She Hate Me
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Movie Reviews of She Hate Me
Movie Review: You know, It's hard out here for a pimp
Summary: 3 Stars
Spike has always had this unusual way of showing he knows exactly what a well crafted structure for making movies is by his methodical way of totally abandoning the common practice. This is to be expecetd of all great artists in any discipline. Sometimes, however, this works okay but not greatly for the great director Spike Lee, like when he is going against form to say something important about gender and sexual relations, as in GIRL 6. Sometimes it works exceptionally well, like in The 25th HOUR--a movie that, as a native New Yorker, poet and father made me cry like a woman at a wedding for an hour after it was over. Sometimes this works so well he creates masterpieces, like DO THE RIGHT THING and MALCOLM X. And then sometimes you walk away wishing he had embraced the vehicular artistry that exists in common practice structure regardless of its predicatbility, like he did in MO' BETTER BLUES--or his latest, THE INSIDE MAN--because his willful departure from structure and traditional artistic form creates a wish in you that he hadn't...a wish strong enough to distract you from the movie in its entirety.
And yet it doesn't distract you enough to stop watching.
The protagonist of SHE HATE ME is, like in JUNGLE FEVER, an upwardly mobile Black Urban Professional Man working as a VP for a pharmeceutical conglomerate on the verge of producing an actual cure for AIDS. Or so they'd like to believe. The money to be made from such a revolutionary product gets in the eyes of the CEO (played by Woody Harrelson) and one of the higher ups (Ellen Barkin) to the point that they forget all ethics and morality and even dispense with the good science of the doctor who helped design the not yet ready for the market drug. This leads to the protagonist stuck in a quagmire of corruption after the doctor commits suicide...which leads to him becoming the kind of whistle blower that could bring the entire company down. The company heads naturally have no intention of allowing this, and proceed to destroy his career.
This perfectly timed plot that the movie opens with is almost thrown away after the first twenty minutes, which is where the structural failures begin to become a distraction. Our protagonist meets up with his ex-fiancee after his bank accounts are frozen and he has been fired. She is a lesbian convert who cheated on him with a woman on the journey of discovering her true nature--which is actually more like bisexuality than lesbianism (a subject that is brought up in the movie but purposely never resolved). She wants a baby for her and her female life partner...and she wants it to come from him.
Thus begins the journey of our protagonist becoming essentially a patriarch/prostitute who impregnates almost twenty women, for five thousand dollars each.
The messages about everything from the nature of human relationships, gender and sexuality to the value of human life in this modern technological age, to the truth about conspiracy and whistleblowers is stated in unusual ways.
The structure of the narrative, again, is purposely disjunct. An actor once told me that a screenplay is the closest thing to poetry in the literary arts; Spike's SHE HATE ME is more of a slam run by two or three street poets of New York City riffing simultaneously in that context than a single mini-Homerian epic or even Shakespearean sonnet. And again, this is what makes the movie difficult to digest yet simultaneously too intriguing to stop watching. Just when you think he did a bad job at conveying his message(s), you are left feeling like the messages you thought he was trying to convey are not actually the ones he was most concerned with-and therefore he may still be completely on point; you just haven't figured out what he's really saying yet.
For this alone SHE HATE ME is worth seeing. But in case that's not enough, the sex scenes are about as hot as it gets! Damn!!!!
A perfect date movie double feature: Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN and SHE HATE ME. Just make sure you eat your Wheaties, and don't have to go to work in the morning!
Movie Review: Very Thought Provoking!!!
