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Reviews Counted:78
Fresh:30
Rotten:48
Average Rating:4.7/10
Consensus: The atmosphere is affecting, and the story, at times, is compelling, but with a lean script and limp direction, Black and White doesn't add up to much.
Synopsis: With Black and White, writer-director James Toback (Fingers, Two Girls and a Guy) confronts the topic of race head on--most specifically, the influence of black urban hip-hop culture on white... [More]
Starring: Robert Downey, Bijou Phillips, Allan Houston, Brooke Shields
Director: James Toback
This is not a film to drag us beneath the surface and immerse us in emotional involvement; but the surface itself is replete with reflections of cultural and social interaction that are never less than fascinating to observe.
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Top Critic... Black and White is sort of a mess, but it's the kind of worthy, ambitious mess that a director like Godard might make.
A daring film that has some sloppy flaws but is far better than Toback's previous effort, the dismal Two Girls and a Guy.
As lively and amusing as the film is in some ways, it does set up expectations at the outset that are never really delivered upon.
Top CriticIt looks like a mess -- if one stuffed with incident, issues and intrigue.
Top CriticJames Toback's Black and White is meant to be an incendiary movie, but it's really only just OK.
The best thing I have seen come from director Toback.
Mostly watchable and well-acted, but neither as engaging nor as exciting as it needs to be.
While Toback certainly makes a game effort to study the infiltration of hip-hop into the mainstream, his inability to choose what ground to cover ultimately results in an episodic hotch-potch.
Short bursts of captivating information are strung together in a series of quick-cutting vignettes, alternately hitting their mark and falling disastrously flat.
The unfocused story travels through so many subplots that none of the individual stories are ever explored fully enough to pay off.
Perhaps you remember "The Pick-Up Artist," the movie that single-handedly killed Molly Ringwald's career? That was another Toback production. "Black and White," for all its arty pretensions and supposed shock value, doesn't break his losing streak.
It doesn't try to spell out all aspects of the issue or arrive at any particular point. Toback presents specific characters dealing with specific problems and, through their stories, somehow manages to take the temperature of the times.
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Top CriticThis movie doesn't provide the luxury of detachment; it forces us to sort out the confusing racial dramas of contemporary America, and it's far more involving because it has no narrator telling us what to feel.
November 10, 2005:
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