KEANU [2016]

TV sketch comedy duo Key & Peele (and their frequent director, Peter Atencio) take their evident love for movies and make one of their own.

Keanu follows two middle-class suburban fellas that clumsily pose as dangerous drug dealers in order to retrieve their stolen kitten.
K&P take the one-joke fish-out-of-water set-up and nearly make it work for the entirety of the film.  It loses some steam in several spots, mostly when the plot starts veering off course but thanks to the two lead's chemistry and charisma it never grows too stale.  The influences are worn on the film's sleeve, while there are some well-placed in-jokes that only the most hardened fans of film & TV will pick up (Cheddar? Brilliant).
To top it all off, this is probably one of the most adorable kittens to ever grace the screen.

3 fluffy pink bunny head's that'll stab you in the eye out of 5

STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON [2015]

Friday director F. Gary Gray walks with some familiar faces in the music bio-pic Straight Outta Compton, depicting the short-lived rise & fall of pioneering West Coast rap act N.WA.
It's follows the group in 1986 as they come together and leads right up to the 1996 birth of Aftermath Entertainment, so obviously it follows the members for quite a few years after the demise of the controversial group.  So with that being said, it might not be so much a N.W.A. bio-pic and more a E, Dre & Cube bio-pic seeing as M.C. Ren, The D.O.C. and DJ Yella are largely ignored in it's 2½ hour running time.  It's not often when a film like this hires actors who look like the people their playing have actual talent but thankfully due to some excellent direction and strong performances it never becomes distracting or overly phony.  It glazes over quite a few shadier incidents involving our "heroes" of the film but nothing that would push the dramatic plotting of the film.  It's not the perfect musical bio-pic but certainly is one of the more easily digestible and entertaining.

3½ Bye, Felicia's out of 5