Revue 'Freaky Tales'': an oakland from the Reagan era comes to life

“Freaky Tales”, a Curio ransacking“Malf Nelson”, “ “Captain Marvel”), is an ode to the bay region as a boy could remember it, presenting three semi-growing stories which take place on May 10, 1987, which neat facts in the myth. “Oakland in '87 was Hella Wild”, the rapper of joy Too shortThe narrator of the film. Too short is also on the screen, in a cameo as a cop. (There is also a version of his young auto played by Demario Symbario Driver.) “Freaky Tales” obtains his title of Too Short Nine Minute Song of Sexual Braggadocio of his 1987 gold record, prefiguring here a co -pumping of genre war that he deserves.

This summer, Fleck was a 10-year-old child in Berkeley. He was too young for having experienced too short rap battles with first -hand, but old enough to carry the energy of this time as part of his own identity. Fleck and his longtime collaborator Boden reflect the feeling of this excitement – this superb, should they be higher – in instantaneous of a battered city which can, on occasion, to retaliate and win.

Most places and some people are real. But the star is hyperactive nostalgia, even extremely contradictory. Not only does the film feig to be on VHS with white static tickling through the breaks of the segment, but it also has cigarette burns in the upper corners of the frame to claim that we are also looking at it on a 35mm coil at the local theater. Sometimes the action scenes are justified with caricatured scratches and sound effects; Sometimes the action is all cartoon. I'm sure the filmmakers know that the Grand Lake Theater of Oakland did not show “Lost boys” This can. (It would only open in July.) But I am sure they don't care. It's all about vibrations, guy.

The film is divided into four sections with three groups of heroes: punks, rappers and the Golden State Warriors who were in the playoffs against the Los Angeles Lakers, the “Showtime” team which would continue to win the championship. That evening, however, the fourth match of a potential scanning of the Lakers, the leader Golden State Sleepy Floyd (here played by Jay Ellis) refused to lose. He scored 29 points in the fourth quarter, an post-season record that is still despite the future warriors like Stephen Curry and Kevin during trying to shoot him.

The big Floyd evening is real and you can find online archive images, including Floyd court interview With a local sports executives that describes the player's success in mystical terms. Floyd, said the journalist, played if it was as if he were “unconscious” – he went to “another kingdom”, “this other area”.

The filmmakers took this idea of ​​metaphysics and transformed it into a false religion with Floyd welcoming television advertisements for psytopians, a mindfulness camp where other residents of the bay can form their brain to fight “interior and external demons”. For him, it probably includes Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, although the script finally has its fictitious fictitium beating more hostile villains with a ninja sword.

Three of the arches of history follow a simple plan: an outsider fights and wins. The fourth section, stuck in the middle, is a tale made on a hitman, Clint (Pedro Pascal), who tries to retire, assuring his pregnant wife (Natalia Dominguez) that his fury fist is now “just one hand”. Pascal goes sincerely, but the mini-conte is so dark that he only accomplished two things: get Pascal on the poster and completely blur the tone of the film.

Otherwise, these interconnected plots are exciting pulp fictions – the film Quentin Tarantino is an obvious inspiration. The characters crisscross the other's paths in a cute manner but does not aspire to the cosmic coincidence beyond Clint de Pascal advising two punks, Tina and Lucid (Ji-Young Yoo And Jack Champion), the most vulnerable place to target a point bracelet.

The Tina and Lucid segment is the opener and establishes that we are in stories of shredder success (with as much blood as possible). It is inspired by a real confrontation between the Hardcore collective 924 Gilman StreetA place of music at all ages that is still in the lead and a group of racist Rednecks. We are launched in the atmosphere with an excellent follow -up in the sidewalk of the club and in a concert where adolescents and the 20 years were so strong that the camera is overturned and stumbles. Later, when Tina and Lucid kiss, we plan above the action while Pogo's dancers blur in a pretty romantic whirlwind.

The costume service must have used each safety pin in the city. However, these children with the hard aspect of respecting a principle of non -violence – until they decide that they are so sick to be attacked by the neonazis that they are ready to retaliate. There are gore geysers and a skinhead which is transformed into Tiki torch.

It's exciting things and a bit like Glib. The film refuses to alleviate the atmosphere: all the acclamations and no arrests, even with the repugnant police officer of Ben Mendelsohn who rushes and harass two black girls, secure and Barbie (Normani and Dominique Thorne), at the nearby ice cream shop where they work. In an intelligent detail, Mendelsohn's unnamed racist shoots the other white in the store an accomplice wink. This man wears a jackson for the president of the president, but he is too intimidated to intervene.

The STICE and Barbie section is the most realistic. It is also my favorite, the duo defying too short for a rap battle in which the two parties have a verbal objective hilarious the genitals of each other. (When the music comes into play, you could recognize Antice and Barbie from the too short track “Do't Fight The Fein '”, in which real girls, only 15 at the time, removed the most established artist with the two barrels.) Normani and Thorne nail performance, spitting tight and overlapping insults on the height of too short, locking of giroute and dental hygiene With malicious joy.

Meanwhile, on Floyd's advertisements for psytopians, green light radiates the eye globes of a believer and continues to light all the corners of the film. The menthole lightning bolts zaps in a few moments of tension. Slugs of pea escape from the unit microphone, the Oakland Coliseum and yes, this point bracelet. Green glow seems to impregnate people with additional courage – or cause a bloody nose. And he is never recognized by the script. It is to debate what it means. During the film, my assumptions included telekinesis and algae flowers floating from Lake Merritt. But the mystery adds to the feeling that even if Boden and Fleck turn back from Marvel and return to their independent roots, they made a superhero film, after all: an intelligent update on the street on the Toxic.

Anyway, they did their research. Evelyn's soundtrack “Champagne” King and Public Image Ltd. and modern punk acts remanishing the classics is fantastic, just like the score appropriate by Raphael Sadiq of Tony! Toni! Tone! Each frame is filled with details, up to T-shirts for small regional bands such as sewer trout. There is even a reference to Rocky Road ice cream, invented in Oakland in 1929.

So these “bizarre tales” are fun, if not completely satisfactory. You understand why so many stars born in the bay region have agreed to arise in the film for a scene, from the real Floyd too short and somnolent to other inhabitants, especially Marshawn Lynch As a bus driver, Rancid TIM Armstrong As a devoted psytopian and Angus cloud In one of his last roles of a criminal thug. The biggest coup is a native concord camée Tom HanksAlready a little famous at the time even if none of the other characters remembers his name. (“Big” would be released the following year.) What they know about Hanks is that he sold hot dogs at the Oakland A stadium. Here, he plays a clerk in a video store in part named Hank who challenges customers to appoint the best films about outsiders.

“The oppressed thinks that we can achieve the impossible,” says Hanks with a smile. This film also does it, in daring neon, for a quick and inexpensive smile.