A Bougie Podcast Epi. 2: Agents Suck/Guillermo Da GOAT/What Happened Denzel?

Episode 1 was just the tip, this week we’re giving you the whole shabang with Episode 2 of a Bougie Podcast. In this episode we chop it up about agents (and when you should bother with them), Guillermo del Toro’s next masterpiece The Shape of Water, and after seeing the trailer for Roman J Israel, Esq. Adam is asking, “What happened Denzel?” And that ain’t even the half. Check the full episode below, and until next time… Peace!

Bougie

A Bougie Podcast

Wellllllll, it’s been quite some time since I began talking about wanting to do some kind of “audio-review” or podcast on the visual medium. After many attempts, Adam Glenn and myself decided to try something out. I’m going to go ahead and call this “The Bougie Chat” episode 1 (That name may change). We kept this one short because, more than anything, it was an experiment.

Comin to ya live from Photoville: In this episode we talk cameras (and probably shit on your favorite brand), Photoville, and last but not least, Mother! (Spoiler Alert!)

Adam mic 2 (BW)

Crooklyn 23 Years Later: A film for a rapidly gentrifying New York

“You love me, you hate me, you know me and then you can’t figure out the bag I’m in. I am everyday people”, sing Sly and the Family Stone as Spike Lee’s camera brings us through a clean, bustling, and multi-cultural Brooklyn street. Is there any surprise that New Yorker’s voted that Crooklyn be the film to unite us?

In the first year of the One Film, One New York competition, Crooklyn beat out films such as New York, New York, On The Town, Desperately Seeking Susan, and The Wedding Banquet as the film to unite New Yorkers in these very divisive times. And oh how much there is to learn from Crooklyn – but the question that I found myself asking was, “is it too late?” Crooklyn marks the 7th entry from Spike Lee as a Director, and it is perhaps his most subdued film. As always he deals with issues of race, gender, and gentrification, but he keeps all these subject matters contained within the very small story of a nuclear family in Brooklyn. If you have not seen Crooklyn then what are you waiting for? I don’t want to review Crooklyn as a film so much as I want to look at it in the context of modern day New York City. As I sat in a packed BAM Rose Cinemas theater and Crooklyn started playing, you could feel the collective longing for the images on screen coming not only from my self, but from the entire theater. Shots of girls playing hop-scotch, kids playing skully, and neighbors congregating on a stoop were once all quintessential images of New York life. And while Crooklyn felt like a celebration of all those things, one couldn’t shake the feeling that this film acted as a send-off to a New York long gone.



The loose structure one often finds in Spike Lee’s films is stronger than ever in Crooklyn, to great effect. When our main character Troy, a street-smart 12 year old played by Zelda Harris, walks into a bodega she’s immediately hypnotized by a drag-queen dancing with one of the store owners. Troy’s gaze is fixed on the woman dancing in slow motion and the scene is visual poetry, but more importantly, it is one of those moments that everyone that’s grown up in New York can attest to. One day you saw something, a moment as small – and seemingly insignificant – as a human interaction, that changed your life and taught you a great deal. The fact that Spike Lee takes the time to give us this scene in all it’s glory is a testament to his ability to use emotion-perhaps the tool he’s most skilled with in his filmmaker arsenal.


The film is filled with experiences that can unite all New Yorkers, including the experience of leaving New York for a reconnaissance in the suburbs. When Troy’s parents – played with both tremendous grace, and grit by Delroy Lindo and Alfre Woodard – take their kids on a road trip to Virginia, as city-folk we can empathize with their feelings of being a fish out of water, and hearing crickets for the first time. And no matter how nice the people or how big the homes, the feeling is still “I need to get back to Brooklyn!”




With that being said, Crooklyn is a testament to a New York that no longer exists. Neighborhoods don’t mix like they used to, gentrification has no interest in any of the customs or culture of the neighborhoods it changes, and because of that, the very idea of the “neighborhood” is fleeting in New York. In the film, Troy and her 4 siblings, along with her mother who’s an educator, and her father who’s a musician, live in a brownstone. One of the first questions that popped into my head during the film was, “could a family of 7, on a teachers salary, even afford to live in that house anymore?

