If you’re at all familiar with the wildly popular book and movie “Fifty Shades of Grey ” by E.L. James, then you’ve most likely heard about the newest spoof, “Fifty Shades of Black.” The film, produced by Marlon Wayans and Rick Alvarez, follows suit behind the Wayans brothers’ largely popular spoofs “Scary Movie” and “White Chicks.”
From the first scene,...
“What’s a faggot? Am I a faggot? How do I know?” Berry Jenkin’s “Moonlight,” based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” is a beautiful contemplation on the excruciating and universal plight of identity formation. It is a coming-of-age drama about Chiron — an African-American man from Miami struggling with his sexuality — told in...
The DC Extended Universe (DCEU) has had a rough time since its beginning. “Man of Steel” was an OK starting point; “Batman vs. Superman” was a bloated mess and a terrible idea; “Suicide Squad” was actively painful; “Wonder Woman” was, well, wonderful, but it raised the question of whether it was part of a larger shift in DCEU movie...
I’m so glad I brought a punching bag with me into the theater on Friday to vent out my frustration with this film. This half-cocked film, “Fist Fight,” presents a bizarre premise riddled with superfluous F-bombs and disappointing, crass jokes that recur with no landing punchline.
It’s Roosevelt High’s last day of school, and all the seniors go ape-shit...
Tom Ford made a toughie. The fashion designer-turned-filmmaker’s second cinematic feature, “Nocturnal Animals” starts just about as confusingly as it ends, and we can talk about interpretations all day but there remains a layer of mystique surrounding this film’s themes that still has its grip on me. I enjoyed it (very, very much) but I am also angry at...
The superhero genre has become a staple in today’s film and television industry. It’s become the driving force of contemporary blockbusters, with many of them becoming the highest-grossing movies every summer. Marvel and DC comics have headlined movie theaters across the world with characters like Iron Man, Superman, Batman and Captain America, as they have come to life from...
“Hidden Figures” tells an untold yet, remarkable true story of three intelligent African-American women who contributed to the many firsts of NASA’s historic space launches. Though, in a segregated Virginia of 1961, the ingenious minds behind complex math calculations and computer expertise at NASA were discriminated against trivially due to their race and sex. The film acknowledges the overt...
I feel like I’m suffering from cinematic deja vu. With most of the big budget Hollywood movies released either in summer or around Christmas, seeing a decent movie in autumn has become more the exception than the rule.
Vin Diesel’s vanity piece “The Last Witch Hunter” is in the former category, featuring a borrowed plot and borrowed actors in a...
A Russian ballerina thrust into the world of spies, an American mole in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and a secret romance between agents on opposing sides — these are all the components that make a heart-pounding thriller filled with sex, murder, secrets and betrayal (e.g. “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” or “Casino Royale”). And while “Red Sparrow” has...
There’s something uniquely satisfying about films, especially in the horror genre, that market themselves as “inspired” by true events. What does that even mean? It’s become common knowledge at this point that some of the genre’s most beloved entries that adopted this marketing ploy stretched the definition of inspiration one mile too far: A tragic shooting-turned ghost story became...