SUGAR HILL

I rewatched Sugar Hill in full recently after almost 30 years and it might be one of the most miscategorized movies ever. By the mid/late 90s, any movie that was part of the Black-American film boom at the time got grouped in to that “urban”/“hood” genre. What started out as essentially “post-Boyz in tha Hood cinema” (menace II society, south central, New Jersey drive, strapped, juice, above the rim, etc) eventually branched out to stuff like Deep Cover, King Of New York, New Jack City, Drop Squad, Dead Presidents and Sugar Hill. That’s a pretty lazy and borderline racist grouping of movies. Deep Cover was a noir crime drama. Dead Presidents was a post-Vietnam crime story. Sugar Hill was about organized crime. Drop Squad had nothing to do with traditional criminality at all (it was actually a response to all of the movies out at the time that sort of romanticized that stuff). If a movie had a predominantly Black cast and an ounce of “grittiness” it got called “hood” or “urban”.

It also didn’t help that a lot of these films shared the same actors, writers, producers and directors. Tupac starred in Juice and Above The Rim. Samuel L Jackson appeared in Juice, Fresh and Menace II Society. Laurence Fishburne starred in Boyz In Tha Hood and Deep Cover. Donald Faison co-starred in both New Jersey Drive and Sugar Hill. Bokeem Woodbine starred in Strapped and Dead Presidents. Khandi Alexander played the stereotypical drug addicted hood mom in Menace II Society and Sugar Hill. And a lot of the background/supporting cast from Boyz In Tha Hood showed up in South Central, Poetic Justice and Menace II Society. Sugar Hill was written by Barry Michael Cooper who also wrote New Jack City and Above The Rim. These three movies don’t have a whole lot in common but they were all birthed from the same person.

New Jack City / Sugar Hill

New Jack City / Sugar Hill

Menace II Society / Sugar Hill

These predominately Black films from the 90s also featured a rapper-turned actor in a prominent role and had high profile hip-hop soundtracks with a lot of the same artists providing the songs. 

In 1996 the Wayans brothers released Don’t Be A Menace In South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood which kind of killed the unofficial “urban movie” genre. But the damage was done. To this day folks will still miscategorize stuff like Deep Cover and New Jack City with Menace II Society and South Central. 

On one hand it’s quite bigoted to group all these movies together, but it’s also easy to see how, at a quick glance, one could group a lot of these movies together on face value.

I say all this to say that Sugar Hill should really be grouped in with other modern smaller scale mob/organized crime movies. It’s certainly not on the level of Goodfellas, Casino or the first two Godfather movies but it is definitely a great second-tier crime movie. Instead of Juice or Menace II Society, Sugar Hill deserves the same notoriety as Donnie Brasco, The Funeral or A Bronx Tale. Sugar Hill and Carlito’s Way are cinematic first cousins. Both New York City-based movies involve a protagonist villain trying to leave their criminal past behind for a woman. Unfortunately there’s always been this inability to connect predominantly Black films to predominantly white films the same way people connect and correlate same-race films…

In Sugar Hill, Roemello (Wesley Snipes) and his brother Ray (Michael Wright) are high-level New York City drug dealers. Roemello grows tired of the criminal life and plans to leave it all behind with his girlfriend Melissa in the midst of a gang war started by Ray. 

The story eventually turns in to a tug of war between Melissa and Ray. One side wants to pull him away from his dangerous lifestyle while the other side wants to keep him from leaving. 

Unlike some of the aforementioned movies, Sugar Hill is actually visually stunning. That’s not to say that films like Juice or Deep Cover don’t have stunning shots. But for the most part, the movies associated with the “urban” genre aren’t really recognized for their striking visuals. Sugar Hill is different. I don’t know how intentional this was but the wardrobe colors combined with the dark skin of the actors make for a nice contrast. It kind of planted the visual seeds for later films like Belly. Outside of just the visual similarities, the relationship between the brothers in Sugar Hill parallels the relationship between Nas and DMX in Belly right down to the level-headed partner wanting to leave behind their life of crime while the emotional unpredictable partner wants to stay a criminal. 

