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It is a performances centric movie

Great Film overall

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

This one got lost somehow in the years between School Daze and Dear White People, but it's well worth rediscovering. Multi-story structure played out by a fine ensemble cast is perhaps a bit too schematic and tries to do a bit too much, but Singleton brings the same empathy he displayed in Boyz in the Hood (and a welcome returning cast member, Ice Cube) to Higher Learning. Plus, his filmmaking smarts have improved, if anything, as several very well thought-through sequences demonstrate (particularly the melded-together love-making episode). What Singleton accomplishes, very movingly, is to convey the struggles that college-age people have figuring out who they are and what they are here for. The pain of being midway between adulthood and adulthood itself is always right there on the surface -- especially for the black characters, of course, since they are adjusting to a world much more directly controlled by the white man than they had previously experienced, but for the white characters too, one most tragically. Higher Learning accomplishes this at least as well as the two films mentioned earlier. Biggest asset: Omar Epps. His performance as Malik has a depth and emotional weight that goes beyond the rest of the cast (who are all just fine) and makes clear how much is at stake for him -- and everybody -- in the drama of college.

Director John Singleton is trying to cram every stereotype into this portrait of an American college. Sure the student body can be divided along racial lines and racial tensions. And sure there are rapes in colleges. And hard drinking parties ... And racist security ... And lesbian experimentation. All he needs is some gay guys and he's all set.Kristy Swanson plays the co-ed who falls into some hard partying and gets raped. Although I like her, she's not a versatile actress. If I have any problems, it's Busta Rhymes. He is the biggest ridiculous stereotype in this movie. Singleton is not doing him or himself any favors. The battle between Ice Cube and Michael Rapaport does drive the story in an interesting way. But again, Singleton takes it into the most sensationalized way. This is not a subtle movie. The characters are mostly 2-dimensional. Tyra Banks makes an impassioned plea, but even that seems 2-dimensional. I guess if there are enough 2-d, Singleton hopes it adds up to 3-d.

