Baby Boy

Director: John Singleton

2001 / 130min / DCP

Released 10 years after his Boyz N the Hood became a cultural phenomenon, Singleton’s Baby Boy, from its disarming opening images of full-grown star Tyrese Gibson as a fetus curled in the womb, is a film so audacious, so provocative, and so personal it’s difficult to believe it ever had a nationwide release. With two babies on the way from two different women and his young mother (A.J. Johnson) bringing around a hyper-masculine new boyfriend (Ving Rhames), Gibson’s coddled Jody is faced with a crisis of identity, struggling to “be a man” without any viable model to emulate. “Singleton’s most mature and hopeful film.”—Armond White, The National Review