Movie Review Love Beats Rhymes

Love Beats Rhymes (2017) 

Directed by Rza 

Written by Nicole Jeffeson-Asher 

Starring A'zealia Banks, John David Washington, Jill Scott, Lucien Laviscount 

Release Date December 1st, 2017 

Love Beats Rhymes is the kind of movie that just doesn’t get made enough. This is a sweet, sensitive, and smart movie about a young, ambitious black woman who decides that she can have all that she wants, school, career, a good man, and that all it takes is a little hard work and desire. I wish more movies had the courage to tell young women that you don’t have to compromise all the time and that you can demand all that you want and work toward getting it.

Love Beats Rhymes stars Azealia Banks as Coco, a rapper with a crew that performs at rap battles in New York City. You might immediately put her in a box as if you already know who she is but you would be wrong. Coco isn’t just a talented rapper. She’s also a college student several credits away from graduating with a degree in accounting, all while she pursues a record deal. Most movies force drama by making characters choose one or the other. It’s refreshing to see a movie character, especially a young black woman, a far too rare lead character, allowed to be so ambitious.

As I said, Coco only needs a few more credits for her degree and when a friend tells her that Poetry 101 is an easy grade, she jumps at the chance, assuming that, as a hip hop artist, poetry will be a breeze. Coco finds herself challenged immediately by her professor, Nefari Dixon (Jill Scott), who has a low opinion of hip hop, especially in relation to poetry, which she puts on a high pedestal. Coco also clashes with Professor Dixon’s teaching assistant, Derek (Lucien Laviscount), who shares the Professor’s disdain for hip hop.

Naturally, Coco and Derek’s antagonism is cover for their mutual attraction and soon enough, nasty words give way to loving coos and their relationship comes under the scrutiny of the jealous professor, jealous of someone taking her handsome TA and of the talent of Coco who, when she finally discovers real poetry, takes to it with talent and passion. The love triangle aspect of Love Beats Rhymes is a rather forced cliché intended to inject drama late in the third act, in a very Robert McKee fashion, but the rest of Love Beats Rhymes is so winning I can forgive a few overly familiar moments.

Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal 

Movie Review Repo Men

Repo Men (2010) 

Directed by Miguel Sapochnik

Written by Eric Garcia, Garrett Lerner

Starring Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Liev Schreiber, Alice Braga, RZA, Yvette Nicole Brown

Release Date March 19th, 2010 

Published March 20th, 2010 

Warning: The movie Repo Men has been sitting on a studio shelf for nearly three years. The film starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker never developed a reputation as a troubled project but for some reason the studio never saw fit to put it on the screen until now. This is, generally, a bad sign. Films that sit on studio shelves for a while have an almost literal stench of failure attached to them.

Repo Men stars Jude Law as Remy, a man with a very unique and disturbing profession. It is Remy's job to retrieve property but not just any property, Remy retrieves internal organs. A company known as The Union has developed mechanical organs to replace failing human organs of all types, lungs, heart, kidney et cetera.

The catch is that  these mechanical organs are unbelievably expensive, so expensive that the company offers an exorbitant payment plan. If you default on your payments for more than three months the Union sends Remy and or his pal Jake (Forest Whitaker) to retrieve the organ by any means necessary. Bloody gutting and death are the usual result.

As you may have learned from the trailers and commercials, Remy has an accident and ends up with a mechanical heart courtesy of The Union. Becoming a transplant patient changes Remy and he can no longer be a repo man. Also helping change Remy's perspective is another former patient (Alice Braga) who Remy falls in love with and eventually goes on the run with in order to escape the repo of both of their important parts.

Repo Men has an interesting idea, one that could be played to capitalize on the current debate over health care reform in America. What better way to parody the heartless insurance and HMO conglomerates than with the mass, bloody retrieval of organs that patients fail to pay for. The satire practically writes itself. 

That, however, is for another movie, as noted above Repo Men was made nearly three years ago before the battle over health care reform became a daily lead story on the national news. What Repo Men is really about is hardcore bloody violence reminiscent of the recent blood and guts epics coming out of Japan and South Korea. Repo Men apes a number of Asian action and horror conceits, especially the bloody violence of Chan Wook Park's Oldboy.

A scene late in Repo Men seems entirely lifted from Oldboy. In it Jude Law takes on several bad guys in a narrow hallway with a knife, a saw, and some sweet Kung Fu. It's a terrific scene but also derivative and in the end pointless. I won't spoil the ending but trained film watchers will be disappointed at how Repo Men tips its hand early on and cheats to the finish in a most irritating way.

I don't know exactly why Repo Men was left on the shelf for three years. There is little that could have been done in that time to improve it. My guess has less to do with production trouble than with marketing challenges. The studio (Universal) was likely holding the film until Jude Law regained his status as a marketable leading man.

In 2007 Jude Law was coming off of a series of box office disappointments and indie movies that barely made it beyond the art house. He was also a rising tabloid star having had a troubled marriage and well publicized affair that kept him from making many movies from 2004 to 2007.  In 2009 Jude Law came back to the top of the marquee starring opposite Robert Downey Jr in Sherlock Holmes. With Law's name recognition once again on the rise, and his tabloid troubles seemingly behind him, Universal likely felt they finally had a marketing hook and Repo Men arrived.

None of this means much to the quality of Repo Men. It's merely one of those notable Hollywood stories; a peculiarity of the Hollywood system where stars are coveted for their ability to sell a movie with their name and persona but shunned at the mere mention of potential scandal or perceived lack of appeal..

Repo Men is the result of that bizarre Hollywood system where marketing means as much or more than the quality of the movie. No one seemed to care whether Repo Men was any good, it's not great but not terrible. The more pertinent concerns for executives were whether the movie could be sold. In 2007 it wasn't an easy sell. In 2010 it became an easier sell.

Putting aside the Hollywood junk, if you are a fan of hardcore, blood and guts violence or a fan of Jude Law you will find a lot to like about Repo Men. If you prefer movies with strong story, characters and motivations skip Repo Men which pushes aside an interesting cast and story in favor of more blood and more guts and more spectacular ways of displaying them on screen