![]() Either way, it’s four-and-a-half hours - while far short of the seven that West is heard telling someone that it will eventually run - are still long enough to make “Hoop Dreams” feel like a YouTube video by comparison. Or maybe it’s none? It would be a simple question of semantics if not for the fact that each of its 90-minute parts is shaped like an episode of a TV show, complete with teases and recaps. ![]() By the time it’s over, the fact that Kanye cut Simmons out of his life for nearly 15 years is just a part of the reason why this film only finds a thimble of insight for every mile of its event horizon. The big-hearted man behind the camera loves the volatile guy in front of it too much to look directly at the person he became (the same person he knew would eventually be watching this), and “jeen-yuhs” suffers as a result. On the other hand, that same codependency makes it hard for Simmons to maintain perspective once West’s fortunes start to turn. On the one hand, Simmons’ personal attachment to the growing supernova at the center of this story results in the unique intimacy of a film that shares the fortune of its subject. All told, the raw and addictive “ jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy” is both a little more than the movie inspired it, and also a lot less. the bittersweet moments shared between West and his late mother Donda) bring the rapper back down to Earth in a way that make it easier to see him as a product of his environment. ![]() Needless to say, he hasn’t, though stretches of the final cut (e.g. West is too much of a black hole to be the subject of a Steve James movie. His compulsive need to suck up every last atom of oxygen in the room - whether that room is the scuzzy home studio where he wrote the beat for Jay-Z’s “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” or the stadium inside Madison Square Garden - has always made West an ill-fitting avatar for anyone but himself, and precluded the possibility that Simmons and his co-director Chike Ozah would be able to shape this project into the “Hoop Dreams” of anything. Where to Watch This Week’s New Movies, from ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.
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