Belly

Hype Williams’s film resolutely believes in finding a better path, culminating in both of the main characters seeking their own form of peace.

An often astounding spectacle of a movie that doesn’t make a lick of sense, but that’s almost beside the point.

Sanctimonious, silly, occasionally brilliant and exquisitely vivid, Hype Williams’s Belly (1998) crowned the decade in which hip-hop swallowed popular culture, and we never looked back.

That opening scene bumps it up. I forgot, upon rewatching, how great the opening is and how terrible everything after is. Should've just been a music video...

If we're not talking about the opening...this is pure insanity. Have you actually watched this movie?

On paper, Belly is just another boilerplate crime drama about how a life of street crime can only end one way... In its execution lies perhaps one of the greatest displays of style as substance in contemporary cinema.