Cheese graters, tattoo needles, kitchen scissors—it would be harder to name a household object that isn’t put to exorbitantly gory good use in Lee Cronin’s “Evil Dead Rise,” a gratifyingly lean and impressively mean new installment in the long-running horror franchise. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonKick-started by Sam Raimi’s classic 1981…
Just enough of Apple TV’s latest high-profile thriller works to recommend it, even if it never quite achieves the heights it should with its premise and captivating leading man. Idris Elba has had a fascinating career in that he has the screen charisma to be a movie star, and yet his most popular roles remain…
“When you are an underdog, you have to take what is yours.” Apple TV has revealed the official trailer for the documentary about the basketball icon – Stephen Curry: Underrated, made by director Peter Nicks. This initially premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, a late addition as a Special Screening at…
With the possible exception of the third Godfather entry, I‘ve never had higher expectations for a sequel than for Martin Scorsese’s “The Color of Money” (1986). After all, it took Hollywood twenty-five years to come up with a follow-up to “The Hustler” (1961), one of the greatest films ever made. When they finally decided to…
“They know we have their stuff. Maybe we send it back?” Focus Features has unveiled an official trailer for a crime caper comedy called Drive-Away Dolls, the second feature film directed independently by Ethan Coen after the Coen Brothers split up and decided to start making films on their own. It’s set to open in…
The American Black Film Festival (ABFF) personifies the glow and energetic spirit of Black creators, and its 27th year felt extremely timely. The featured films, TV shows, shorts, and documentaries exemplified the modern Black experience. The festival draws a global crowd and enhances the international understanding of Black people in the diaspora for its attendees….
Released in theaters this past Juneteenth weekend, Tim Story’s “The Blackening” is a well-scripted, intelligent, and funny movie that somehow seems to break the rules of the horror genre and simultaneously keeps them. “We Can’t All Die First,” the film’s tagline, keenly recognizes the well-known horror trope that if any Black people are in the film,…
As major studios adapt to the changing business and cultural landscape, moving into the future all too often means revisiting the past. Few projects embody this phenomenon like the Paramount+ original series “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies,” which debuted last April. Set at the mythical Rydell High School four years before the events of…
Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) still dreams of opening a restaurant. Having discovered the money his deceased brother Mikey (Jon Bernthal) stashed in tomato cans, he now has enough cash, or nearly enough, to follow through on his plans for building a high-end establishment. With sous chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) at his side, he will…
Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s “The Stroll” is a riveting documentary about transgender women of color during the 1990s and early 2000s engaging in sex work in an area known as The Stroll in the Meatpacking District of lower Manhattan. It is a story of despair, sisterhood, and triumph. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect…
The following table of contents features all articles published during Black Writers Week 2023 (June 19th through June 25th), arranged in the following categories: intros, features, interviews, reviews, TV reviews, republished features, republished interviews and republished reviews. —The Editors Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho Marathon INTROS Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The…
“What is the pink, and how do the pinks interact…?” Dive in and discover the many shades of pink used to create this magical movie set. Architectural Digest has posted an extensive 7-minutes behind-the-scenes featurette for Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated new movie opening in July this summer. Based on the beloved dolls for kids,…
“Fresh Kills” stands tall alongside the best post-“Godfather” gangster movies, and it stands apart because of how it focuses on the wives, girlfriends, and daughters of organized crime in a genre that more often pushes them to the margins. Small in scale but rich in character and incident (and brutal violence), it’s the debut feature by…
Let’s say you want to watch “Adipurush,” a new Indian mythological action-fantasy, without thinking so much about what came before it. You want to enter the theater with as little baggage as possible, despite the associations that come with the marquee-topping Prabhas, star of both S.S. Rajamouli’s trend-setting “Baahubali” period action fantasies. Maybe you want…
“His knowledge for action & stunts, and how to tell a story within it, it’s impressive.” –Chris Hemsworth discussing director Sam Hargrave. Netflix’s new spectacular action movie Extraction 2 is now available to watch as of today. They’ve released a new behind-the-scenes featurette to build up the hype. The movie is a direct follow-up to…
“You know the best part about stories? You remember them. They stay with you. And I want to tell you a bedtime story.” Fubo has revealed a short & sweet trailer for a quiet new streaming series called Bedtime Stories with Ryan. And yes, it literally is just actor Ryan Reynolds telling bedtime stories on…
“How can the country be in love with these two idiots?” Netflix has unveiled a full-length official trailer for WHAM!, a new documentary film about the iconic music duo / 80s band called Wham!. Yes, the band that brought us “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” and “Last Christmas”. The duo consisted of George…
The Tribeca Film Festival has been a welcome platform for genre fans, and the 2023 iteration is no exception. The horror offerings span the different styles of the genre this year with the Tribeca premieres of films like “Final Cut” and twisted tales from veterans and newcomers alike. One of the most anticipated horror films…
One of the most spectacular and frustrating mixed bags of the superhero blockbuster era, “The Flash” is simultaneously thoughtful and clueless, challenging and pandering. It features some of the best digital FX work I’ve seen and some of the worst. Like its sincere but often hapless hero, it keeps exceeding every expectation we might have for its competence only…
“Wars don’t start with explosions – they start with silence.” Frontline PBS has revealed the main official trailer for an acclaimed documentary film titled 20 Days In Mariupol, one of many films made recently about the war in Ukraine. This one premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, then it also screened at CPH:DOX, Hot…
“Every Body” is a moving, fascinating look at a too-often-ignored subset of the world’s population, filled with empathy and understanding but also a cool, analytical anger about what history has put them through. The subject is intersex people, the slightly-more-than one percent of individuals who were born with a condition that complicated the state’s ability to identify…