Frankie (Vivica A Fox) has a bank job — until someone she knows from South Central LA holds her at gun-point, the attempted robbery turns into a bloodbath, and the boss sends her packing. Life gets much harder. Her homegirls (Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Kimberly Elise) fix her up with the office-cleaning firm where they work nights, but it’s not long before they hatch a plan to capitalize on Frankie’s qualifications, in particular her inside knowledge of bank security procedures.
In the wake of all those gun-toting white women and black men, black women were overdue their own loaded action adventure. This noir Thelma & Louise rekindles some of the subversive fire of ’70s exploitation flicks, although it’s far too polished to have come from the Corman stable. The intense heist sequences show a command of thriller dynamics that’s right up there with the best of them, but director F Gary Gray is equally convincing on the character front, eliciting funny, grounded performances from the four women (Latifah notably refuses to caricature her lesbian role). It’s an energizing spree for the Girlz n the hood.
The movie surprised and moved me: I expected a routine action picture and was amazed how much I started to care about the characters… It creates a portrait of the lives of these women that’s so observant and informed.”
Roger Ebert
Latifah brings an extraordinary presence to the proceedings, and not just in her no-fuss approach to Cleo’s sexual orientation. Both in the way that she scowls and glares at her adversaries and the way that she delights in her friends’ company and her new-found job skills, Latifah brings something new and startling to the traditional screen depiction of women, something that comes across as so completely indifferent to how she’s perceived by any camera or viewer.
Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle
F. Gary Gray
Jada Pinkett, Vivica A. Fox, Queen Latifah, Kimberly Elise
USA
1996
English
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits
Producer
Dale Pollock, Oren Koules
Screenwriter
Takashi Bufford, Kate Lapier
Cinematography
Marc Reshovsky
Editor
John Carter
Original Music
Christopher Young
Production Design
Robb Wilson King
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.
GoodFellas
The ultimate crash and burn movie, Scorsese's exhilarating gangster film is infused with the excitement of fast cash, girls, guns and drugs. Yet this brazenly amoral movie also captures the brutality, betrayal, and spiritual void of the criminal world.
Madonna: Truth or Dare
A year in the life of Madonna at the height of her fame, touring Blonde Ambition through 1990. There's concert footage, but the movie is also daringly truthful about life behind the scenes — not that Madonna is every really off-stage.
Pulp Fiction + The ReViberators
In the spirit of Quentin Tarantino, we're going to launch our summer series 90s, Baby! smack in the middle, with 1994's Pulp Fiction, the most exciting and influential movie of its era. On 35mm. Preceded by surf guitar sensations The ReViberators live!
Jacob's Ladder
Ever feel you're losing your mind? Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) comes back from the Vietnam War with a firefight in his head. Sanity is a losing battle in Adrian Lyne's terrifying psychological thriller.
Reservoir Dogs
Quentin Tarantino announced himself to the world with this ingeniously fractured heist movie, carved into character-centric chapters, riffing breezily on pop culture, but counterpointing all this with blood-soaked intensity.
Total Recall
The master of the subversive blockbuster, Paul Verhoeven concocts a film about corporate mind-control vs. revolutionary uprising by setting it on Mars and allowing for the possibility the whole thing is just an escapist fantasy...
True Romance
Rockabilly comic book clerk Clarence (Christian Slater) meets dream girl Alabama (Patricia Arquette) with trouble in her wake, in this seminal couple on the run thriller from Quentin Tarantino's excitable mind.
The Company of Strangers
In this Canadian gem, seven elderly women find themselves stranded when their bus breaks down in the wilderness. With only their wits, memories and some roasted frogs' legs to sustain them, this remarkable group of strangers share their life stories.
Boyz n the Hood
Twenty-three-year-old writer-director John Singleton's groundbreaking portrait of three young men growing up in South Central is a film of integrity and compassion. It's a far richer portrait of Black lives than Hollywood's gangsta exploitation pics.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. (Yep.) James Cameron's all too relevant action movie is in some ways unsurpassed. Linda Hamilton is the mom we all need right now.
Thelma & Louise
In this iconic feminist road movie BFF Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon take off for a weekend getaway that turns violent when one of them is attacked. The stakes get higher as they flee the scene. Winner: Best Original Screenplay (Callie Khouri).
Julio Avila Cuban Band Live + The Mambo Kings Film Screening
Feel the heat! Shake your booty as we combine a live set of exhilarating Cuban music followed by a rediscovered 90s barnstormer of a movie starring Latin heartthrobs Armand Assante and Antonio Banderas alongside the likes of Tito Puente and Celia Cruz.
The Silence of the Lambs
Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) gives FBI serial killer hunter Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) pointers from his maximum security cell. But is he trying to aid the investigation, or just messing with her head?
Delicatessen
Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jacquet collaborated with Marc Caro on their first film, a breathlessly inventive and unexpectedly charming comedy about two young lovers evading a cannibal butcher in a post-apocalyptic France.