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Searching for Bobby Fischer

Director: Steven Zaillian

Cast: Joan Allen, Ben Kingsley, Laurence Fishbourne, Joe Mantegna, Max Pomeranc

Released: August 11, 1993

Oscar nominations:

Best Cinematography - lost to Schindler's List 

In case you weren't sure, the title is NOT referring to trying to find the actual Bobby Fischer, but rather the NEXT Bobby Fischer. Good, glad we cleared that up! 

So I should probably preface this by saying I know nothing about chess. I have never played it, I don't know the rules (I probably wouldn't understand the rules!). Much like one Jon Snow, I know nothing (about chess)! That said, I quite enjoyed this movie (even though I had no idea what was going on when chess was being played). You'd think watching people play chess would be one of the most boring things (and I'm sure it is in real life!), but the movie does a good job of keeping it cinematic.

This movie sort of reminded me of The Wizard. You know, that movie was about a young boy who is a video game prodigy and this movie is about a young boy who is a chess prodigy. I will say that this movie is better, but let's be honest, pretty much any movie (within reason!) is better than that one! 

The chess prodigy in question is a seven-year-old boy named Josh Waitzkin (played by Max Pomeranc). I had no clue Josh was a real person and that this movie was based on a book of the same name written by Josh's dad, Fred Waitzkin. But to be fair, I don't follow the chess scene, so I'm not familiar with any big name chess players (and to be honest, I'm not sure how big a name Waitzkin was as he was really a child chess prodigy). Yeah, I've heard of Bobby Fischer, but I feel like he's one of those big names everybody's heard of. I didn't know anything about him except he was really good at chess. We get some small Bobby Fischer history lessons sprinkled into the movie and he seemed kind of like a jerk. I did a quick skim through his Wikipedia page and yikes! He allegedly idolized Hitler and was glad that the 9/11 attacks happened. I'm not sure why you would want to be compared to him! Yes, I realize that they're only comparing Josh's chess skills to Fischer's chess skills and they make it a point to say that personality wise, Josh is nothing like Bobby. At this point in time (1992/93), I'm not sure how much is known about Fischer's truly problematic view of the world. If we really were searching for Bobby Fischer, I don't think I'd want him to be found! We don't need to search for him anymore, though, because he died in 2008. 

Heh, one of my notes I wrote was, "Bobby Fischer seemed like a whiny baby". I can't remember exactly why I wrote that, but it seemed like he was always complaining about something as young Josh tells us in voice over. (BTW, this kid was not the best enunciator of words so it was sometimes difficult to understand what he was saying in voiceover). I swear he told us that he complained about his view of his hotel in Iceland was too nice. WTF? 

So when we meet Josh, he's a kid who's just turned seven and he lives in New York with his parents, Fred and Bonnie (Joe Mantegna and Joan Allen) and his little sister. He enjoys watching Vinnie, a presumed homeless man (played by Laurence Fishbourne) play chess in Washington Square with other men. This movie never states what year it's supposed to be, but the real Josh Waitzkin was born in late 1976, so it would have been 1984 around the time he got into chess. Funnily enough, that was the year his portrayer, Max Pomeranc, was born, so there is only an eight year difference between them. I did wonder if they got a kid who was a chess player to play Waitzskin since they'd probably want to cast somebody who knew what they were doing and sure enough, according to the Wiki, Pomeranc was was one of the country's top 20 chess players in his age group at that time. Like I said, this came from Wiki, so who knows how reliable it is. 

So I haven't read the book (obviously, or otherwise I would have known Josh Waitzkin is a real person), so I'm not exactly sure how Josh learned how to play chess. His parents didn't teach him and he didn't learn at a friend's house. The movie makes it seem like he learned just from watching Vinnie and the other men in the park. Can you just self-teach yourself to play chess? I would think you would need to know the rules. Bonnie notices that her son has been fascinated with the chess players in the park, so she takes Josh to one old man in the park who's supposedly some great chess player from the past. His table has a sign that says you can play a game with him or have your picture taken with him for five dollars. (We will later learn that you don't make a lot if you're a world renowned chess player). Josh plays the man and loses, but Vinnie is watching him play and is impressed with the young boy's chess skills. He tells Josh's mother, "Your boy used pieces in combination to attack." Whatever that means, but it certainly impressed Vinnie. He asks Josh his name and Josh tells him. When he asks him, "Josh what?" his mother tells him not to give out his last name, but of course he does and Vinnie writes it down. 