Sugar Hill is more of a slow burn than a typical shoot 'em up gangster flick. The explosive violent moments are few and far between. What we get instead are scenes of Snipes questioning his existence as a crime boss with a looming noir-ish jazz heavy score. This is mob/mafia/organized crime story that has more in common with other existential crime films like Sonatine and Hana-bi than it does King of New York. 

This is overdue for a proper reassessment.

SIDEWALK STORIES

I suppose the most alarming takeaway from Charles Lane’s Sidewalk Stories is that even though it was a remake of an almost 70 year old film at the time (Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid), the basic premise still applied to late 1980’s New York City. Lane never shied away from his giant homage to Chaplin but the bigger emphasis was on poverty and how bad it was even in the modern era. The cast of Sidewalk Stories is mostly Black so you could delve deeper in to race but a lot of the supporting and background characters are mostly white. Charles Lane has absolutely explored issues concerning race in his other works but I honestly don’t think this was his goal here. I think he was trying to make a general observation about poverty in the modern era and how it effects everyone.

There really isn’t much left to say about this movie after 35+ years. All the interesting and insightful stuff has been said. Outside of the race of the main characters there really isn’t anything different between Sidewalk Stories and The Kid. It’s essentially shot for shot. I don’t have anything new and/or profound to add.

What hasn’t been touched on a whole lot are the film’s influences outside of The Kid and the later films it would go on to influence. I find all that stuff interesting. Sidewalk Stories is a visual film and it hasn't really been looked at through that lens.

It [SIDEWALK STORIES] definitely came from THE KID - Charles Lane, hiddenfilms.com

The Kid / Sidewalk Stories 

The Kid /
Sidewalk Stories 

The Kid / Sidewalk Stories 

The Kid /
Sidewalk Stories 

The Kid /
Sidewalk Stories 

The Kid /
Sidewalk Stories 

A common theme of silent cinema was poverty. Even if you aren’t a silent movie aficionado, close your eyes right now and think about the basic elements of a standard 1920s silent movie. Scraps of bread, dirty faces, holes in shoes, winos, etc.

Sidewalk Stories is really one giant homage to the silent genre.

homelessness was the thing that made me make the film - Charles Lane, moveablefest.com

Menilmontant / Sidewalk Stories 

Speedy / Sidewalk Stories

The Gold Rush / Sidewalk Stories 

The Gold Rush / Sidewalk Stories 

It should also be noted that Sidewalk Stories was a sequel to a lesser seen short film that Lane made in film school which was also an homage to the silent genre and laid the groundwork for his debut feature…

The Gold Rush / A Place In Time

The Gold Rush / A Place In Time

Sidewalk Stories was sort of a difficult film to track down for years but one huge momentary positive about the popularity of The Artist (2011) is that the director Michel Hazanavicius supposedly credited Lane’s Sidewalk Stories as a major influence. This brought some attention to the underseen film. I say supposedly because while Indiewire, Film Comment, TIFF, The Atlantic and more all say this - I haven’t actually found a direct quote from Hazanavicius himself. Film critic Ashley Clarke did note that Sidewalk Stories had a series of screenings in France in 2002 which is where Hazanavicius may have seen it.

Sidewalk Stories /

The Artists

Sidewalk Stories /

The Artists

Lane would eventually acknowledge The Artist and it's similarities to his movie...

