Thursday, April 2, 2015

Top Five (2014)

Chris Rock's near masterpiece look at fame and relationships is a couple of bumps short of being the best film I saw in 2015 to date.

The film has Rock as a comedian turned actor who doesn't feel funny any more. As his wedding to a reality star looms and his newest film, a film about a Haitian slave revolt is released he finds he has to spend the day with a New York Times reporter (Rosario Dawson) doing a profile.

Let me put it out there when the film focuses on Rock and Dawson just talking or when Rock is reflecting on life and existence this film is as good as they come. In those moments the film is one of the best films on life as I've seen.  Its because of these moments that the film needs to be seen by anyone who loves good movies.

The trouble is that periodically Rock feels the need to get silly and overly raunchy in scenes that seem more like digressions. We don't need to see the story of the hookers and the guy from the comedy club, nor do we need to see the long digression about Dawson's closeted gay boyfriend. Its not that the stories don't belong in the film, they do since they add color to the characters telling the stories, but seeing them, especially as amped up comedy sidebars distracts from the interaction between Dawson and Rock. We don't need to see these things when the words between the two leads are so incredibly powerful.

Once the sidebar stuff ends-somewhere at about the one hour mark the film recovers its footing and sails gloriously to the end.

An absolute must see and best of all a film I will be revisiting for years to come.

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