary about the onscreen action. Just like a great soundtrack should.

So if you know the fate of Sharon Tate and listen to the lyrics of Bring a Little Lovin', you’ll discover that Tarantino still brings a positively wicked sense of ironic counterpoint to his song selections. There’s a reason he has a rep as one of the hippest cats in the movie bidness. As for Sharon and bug-eyed Charlie Manson, whether Tarantino attempts to rewrite history à la Inglourious Basterds will be determined July 26. Unless you're among the fortunate who got to see the premiere at Cannes this afternoon, after which Tarantino and his cast received a six-minute standing ovation.


Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Want to Live? Then Die in L.A.

By Steve Evans

Summer blockbuster season is upon us and I am mostly unimpressed with the cinematic slate. I’ll go see Scorsese’s latest and Tarantino’s, too, but that’s about it. Summer is a time for action films, and for my money, the more violent the better. Many terrific action films have been made over the last half century and you’d best believe I’ve seen ‘em all. The Bond films hold up and, well, Die Hard (1988) is still the gold standard for Christmas movies featuring terrorists and machine guns and exploding helicopters. Yippie-kai-yay, etc.

But now and again I revisit the work of William Friedkin when I want a textbook refresher on how to shoot an action film. His early success, Best Picture winner The French Connection (1971), made a star out of Gene Hackman and delivers what remains one of the great chase sequences in all cinema. I watched it again the other night. Brilliant flick, infused with the influences of the French New Wave. Friedkin’s horror-film follow-up, The Exorcist (1973), never did anything for me except trigger a fit of the giggles. Why that flick scared anyone remains a mystery to this day: “Your mother sucks cocks in hell!” “Oh? Here’s a puke bucket, you little harlot.” Friedkin faltered after that for nearly a decade with several misfires. Then he turned 50, got serious, and directed another masterpiece.

I’m talking about his 1985 thriller To Live and Die in L.A., about a brooding counterfeiter and the secret service agent determined to take him down. This is a damn-near perfect action picture, with credible, well-developed characters performed by a sterling cast that includes Willem Dafoe, William Peterson and John Turturrro in an early role. The action set pieces are many and memorable. There are beautiful babes – the kind you trust and the kind you sleep next to with one eye open. The band Wang Chung delivered their best-ever work for the soundtrack. Almost everyone in the film has a nasty attitude. And what is an action flick without balls-to-the-wall violence? Here the brutality is potent, bloody, abundant and unapologetic. This may be the most nihilistic action movie ever made, outside of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear, which Friedkin himself remade in 1977 as Sorcerer.

Oh. You want a chase sequence in downtown L.A.? Friedkin outdid his own previously best effort in The French Connection. Ask yourself what it would be like to fly down a freeway at 80 mph. Going the wrong way. With cars coming head-on. To Live and Die in L.A. answers that question.

This film exudes effortless style. It’s an outrageously slick piece of entertainment with enough throbbing testosterone to make Big Arnold Schwarzenegger cry like a sissy with skinned knees.

I first saw the picture in a theater 34 years ago. Back then, it blew my mind at the possibilities of action cinema. Leaving the theater, I recall breaking several land speed records driving home, such was my lingering excitement. I am still waiting for someone to surpass the pure adrenaline this film delivers.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2019 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.