Straight Outta Compton (2015) ****

Going into Straight Outta Compton I already had a general idea of the history of N.W.A. I’m not a gangsta rap fan, but I was transitioning between childhood and angry teenager during the same time as their run and I watched MTV. I remembered the riots (there were always riots back then, no matter the genre) and I remember the death of Eazy E. I knew that Ice Cube left and formed Public Enemy. This film filled in those gaps.

This is your straight forward biopic and what’s most striking about it is the how the themes that have played out throughout the annals of music history continued to play out. As a whole, N.W.A. was a great unit that is torn apart by the oldest reason in the record business: money. And it’s not them fighting each other for it (not quite), but how yet another group of young stars is manipulated into giving up their rights because they’re naïve, while the agent or promoter, or the record executive lives high on the hog. That’s the typical story, but the layer that sits on top of that is the environment these guys came from and how they expressed it in their music, even to the point of having to take knocks from the police and competitors. The weight of this brave new world of gangster rap was on the shoulders of these young men.

I’m kind of leery when your subject matter is the producing the film and I think there were a few tid bits that were glossed over, but overall Straight Outta Compton is a great film that details the birth of a new art form as it shows us the business as usual attitudes of the industry.

Marty (1955)*****

Do you remember all of those movies in the 1990’s about someone who didn’t know what they wanted to be or where they wanted to go. There was an emphasis on just hanging out and killing time until the next day to start again or the work their way into the next weekend of killing time until Monday. Marty stands as the originator of this type of plot where a young man has stayed with his mother beyond his years and is just following the current that is life.

The film stars Ernest Borgnine as the title character, a butcher who lives with his mother and hangs out with his buddies at night and on weekends. Even with all of these people in his life, Marty is lonely. He longs to be with a girl; a nice girl. As the film proceeds we follow Marty as he attempts to begin relationships with females that are mainly acquaintances, ships floating by in the dead of the night that you may wonder where they traveled after your encounter, but you’ll never see them again. What happens next is the “when you least expect it” notion kicks in and Marty meets Clara (Betsy Blair) who he becomes enchanted with, even though Clara goes against the world that Marty has created for himself.

Borgnine’s performance is on par with some of the best work of the 1950’s, going well beyond the norms of the era. When Marty is shot down, lonely, excited, you feel it in his performance. You come along on this ride with Marty and it is an emotional roller coaster. It’s a portrayal that will stay with you long after seeing this film. It’s a masterpiece of a performance that won Borgnine a well deserved Academy Award. Those feelings go hand in hand with what you feel as a viewer, particularly when Marty and Clara begin their courtship. You feel those feelings that a person experiences when they meet a person and they like that person, spending hours with them just talking or walking or whatever because it doesn’t matter. You just want to be with that person. It’s a hard feeling to describe and it is something that comes up when reminiscing about that first meeting, but it’s a universal feeling that a person holds onto throughout the rest of their life. Marty captures that moment perfectly. I can’t think of a film that displays that moment and those feelings like Marty does. Usually they end up in slapstick like blah. There is not gimmick or pratfall. This is just two people falling for each other.

Marty is a best picture winner and coming from a time when epics and big names usually won the big prize Marty is a nice little breath of fresh air. It still holds the record as the shortest Best Picture