The Corner

Two of my favorite things combined..... but falls short.
The creator of my favorite TV show, The Wire (David Simon), and the actor from one of my favorite movies, FRESH (Sean Nelson) , joined forces in 2000 for this Emmy winning HBO miniseries called The Corner. We Netflixed it because of our love for the Wire and Fresh, but it was just super depressing and poorly acted. Actors you'll recognize from The Wire play characters that are surprisingly out of character. Hours and hours of watching junkies flounder without much plot. The miniseries starts off like it's trying to look like a documentary, but then incorporates so many camera angles that it's hardly believable. Jill and I stopped after a couple episodes.
Sooooooo..... This leads me to recommend FRESH to fans of The Wire. Fresh is about an 11/12-year-old drug runner who is too smart for his own good and tries to out-smart his way out of New York drug life. This movie was supposed to be the first "ghetto movie" in the 90's (and had a hyper-realism feel like The Wire), but on the eave of its release, Boys n the Hood and Menace to Society were released by other studios and served as more high-action/violent and more popular movies. But Fresh is, by far, more better. The best thing about Fresh is the kids in it use real urban kid language and it's so real. The dialog is so real. Fans of The Wire will also appreciate a familiar feeling of having to remember names, faces, alliances, and street vocabulary. Plus, you'll love the character Fresh- that's the kids name.