Chi-raq

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Spike Lee/Starring: Teyonah Parris, Nick Cannon, Samuel L. Jackson, John Cusack, Wesley Snipes, Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson, D.B. Sweeney and Dave Chappelle

One never knows what Spike Lee will come up with though it's a sure thing that the subject matter will focus on African-American issues, of which he has many trenchant things to say and express. In his latest film, he combines social commentary with drama, farce and song and dance and achieves a synthesis that is imaginative, informative and ultimately entertaining. Chi-raq may be his most inspired film in years and most daring, as he not only adapts Aristophanes' Lysistrata, he also turns it on its head by setting in present day Chicago.

Aristophanes' play; set during the Peloponnesian War, tells the story of a group of women, led by Lysistrata, who attempt to end the bloody conflict by refusing their men sex. Lee's story takes place on a different battlefield; one just as violent and bloody: the gang wars in Chicago's streets. As the wars rage in the streets, bodies of bystanders begin to accrue until Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) decides she has seen enough. Though the story is Aristophanes', the conflict depicted in Lee's film is drawn from recent events in Chicago. What distinguishes Lee's film from the Greek dramatist's is how he chooses to tell his story. What they have in common is the theme of female empowerment.

One may immediately notice, from the film's opening lines, is the dialogue, which is declaimed in a rhyming, lyrical manner that is faithful to both Aristophanes and hip-hop.

Subtitles at the beginning of the film offer the audience sobering statistics about the casualties of gang violence on Chicago streets, whose numbers exceed the total number of casualties from both the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars.
Chicago, or Chi-raq; as its referred to by city inhabitants, is the battleground of two warring gangs: the Spartans and the Trojans. Lysistrata's boyfriend and local rap star; Chi-raq (Nick Cannon), is the Spartan leader whose forces battle the Trojans and their leader Cyclops (Wesley Snipes).

Serving as the story's narrator is the hip Dolmedes (Samuel Jackson); who appears periodically in immaculate duds to help the narrative along.

Fed up with the death toll from the Spartan/Trojan gun battles, Lysistrata conceives the aforementioned plan whereby the women from both sides of the conflict deny their men sex as a radical approach to ending the violence. Thinking they can merely transfer their amorous activities elsewhere, the men find all the women in the community; including strip clubs, have joined Lysistrata's strike as well. Denied their carnal pleasures, the men try to turn the tables on the women only to find Lysistrata has organized the women only too well. Before long, she and her women army seize control of an armory.

As Lysistrata's plan takes effect the men scramble to find a way to free themselves from the lockout. Joining the call for a cessation to the violence is Father Mike Corridan (John Cusack); a white clergyman who is sympathetic to Lysistrata's plan. Corridan's emotionally-charged sermon at a funeral honoring a gang-war casualty serves also as an invective about the problem of gun-related violence in black, urban America. Meanwhile, Lysistrata finds her movement has become a national and international phenomenon.

Though we see several dance numbers where Spartan and Trojan women shake their booty provocatively, Lee never lets us forget the very serious issue at the heart of the film.
And though Lysistrata's solution to the violence is fanciful at best, it makes for a terrific premise for a film, which Lee exploits not only for maximum entertainment but to express a cogent message.

Chi-raq shows how Lee can be a feverishly-imaginative director. Setting Aristophanes' play in modern day Chicago and substituting a gang-war for the Peloponnesian conflict is refreshingly original.

Teyonah Parris is a delightful Lysistrata; her scalding sexuality and powerful presence make the men seem boyish. We don't often have a chance to see Angela Bassett in films, but here she is quite terrific and lends her own stalwart presence to the proceedings.
I suppose Lee could have knocked twenty minutes or so off the running time but that's a minor quibble. Some critics I've read think John Cusack's sermon is a significant mistake but I understand Lee must have felt a funeral oration delivered by a white man might make a more powerful impact. I haven't made up my mind about it but I didn't find it to be a glaring error (if it is one).