Summary: 3 Stars
Like everyone else, when I saw this movie on the shelf, I figured typical Spike Lee movie with a lot of comedy with dashes of seriousness added to provoke thought, which is usually a Lee trademark. Eventhough a lot of the parts as far as Mackie's interaction with trying to impregnate lesbians, who were more than willing to pay him top dollar to do so, became almost too way over the top to even fathom, I think the point behind it was when a person's back is against the wall, after losing a job, getting his assets freezed by the government, having his name slandered and unable to gain employment because of trying to do the right thing, and basically being to the point where he was penniless, if faced with that choice, what would any of us do in that situation? Sit around and mope, or look for the quick buck. It's a problem we have as a society today that we tend to put more emphasis on a quick dollar ahead of morals. And to me that was whole concept to this movie. Whether a quick dollar is worth having at the expense of losing your dignity, self respect, and morals we were brought up to have. Though, this clearly is not one of Lee's best films, and it has "She's Got To Have It" 2005 written all over it, the film still makes you question even some of the decisions we make in our daily lives. I love the history lesson also injected into the film (anybody who's watched a Spike Lee movie knows there's usually one in his films) of the police officer who was basically responsible for whistleblowing and starting off the chain reaction of the Watergate scandal. It was a nice mix of the past which coincided with Mackie's present of blowing the whistle on his company's unethical practices and his character was forced to face the same hardships and realities as the officer who blew the whistle on Watergate. It's a lesson that it's a lot more painstaking in life sometimes to do what you feel is morally right. I've seen enough of Spike Lee's films over the past almost 20 years now to know not to look at a film on the surface but to look at the message behind what he's presenting. Overall, it's a good film with many, many terrific actors and actresses in it, and how Lee managed to differentiate all the different top notch artists, and give them their own unique characters to spotlight on, just shows his usual creative genius behind the camera. Decent film though.Movie Review: Not everyone likes fusion jazz.
Summary: 3 Stars
I've always had a great deal of admiration for Spike Lee as a filmmaker even if I haven't always found his films enjoyable. Over nearly three decades of direction, he has proven to be an enigma, willing to stretch and take risks in selection of subject matter, often bringing attention to issues related to ethnicity, social responsibility, cultural distinctiveness and self-reflexivity among others, in a direct periodically controversial manner. Conversely, his directorial style, originally acclaimed as inventive and edgy has fallen into predictability. There are signature devices like kaleidoscopic shots, frame capture and repetition, or overhead perspective where immediately the viewer recognizes the film as a Spike Lee joint.
While at first, I didn't find She Hate Me to be particularly successful in either the dramatic segments or attempts at comedic release as in both instances the scenes seemed over-worked, those factors did not make the movie unwatchable and may have been the result of familiarity with thematic paths Lee has examined so often in previous films. I believe the emphasis on lesbianism is a new hook - for Lee anyway - but the underlying message here that self-awareness is often amorphous and in far too many situations personal values are sublimated to capitalistic aspirations, these concepts are recurrent subjects in many of his films. In this outing the sub-plots, most of which were satirical treatments of conventional views, are multifaceted but so numerable that for some viewers the film may appear to lack cohesiveness. Lee also becomes heavy-handed with what is obviously personal commentary on some issues like corporate excesses and social responsibility but with those concepts under examination in the same space he uses to decry parochialism in society by presenting a range of stereotypical characterizations he risks confusing a portion of his audience and offending another.
Movie Review: Disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
I'll give this three stars, but that's a disappointed three stars. I've been a Spike Lee fan since She's Gotta Have It. Used to be that I'd get out to see each of his films in the cinema right when it came out. That sort of enthusiasm has waned, however, and this film is an example of why.
Spike has done some classics, like She's Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, X. And he's made some strong recent movies, like Summer of Sam and The 25th Hour. But he's also made some stinkers, like Crooklyn and Bamboozled. She Hate Me is a lot like those lesser films. Whatever point the director is trying to make takes over and moves his characters around like they were stick figures - even if they're doing their best with their roles. Sometimes this works, but I'm not sure that in this case Spike has anything particularly interesting to say about either big business or lesbian motherhood or black male physical objectification...
I can't disregard him entirely. At moments this is thought provoking, but not often enough. It's tiring. Spike often goes on to long in his films, even in ones that I like. But when he goes on and on in a film that's not his best it really starts to get wearing. His cameo roles help inject some energy into it, but they don't hold the whole thing together. Anthony Mackie is a promising actor, but far too often in this he seems to doing a Will Smith imitation, especially when he gets upset.
Anyway, not one of Mr. Lee's best. I wish, actually, that he'd branch out and do something outside his New York comfort zone. He was ambitious early in his career, but to stay ambitious he needs to branch out and challenge himself again. Maybe something historical, something with an international flavor, just something different!
Movie Review: On the Fence
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie really tried to take on too many subjects. had Mr. Lee focuses on just the relationships it would have been more interesting. I do, however, give him props on showing a loving monogamous relationship between two beautiful women. I just don't think that lesbians who are really gay and committed to one another would want to have affairs with men, even if it is to have a baby. But that is to be expected when you have a straight man writing about a subject he has no insight about. To me, the movie begins when he introduces the main female characters (fatima and the Dominican woman). Their story held my attention. The rest of the movie just went all over the place. But it's worth a buy based on that storyline, just fast forward through the rest!