Nicole Ari Parker

The film's setup is simple. Dre (Taye Diggs) and Sidney (Sanaa Lathan) have been very close friends since childhood, when hip-hop was just coming into its own. Dre is a well-known hip-hop record producer who is unhappy with his job and is about to get married. Sidney is a magazine editor who is working on a book about the origins of hip-hop and cannot find the right man to fit her groove. She is of course secretly in love with Dre because he is the only man who can connect with her and her music, and Dre is secretly in love with Sidney because she is the only woman who will support his dreams. Both Dre and Sidney have problems with the other's initial choice of spouse (Nicole Ari Parker and Boris Kodjoe).

Continue reading: Brown Sugar Review

Both a winning, friends-or-more romance with intelligent, down-to-earth characters and a melodious love-letter to the heart and soul of hip-hop, "Brown Sugar" signals director Rick Famuyiwa's emergence as an articulate, grown-up voice in African-American (and cross-over) cinema.

Far more mature and perceptive than recent stereotype-hocking, battle-of-the-sexes "comedies" like "The Brothers" and "Two Can Play That Game," this movie may not have a terribly original plot -- in the midst of plans to marry other people, two life-long best friends (Taye Diggs and Sanaa Lathan) finally realize they're meant for each other -- but the story is built around smart, appealing, multi-dimensional characters whose romantic (and other) problems are not simplistic or easily resolved.

The supernaturally handsome and magnetic Diggs plays Dre, an executive at a record label that has sold its soul for commercial success. Torn between making a good living and sticking to his principles (defined by his true love of unadulterated, old-school hip-hop), he finally walks out when his boss tells him "You wanna keep it real, you go to (another label). You wanna keep it profitable, that's what we do." (A running gag features the label's talentless new black-and-white novelty rap duo who call themselves "the dalmatians of hip-hop" and plan to remake "The Girl Is Mine" as "The Ho is Mine.")

Continue reading: Brown Sugar Review

Written by a man (Kwyn Bader) who has convinced himself he knows what women want, "Loving Jezebel" is a film about a sensitive-guy lady-killer with a bad habit of coveting women who are spoken for.

After a prologue in which our hero is freeze-framed while jumping out a window to escape an angry and armed jealous husband, Theodorus (Hill Harper) laments in voice-over about how it all started in kindergarten with a girl named Nicky Noodleman.

In a two-reel run through high school and college (rife with amped-up '80s and first-sex clichés), Theo comes off like a whiney puppy dog type, actually begging for dates and -- here's where the picture's credibility goes straight out the window -- getting girls to say "yes" this way. See, they all have insensitive boyfriends and he's so tender, blah, blah, blah.

Continue reading: Loving Jezebel Review

There seems to be an unwritten rule that movies starring ex-stand-up comedians must come to a grinding halt at some point for the star to have a vanity improv scene.

Every Robin Williams has such moments -- even his syrupy, sentimental pictures. Every Martin Lawrence movie does too. In "Blue Streak," the improv moment comes when Lawrence dons a nappy pigtails wig, gnarly false teeth, body padding and a velour jogging suit to pose as a hyperactive pizza delivery boy.

For that one scene, any common sense regarding the story is put on pause and Lawrence cuts loose with an epileptic booty bump dance and a lot of babbling smack, all of which is designed to produce seat-bouncing laughs (it doesn't), but has little to do with the movie.

Continue reading: Blue Streak Review