Slam

Really good and believable script, atmosphere and flow, very well acted. It doesn't even matter if the camera crew is totally visible in many pictures in one guys mirror-sun glasses. This is definitely one of the best "hood" movies of the nineties. It's also shows you a different kind of hood that you're used to: OK there's some drug selling and rapping, but that's the reality, and reality is what these movies are about. But that's only the beginning: This film grows to be really deep and interesting story about generations, art making (=self-expression), life goals, and the Tragedy of the contemporary world. In this film, for example the rapping thing is portrayed quite funnily; It's more real, in other words also more sad and also more serious, than in the other movies. This film shows what rap, and any kind of art and self-expression is: It's about salvation, it's about ideals, it's about dreaming, it's about rising above. It's about creating your OWN world inside or outside, or above, the world which you don't like and don't wanna support. It's about prisons of the mind that you or some other people have created in your mind which you gotta grow out of to be free. It's a story of courage. It's about miracle of life. This film really shows what it's all about, if someone already don't know. It's a PEOPLE's culture. The MTV and money sh** don't have and will never have anything to do with it. It's a people's way of expressing themselves in their communities. And this film shows it all real beautifully. One of the best movies about artist's life too. It also grows to be a beautiful love story. In all ways it's better than all it's parts combined and all hopes imagined.

It's not the best acted film in the world, like some reviewer said, but it might at the top level among the other best. The film is also very nicely shot. It doesn't actually feel like a documentary, but more like what it really is: Quite cheaply and simply (=that means freely) made self-expression. You can feel the joy of the making. I don't have to even mention that the soundtrack is great: One of the best. The world needs this kind of movies. (Or does it?...) At least somebody's world does. Somebody else's world might need movies that glorify violence. This is not that kind of movie. This is not 50 cent. This is not death. This is life.

I happened upon Slam quite by coincidence one evening. I just got an updated cable system with all of these channels and movies and music. So I was surfing and I came upon Slam. I had no idea what it was. I had never heard of the movie before, but I was familiar with Saul Williams and his work. I had seen him on a documentary a few years ago. I thought the film was brilliant in the sense that it took a familiar topic and refreshed it. Slam was intense and real. It was preachy without being trite, redundant, cliche, or just plain corny. The actors were totally believable. I bought it. I bought it all, hook, line, and sinker. And in the end, that's all I can ask of a film, to take me somewhere I want to go, but haven't been before. This film was not afraid to tell the truth. And again, more importantly it was not afraid to also tell us that there are no easy solutions or easy roads out.

This movie is responsible for a lot of things and after finally seeing it I now know why. What it lacks in polished film making it more than makes up for in honesty, passion and ambition. From the performances through to the writing and cinematography everything is raw and beautiful and vibrant with life in a way that we never see in Hollywood films. And I'll be damned if the subject isn't poetry and how it exists in and what it makes of real life. How it is real life. In many aboriginal cultures there is no separate category for art that differentiates it from the rest of life and this movie hearkens back to that cultural tradition. A young Saul Williams defines his life, takes action, heals himself and saves others through his poetry. All of the acting is fresh and real but Saul Williams and Sonia Sohn especially shine, as they should. There is something real going on that is being captured here and the rest of America better know what it is.

The best films, in my opinion, are those which challenge your conventions and beliefs and really make you think. Slam did that in Spades. I was completely lost in it. The cinema-verite style (the film was shot remarkably like a documentary) completely drew me in. Slam will stick with me for a long time to come.

Also, anyone who knows Washington, D.C. will recognize that this was a great use of D.C. as the setting for a movie. Usually D.C. is used as just a pretty backdrop, but in this movie you saw real sites like the Projects of Southeast and Capitol Hill's Eastern Market, and recognized that D.C. is a city of real people and not just a place aliens blow up.

Fantastic performances, a good story and interesting photography make Slam a very good movie; realism makes it a great one. I was in awe of the utter authenticity of the people, the situations, the energies in this film. I was suitably impressed by the emotions expressed and how effective it all was, for essentially a minimalist message (the odds are stacked against young black males in the inner cities) but even more impressed once I listened to the commentary on the DVD. I highly recommend you get your hands on the disc, and listen to the commentary after watching the film. Sure, it's a bit too self-congratulatory ("what a beautiful shot!" [it was only "nice"]) but the insight on the people involved--the writers, actors, poets... adds an incredible amount of depth to the experience.

To quickly generalize: if you appreciate Spike Lee's work, you'll probably like Slam. Although Spike might be a little upset that a white Jewish director brought this to film :-)