Chi-Raq

Review by Pamela Zoslov

Where Spike Lee goes, controversy inevitably follows. The latest imbroglio for the 58-year-old filmmaker was over the making of CHI-RAQ, a film about gun violence, in Chicago. Windy City mayor Rahm Emanuel objected to the title, which uses a street nickname — pronounced “Shy-rak” — that likens the gun-plagued city to war-torn Iraq. Emanuel gave Lee the go-ahead anyway, over objections of Chicago alderman Will Burns, who said the title would hurt Chicago's brand, labeling as violent “whole parts of the city,” where people “already walk around with a chip on their shoulders.” Media outlets piled on Lee, a resident of Brooklyn, for focusing on the violence in Chicago. And the Huffington Post wrote a damning screed against the movie, based solely on the pre-release trailer!

Black Nativity

Review by Bob Ignizio

Given that I'm white and an atheist, it's probably fair to say I'm not the target audience for BLACK NATIVITY, the second of three African-American Christmas movies being released this year. But you know what? Whether the filmmakers were aiming for me or not, they won me over.

Although ostensibly based on the play of the same name by Langston Hughes, BLACK NATIVITY gives barely a nod to its source material, an Africanized telling of the birth of Jesus. Instead, it tells a new story about Langston Cobbs (Jacob Lattimore), a young man whose mother Naima (Jennifer Hudson) named him after the famous writer/poet. As the film begins, these two are being evicted from their home in Baltimore. Seeing few options, Naima sends her son to live with his grandparents, the Reverend Cornell Cobbs (Forest Whitaker) and his wife Angela (Angela Bassett), while she tries to scrape together enough money for a new place to live.