When Bonnie reveals to her husband that Josh played chess in the park, her husband replies with, "Josh doesn't know how to play chess." She answers with, "Yes, he does. Don't ask me how, but he does." Yeah...the movie really never explains HOW he learned how to play chess and the parents seem to accept it. I'm sure it's more expanded on in the book. Josh's dad works as a baseball analyst/sports writer (something like that!) and likes to bond with his son over baseball; Josh is even on a Little League team. This has nothing to do with the movie, but the actor who played him sounded so much like Ray Romano, that I kept expecting Doris Roberts to come out and exclaim, "Raymond!" 

After hearing this revelation that his son knows how to play chess, Fred decides to bring out the chessboard to play a game with Josh. The game ends fairly quickly and Fred wins. He confesses to his wife that he should have let Josh win and was even giving him an opportunity to win. Bonnie tells him that Josh wasn't trying to win. Fred decides to play again with Josh and this time he tells him to "really try."

This time they play seriously and it takes so long for Fred to decide how to move his pieces that each time it's his turn, we see Josh playing with his sister during one of his dad's turns, talking on the phone to his friend (who he tells that he'll be right back when his dad calls to him that it's his turn, he runs to the living room, moves his piece, then runs back to the phone), and most humorously, Josh is taking a bath after his dad his finished thinking over a move and when he tells Josh it's his turn, Josh tells him exactly what he wants moved and he ends up winning the game. While it seemingly takes his dad several minutes to make a move, it only takes Josh a few seconds and he knows exactly how to move the pieces to win the game. 

Fred takes Josh to the Metropolitan Chess Club that he knows about from a guy that writes the Chess Column at the same newspaper he also writes for. Um, excuse me, Chess Column?? What? Is this only found in big city papers? I have never heard of a Chess Column in a paper before; granted I've never actively looked for one before. I also don't read the newspaper, I mean, how archaic.  

Anyway, Fred is there to look for a man named Bruce Pandolfini (played by Ben Kingsley). Obviously, he is a real person and I looked up his stats on Wiki:

-He is still alive at the time of this review; he is 73.

-Wiki tells me "he is considered to be America's most experienced chess teacher."

-I thought this little tidbit was interesting; I haven't seen The Queen's Gambit; but now I'm interested to check it out:

In 1983, Pandolfini was the chess consultant to author Walter Tevis for the novel The Queen's Gambit, for which Pandolfini had also suggested the title. Decades later, Pandolfini returned as consultant for the 2020 Netflix miniseries of the same name.

- He looks nothing like Ben Kingsley. Okay, that wasn't in his Wikipedia page, but just thought I would throw it out there. 

Before Bruce accepts tutoring Josh in chess, he invites Fred to an adult chess tournament where all the national chess champs are gathered. This is where we find out that one of the great chess champs, Asa Hoffman (again, somebody I've never heard of), who grew up in a wealthy family and went to prestigious schools, plays 200 games a year and only makes $2,000 from doing it. I suppose if you come from a wealthy family, you can afford to immerse yourself in chess! Fred tells Bruce, "Clearly, you had me come here so I could see all this. But if you really wanted me to say no to letting my son play, you wouldn't have bothered. You want me to think you want me to say no, but you actually want me to say yes." Bruce just replies with, "I want back what Bobby Fischer took with him when he disappeared." I don't know if I was clear when I was talking about Fischer, but supposedly he would just disappear and nobody had any idea where he was. But then he would pop back up to play a game, then disappear again. 

Bruce has agreed to tutor Josh and during their first session they don't even talk about chess, let alone play it. Josh has a large selection of board games in his room and they play Clue. I did notice he had Stratego which is a game my brother also had. We used to play it and he would always beat me because I sucked so bad. That's probably the closest game to chess I've ever played. 

At their next session, Josh is at the Metropolitan Chess Club and Bruce has set up the board for him. He tells his new pupil, "The mate is four moves from the position in front of you." This absolutely means nothing to me! He wants Josh to figure out the moves in his head; Josh tells him he can't do it without moving the pieces. This prompts Bruce to knock the pieces off the board and they clatter onto the floor. A bit overdramatic if you ask me. But after staring at the board for several minutes he gives him the answer, "knight to C8" which pleases Bruce. It pleases him so much that he gives Josh a certificate that he deems is "very rare." It says "Master Chess Certificate awarded to ______ for highest achievement on ______ (date)." Bruce continues to oversell the certificate. He tells him it's only been given out a few times in history and "only to those who achieve a lot of master-class points." This is just a piece of paper; it can't be that significant, but he wants to encourage Josh to earn master class points because it will show that he's learning chess the way Bruce wants him to learn it. 