Now that Sidewalk Stories is finally on a proper blu-ray you should check it out if you haven’t…

maXXXine

Maxxxine is certainly better than the other two films in the Maxine trilogy but that isn’t saying much. I recognize this isn’t a very good movie but I also kind of enjoyed it. Unlike Pearl and X, this movie has the guts to try to be fun and entertaining whereas the other two are quite boring. Maxxxine certainly fits in with the other movies as they’re all about our female protagonists wanting to be famous no matter what, but the tone switches this time around. Pearl and X don’t work for a multitude of reasons but the main issue is that they’re boring. Boring can be good sometimes but not in this case. It’s sort of a failure when your films about pornography and axe murdering are stale and uninteresting. I think this is a fair criticism because Ti West didn’t set out to make boring deconstructed slasher movies. It’s clear from the editing, music and overall tone of the first two movies that he wanted to make something exciting. The thing about Ti West is that he’s good at ghost stories. Traditional horror and slashers aren’t really his strongpoint. I think the Maxine trilogy is proof of that (click here to read my thoughts on X from a few years ago).

This is a very unintentionally silly movie with a lot of cartoonish performances and sometimes silly dialogue. But the biggest issue is there’s too much going on for a 100 minute movie. In addition to Maxxxine’s never-ending quest to become a movie star, she’s still on the run from the murders in the first film (there’s a sleazy private investigator on her trail that knows about her past). She’s committing all new murders this time around and there’s a serial killer called the nightstalker on the loose that’s killing girls around her. The movie could have been simplified and condensed. But I was still entertained. My attention never strayed like it did with X and Pearl.


Maxxxine has drawn a lot of comparisons to Boogie Nights. I guess that’s because both movies are about the adult film industry. But any shot, scene or comparison from Boogie Nights that folks bring up in relation to Maxxxine all come from older films (the famous mirror shot at the end of Boogie Nights was an homage to the ending of Raging Bull which, knowing Martin Scorsese, was probably inspired by something earlier).

If anything, Bette Gordon’s Variety feels like the movie that Maxxxine takes from the most. Both movies are about women in the adult industry being pursued by stalkers. Variety and Maxxxine have lots of specific scenes and moments that are too identical to not mention even if they are coincidental.

Variety / maXXXine

Variety / maXXXine

I noticed this potential nod to Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere…

Somewhere / maXXXine

and Tales of Hoffman…

Tales Of Hoffman / maXXXine

Visual homages aside, Maxxxine’s twist in the end borrows heavily from Paul Schrader’s Hardcore. Enough time has passed since this movie’s release so I’ll just reveal it - the nightstalker is revealed to be Maxine’s evangelical father trying to get her to leave the adult film industry and come back home which is similar to George C Scott’s character in Hardcore (minus the serial killing).

Hardcore / maXXXine

Hardcore / maXXXine

The crazy stalker element comes right out of Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion

Crimes of Passion / maXXXine

I guess I don’t have a huge issue with all the homages considering the prior films in the trilogy are also reference heavy. I knew what to expect. If anything, the coincidental similarities to older films are the best thing about it (I didn’t particularly care for the Psycho sequence that’s literally set in the actual Psycho house)


This isn’t a post to try and convince anyone that Maxxxine is misunderstood (I’m sure in about twenty years or so history will be re-written and it will find a new cult audience of apologists). This movie’s reputation is understandable. Maxxxine deserved all the negative criticism it received. I just thought there were a handful of semi-interesting qualities about it that shouldn’t go ignored even if the overall end product is a misfire.

ALPHA: ANOTHER LOVE LETTER TO DAVID CRONENBERG

eXistenZ / Alpha

I’m a little obsessed with looking at the films of Julia Ducournau through the lens of David Cronenberg because, unlike so many other younger/newer generation filmmakers, David Cronenberg seems to be a fan of Ducournau’s work. I don’t know if he’s just being nice in his older age but I have to imagine his praise means the world to her (he's never held his tongue when it came to being critical of other filmmakers in the past).

David Cronenberg is a major influence in my life. I discovered his films when I was a teenager - Julia Ducournau, focusfeatures.com

She’s got a really strong visual sense. I know she’s said how much of an influence my filmmaking has been, but it’s basically in the sense of unlocking her own sensibility, which is unique. She’s got a really strong visual sense and a sense of the absurd, the extreme. Her films are totally not like my films - David Cronenberg, indiewire

The opposite recently happened with John Carpenter expressing his disdain for The Substance…

 

I like The Substance but it has to feel awful having one of your heroes despise your work. But at the same time it has to be frustrating for Carpenter having his name associated with a movie he dislikes.