This is a review of "Rosewood" and "Higher Learning", two films by John Singleton. The weaker of the two, "Rosewood" takes place during the 1923 race riots of Rosewood, Florida. Structured as a western, the film watches as an archetypal "Man With No Name" (Ving Rhames, literally playing a character called Mann) enters Rosewood, only to find the town's predominantly African American population living on edge with a white minority who rule with guns, badges and a bucket full of resentment.A single incident sets the town alight: a young woman blames a black stranger for the vicious beating she received from her white husband. "He was so big!" she screams. "He was so black!" The news spreads. Local white folk begin assembling. Pretty soon a carnival atmosphere develops, whites arming themselves, getting liquored up and commencing the slaughtering of blacks. Charred corpses hang from trees, houses burn and bullets fly.Though it pretends to be "serious" and "historical", "Rosewood" is mostly a silly cartoon. Singleton creates an African American Eden, one which would have flourished had it not been for the white man. Whites are themselves portrayed as lecherous, stupid and one dimensional. One character, played by Jon Voight, is our token "nuanced white". He's a rich landowner, sleazy, but eventually learns to "do the right thing". Elsewhere Singleton consciously reverses common African American stereotypes: all the white families are oversexed, violent, carnal or single parents. The black families, in contrast, are torn straight out of Norman Rockwell paintings, celebrating birthdays, always surrounded by a warm glow or sitting at big, family meals. Later, Mann becomes a Biblical figure, a Moses who leads surviving black folk on an exodus out of Rosewood and across a river.Like most films "about racism", "Rosewood" has nothing to do with racism. The saviours of our victims are two landowners, the ruling class is invisible and it is specifically working class whites who are demonized. Racism, in other words, is caused by the stupid, poor, irrational lower class. But racism always has economic roots. In the US, racial policy became a means of combating worker unity by fostering conflicts and divisions between groups along racial, national, sexual or religious lines. The revitalisation of the KKK in the 1920s was itself a direct response to economic factors. Such things go back as far as the 18th century (quasi-military alliances between large corporations and governments repressed efforts to form labour unions and conduct strikes), when the ruling class pitted blacks, Indians and whites against one another to stave off insurrection. Indians, for example, were often hired as "slave catchers", whilst "strikebreakers" - workers used to replace white strikers – always came from outside the area and/or "lower" ethnic groups. This, of course, exacerbated racial tensions and disrupted communities. Where Rosewood is set, almost two generations after the abolition of slavery and the end of the American Civil War, many French Canadians, East Europeans and Africans were first introduced as strike breakers. The deliberate creation of racial and ethnic conflict was not a matter of individual employer prejudice but of capitalist class strategy. Ulimately, "Rosewood's" message is typical of all of Singleton's films: evil whites preyed on black, set them back, but now's the time for African Americans to help themselves, pull themselves up by the bootstraps, be good and earn a buck. Blacks, in other words, must now be good whites. Play the game that causes the problem and shunt the problem onto someone else.Singleton's "Higher Learning" tells the same story, but is set in a fictional Columbus University. It contains a number of intertwined subplots and characters, the most interesting of which involves Malik Williams (Omar Epps), a black athlete who resents being forced to represent his school on the track field. The film's philosophy is articulated by Laurence Fishburne, who plays a West Indian Professor. African Americans, Fisburne essentially says, should suck it up, work hard, stop blaming people and put up with the problem. Other subplots involve shy and naive girls turning lesbian after being raped by men and a lonely confused man (Michael Rapaport, deliberately parroting DeNiro's Travis Bickle) joining a neo Nazi group. The film ends in a big, climactic orgy of blood, as most of these films do. As with Singleton's best film, "Boyz n the Hood", actor Ice Cube (and rapper Busta Rhymes) stands out. He out classes everyone. The rest of the cast overact.While the film is right to show how racism as a system has been institutionalised within the very fabric of American social, economical, educational, and governmental institutions, and has always sought to dehumanise, devalue, and even destroy minorities and women, its ending, in which the word "unlearn" is boldly written on-screen, is completely unearned. The idea is that a "higher education" beyond "education" is the solution, that one should "unlearn" what they've been programmed to accept, but little in the film supports this theme and the statement largely comes out of left-field.7/10 - Worth one viewing.

I thought I would originally review John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood and Poetic Justice for Black History Month here on IMDb but I found out the YouTube uploads had some scenes blocked by Columbia Pictures. So instead I'm reviewing this one, Higher Learning, having just watched on Netflix Streaming. Taking place at Columbus University, it centers on three freshmen: Malik Williams (Omar Epps) who has a half scholarship on track, Kristen Connor (Kristy Swanson) a naive girl from a town near Disneyland, and Remy (Michael Rapaport) who finds himself alienated from the beginning. They all attend the class of one Professor Phipps (Lawrence Fishbourne) who believes in not doing anyone special favors. Malik is especially resentful of this since he thinks the teacher should "help a brother out". Eventually, they all have some kind of mentor outside of class: Malik with Fudge (Ice Cube) and Deja (Tyra Banks), Kristen with Taryn (Jennifer Connelly), and Remy with Scott Moss (Cole Hauser). Compelling characterizations all with many pertinent topics and situations worth exploring though I feel I have to discuss one really interesting one: after Kristen gets raped, roommate Monet (Regina King) gets a call from the one who did it trying to reach her but gets rebuffed. He doesn't take it well and calls Monet a "black bitch" which then switches the focus from Kristen's misery to Monet's appalled demeanor with the result of her bringing her like-skinned friends to go to his place to...well, you've probably figured what they would attempt to do. This was the most compelling part that explored how one doesn't watch what one says in the heat of the moment with consequences to pay the only option. In summary, Higher Learning is perhaps not a great film but it's very good in pushing one's buttons. So on that note, it's well worth seeing.