Speaking of which, Bruce tells Josh's parents that Josh shouldn't be playing chess with Vinnie and the other men in Washington Park. He tells them, "What I'm trying to teach him and what he's learning there are two very different things. Park hustlers play tactics, not position. They rely on wild, unpredictable moves meant to intimidate their opponents. ...It'll cost Josh dearly in real games." Fred was willing to agree to Bruce's terms, but Bonnie refuses because she knows how much it means to Josh and how much he loves playing chess there. Bruce tells her it will make his job harder and she just replies, "So your job's harder." This is the first hint we get where the mother has the kid's interest at heart while the father is more about honing the kid on his skill. 

Fred takes Josh to his first chess tournament (I missed where it was held) and while Josh was swimming at the hotel pool with the other kids who were also there for the tournament, another father asks Fred what his kid's rating is. I guess Fred has no idea what this means (I certainly have no idea what it means!) because he sees a sign that has the number 15 on it and tells him "fifteen" which the other father is amazed by the 1500 rating and tells him he doubts their sons will play against each other because his son, Morgan, isn't even rated 1000 yet. I looked up what a chess player with a rating of 1500 would look like. They would be an intermediate player with 5-6 years of playing the game under their belt. It said a bunch of things that didn't mean anything to me and added that they "will probably need a chess coach to improve further." I'd be curious to know what the rating he really was at that time; he certainly could have been close to 1500! I would definitely be rated a 0! 

At the actual competition, which takes place at a high school gym, the director of the tournament seems to be more concerned about the parents than the kids. He tells the parents they can watch, but he doesn't want any funny business - no throat noises, no comments, no eye contact, nothing where they might be giving a hint or a sign to their child on what to do.  

There's a funny moment where Fred is standing behind Josh, watching him play. Josh's opponent's dad is behind him and he's this big burly guy with his arms crossed, just glaring at Fred. I guess he's trying to intimidate him? Elsewhere, a fight breaks out when a father is accuses of pulling his ear and giving his kid a hint. The man claims he was just scratching it, but like the tournament director told them all, "Nobody cares if you're guilty or not" so all the parents are kicked out of the room and sent downstairs to the locker room (and locked in until the end of the tournament!) All the kids start clapping once the adults are gone and they can finally concentrate. I'm surprised they let the parents stay in the room in the first place. 

This movie is full of big name actors: Joan Allen, Laurence Fishbourne, Ben Kingsley....and we get another one when William H. Macy shows up as the father of the kid who is playing Josh in the final game. (A young Laura Linney will also show up later as Josh's teacher). A random kid keeps running back and forth to tell the parents what's going on in the game. When he finally comes to tell them the game is over, he just walks away and doesn't say who won (um, that's what they're waiting to hear, kid!) It is revealed that Josh won (of course) when he and Fred are on the train traveling back home and a sleeping Josh is clutching a trophy. This leads us to a montage where we see Josh collecting a bunch of trophies as he wins game after game. Their mantle is getting quite full! We also see him building a tower with all the chess pieces which seems kind of impossible. 

Trouble comes in the form of a new kid named Jonathan Poe who is deemed the new Bobby Fischer. Josh sees him playing the old man in the park and it appears that he's an even better player than Josh. I would hope he would be because he's been trained by his chess master, a stuffy elderly man with a beard, since he was four. It seems his parents just gave their son to this chess master (WTF?!) and he does nothing but play chess; he doesn't even go to school. (Again, WTF?!) Good Lord, I can't imagine anything more tedious than having to play chess all the time. All. The. Time! This kid is a chess robot; at least Josh is a normal kid who goes to school and as other interests like baseball and astronomy and building things out of Legos. Poe seems to have a uniform AND a catchphrase. In the three scenes or so we see him (all on different days, mind you) he's always wearing a white polo. He also says "Trick or treat" after he wins a game. I mean, he can't come up with a better or more relevant catchphrase? There's already one built in the game with "Check mate"! 

Seeing that he's not the best anymore and not wanting to disappoint his dad, Josh tells Fred he doesn't want to go to the State Finals. He reasons that if he wins, everyone will be expecting it since he's a top ranked player. And if he loses, he's afraid of what other people will think, especially his dad. (Though he doesn't tell his dad that part). He tells Fred, "Maybe it's better not to be the best. Then you can lose and it's okay." I totally get what he's saying. Being ranked the best at something has to put a lot of pressure on that person. But if nobody is expecting you to win, if you lose, nobody will care and if you DO happen to win, people will probably make a bigger deal because they weren't expecting it! If you're already the best at something, does anybody really care THAT much? Thank God I'm so mediocre so I don't have to worry about this! Josh does go to the State Finals but ends up losing in seven moves; he clearly lost on purpose. 

