Dope - 2015

Written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa. Cinematographer was Rachel Morrison. A woman cinematographer. Welcome to Hillary's America people.
So we talk about the language of film here, the ability of the camera to tell a story without words. In the opening of 'Dope' there's a salmagundi of shots illustrating Malcolm's 90's hip hop fetish. Unfortunately, for some inexplicable reason, Famuyiwa uses voice over to explain what we can already plainly see. And the voice natters on for two minutes explaining character traits we should have learned visually or through action.  

To top it off, the voice over is never used again in the film. Maybe a producer got nervous and made him add it in, kinda like how a producer made him add in his kid. I'm joking of course, I'm sure Brown getting the role was completely unrelated. There's the old rule in movies of "show don't tell", we might need to add an addendum of "don't show and tell".
I'm probably making too much of a minor annoyance, especially when the rest of the film was so enjoyable. Let's take a look at one of my favorite scenes, towards the end when Malcolm stands up to his bullies. The camera holds still when filming his friend walking up calmly to take the gun away. It shakes with nervous energy whenever the focus is on Malcolm. A wonderful job of depicting the two states of mind. You'll also notice in the background shot for his friend there's a lot of life and light, cars and stores, but behind Malcolm there's just darkness. Again, Rachel is demonstrating the characters focus, not just in the scene but in their lives. Malcolm makes a bunch of short term decisions in the movie and it's surprising he escapes his bad decisions when everything he does is so singularly focused on himself and his needs. Maybe that's the ultimate moral, get yours.

Rick creates an uneasy dynamic during the meetings between AJ and Malcom. Some of it is in the acting, but Rachel uses the camera to pepper the scenes with awkwardness. She fills the shot below with an unfocused look at the back of Malcom's head which dominates the screen even though AJ should be the person in power here. Rachel never shows us the back of AJ, so Maclom is a fully drawn character here as opposed to the cartoon-ish Austin.

I can't give an example here but the editing is another factor in creating tension in the scene above. The cuts get quicker and quicker as both sides begin to assert themselves.
The final shot of the film I really like initially, then I changed my mind the second time. I wish he hadn't looked at the camera directly. Why?

It changes the meaning of the film. It makes Malcolm self-aware, as if we were watching a documentary. So was he acting how he did to impress the people in the film, or to impress us the audience?
Highly recommended. It was a lot of fun,especially if you know the tropes of films like 'Heaven is a Playground' with a bit of 'Wassup Rockers' thrown in.