Black and White (1999)

It's the one Tobackonists have been waiting for since the thrill of his debut movie FINGERS--a movie with the soar and rush of obsession that also has the sanity and craft of a grown man. This movie about the uneasy millennium-era relationship of black and white people in America is not, as many people have said, a work of moony White Negroism. It resembles one of Godard's mid-sixties essay-movies like MASCULINE FEMININE or TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, but with race substituted for sexual politics, and with a heavy dose of pornography and melodramatic pulp. Toback keeps cranking up the heat as the cast--a conceptual-art demonstration of stunt casting--leaves the audience openmouthed.

Bijou Phillips is a wonder as the wigga-talkin' Upper East Side chiclet who proclaims, "I wanna be black--I'm a kid in America." Ben Stiller, as a tormented dirty cop, gives the performance of his life in a high-speed monologue of self-analysis that's like a speed freak's channeling the essence of Robert Downey, Jr. The great man himself appears here as well, as a gay artist who comes on to Mike Tyson (playing himself) at a party. The scene of violence that ensues should have James Toback clinking a glass in celebration in the mirror: he managed to top the Jim Brown/Tisa Farrow head-smashing sequence in FINGERS. Brooke Shields is an amazement as a fervent, sincere documentarian with dredlocks--she's like a deadpan version of the Geraldine Chaplin character in NASHVILLE, and Shields astonishes.

Toback wants to cram everything into this bird's eye view of race--sexual fantasies, money machinations, the class strata of New York City. That none of the scenes is a dud, that the movie is beautifully shot and edited, that nothing feels merely "excessive," is a testament to the passion behind the camera. BLACK AND WHITE is a miracle to this viewer: it renewed my excitement and faith in movies at a moment when I felt it falling down.

Fmovies: The biggest problem with this film is simply that the white characters are portrayed with more couth than their "Real Life Counterparts". Look around at WHO(meaning white youth) embrace the Hip Hop culture 1)undereducated,rhetoric spouting revolutionary wannabees 2) lazy minded,material driven, "instant gratification junkies" 3) simple minded sheep who have such identity problems that they assimilate into a culture which basically despises their existence...AND THOSE ARE THEIR GOOD POINTS

As far as the film goes, I watched it all the way through, hoping something would happen.Finally something did: the film ended and I got to watch something else.

I rented this title because I saw Elijah Wood was casted in it, my favorite actor. Make a notation that I use the word "title" rather than movie because it isn't deserving enough to be called that.

From the very beginning to the very end it was nothing but a major disappointment. I had no idea that Wood would even be in a movie so bad. I never even knew a movie that he was in could be bad! He had very little lines, and was the only decent character in it.

As for the film... IT HAD ABSOLUTELY NO PLOT!! None at all. There was no major internal conflict, or external for that matter.(Well at least that the movie was based on, just small disagreements). Everyone in this film played a static character, making no change within the movie. It starts off with white kids wishing they were black, and ends the same way. Many small plot strands were thrown together to make a meaningless, unsubstantial, stupid film. It was thought out like something a 5 year old could do, that is, a 5 year old with a terribly sick mind. Even if there was a plot there was too much swearing and cheap sex (which pertained to nothing at all in the movie) to even get a message across. I would rate this movie a perfect 1 on a scale from 1-10. And I think many would agree.

These white kids were not "hip-hop culture", they were a bunch of winey teenage posers who couldn't see how good they had it, middle class suburbs, so they stooped down a level where they had their own fantasy world of being black and from the ghetto, which they weren't either.

As for the "rappers" in the movie, their parts were thrown in for nothing. They did nothing accept waste time on the screen. Maybe (that's a BIG maybe) if as much thought went into emphasizing the the white kids (whom I thought it was about) the movie could have been semidesent.

The last 2 minutes of the film were the worst. It ended with an unpredictible twist that in no way pertained to anything that was seen during the other 97.

Black and White fmovies. Watching Robert Downey Jr. try to seduce Mike Tyson is worth the ticket price alone, but only just. The appropriation of black hip-hop culture by privileged white teenagers should prove interesting ground for storytelling, but James Toback's film is undermined by the lack of even one likeable character. It's very hard to care about the motivations or destinies of people you hate. Two pleasant surprises amongst the vignettes: Ben Stiller can be convincing outside of trash comedy; and Claudia Schiffer can actually act.

Exploitative and depressingly awful film by James Toback about rich white kids and their identity-seeking obsession with all things black. Toback proudly stated that most of the actors were improvising their scenes and dialogue; didn't he know that it only makes him look worse for letting such a mess go on in front of his cameras? The performances otherwise are all good, especially from Marla Maples and Claudia Schiffer, two names I never thought I'd be giving praise to. Unfortunately, the film just seems to be constantly looking for new ways to p**s you off.

Well, at least that's what this movie becomes in the end. Actually, I couldn't finish the movie. I got 90 minutes into it, and gave up hope that the movie would return to its beginning. The movie starts out good, with a nice angry premise. It seemed so full of venom and froth that the movie would turn out to become a great statement about white culture, black culture, inner city culture, middle class culture, etc.

The movie begins with a black man and two white girls having sex. Then jumps to show that one is middle class. Then, in one of its greatest moments, it has a white guy explore the difference between N-a and

N-r. That was a priceless moment. It adds to the fun with Brooks Shields, and Downey (unnecessarily, but fun). And it keeps going with brutality.

However (There's that nasty word), the movie loses itself fairly quickly. It gets caught up with a basketball player being bribe to lose a game, then blackmailed for accepting it. It goes on, and the movie begins to have a plot instead of a theme, which has nothing to do with the theme. Its like, the movie lost its way, and had nothing left to say. I think I knew where it was going to go with it, but it didn't go there. Maybe it was still on its way, I dunno.

But, in the end, the movie would have made a better episode of "Strangers With Candy" than anything else. It lost its way, and I wonder how it ever got greenlighted, nevertheless had all the big stars in it. Well, we all make bad choices (check "Ready to wear (Pret-a-porter)"), but this one should never have been made.

3/10 (for the beginning)