Bruce sets some new rules for Josh including no more speed chess or games in the park. He knows Josh likes it, but it isn't good for him. He tells Josh they're teaching him all the wrong things. He also asks Josh if he knows what "contempt" means and tells him, "You have to have contempt for your opponents". Josh says he doesn't even when Bruce insists that his opponents hate him, which I seriously doubt since there are seven/eight-year-olds. Josh has the best response when Bruce says, "Bobby Fischer held the world in contempt." (What a shock). He simply replies, "I'm not him." This is pretty much the thesis of the movie: This kid is NOT Bobby Fischer.

At another lesson (this one at Josh's home; I'm confused, sometimes they had lessons at the Waitzkin household and sometimes they had the at the Chess Club; they seemed to be wherever was more convenient for the scene), Josh wants to know how close he is to getting his so-called "very rare" certificate. A frustrated Bruce pulls one out of his briefcase and tells him it doesn't mean anything and starts pulling out many more copies he has and asks him if he wants those too. Geeze, what an a**! Bonnie thinks so too because she tells Bruce to get out of her house. On his way out, he tells her, "To put a child in a position to care about winning and not to prepare him is wrong."

Later that night, Bonnie and Fred get into a fight. Fred agrees with the chess coach and says Josh is in a slump and is afraid of losing. Bonnie retaliates with, "He's not afraid of losing; he's afraid of losing your love." Fred finally sees the light and tells Josh it's okay if he wants to stop playing chess, but Josh tells him he wants to play at the National Finals in Chicago, where, to become the champion, a player must win all seven games.

Even though Bruce was a total jerk to Josh, Fred still invites him to go to Chicago with them. He says he can't go so they end up taking Vinnie instead. It's kind of amusing they take a presumed homeless man with them. But it is kind of sweet and Vinnie was a much better coach to Josh than Bruce ever was. Bruce does end up coming to Chicago and he patches everything up between him and Josh when he gives Josh a framed certificate saying that he "obtained the rank of Grand Master in the eyes of his teacher". He tells Josh he's proud of him and is honored to be his teacher. Aww. 

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that Josh makes it to the seventh and final game and his opponent is Jonathan "Trick or Treat" Poe. Josh's parents, Vinnie, Bruce, and Poe's chess master are all watching the game on a monitor. Right away, Vinnie and Bruce have a disagreement when Bruce doesn't want Josh to bring out his Queen, but Vinnie thinks he should. As usually, I have no idea what's going on. Josh ends up getting Poe's Queen and tells him, "Trick or Treat." I'm sure Poe loved that! 

On the monitor, Bruce sees that Josh can win in 12 steps. (How?!?!  I mean, I guess it is possible to see your moves in advance). We see Josh concentrating on the chess board as we're hearing voiceover from Ben Kingsley telling us the moves he should make as though Josh is hearing what his teacher is telling him the moves he needs to make. Even before he makes a move, Bruce can tell that "he's got it". Being the nice and decent kid he is, Josh offers Poe a draw so they can share the championship. Poe just scoffs at this and Josh tells him, "You've lost; you just don't know it." Poe still doesn't believe him and tells him to look at the board and Josh replies, "I have." He insists on them sharing the title, but Poe still refuse to take his deal and tells him to move. He does and he wins. Yay. 

The movie ends and a few title cards show up, telling us that Josh "still" plays chess and he is "currently" the highest-ranked player in the U.S. under 18. Remember, this movie came out in 1993 so those key words are no longer relevant! And since Bobby Fischer's name is in the title, we get a title card with an "update" on him: "In September 1992, Fischer emerged from secession to challenge his old rival Boris Spassky. After winning, he promptly disappeared again." I guess Bobby Fischer was not a fan of this movie. What a shock.

Increase the Peace

Boyz n the Hood

Director: John Singleton

Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Laurence Fishburne, Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, Angela Basset, Nia Long, Regina King

Released: July 12, 1991

Oscar nominations:

Best Director - John Singleton (lost to Jonathan Demme for Silence of the Lambs)

Best Original Screenplay - John Singleton (lost to Callie Khouri for Thelma and Louise)

Spoiler alert....there are characters who get killed in this movie that heavily features gangs!

