#4: Street Fight (Curry, 2005)

"I understand what you've done here, Queue. But I think the lesson could have been learned without the loss of 18 members of my crew." - Captain Picard

My Netflix queue is almost always at maximum capacity. I don't get it, who doesn't have 500 movies they are dying to see?

This is particularly annoying whenever I stumble across an awesome looking softcore lesbian foreign "film" and the site won't let me queue it up. Since I know that I'll forget the name of That Movie with That French Chick immediately after navigating away from its page, I have a conundrum. I can...

1) ...Forgo watching I Kissed a Mongolian Girl (and I liked It) altogether.
2) ...Prune a random film from the list I wasn't likely to watch in the first place (I'm looking at you, Rollerball).
3) ...Stream a queued "instant" movie through the Netflix website, after which a spot will be freed.

Tonight, I chose option three.

Streaming a movie through a browser is a bit different than watching it on a disc. The picture quality is pretty good, but not as great as DVD and nowhere near Bluray standards. There aren't any subtitle options, which annoys the screenwriter in me. And you don't get any special features (i.e. director's commentary, deleted scenes). I decided on a documentary ((1) less emphasis on picture quality, (2) likely was never a screenplay, (3) low budgets often result in very few DVD extras).

I picked Street Fight (Curry, 2005). Curry gives us a good documentary about the 2002 mayoral election in Newark, NJ, focusing mostly on the grotesqueness of urban politics and barriers that prevent new ideas and new candidates from dismantling "the machine."

The subject is compelling, Curry's style was adequate for a "follow you around" type doc, the footage was intimate, and the characters say provocative things ("We ask our black children to get educated. And they do. Then we call them white.") Street Fight is a good film, I thoroughly recommend it, etc., etc.

What really fascinated me was this glimpse into Newark. It's a fucking disgusting city in every respect, I really had no idea! If the occupants weren't speaking quasi-English the whole time, I would have assumed they were filming in Port-au-Prince or something. The police are corrupt, the buildings are rundown, the candidates are unapologetic criminals who are consistently re-elected by the stupidest constituents to ever be captured on celluloid! Newark is the fucking asshole of the entire hemisphere.

Who knew?

Street Fight (2005)

Even buildings kill themselves when forced to live in Newark.

And the film's most random exchange:

LITTLE BLACK GIRL: "I just touched Booker. If you don't believe me you can smell my hand"
DOCUMENTARIAN: "Um, does he have a smell?"
LITTLE BLACK GIRL: "Yes. He smells like... he smells like THE FUTURE."

Final score: 78 out of 100.