Armed only with his mysterious mental connection to the feral minds of studio executives, the Movie Guru reveals just how good or bad this week's new releases will be:

Closer (R)
Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen star in a dark, dialogue-heavy psychosexual drama about love at first sight, obsession, monogamy and the struggle for dominance in relationships. Read the review.
Now Showing: Downtown West

Primer (PG-13)
Abe and Aaron are two young engineers who work for a giant corporation by day and build their own projects at night. When the experimental device in their garage turns out to have some unexpectedly powerful capabilities, the two are challenged to not let the tool’s abilities overwhelm their morality.
Now Showing: Downtown West

Zelary (R)
In the midst of WWII, the Czech Republic is occupied by the Nazis, forcing Eliska, a nurse in Prague, to flee. Her only option is to live in the countryside in the backward town of Zelary with a simple mountain man named Joza, whose life she had once saved by giving her own blood. The tale of survival and compassion was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
Now Showing: Downtown West

Rap is a Battlefield

Say what you will against Eminem. Call him white trash usurping a black man’s medium. Complain that his latest disc lacks the genius of his past records. Bitch and moan that he won’t shut up about ex-wife Kim, his mother and his miserable childhood.

Even so, Eminem is a phenomenon. Everything Marshall Midas touches turns gold. Who else could sell a single about child molestation and farting, or bring black hoodies, mix tapes and battle rap to the forefront of pop culture?

No surprise, then, to find television shows and documentaries about freestyling and battling creeping out of the creative consciousness. In a way, it’s almost insulting. Taking financial advantage of a raw but beautiful cultural ritual smacks of capitalist whoring. At the same time, battle rap is so complex and fascinating that it’s hard not to want more.

The Battle for L.A.: Footsoldiers Vol. 1 is one of the first documentary films to penetrate this underground verbal boxing circuit. As much a film as a promo piece for West Coast rap crew Tunnelrats, The Battle for L.A. invites the curious to a world of unrefined Hip Hop.

It’s a world not unlike 8 Mile. Here, word-slinging warriors spit syllables like poison. Punches and kicks are traded for vicious lexical assaults. When these competitors pound one another, it’s pride that’s at stake.

As a documentary, Battle succeeds because it doesn’t tell us a story—we’ve already been to 8 Mile. Instead, this documentary rolls the film and ducks for cover. In return, we get a ringside seat with one hell of a view.

Sadly, two things don’t work for this movie. One is short bits of interviews with the battle rappers. While these could have been interesting, mostly the MCs just repeat one another and barely scratch the surface of why freestyle battles are so engaging. The production and mixing is also off, to the point that the beats these poets skip over drown out their words. That’s a shame, too, because some of these tongues pack quite a punch.

—Lloyd Babbit

December 2, 2004 * Vol. 14, No. 49
© 2003 Metro Pulse