I first saw this movie in 2009, months before I started this blog so it had just missed the cut off date for me to review it after seeing it the first time, but I figured now would be the perfect time since I consider it a culturally relevant film from 1991. At 24, John Singleton was the youngest director ever to get a nomination for Best Director. That's really young and this was not only the first movie he directed (well, duh, he was only 23 when he directed it!), but it was the first thing he directed, period. I had always just assumed he did music video work, but IMDd lists nothing previous to Boyz n the Hood. 

I was curious to see other young directors (as in under 30) who have also been nominated for directing Oscars. Alright, so after doing some research on Wiki, I'm back with some cool facts! Nobody in their twenties has ever WON a Best Director Oscar. The youngest winner was 32 years old, some guy named Norman Taurog for some movie called Skippy. This was back in 1931, so back then he probably would have been considered old, haha! In more recent times, the youngest winner would probably be Sam Mendes who was 34 when he won for American Beauty in 2000. (He is the third youngest Best Director winner). That's still a whole decade older than John Singleton who has held the record for the youngest Best Director nominee (and remember, there are more nominees than winners overall!) for the past 24 years. Before him, the youngest Best Director nominee was Orson Welles who was 26 when he was nominated for Citizen Kane in 1941 (hmmm...I always pictured him as an old man!) Since him, there's been a handful of 29 (M. Night Shyamlan! Ha! Remember when he was nominated for one for The Sixth Sense?) and 30 year olds (Spike Jonez for Being John Malkovich and Jason Reitman for Juno).  Okay, sorry, I just like statistical facts like those. It is very impressive that John Singleton was nominated when he was that young.

Another interesting fact about his nomination (and this one shocked me a little) is that he is the first black director to be nominated! I was thinking, Wait a minute....Do The Right Thing came out two years BEFORE this movie...did they forget about Spike Lee? And then I had to double check and found out he wasn't...oops.... Then I was thinking, what about Sidney Poitier? He was surely nominated for Best Director, right? No....he did win for Best Actor (that must be what I was thinking of), but has never been nominated for any directing work. I mean, maybe I shouldn't be that surprised....this is the same organization that was called out for being racist at this year's Oscar ceremony! So John Singleton holds two pretty distinct Oscar firsts.

The movie starts in 1984 when our main character, Tre Styles, is ten years old. He lives with his mother (Angela Bassett) in South Central L.A. who is going to school for her masters. Tre is a bright kid, but, because of the aggressiveness he sees in the older kids around his neighborhood, he gets into a lot of fights because that's how he's learned how to act when he wants to intimate someone or if he doesn't agree with someone. His mother told him if he gets into one more fight, then he will be sent to live with his father who lives in a rough neighborhood. I felt like he would have gone to live with his father regardless since his mother was so busy with going to school and completing her work. His father (Laurence Fishburne - yes, his parents are Ike and Tina Turner!) Furious Styles (yes, that is his name; no, he's not a superhero) is a strict parent, but tells Tre he is lucky because most of the boys in his neighborhood don't have a father to teach them responsibility like Tre does.

Tre becomes fast friends with three other boys his age in the neighborhood: Doughboy (whose real name is Darren, but they call his Doughboy because he's fat, I guess); Ricky, who's Doughboy's half brother (they have the same mother, but different fathers, neither which is in their lives); and Chris. There's a scene where the four boys are walking along a train track and one of them asks the others if they wanna see a dead body. Sound familiar? Okay, that cannot be coincidental! That is so Stand By Me! There's even a fat kid in the mix! The dead kid they see is even in a similar position as the dead kid in Stand By Me; kinda hidden in the brush. Only the dead kid (well, he's more of a dead teen, but it's all semantics) in this movie was shot by a rival gang member while I think the dead kid in Stand By Me was hit by a train, right? I don't remember...and I've seen that movie many times. That's really sad. It's sad that I don't remember is what I mean, but it is also sad that a kid died from getting hit by a train. Anyway, I'm getting way off track...haha, I made a pun. Anyway, very cool John Singleton is a Stand By Me fan.

In one scene, two police officers come over to the Styles house after a burglar has fled after Furious shot at him. There's a white cop and a black cop and you think the white cop is going to be a racist jerk, but he just asks for the statement and when he goes back to the car, it's the black cop who is racist, pretty much telling Furious that he wasted their time since nothing was taken and that it's too bad he didn't shoot the perpetrator so there would be one less n-word to worry about. When the cop says hello to Tre, Furious tells him to go back in the house and the cop asks him if something is wrong and Furious replies, "Yeah, there is. It's just too bad you don't know what it is." This cop will come back later and he will not have learned his lesson.

