The High-Low Grooming Pair “I have this travel-size oil from my friend Will. It's called Sandalwood scent. It's in a little vial. You wouldn't believe the amount of compliments I got off this. Now I can't travel without it. It's not too much. It's the perfect balance. You know how people will wear cologne, and it's good but it's a lot—or they could have used more? This is the perfect in-between. You're not trying too hard, but you also don't smell bad.” “My grandma just got me some Speed Stick. I was at her house and she’s got a drawer full of them. I think she got it at the dollar store or somewhere. She freaking loves Speed Stick. She's literally that type of grandma that buys everything in bulk to make sure when people come over it’s there.” Speed Stick The Multi-Purpose Bag With a Message “I have this duffel bag that I like to use. It's from Beyu. Their company is all about individuality, believing in oneself. It's a duffel bag that turns into a backpack, it turns into an over-the-shoulder bag, and it's pretty dope. I was actually performing at a show in Atlanta on my last trip, and a friend of a friend came backstage with a whole bunch of them and so they gifted me one. It was amazing. After they told me about what they stood for, I totally had to have one.” Beyu Urban Explorer Dufflepac Chelsea Boots for Running, Dancing, and Other Craziness “I'm not trying to spend $1,500 on a shoe. That's just me, because I'm always dancing or running or doing some craziness and messing up sneakers. Expensive shoes are not the goal. House of Hounds are nice boots. They have a lot of different styles.” House of Hounds "Adrian" suede buckle boots The On-the-Go Headphones “You know, make calls, listen to music, and just be more remote while getting to wherever I need to get. The AirPods, they’re not bad.”<doc-sep>“I know it’s a rotten game, but it’s the only one the Man left us to play.” With those words, spoken by one weary drug dealer to another, the 1972 film “Super Fly” offered up a soulful lament to go with its moody style, fabulous clothes and immortal Curtis Mayfield soundtrack. Directed by Gordon Parks Jr., whose father had helped usher in the blaxploitation era by directing “Shaft” the year before, the movie told the sad, biting story of Youngblood Priest (Ron O’Neal), a Harlem cocaine dealer looking to pull off one last big score and get out of the game for good — a classic gangster-movie premise that couldn’t help but take on extra resonance for a black man defying a system bent on keeping him and others like him in their place. For the record: An earlier version of this post said that “Superfly” was Director X’s (a.k.a. Julien Christian Lutz) feature debut. He directed a 2015 feature called “Across the Line.” Forty-six years later, there’s a new “Superfly” on the scene, and Priest, now played by the strikingly handsome Trevor Jackson (“Grown-ish”), is still a pusherman gunning for early retirement, this time sporting a leather jacket and a slicked-back cock-of-the-walk hairdo. He talks a lot more than his predecessor did, underscoring the movie’s overall more-is-more sensibility: more gritty realism, more outsize fantasy, more drive-by political critique. The action has moved from Harlem to Atlanta, with a few quick stopovers in Texas and Mexico for that extra jolt of contemporary drug-war verisimilitude. There are several shootouts, a lot more dead bodies and one explosive car chase whose biggest casualty is a once-proud Confederate statue. In between set-pieces dripping with so much blood and attitude that you might want to bring a mop to the theater, we get some pole-dancing eye candy and a three-way sex scene that, much like the 1972 film’s memorable bathtub interlude, nearly stops the story dead in its tracks. Advertisement In neither case should that be interpreted as a criticism. “Superfly” may be suffused with political fury, but it is also unapologetically awash in cheap, disreputable B-movie thrills. That sounds like a fair approximation of the twin satisfactions — pleasure and provocation — that the early blaxploitation movies afforded their audiences in the immediate wake of the civil rights era, and there’s no real reason the formula shouldn’t hold up now: Even more than some movies, racial oppression has a way of never falling out of fashion. READ MORE: A look back at the blaxploitation era through 2018 eyes » But if “Superfly” is an arresting feature effort for Director X (a.k.a. Julien Christian Lutz), the music-video auteur known for