Writer-director John Singleton’s groundbreaking and politically astute portrait of three young men growing up in South Central Los Angeles. Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr) is sent to live with his father, Furious Styles (Laurence Fishburne), in tough South Central Los Angeles. Although his hard-nosed father instills proper values and respect in him, and his devout girlfriend Brandi (Nia Long) teaches him about faith, Tre’s friends Doughboy (Ice Cube) and Ricky (Morris Chestnut) don’t have the same kind of support and are drawn into the neighbourhood’s booming drug and gang culture, with increasingly tragic results…
Singleton became the youngest person ever to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director
In 1991, at just 23 years old, John Singleton made his explosively powerful debut with Boyz N the Hood, a film for which he deserved – and largely got — the kind of respect Scorsese earned for Mean Streets. […] Boyz N the Hood is a passionate drama shot with fluency and style, a study of what amounts to life during wartime, with people grimly used to gunfire and helicopters thudding overhead. Watched again, a quarter of a century on, what is so striking is not the confrontational aggression but the movie’s humanity, idealism and lack of cynicism.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (2016)
Singleton’s powerhouse movie has the impact of a stun gun.
David Ansen, Newsweek
On the surface, the film appears to be about Black crime and Black children coming of age, but just outside the frame Singleton is saying something more. Systemic racism is the real villain in this movie.
Lawrence Ware, New York Times
Alongside Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, this was the most astonishing and hard-hitting directorial debut of the 1990s.
David Parkinson, Radio Times
Media Partner
John Singleton
Cuba Gooding Jr, Laurence Fishburne, Ice Cube, Angela Bassett, Morris Chestnut, Tyra Ferrell, Regina King, Nia Long
USA
1991
English
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits
Producer
Steve Nicolaides
Screenwriter
John Singleton
Cinematography
Charles Mills
Editor
Bruce Cannon
Original Music
Stanley Clarke
Production Design
Bruce Bellamy
90s, Baby!
Ten years. 11 weeks. 90 films from the 1990s. This summer, 90’s Baby! takes a deep dive into a defining decade of cinema.
Crash
Sex drive, David Cronenberg-style. The car-crash fetishists who orbit Cronenberg's metrosexual Toronto (they include James Spader, Holly Hunter, and Deborah Unger) obsessively seek a fusion of metal and flesh... Fender bender as the ultimate orgasm.
Trainspotting
Danny Boyle's blistering movie was a sensation in 1996: a kick in the teeth of old school British kitchen sink realism, it fearlessly transformed the dire circumstances of Edinburgh heroin addicts into an experience by turns exhilarating and devastating.
Fargo
Have the Coen brothers ever made a more satisfying movie than Fargo? This grisly comedy pits one of cinema's most pure-hearted cops (Frances McDormand's pregnant cop, Marge Gunderson) against the machinations of weak and mercenary men.
Lone Star
John Sayles's modern day Western is a murder mystery which draws sheriff Chris Cooper to investigate two of his predecessors, the notoriously corrupt Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson), and his own father, Buddy (Matthew McConaughey).
90s Mystery Movie + Trivia Night
And now for a shot in the dark... We're not announcing the Mystery Movie in advance, so you'll have to take a leap of faith. We can say it was released between January 1990 and January 2000, and it's not already showing elsewhere in this series. As an added enticement we're going to throw in a 90s movie trivia night with your ticket — plus prizes!
Princess Mononoke
A mystical fight between humans and the Animal Gods of the forest. Ashitaka, the last prince of a dying race, struggles to find a way for both sides to co-exist. But the fighting only becomes more and more bloody and all hope seems to be lost…
Gummo
Harmony Korine was just 24 when he made Gummo. It's become a cult favourite as much for its singularity as anything else: it's a strange, misshapen beast, a slice of beat poetry translated into experimental film.
Jackie Brown
Take half a dozen characters who know they're in a fix, and give them half a million dollars to fight over. Tarantino's crime movie (his best) transcends genre in large part because in Pam Grier and Robert Forster it gives us people we truly care about.
The Big Lebowski
The Coens' whacky, warped slacker generation riff on Raymond Chandler, a shaggy dog story which delights in going sideways at every turn. Jeff Bridges is the Dude, and what he really wants is to get his rug back...
Out of Sight
Adapted from Elmore Leonard's novel about the mutual attraction between an escaped bank robber and the FBI agent on his tail, Out of Sight is sexy and romantic, cosmopolitan, and full of Soderbergh's sleight of hand, shuffling time like a card sharp.
Buffalo '66
Vincent Gallo's directorial debut is an eccentric, provocative comedy which laces a poignant love story with both a sombre, washed-out naturalism and surreal musical vignettes. This one is something different...
Run Lola Run
In the hyper intense world of pre-millennial Berlin, Lola has just 20 minutes to come up with a 100,000 Deutchmarks or her boyfriend cops it. He's asking the right woman: Lola won't stop til she's saved the day... It's Speed, in the multiverse...
Rushmore
Precocious Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) is befriended by depressed industrialist Harold Blume (Bill Murray) until they both fall in love with first grade teacher Miss Cross (Olivia Williams). Anderson's second feature is an old favourite.
The Blair Witch Project
The rushes of a student-made documentary investigating the legend of the Blair Witch in Burkittsville, Maryland, a quest that led the three filmmakers deep into the Appallachian woods. Easy to get lost in there...