The movie jumps forward seven years to "present" day 1991 where Tre is now 17 (and now played by Cuba Gooding Jr. BTW, does anyone know how to pronounce his name? I'm not sure if it's Cue-ba or Koo-ba because I've heard it said both ways. I've always pronounced it the same was as the country). Out of his three childhood friends, he's become closest to Ricky (now played by Morris Chestnut). There's a reason for this. Doughboy and Chris were caught shoplifting and were sent to juvie. They were there for seven years which seems a little extreme for minors unless they were caught with guns, but we're really never told the whole story. After the time jump, the first scene we see is a welcome home party for the two kids. Doughboy is now played by Ice Cube and Chris is now in a wheelchair (and played by someone not famous, or I should say by someone who did not become famous). They're both gang members, both affiliated with the Crips party. (Which probably explains why Chris is paralyzed since he was shot.)

So here's something crazy: Laurence (or "Larry" as he was credited!) Fishburne is only seven years older than Cuba and he's playing his father! Furious is suppose to be a young father as he was seventeen when Tre was born, so when Tre is ten, the age difference makes sense since Furious is suppose to be 27 and Fishburne was 29 when he filmed this. If they did age Fishburne in the time jump (to the ripe old age of 34!), then I didn't notice anything. But you have to remember Fishburne was playing someone older than he actually was and Cuba was playing someone younger than he was as he was around 22 when he filmed this. I can't imagine anyone other than Laurence Fishburne playing Furious, though, he is so good. I read that Eddie Murphy was offered the part or considered for it. Thank God that didn't happen...I can't see that at all!

When I re-watched this, I remembered that one of Tre's friends died at the hands of a gang member and for the longest time I was convinced it was Doughboy (and technically he DOES die, but it's off screen), but as the movie went along, I realized I had remembered wrong and that it was Golden Boy Ricky who gets shot. It's really no secret that Ricky and Doughboy's mother prefers Ricky over Darren. Ricky has gotten the opportunity to get a scholarship to USC to play football and the scene where his mother tells him that if he gets in, then he will be the first person in their family to attend college, that's when I knew he was the one who was going to die. And I was right.

There's a scene earlier in the movie where the four guys are at a street racing event and Ricky gets in a scuffle with a Blood member. (We know he's a Blood member because he and his other cronies are wearing red.) The Blood member is walking past Ricky and shoves him and they get into a fight and Doughboy asks the Blood members if there's a problem as he's flashing his gun to them. The Blood members eventually leave them alone, but a few minutes later, the leader shoots his gun in the air, scaring everyone away.

Tre and Ricky drive back home together and on their way back they are pulled over by the cops. The very same cops that came to the Styles house seven years ago when there was an attempted robbery. That racist black cop I mentioned earlier? Still a self-hating racist cop! If Tre recognized him, I couldn't tell. But what are the odds that he would meet up again with the same cop from seven years ago? And they live in South Central L.A. where there must be tons of cops all the time. It seems a little implausible that he would run into the same two cops from his childhood.

The Blood member is still angry at Ricky for confronting them and has somehow found out where he lives and the other boys see their car in their neighborhood and know nothing good can come out of

RICKY!!!

this. Ricky doesn't think anything of it; he just thinks they're trying to scare him. Um, they're in a gang...they will kill you over anything! It's so stupid...you can accidentally bump into someone or say the wrong thing to someone and the next moment you're shot dead. Ricky may have been book smart (he did get a high enough SAT score to get into USC), but I don't think he was as street smart as his brother. He's just standing out in the alley scratching some lottery tickets. I'm thinking, get your ass somewhere where you're not out in the open! But like I said, he didn't seem to be too concerned about his safety. Tre sees the Bloods first and yells "RICKY!" to warn his friend, but it's too late and in a very brutal scene he is shot dead. His friends take his body back to his house. Now while his friends' and his girlfriend's reactions were heartbreaking, it was his mother's reaction that really got me. At first, she is confused as to why everyone is screaming and crying and when she sees her son's body on her couch (and thank goodness it had plastic over it!), she breaks down and pleads for him to wake up. Really sad stuff.

Drenched in his friend's blood, Tre goes to his house to get his gun. His girlfriend, Brandi (Nia Long) sees him and pleads for him to tell her what's happened to Ricky but he won't talk to her. Furious tells him he can't leave this house or his life will be over, everything he's worked for to try to get out of this town for a better life. Tre tells him he won't do anything but ends up sneaking out to join Doughboy and the others to get revenge on the guys who killed Ricky. However, Tre realizes his father is right and he doesn't want to go down this path of violence and asks for them to pull the car over so he can get out.

