With films like The Imitation Game, Nightcrawler, and Birdman earning critical acclaim left and right, it can be easy to forget that some of the season’s highest profile films have yet to come out. In particular, this Friday sees the release of two of my favorite films of the year–P.T. Anderson’s Inherent Vice and Chris Rock’s Top Five. Many cinephiles have been losing their mind over Inherent Vice since they first heard P.T. Anderson was adapting a seemingly unadaptable Thomas Pynchon novel, but equally worthy of praise and attention is Rock’s Top Five.
The semi-autobiographical comedy follows comedian Andre Allen, an international superstar on the downspin who is struggling to find himself after leaving behind stand-up comedy and a series of incredibly profitable yet incredibly stupid films that left him creatively unfulfilled. Rock serves as the triple threat of writer-director-star, but he is also anchored by a tremendous cast of characters including Rosario Dawson, Kevin Hart, J.B. Smoove, Jay Pharaoh, Leslie Jones, Gabrielle Union, Sherri Shepard, Anders Holm, and some of the best cameos I’ve seen in any film all year. (If you don’t know what they are, don’t spoil them for yourself.)
While you’ll have to wait until this Friday to see Top Five for yourself, we have an exclusive featurette courtesy of Paramount that shows Rock and the cast talking about what it was like to make the film and the experience of working with a comedian-turned-director like Rock.
Top Five opens on December 12.