Ducournau’s latest film Alpha is about 5 years too late. It’s a movie about a mysterious contagious disease that turns people in to marble. That’s not all the film is about. Alpha delves in to everything from drug addiction and family drama to childhood bullying and repressed memories.
Naturally this can be seen as another Covid-sploitation movie but even if it came out in 2021 or 2022 I’d probably still be a little cynical towards it. We all lived through covid. We get it. A covid movie with heavy symbolism and metaphors seems a little pointless to me.
What’s unfortunate is that from now on, any modern film about a contagious disease will be called a covid movie even though Covid wasn’t the first contagious disease. 

What I did find somewhat interesting was how Ducournau pulled from some of Cronenberg’s lesser known works, images and scenes (there are still some nods to his more popular movies). I was warned that Julia Ducournau didn't emulate Cronenberg this time around like she did w/ Raw, Titane and her early shorts but I didn’t see it that way. 

It’s an interesting coincidence that Alpha's ending is similar to Crime Of The Future with The Passion Of Joan Of Arc tear drop.

Crimes Of The Future / Alpha

Instead of Videodrome or Scanners, Ducournau seems to pull from stuff like eXistenZ and later period Shorts like The Death Of David Cronenberg.

Crimes Of The Future / Alpha

eXistenZ / Alpha

Amin's body transformation in Alpha is similar to Seth's transformation in The Fly

The Fly / Alpha

The drug addiction aspect from Alpha definitely pulls from Naked Lunch as well.

Naked Lunch / Alpha

Naked Lunch / Alpha

Again - this wasn’t my thing but I can see how others might like this. I love a good comparison but Julia Ducournau doesn’t seem to have a voice of her own yet. Shes starting to take the Cronenberg worship a bit too far. That’s not to say Cronenberg owns body horror or the horrors of body transformation. He just seems to be the only person Ducournau pulls from.

A VISITOR TO A MUSEUM

If you’re familiar with this blog then it’s no mystery that I’m a big Andrei Tarkovsky fan. I’m such a fan that I even like most of his students, knock-offs and copycats. I’ve dedicated quite a few blog entries to the work of Tarkovsky and his direct influence on various filmmakers that came after him (early Lars Von Trier, Carlos Reygadas, Alexander Sokurov, Andrey Zvyagintsev, Bi Gan, Elem Klimov, Nina Menkes and more).

Tarkovsky’s influence is so prolific that his “students” sometimes feed off of and imitate each other without even meaning to…

The Element Of Crime / A Visitor To A Museum

I say all this because up until a few days ago I hadn’t seen any films by Konstantin Lopushansky. Major oversight. I’ve only seen three of his films so far but the influence of Tarkovsky is all over his work (or at least what I’ve seen so far). 

I know it comes off as lazy to compare slow “artsy” contemplative Russian films to Andrei Tarkovsky but Lopushansky actually worked on Stalker. He also never seems to shy away from his mentor’s spiritual influence while dismissing the types of comparisons I make all throughout this post.

The Mirror / A Visitor To A Museum

Figuratively speaking, the great master’s shadow, as people used to say, hangs over every all of us – directors of the 20th century, his influence was enormous. Many critics ask Lars von Trier, Alexander Sokurov, me about his influence. It is inevitable, as he is the greatest representative of auteur cinema, his quintessence of auteur cinema ideology has been absorbed by many, including me. But if we speak about style, some critics who do not like auteur cinema attempt to pick things apart; they say that in my films the water is flowing just like in his films. I respond that water flows in millions of other films. This argument is very weak.

