movie – Houghton STAR

by Rebecca Dailey '25

Tonight from 8 to 10 the Campus Activities Board (CAB) will host their Valentine’s Day event, “Flics and Fondue,” outside of Java in the Reinhold Campus Center basement. The evening will include a chocolate fondue fountain with assorted snacks, valentine writing supplies and a showing of the “Princess Bride”!

Emma Podobinski ‘27, who is leading the event, expressed her excitement: “I have always loved Valentine’s Day, and that definitely inspired this event. I wanted to create a cozy and chill event for people to enjoy on the holiday while doing thematic activities. To me, eating chocolate fondue, watching a romance movie, and writing Valentines sounded like the perfect Valentine’s night.”

Jana Newberry, Director of Student Engagement and the supervisor for CAB, shared, “Emma mentioned the idea for this event in her CAB interview process and so it’s very cool to see it come full circle! Valentine’s Day is a fun one, and I like that the event feels both special and relaxed. I like that anyone could come and have a good time.”

Significant planning went into this event. Newberry helped coordinate behind the scenes details and supported Podobinski’s process of reserving a space, ordering food and decorations and renting equipment.

“CAB works collaboratively on most of our events from the idea phase to putting on the actual event,” Newberry stated. She added that “Typically, we have one or two people ‘on point’ in this case Emma Podobinski had the idea and energy for this event and has done a great job with the planning!”

Podobinski wanted to create an atmosphere for everyone. “For this event, my favorite part of planning was creating the atmosphere that I envisioned the event to have,” she said. “When I was ordering decorations, I had a lot of fun planning how I wanted to transform the space outside of Java 101 into the cozy place I was imagining. I relied on Pinterest to see the vision come together and to come up with fun ideas for the event.”

While Valentine’s Day may be centered around love, this event is meant to share with all, Newberry said. “We wanted to do something specific for Valentine’s day and most people can get behind food and movies,” she commented.

She added, “Again, everyone is welcome, whether they can come for the whole time or just drop!”

“I want everyone to be able to enjoy Valentine’s Day, whether they are in a relationship or not,” Podobinski expressed. “So, I hope this event creates a space where people feel comfortable and can spend time with their friends and loved ones on the holiday.” ★

In an age where we have become so accustomed to celebrity culture it can be easy to forget that there was, in fact, a point in time when aggressively colorful headphones did not bear the name of Dr. Dre or that Ice Cube actually had a career beyond starring in buddy-cop goofball comedies alongside Kevin Hart or Channing Tatum as an ironic parody of his former self. That is the point director F. Gary Gray wishes to make in Straight Outta Compton. Before the two of them were media moguls, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and fellow rapper and business partner Eazy-E, had a hand in creating music together that would change the world forever.

Straight Outta Compton, to the uninitiated, is about the rise and fall of N.W.A., one of the most controversial musical groups of all time. So infamous were they that their best selling album, “Straight Outta Compton”, was the first to ever include the “Parental Advisory” sticker on the front of it. The film does an excellent job chronicling the earliest exploits of Cube, Dre, and E and how through combining their individual, unique skillsets they were able to secure a record deal with the help of manager, Jerry Heller.

The performances are solid throughout, Jason Mitchell as Eazy-E, O’Shea Jackson Jr. as Ice Cube, Corey Hawkins as Dr. Dre, and one excellent Paul Giamatti as Jerry Heller, the group’s manager. Mitchell, Jackson, and Hawkins even do their own rapping. All four are featured prominently alongside each other without anyone hogging too much of the spotlight and each remaining completely magnetic on their own. There are a couple of dents in the armor when it comes to the screenplay but my overall enjoyment of the movie was hardly affected by the occasional lapse of good writing or awkward method of delivery.

One of the darker aspects of the film is the early theme of police brutality and racism. It is the 1980s, after all. The film’s timeline falls in the middle of the Rodney King era, which is mentioned at several points. By seeing the actions of the LAPD and their unjustified aggression toward our protagonists, it is hard not to sympathize with them and have some sort of muted respect for the brazenness of their retaliation in the form of “F*ck Tha Police”. It is no secret that N.W.A. was widely demonized by the public over the content of their songs upon release, one of Straight Outta Compton’s biggest strengths being how it attempts it humanize its members by providing enough lyrical context to educate as well as entertain.

The second half of the film does more to focus on the careers of Dre, Cube, and E as they begin to drift away toward other projects. Some of the film’s funniest moments are the scenes featuring Dre’s first forays into producing for other rappers who today you and your mother are almost guaranteed to know on a first name basis.

However, things don’t move at nearly as brisk a clip here as the first half. Some scenes drag on a bit longer than they should, others grind past not feeling vital enough to have made it into the final cut. The foremost criticism by many regarding Straight Outta Compton is that certain incriminating details surrounding the morality of N.W.A.’s members are never brought up. This isn’t to say that the movie portrays them as spotless, only able to be properly seen through rose-colored glasses but it is true that some particularly unflattering scenarios managed to stay away from the narrative we see on the screen.

If you enjoy the conventions of good filmmaking, music from the golden era of hip-hop, movies with hard-R subject matter, or have even a passing curiosity for social justice, any one of those reasons is good enough to give Straight Outta Compton a watch. The characters are rough around the edges but wholly endearing, showing multiple generations the merits of overcoming great lengths to express yourself, “Express Yourself” incidentally being a great N.W.A. song that you should definitely go listen to.