BOYZ N THE HOOD (1991)

"They want us to kill ourselves."

1984. Ten-year-old Tre Styles lives with his single mother (Angela Bassett) n Los Angeles.  She can't handle his shit and sends him to live with his father, Jason "Furious" Styles (Laurence Fishburne) n the hood. Some STAND BY ME shit happens and suddenly it's 1991 and 17-year-old Tre is now 23-year-old Cuba Gooding Jr. who looks like he's 30 and hasn't slept n 4 days.  He also has a shirt with two random dots on it. N order to show off his shirt, he goes to a neighborhood BBQ party where we're introduced to the important characters n the film.  Namely, half-brothers Darren 'Doughboy' Baker (Ice Cube) and Ricky Baker (Morris Chestnut).  Doughboy and Ricky might be brothers, but they are very different.  Ricky is a football start who hopes to get a football scholarship while Doughboy is a drug dealing gang member.

What can I say about BOYZ N THE HOOD that hasn't already been said a billion times by people who actually get paid to write about such things?  Probably nothing. It's definitely a product of it's time and dated as fook, but it's still a great film and historically important.  It's also unfair to carelessly lump BOYZ N THE HOOD nto the "hood film" genre thinking that it's nothing but endless drive-bys and people randomly yelling "motherfucker", because BNTH is more of coming-of-age than anything else.  It just happens to take place n the hood.

Good pace, hit or miss acting, less violence than some might expect, Duck Hunt, awesome early 1990's Los Angeles scenery, uneven direction (that kinda adds to the film n a weird way), dude getting hit with a garbage can, so many loose ends n the script that is seems like the movie is more a fable than an actual story, multiple now iconic scenes and characters, actors that all (distractingly) look 5 years older than their characters (example: 22-year-old high school footballer applying for college), badass dated fashions, vintage cars, a Freddy Krueger reference, director cameo (Mailman), an Eazy-E dis, dated slang that I still use, male dominate story, interesting soundtrack that features everything from 2 Live Crew to The Five Stairsteps.

BOYZ N THE HOOD is mandatory viewing for anybody interesting n American Cinema or just good films n general, but for me personally the single greatest thing about BNTH isn't anything to do with the film itself, but instead its obvious influence on one of my favorite films: the 91-minute cut of 1995's FRIDAY.  Watch them back-to-back and you'll see what I'm talking about.  Hell...Cube's even wearing the same exact clothes n the opening scene of FRIDAY that he was wearing n the last scene of BOYZ N THE HOOD!  Half-dead motherfucker. Come on, sister!

If you need me, I'll be outside raking leaves n a yard with no trees.

[Fun fact: I remember going to Wal-Mart right after this film came out (and before I saw it) and being confused as to why so many people were walking around with baby pacifiers n their mouths.]

CRITTERS 4 (1992)

For a low budget sci-fi film, CRITTERS 4 (while not really original) isn't too horrible, but as a CRITTERS sequel it's pretty goddamn lame because there's hardly any Krite action until the last act of the film and even then it's weak.

In 1992, that stupid ass motherfucker Charlie (yes, he's still around stinking up the entire franchise) gets himself locked in a spaceship along with two Krite eggs and put into some kind of hibernation. Fast-forward 53 years and a salvage ship comes across Charlie's ship just floating around in space. The crew contacts the owners of the ship and are instructed to report to a nearby station to collect their reward. Once there, they crew discovers the station has been abandoned. Even worse, the two Krites escape and are now on the loose.

That set up took nearly 40 minutes of screen time, but it's not too bad since it was kinda entertaining.  Unfortunately though, instead of being claustrophobic and tense (like ALIEN), the remainder of CRITTERS 4 is just a long snoozefest. The two Krites are about as scary as a Muppet, the cheap sets get really old really quick, the story doesn't go anywhere, the action is pathetic and having Charlie as a main character is a fucking personal insult to every single person who paid to see this film.

If you want to complete the CRITTERS series, then you have no choice but to watch C4, but honestly everybody else should just stay away. It's not horrible, but it's not good either. There's so many better things you could be doing with your life than watching CRITTERS 4. Skip it.

Part 1 - Critters (1986)
Part 2 - Critters 2 (1988)
Part 3 - Critters 3 (1991)

What computers will look like in the year 2045.