And so on. In fact his influence is spiritual, it is the understanding of art. I was lucky to make a first draft of his lecture. He lectured film direction, later he took me as an apprentice for Stalker, we had an opportunity to socialize and one day he asked me to systemize his lectures - Konstantin Lopushansky, indie-cinema.com

Lopushansky’s time working on Stalker had to have made an impact on his own filmmaking. The basic premise and/or keywords that one would use to describe A Visitor To A Museum sounds a lot like Stalker; a long contemplative dreary quest through dirt, rain and sewage in a seemingly post-apocalyptic world to find a mythical forbidden place. In Stalker, our protagonists are out to find “the zone”. In A Visitor To A Museum, our lone protagonist is on a quest to find the ruins of a lost museum and the city that once housed it (the movie is set after a global/apocalyptic disaster).

Stalker / A Visitor To A Museum

It's true that water flows in a million films and it's easy to oversimplify visual comparisons in that way but when you place the two above scenes next to each other combined with the history between the two filmmakers - it does take on a slightly deeper meaning than simply two scenes of water.

Stalker / A Visitor To A Museum

Stalker / A Visitor To A Museum

Stalker / A Visitor To A Museum

The “message”, metaphors and symbolisms within the film are sort of worn on it's sleeve. Not to give too much away but the discovery of the lost museum/city brings up issues concerning classism and eugenics. For me, this movie really touches on the importance of knowledge and how far some will go to find rare artifacts. I was once a lightweight collector of records, videotapes and DVDs so I can kind of relate. I’ve never taken the type of journey that the film’s protagonist took to seek out lost artifacts but I have driven across multiple state lines to purchase a rare VHS or a piece of vinyl just to have it or further my knowledge of an artist's entire body of work. As cliche as this may sound, at a certain point it’s less about the thing you’re trying to obtain and more about the journey and the folks you meet along the way.

The discovery of the film’s protagonist is a bit more depressing than my journeys and discoveries but there’s still love and dedication. In order to go through what he goes through to find what he’s looking for there’s clearly love, curiosity and dedication to seeking out lost artifacts. That kind of stuff is important. Besides building character, it continues the art of preservation. No matter how much technology pushes away things like the need for physical media, books, libraries, video stores and liner notes - these things all play a part in persevering history (as you read this, the fate of the ECW wrestling archive is in limbo and has been temporary removed from streaming). Preservation of history is important for a multitude of reasons but it’s most important to me because, now more than ever, history is easy to rewrite and/or bury (like in A Visitor To A Museum). 

Very few things irritate me more than not only rewritten history, but people’s acceptance of said rewritten history and/or incorrect information when all they have to do is take 60 fucking seconds to open their smart phones and find the correct information without the use of AI. And if the information they find on the internet is incorrect or only partially true, they can cross-reference what they find with more accurate information from a book or newspaper or PDF scan found in a library or some kind of archive.

I worry that both young and older people have become lazy and are relying heavily on not just AI (which I find to be wrong often), but misinformation that panders to or caters to what they want to hear. People aren’t even reading entire articles. They’re just going off of a clickbait headline or a poor description of an article told to them by another likeminded friend. And I know I keep shitting on AI but the way folks on social media just blindly believe nonsense and obvious fake photos really worries me...

A Visitor To A Museum matches my energy when it comes to all of this even though it was made in the late 80s and couldn’t predict where we’d be today. 

THE BEST (and worst) OF 2025

This is certainly a list of "ranked" films in various categories but it's also a personal log of every new release I watched in 2025. I say this because my personal favorites don't really reflect the movies that you're supposed to have on your 2025 list. This might lead one to believe that I didn't watch many movies this year but I assure you I did. For the last half of 2025 I was out of commission and had nothing to do but watch movies. 

I certainly thought Sinners was fun but I just didn't think it was the culturally defining movie that people are being bullied in to thinking it is. I was indifferent towards everything from Weapons and The Long Walk to almost every superhero/comic book movie. I absolutely hated One Battle After Another, and was let down or disappointed to varying degrees by personally anticipated films like Friendship and Highest 2 Lowest. Emma Stone gave it her all for a pretty bad movie (Bugonia), Johnathan Majors participated in a feature length humiliation ritual (Magazine Dreams) and the superhero fatigue is in full effect. I guess I appreciate the continuous theme of looking at America through varying degrees of cynicism (Eddington, Bugonia, One Battle After Another, Highest 2 Lowest, Sinners), but everyone's final executions mostly fell flat or couldn't stick a proper landing.