Somehow, Doughboy and the others manage to find the Bloods eating outside a fast food place. (The town they live in must not be that big... or maybe gangs have their favorite hangouts?) They kill all of them in the parking lot and Doughboy personally gets out himself to "finish the job" while the other guys are yelling at him to get back in the car before they get caught. The next day we see a scene with Doughboy talking to Tre saying how he knows his days are numbered since someone will want to seek retaliation for the lives they took...although how would they know it was him since he killed all the people and there are no witnesses? Maybe the one Blood leader took notes. Who knows how this gang stuff works. But he's right and we see text written on the screen that Doughboy was murdered two weeks later. As this is shown, Doughboy is walking across the street after talking to Tre and vanishes. It's another shoutout to Stand By Me when it's mentioned River Phoenix's character dies and we see him disappear. Except I thought Doughboy was suppose to be the Vern!

Tre was able to get out of L.A. when he is accepted to a college in Atlanta along with his girlfriend.

It's a respectable movie for a first time director though things are a little heavy-handed at times. For instance, the very first scene shows a neighborhood and the camera lingers on a stop sign for a few seconds. The message is very blatant! 

Simply the Best

What's Love Got To Do With It?
Director: Brian Gibson
Cast: Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne, Jennifer Lewis, Vanessa Bell Calloway, Khandi Alexander, Chi McBride
Released: June 25, 1993

Oscar nominations:
Best Actress - Angela Bassett (lost to Holly Hunter for The Piano)
Best Actor - Laurence Fishburne (lost to Tom Hanks for Philadelphia)

I was a big fan of Tina Turner's music before I saw this movie and knew about her past with the abusive Ike Turner, but after watching this, I had a whole new appreciation for the struggles she went through and how she became a superstar recording artist. This is probably one of the better music biopics I've seen. It's based on an autobiography Tina Turner wrote called I, Tina. The movie mainly focuses on her meeting Ike Turner and how she became a recording artist. We do get a few scenes of her as a little girl, then named Anna Mae Bullock (while I did know that Tina Turner wasn't her given name, I couldn't have told you her birth name prior to seeing this film) growing up in Nutbush, Tennessee. Now that song "Nutbush City Limits" makes a lot of sense! "They call it Nutbush! Oh, Nutbush! Nutbush city limits! Nutbush city!" On the Nutbush, TN Wiki page, it says that "Nutbush is best known as the home of Tina Turner." Who would have thought? That's probably the only thing they're known for (it's a town with a population of a little over a thousand people).  You have to admit that's a pretty impressive thing to be known for. What are the odds that a town with such a small population would have produced one of the world's most successful singers? And I'm sure you'll find many signs like this if you drive through it:

The movie establishes her love of singing as we see her as a young girl singing (very loudly) in the church choir. She is so disruptive and obnoxious that the choir director kicks her out! As a teenager, she relocates to St. Louis where she sees Ike Turner (Laurence Fishburne), the bandleader of a band called Kings of Rhythm, perform at a bar. The ladies think Ike is very smooth and charismatic and every time his band plays "Darlin', You Know I Love You" (a song I was not aware of prior to seeing this film), he lets one of his many admirers try her hand at singing, but will take the mic away if she gets booed for being awful. Anna Mae and her sister go back to the club and when the song is played, her sister convinces her to take the mic and sing. Anna Mae had been practicing the song and is embarrassed when her sister and mother catch her singing it into the bathroom mirror. This is the scene where Anna Mae catches Ike's eye (and ear!)

Obviously Angela Bassett is lip-synching with Tina Turner's voice dubbed in. I believe Tina provided all the vocal tracks for the film. Which you kind of need because she has such a distinctive singing voice. It's hard to imagine anyone else but Angela Bassett in the iconic role because she is so great in it, but there were other big names up for the part including Whitney Houston. That would have been really weird to see a really popular singer play a....really popular singer. I know they would have made her up to look like Tina and any signs of Whitney Houston would have vanished, but it still would be weird. Plus, let's be honest, while Whitney was a great singer, she really wasn't that great in the acting department. Okay, at best. Everyone knows that Angela Bassett can act circles around her. There's really no contest.

Anna Mae becomes ones of Ike's back up singers, known as the Ikettes. She is clearly the best singer and becomes Ike's favorite. This is where the movie starts to move fairly fast. Anna Mae moves in with Ike, gets pregnant, they get married in Mexico, they have a baby boy. We get a very quick scene where Ike tells Anna Mae that new name is Tina Turner. There's no explanation on why 'Tina" was chosen. Perhaps he likes alliteration?

