Then when Jay-Z's purported love interest, Beyoncé Knowles, sets the half-dollar-size paillettes on her black minidress in motion, that songstress needs merely to walk from stage right to stage left and back for the audience's frenzied approval. Missy Elliott pulls one leg of her jeans upward, and Lil' Kim lets her décolletage inch downward. Diddy arrives in a cropped rabbit-fur jacket, and Ghostface Killah sports python-thick chains with platter-wide medallions.

‘Drive My Car’: In this quiet Japanese masterpiece, a widower travels to Hiroshima to direct an experimental version of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”įor the concert Jay-Z corrals hip-hop stars and allies, each decked out in an expensive ensemble.

‘Passing’: Set in the 1920s, the movie centers on two African American women, friends from childhood, who can and do present as white.

‘Spencer’: Kristen Stewart stars as an anguished, rebellious Princess Diana in Pablo Larraín’s answer to “The Crown.”.

‘Summer of Soul’: Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Mavis Staples and others shine in Questlove’s documentary about the Harlem Cultural Festival.

Scott and Manohla Dargis, selected their favorite movies of the year. Rubin, who has recorded with everyone from Run-DMC to Johnny Cash, also finds something to marvel at: 'He doesn't write anything down. In Los Angeles Jay-Z enjoys an in-studio haircut as well as the record producer Rick Rubin's taxidermy collection, especially a polar bear wearing a red fez. A string of rhymes comes together, and he describes his trance: 'I go through my Rain Man. Posse members swig Pepsi, play ColecoVision and show off new riffs, while Jay-Z scowls in concentration. This overly long concert film follows Jay-Z through his preshow paces and visits studio sessions leading up to the big night last November. Its energy, however, is infectious just the same.

When you realize he has already returned to the same stage one year later for a troubled performance - last weekend - it is hard to muster much emotion for this would-be career-capper. In 'Fade to Black,' the rapper Jay-Z performs his own movie-length swan song set to thumping rhythms in Madison Square Garden.

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