REVIEW: Good Time

The Safdie brother’s crime drama could have been a heavy, brooding piece. The brothers however, opt for style, and a little bit of fun along the way.
Robert Pattinson plays Connie Nika, a man who’s character can be summed up by the first three letters of his name. After a botched bank robbery lands his mentally challenged brother Nick (played by Benny Safdie himself) in Rikers, Connie finds himself in an adrenaline fueled night as he races against the clock to get his brother out of Rikers.

Months back, when I first caught wind of Good Time, this crime drama where Robert Pattinson moves through the New York grit as he attempts to get his brother out of Rikers, I immediately dismissed it. I saw the synopsis, accompanied by a photo of a bleach blonde Robert Pattinson, running through the street wide-eyed and wearing an Ecko hoodie. The optics were just all wrong for me. However, I can admit it when I’m wrong about a film, and I was wrong about this one.

The Safdie brothers portray New York City in a way only New Yorkers can. The film displays a deep knowledge of the city’s beat and dark crevices, trading in the skyline with its towering skyscrapers, for the street level grunge complete with back alleys and shady businesses. Hell there’s even a scene that takes place in an access-a-ride bus. Their realistic depiction of an often unseen side of NYC will be eye-opening for many viewers, in a way that I imagine Scorsese’s Taxi Driver did in 1976 for those blissfully unaware of NYC’s dark side.


While yes this film is quite literally a good time, by nature of its plot, the film finds making commentary on some of the critical issues we face as a nation: healthcare, race, the prison industrial complex, specifically Rikers island (because this is a New York film). Every character we see on the screen in Good Time is a product of at least one of those crumbling pillars of American life. As an audience, we know Connie is a scumbag (albeit a very charismatic one), but on at least two occasions we see him use his whiteness to get out of situations with the law. Scenes like these reaffirm our settlement on labeling him a scumbag, but he’s no fool, he knows how the system works and what his weapons are.

The cinematography is remeniscient of a Cassavetes film, with offscreen dialogue, and suffocating close-ups during conversations make every situation feel like some kind of trap. Cinematographer Sean Price Williams, constantly shifts the focus, as if trying to latch on to something, as we see Connie working the gears in his mind trying to worm his way out of a bind. The score, by Oneohtrix Point Never, blends beautifully with the trippy visual style of Good Time, keeping the film moving as the adrenaline builds and keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout.

So yes, in short, see this film. It’s not playing all over the place but, if you have to go a little out of your way, you won’t be disappointed seeing Good Time in a theater. And I’m almost certain that A24 is gonna really push this film for Oscar considerations. Not that that means anything besides the fact that you should see it now, before the Academy’s pomp and circumstance ruin the Good Time. 

REVIEW: Atomic Blonde

The purple-blue neon tones, a la John Wick, are back with David Leitch’s latest entry in his series of hyper-stylized actions flicks.


Charlize Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, a vodka guzzling, chain-smoking M16 agent on a mission to find a list containing the names of KGB double agents on the night of the collapse of the Berlin Wall… at least I think?? If I’m being straight up, the story gets kind of muddled before it gets a chance to really get off the ground but let’s face it, that’s not what you came here for.

Sometimes it’s all in the title folks… Atomic Blonde… no it’s not a Cold War period piece, and not for one second does it pretend to care about the actual events of that day in November 1989. What it is is slick, stylish, and moving to its own groove. I can also say that as far as filmmaking is concerned, it employed some challenging shooting techniques to breathtaking results.


Shooting methods, stylish colors and soundtrack aside, Charlize Theron and James McAvoy bring their A-game and breathe life into archetypes we’ve seen on the screen an umpteen amount of times. I mean seriously how many times have we seen the brooding secret agent or the opportunistic and dubious rogue spy? But Charlize Theron and James McAvoy bring a ferocity to these roles that somehow make them feel fresh and exciting to watch. All under the guise of David Leitch’s eye for style.


While the story isn’t perfect and damn near falls apart at the seams once you start to think about it for too long. Like John Wick, Atomic Blonde strives to be visual candy, and action caviar, often times succeeding at both. Leitch’s plots function as mere vehicles to support his lofty, and often times dancelike, fight choreography. Atomic Blonde is definitely a flex.