Wild Style.

"Barely cooled off from all the burning, the cellblock-bare, Krylon-coated South Bronx of Charlie Ahearn's Wild Style [site] is the kind of urban wilderness spoken nostalgically of by people who only moved here post-Giuliani," writes Mark Asch in the L Magazine. "It's the city as blank canvas - or maybe metal-sided 6 Train, to be tagged in Day-Glo bubble letters - from which springs graffiti and hip-hop culture, represented by Ahearn's friends Lee Quinones and Fab 5 Freddy."

Updated through 11/14.

"The acting is often laughably stiff, but that's part of the charm of a film whose real value is as a time capsule unlocked." In the Voice, Ernest Hardy finds "an artful vibrancy that remains undiminished."

David Gonzalez talks with Ahearn for the New York Times.

At Film Forum from Friday through November 20.

Updates, 11/14: "[I]t deftly reflects the thin line between inspiration and appropriation by white artists," notes Melissa Anderson in Time Out New York. "But the film wasn't made to suggest that Gotham was one big rainbow coalition - its sole purpose was to celebrate the genius of hip-hop's founders."

"Commentators now refer to the film as a 'time capsule,' but that phrase, with its implication that something long vanished has been unearthed, isn't quite accurate," writes Nelson Kim at Hammer to Nail. "Wild Style is still in the air, all around us. It's part of the foundation of the building every hip hop lover calls home."

"In [its] charmingly ragged way, Wild Style celebrates the persistence of street-level ambition, insatiable creativity, and youthful passions in the face of hostile (the cops) and exploitative (media) forces," writes Steven Boone at the House Next Door.

Posted by dwhudson at November 12, 2008 9:10 AM