Soon Ike and Tina Turner become a sensational duo and are writing and recording hits and making lots of money and are soon able to afford a nice house with a pool and furnished with nice stuff. Ike is angry at Tina for buying so much stuff and tells her she needs to sing the songs he's writing for her better and she offends him by saying all his songs are starting to sound the same. This results in the first time we see Ike get physically abusive towards her and it's pretty harrowing to watch. He is slapping her, dragging her, punching her, cussing at her in front of their children (their biological son and Ike's two sons from a previous marriage whose ex-wife (Khandi Alexander) had dropped off at their house one day and both adults are arguing RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE CHILDREN. Real nice!)

At one point, Tina tries to escape when she leaves the house in the middle of the night and takes the children with her to her mother's. They take a bus and while at a pit stop, she has her son, but is trying to find her step-sons and finds them by Ike's car. He had found them and threatens for Tina to get into the car with him and the children.

While performing some of their latest hits on an American Bandstand-type show (maybe that was the show), Tina and Ike are approached by Phil Spector who wants to record a song with Tina. Ike mistakes this and thinks this means BOTH of them, but no, he only wants Tina. The song is "River Deep, Mountain High" and this was the first song played in the movie that I was familiar with. This was around 1965 and this is where Tina starts becoming much more popular than Ike which makes him jealous and makes him more irate which only results in more beatings for Tina. He even rapes her in their home recording booth after beating her up and getting angry at her for the way she's singing a song.

Of course we get a scene of Ike and Tina singing what is their most well-known song, "Proud Mary". In fact, this song is so synonymous  with them, that I always thought they were the original writers/singers of the song and all the covers came after them, but it was first recorded by the band, Creedence Clearwater Revival. But ask anybody who sings that song and I'll guarantee you they'll say, "Tina Turner".

At one point, Ike beats Tina so bad that she ends up in the hospital and she is visited by one of the former, Ikettes, Jackie (Vanessa Bell Calloway), one of Tina's closest friends. She has always pleaded for Tina to leave Ike. She turns Tina onto Buddhism which helps her calm herself and gather her thoughts. It gives her confidence and it's the turning point for her when she and Ike are staying in a swanky hotel while on tour and Ike beats Tina so bad that she has blood all over her face. She runs out of the room and out of the hotel, crosses a busy street with cars honking everywhere and goes to a cheaper hotel where she asks to speak to the manager and says, "My name is Tina Turner and I need a room. I only have 32 cents in my pocket but I promise I will pay you back." Of course they accommodate her.

That incident was the final straw and soon Ike and Tina are in court. Tina says that Ike can have all the rights to their songs and keep all their material possessions and pretty much everything else. The only thing she wants to keep is her name. She is so confident in her ability to build herself up with her name and talent that she doesn't care if she looses everything she's earned along the way. This makes Ike angry (what else is new?) and says that was the name he gave her and that she should be stripped of it if she is leaving him, but the judge lets her keep her famous household name.

Obviously we know who the real winner is. Tina Turner went on to become one of the most famous recording artists in the world and is worth millions of dollars. After breaking up with Ike in 1978, she began working on her solo career and in 1984 released an album with all the songs I'm most familiar with like "What's Love Got To Do With It?" and "Private Dancer." Just as I did with Michael Jackson Madonna, and Whitney Houston, she is one of the artists I grew up with so of course I'm mostly familiar with her '80s music. (Although of course I knew "Proud Mary" as a child). She went on to record many popular hits. She's won eight Grammys. I know she now resides in Switzerland. I remember she was living in the south of France at one time (I think it was Nice?) and about ten years ago InStyle magazine did an article (complete with gorgeous photos) of her estate. Tina Turner's life is just fine. Ike, on the other hand, became known as being a wife abuser and never really elevated to any fame besides being the ex-husband (and abuser) of Tina Turner. He's only known for being a bad guy, really. He spent some time in jail for drug-related charges, continued his drug habit with cocaine and died in 2007. His life did not turn out so well.

The movie ends with Tina singing her new hit single (at the time), "What's Love Got To Do With It?" because you couldn't NOT have that song in this movie! It's kind of cool because you see Angela Bassett in the famous Tina Turner shag wig sing it and then it shows the real Tina Turner singing the song at a huge stadium. While Angela and Tina have completely different shaped faces and facial features, their bodies are very physically similar and Angela emulates Tina's stage mannerisms so well. You know that she did her homework with studying Tina during her performances.

Highly recommended; I might even go so far as to say that this is my favorite music movie biopic.