his visually hypnotic work with artists including Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z and Rihanna, its gleeful ode to excess can also be strained and self-defeating. A lot of effort has been expended to outdo the original story in sheer scale, volume and violence, but the soul of Parks’ 1972 picture — the quality that made it both a crudely invigorating entertainment and a meaningful document of its time and place — is in little danger of meeting its match here. Which doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy yourself. Director X does a pretty good imitation of a Michael Mann fever dream, shooting in a rough digital blur of neon-nightclub interiors and harsh daylight exteriors, amped by the throbbing beats of a soundtrack assembled by hip-hop artist Future. (The music, which includes shout-outs to “Pusherman,” “Freddie’s Dead” and other Mayfield classics, is the one area in which the new movie makes no real effort to compete.) Trevor Jackson and Lex Scott Davis in a scene from “Superfly” (Quantrell D. Colbert / Sony Pictures Entertainment ) Jackson’s charisma is almost as enviable as his coiffure, and he survives the script’s decision to transform Priest into a preening smartass and trash talker extraordinaire. But like O’Neal’s more melancholic spin on the role, he retains a fundamental core of integrity, evident in his reluctance to kill anyone as he looks for the exit sign. Priest’s commitment to nonviolence is not even remotely shared by anyone else — not his gambling-loving partner, Eddie (“Mudbound’s” terrific Jason Mitchell), or his unreliable backup, Fat Freddie (Jacob Ming-Trent), who have their own mixed feelings about his decision to quit. The excellent if underused Michael K. Williams shows off a few jujitsu moves as Priest’s longtime supplier, while Esai Morales takes the story briefly south of the border as a ruthless drug lord. Piling complication upon complication, a new subplot introduces a rival gang of Atlanta drug dealers, named Sno Patrol for their white suits, white cars and white firearms, who run afoul of the play-it-cool Priest and ignite a brutal turf war. Among those in Priest’s inner circle forced to deal with the fallout are his two live-in girlfriends, Georgia (Lex Scott Davis) and Cynthia (Andrea Londo). Their highly functional domestic arrangement offers a sly update of the original material (which had Priest cheating on two different women) as well as an acknowledgment of the more open, sexually fluid tenor of the present moment. Advertisement But if the women in Priest’s life get to see some more action this time, whether that means making out in the shower or hurling a few Molotov cocktails, it’s hardly enough to keep the story from lapsing into the reflexive misogyny that has always been part of blaxploitation’s legacy. “Superfly” may not escape the built-in pitfalls of the genre that inspired it, but it doesn’t skimp on the sidelong satisfactions that those old movies held for black audiences unaccustomed to seeing themselves adequately represented on the big screen. You could argue that things have changed for the better in an era that has given us works as rich and varied as “Moonlight,” “Get Out,” “Black Panther” and the forthcoming “BlacKkKlansman” — a renaissance in African American cinema that might make the scuzzy, nasty pleasures of “Superfly” seem regressive by comparison. Maybe they do. Or maybe the sharp representational laws that too often constrict the cinematic depiction of minorities should be flexible enough to allow for both progress and regression, the low, the high and everything in between. There are ferocious moments here, one involving a confrontation between a white cop and a black driver, that briefly lift “Superfly” out of the realm of lurid, flashy genre retread and into territory that feels raw, unsettling and all too grimly convincing. How Youngblood Priest deals with the Man this time around may be the stuff of purest revenge fantasy, but it also touches a nerve that is hard to dismiss as anything but real. ------------ Advertisement ‘Superfly’ Rating: R, for violence and language throughout, strong sexuality, nudity and drug content Running time: 1 hour, 56 minutes Playing: In general release Advertisement See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour » justin.chang@latimes.com @JustinCChang<doc-sep>Here are some things that are legitimately superfly in “Superfly”: the vertical hairdo on fabulously named anti-hero Youngblood Priest (Trevor