Hudlin Entertainment Forum

General Category => Hard Choices => Topic started by: Reginald Hudlin on June 16, 2015, 05:45:25 am

Title: MENACE II SOCIETY or SET IT OFF?
Post by: Reginald Hudlin on June 16, 2015, 05:45:25 am

Two hood gangster classics.  Which do you choose?

Title: Re: MENACE II SOCIETY or SET IT OFF?
Post by: Magic Wand on June 17, 2015, 10:23:06 am

Not a hard choice at all, Reg!

SET IT OFF!

I can watch it over and over again.
The characters are funny and beautiful.  The plot is engaging.  The soundtrack is AMAZING.

I don't even remember that other movie.

Title: Re: MENACE II SOCIETY or SET IT OFF?
Post by: Reginald Hudlin on June 17, 2015, 02:09:20 pm

Quote from: Magic Wand on June 17, 2015, 10:23:06 am

Not a hard choice at all, Reg!

SET IT OFF!

I can watch it over and over again.
The characters are funny and beautiful.  The plot is engaging.  The soundtrack is AMAZING.

I don't even remember that other movie.

See, I was concerned this was gonna break the other way.  You never know with these hard choices. 

Title: Re: MENACE II SOCIETY or SET IT OFF?
Post by: Emperorjones on June 21, 2015, 04:30:59 pm

Set It Off was good, emotional, an affecting film, but at the same time there was a lightness, fictional quality to the story that Menace II Society didn't quite have. Menace was raw, visceral, and pretty dark. I watched it as a younger man, perhaps in my late teens though I can't quite remember when I saw it exactly now, but it packed a punch, one that even New Jack City (which also had a kind of movie-ish quality) and even Boyz In the Hood didn't have. I enjoyed both Set It Off and Menace II Society, but I'm going with Menace. Of all of those hood movies of the 90s I think Menace stands on top of the mountain.

I don't know if this was the best comparison. Perhaps Menace to Boyz In the Hood. I mean Set It Off had a kind of action movie quality to it that lines up more with New Jack City, IMO. Or maybe even Dead Presidents.