I took Lee's message to heart but also had a great time watching a movie that employed multiple-genre conventions to to forge its own significant, interpretation of Aristophanes. I think it was a mistake to release it during big-screen spectacle season but maybe it will hold its own. We can only hope.

Lullaby

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Andrew Levitas/Starring: Richard Jenkins, Garrett Hedlund, Amy Adams, Anne Archer, Jessica Brown Findlay, Jennifer Hudson, Terrence Howard and Jessica Barden

With a cast like that of Lullaby, one might think director Andrew Levitas would have little trouble dramatizing a dying man's last day but somehow an awe-inspiring assemblage of talent can't save what is essentially a dull, tedious, slog.

Richard Jenkins plays Robert Lowenstein, a one-time, cunning business executive who is now literally on his deathbed. He has lost his resolve to fight his illness and is eager to remove the machines and tubes to which he is connected, thus bringing his life to a tragic end. While his wife Rachel (Anne Archer) tends to him, she also defies his efforts to end his life. So far, so fine. Enter his son Jonathan (Garrett Hedlund); a broody, James Dean-like musician who has returned, albeit reluctantly, to see his father and mend the discord between them these past 12 years. Garrett Hedlund is a charismatic actor who has yet to find his breaththrough role. One might remember him from Inside Llewyn Davis as the mysterious, taciturn companion of John Goodman. Here he is the figure around whom other characters and actions seem to revolve, which is strange; given the fact that it is his father who is dying. Not long after Jonathan arrives, his lawyer-sister, petulantly played by Jessica Brown Findlay, shows up to announce she has initiated an injunction to stop her father from ending his life, which is to take place the next day. Jonathan is outraged and angry as the brother/sister animosity surfaces, thus providing the film another conflict.

It is here where the family dynamics are laid bare: Jonathan angry with his father for past offenses, Jonathan angry with sister for vague reasons (though being absent from his father's side for many years is a major component), daughter angrily rejecting her father's wish to die and the mother also fighting her husband's right to die and...anything else? Thankfully no, though Garrett does meet a 17 year-old girl named Meredith (Jessica Barden)--a terminally ill, bone cancer patient-- in the hospital stairwell while enjoying a family-stress smoke. It is an immediate tip-off from their meeting the two will form some sort of bond during this crisis and become friends. Glaring plot contrivance, anyone?

Joining this circus-like melodrama is Jonathan's old flame Emily, inexplicably played by Amy Adams, whose extraordinary talent can often defibrillate the most insipid movies with her presence and charm. I'm not sure what she saw in such a cardboard cut-out of a role but she is mostly around to remind us how Jonathan not only alienated his family in his past but lovers too. How anyone could waste Adams' talent so badly is mystifying. The same can be said for Terrance Howard and Jennifer Hudson--the doctor and nurse duo tending to Robert--whose characters are so marginal in the story one might think they were movie-catering staffers who happened to step in front of the camera. That's three Oscar-nominated actors relegated to dull, peripheral roles while the principal actors are left to play out unconvincing characters unconvincingly. Anne Archer wears a pained expression throughout, but if it's supposed to be grief, it comes off more as acute dyspepsia.

Hedlund's Jonathan is the young, smoking, existential anti-hero that comes in convenience store script six-packs. We know that sooner or later he will reconcile with his old flame (though not rekindle), dance with the terminally ill Meredith at a makeshift hospital room prom and the family will all gather on the father's bed (Doctor too!), for what must be the greatest orgy of tears in cinema this century.

The film concludes with Jonathan performing a song inspired by his father before a substantial theater gathering, while Emily smiles and sings along in the wings. Everything turns out alright; all the strife is washed away, Jonathan and Meredith blow kisses to one another as a final goodbye and life is beautiful again.

I hope the man sitting next to me didn't interpret my heaving chest as uncontrollable sobbing. If he had looked closer, he might have seen me suppressing seismic laughter. If only the film had been a comedy.