Jackson) and his vast collection of trenchcoats (black leather, brown leather and sheepskin, waxed cotton, sequined); a dirty, murderous cop getting an elaborate martial-arts beatdown; and the fact that Priest’s girlfriends (Lex Scott Davis and Andrea Londo) have actual personalities and even jobs. Less superfly is Alex Tse’s updated screenplay, which turns the stylish, gritty 1972 blaxploitation film into a fairly standard drug-dealer thriller. This could partly be because we’re so used to unconventional leading men like Priest — thanks to the original, which unblinkingly portrayed his “one big coke sale and I’m out” quest as noble. Making his feature directorial debut, Director X — whose background is in music videos (Rihanna, Drake, Kendrick Lamar) — shoots in Atlanta instead of Harlem, glamming up the story with fast cars, hip-hop and lots more women than the original, albeit mostly nearly naked ones in a strip club. There’s also now a ruthless, rival gang of dealers called Snow Patrol, who dress in all white. (Subtle!) But “Superfly” escapes superficiality thanks largely to strong performances from Jackson, Jason Mitchell as Priest’s workmanlike partner, Eddie, and Michael Kenneth Williams as Priest’s mentor, Scatter. Amid all the automatic-weapons warfare, Priest’s navel-gazing and a pretty steamy threesome, there are a few flashes of righteous black anger — one character’s car crash envelops a Confederate statue in a giant ball of flame. And then there’s Eddie’s reason for not wanting to quit dealing and get out safely. “We’re black men,” he says. “There ain’t no place safe on this f–kin’ planet.” Music producer and rapper Future pays respectful homage to Curtis Mayfield, who scored and performed in the original, in the remake’s soundtrack. When you hear the first notes of “Pusherman,” you expect it to turn into a high-wattage remix, but nope: That’s all vintage Mayfield. Still, Director X isn’t above tweaking the older, funkier generation. When Scatter nods to Priest’s “Morris Day hair,” the pretty-boy dealer turns to him: “Excuse me? Who the f–k is Morris Day?” Heresy!<doc-sep>
MIAMI — “Superfly” star Trevor Jackson wasn’t sure that he would land the starring role of the latest Hollywood remake. “I really wanted to be a part of this film,” said Jackson. “I auditioned twice, but I was told I was too young and I didn’t have a big enough name. I was [later] invited to [producer] Joel SIlver’s house, and I was told I got the role.” Based off of 1972 film “Super Fly” directed by Gordon Parks, Jr., the 2018 feature is about a young successful drug dealer, named Priest (Jackson), who is ready to get out of the game. He lines things up for one final score that could retire him, but things go terribly wrong and now his loved ones are in danger. Jackson, whose acting credits include ABC’s “grown-ish” and “American Crime,” joined “Superfly” filmmaker Director X and the rest of the cast in Miami Beach, Fla. for the film’s premiere at the American Black Film Festival (ABFF) on Wednesday. When asked about what makes “Superfly” the best opening night film, ABFF CEO Jeff Friday said, it “is one of the few films of its era that featured African-American characters with agency and power.” The new adaptation features actors Jason Mitchell, Michael Kenneth Williams, and Jacob Latimore. “This was a chance to put my feeling about remakes and source material to the test,” Director X said on the carpet. “I’ve been to a lot of movies that don’t follow the source material and I wasn’t interested in doing that. I wanted to make a movie based on the original that resonated [like] the original film and then progressed forward.” The original title resonated as a cultural touchstone for Director X and others, not only for the look and style of the film, but also for Curtis Mayfield’s legendary soundtrack. The music is another draw for the film’s recent reimagining. Besides rappers like Rick Ross, Kia Shine and Big Boi appearing in the film, “Superfly” and its soundtrack is produced by hip-hop recording artist Future, who was also at the Florida premiere. “We wanted someone who knows the culture, who knows the town and who has a voice that speaks to right now, and at the same time makes great music,” added Director X. “With all those criteria there no one else but Future.” Trevor Jackson, Future, Jason Mitchell, Rick Ross and Big Boi attend the opening night of the 2018 American Black Film Festival in Miami Eric Charbonneau/REX/Shutterstock “Superfly” hits theaters June 15.