As disappointing of a year that 2025 was for movies, I still managed to scrape together a top 10 along with an honorable mention of other pretty good movies that the year had to offer. And with the exception of all the films in the last category, I was able to write about everything listed below. So if you're looking for some insight as to why I put each movie in to their respective categories - click the titles underneath the images to be taken to my review/thoughts/rants.

1-2: Personal favorites (10 out of 10. No notes)

Timestalker / Train Dreams

3-5: Personal favorites (2nd tier)

The Smashing Machine / Lurker / Nevermore : The Raven Effect

6-9: Personal favorites (I wouldn’t blindly recommend these but I liked them very much)

Where To Land /Vulcanizadora  

Rats / Slugs

10: Personal favorites (Didn’t completely work but I still liked it or found something positive or interesting about it)

Eddington

Special Category: I know the director (but the movie is still great!)

Secret Mall Apartment

Honorable mention: it’s good but can we calm down a little bit?

Sinners

Honorable Mention: fun mindless entertainment

Sisu: Road to Revenge

Honorable Mention: It’s pretty ok!

The Accountant 2

Honorable mention: somewhat disappointing but there’s still something there

Friendship

Honorable Mention: I dunno what everyone’s problem is. I liked it...

Thunderbolts*

I Did Not Like These:

Pandering Nonsense: One Battle After Another

A movie about football made by someone that has never watched a game of football before: Him

Spike Lee is officially out of touch: Highest 2 Lowest

The humiliation ritual award: Magazine Dreams*

 The SyFy Channel movie award: War Of The Worlds

No real category to put these in but I found something worthy to write about:

Captain America: Brave New World

The Woman In The Yard

Other movies I saw this year that I just have no real strong opinion on and didn't have the motivation to write about:

Weapons

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

28 Years Later

Kraven

F-1

Frankenstein

Knives Out 3

Heads Of State

Caught Stealing

After The Hunt

The Long Walk

Bring Her Back

Fantastic Four

Bugonia

Superman

Random movie thoughts from 2025:

-Emma Stone gave it her all for that??? (Bugonia)

-The Bresson award: Ryan Bader (The Smashing Machine)

-This is what everyone thought The Beast (2023) was (Timestalker)

-It's always nice to see Shea Whigam show up in a movie (F-1 & Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning)

-The Terrence Malick award (Train Dreams)

-This seems to be the movie he always wanted to make (he's been making variations of it for years). Now that he's gotten it out of his system - maybe he can make a truly interesting movie (Frankenstein)

-Was I supposed to be laughing this much? (Magazine Dreams)

-People are weird about biracial identities and interracial relationships, aren't they (One Battle After Another, Sinners & Him)

-It seriously wasn't that bad (Thunderbolts*)

-A Hulk sequel without The Hulk? (Captain America: Brave New World)

-Lots of dumb decisions in horror movies this year (Weapons, 28 Years Later, Sinners)

-TAR-sploitation? (After The Hunt)

-Product placement award (War Of The Worlds)

-Finally a black horror movie that isn't trying to be Get Out (The Woman In The Yard)

-The Yorgos Lantimos fatigue sure came, didn't it?

-The Pedro Pascal fatigue sure came, didn't it?

-The superhero fatigue is warranted (Kraven, Fantastic 4, Superman, Captain America: Brave New World)

-I can feel the Tim Robinson fatigue coming (Friendship, The Chair Company, etc)

-Happy to see Hal Hartley return (Where To Land)

For a more in-depth look in to my 2025 movie year, check out the yearly Wrong Reel year-end episode

I also contributed a more ranked list to the yearly Toronto Film review end of year blog post...