Black History Month Movie Fest: Snow on tha Bluff

2011 horror movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A few days in the life of a drug dealer living in a part of Atlanta that I probably shouldn't visit. He steals a video camera from some idiots and uses it to film his exploits.

In a way--kind of a scary way--this is an interesting companion to Wild Style. This, concerning the lives of men and women (actually human beings though--I want to make that clear) who live in this purgatorial ghetto, is much more violent and a lot less fun though. Maybe it's more like Kids then. The time's, they are a changin', and this dark version of people trying to live out some version of the American dream almost slaps you in the head with its cinema verite style, its refusal to reveal just what is real and what is fiction. And since the guy--Curtis Snow--and almost everybody else associated with the movie play themselves, you have to assume that a lot of it is not fiction. The result is something really unique, like an urban Blair Witch Project where the witch is dope and inner-city violence. It's raw, really rawer than raw, and the curse-laden dialogue, the drugs, the violence, and especially a scene where the main character is cutting dope with a very young child sitting next to him will make a lot of people really uncomfortable. But that's just because people are uncomfortable being shown things that they'd rather not exist. After a while, this starts to become a little redundant, but at just under 80 minutes, its length is about perfect, and that redundancy doesn't really take away from its raw power. In fact, it sort of adds to it. This protagonist is sort of reliving the same day over and over again, and sadly, it's a cycle that is going to be difficult to break. So the redundancy actually manages to deepen the feelings associated with the film. This movie's unapologetic and brave, the kind of art that seems really dangerous. It's ugly, but it's well worth watching.