Film Reviews
Coming 2 America Is Not 2 Bad: Review
The Pitch: The king has returned! Eddie Murphy is back to check in on his 1988 invention Akeem, the now-ruler of the fictional African nation of Zamunda. As established in Coming to America, Zamunda is both a lavish and antiquated locale: not a lot of TVs, multitudes of rituals and ceremonies, beautiful interior design that would make a real estate mogul blush, all affectionately anachronistic. Akeem’s content with his three daughters and his loving queen Lisa (Shari Headley) by his side. Yet for the sake of kick-starting a sequel, he needs a male heir to avoid war with General Izzi (Wesley Snipes), leader of Nextdoria (you come up with a better fake name). And as it just so happens, Akeem hooked with up a woman named Mary (Leslie Jones) in the ‘80s, and unknown to Akeem, Mary raised his s...
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On the Run Is a Total Franchise Play: Review
The Pitch: It’s another SpongeBob movie—what do you need, a road map? Actually, maybe: This newest adventure is an underwater road trip, with SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) and his starfish pal Patrick (Bill Faggerbake) on a mission to save Gary, SpongeBob’s beloved pet snail, who’s being used as part of a skincare regimen for King Poseidon (Matt Berry). This snailnapping was engineered by the scheming Plankton (Mr. Lawrence), who wants SpongeBob to stop (inadvertently) interfering with his plans to ruin the Krusty Krab, the restaurant where SpongeBob happily toils away. There are also two different robot assistants, one amusingly voiced by Awkafina. A Brand New Sponge: This is the third SpongeBob film, following 2004’s The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and 2015’s The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of W...
Amy Poehler’s Moxie Unites a New Generation of Rebel Girls: Review
The Pitch: High school junior Vivian (Hadley Robinson) is struggling to find her voice. In response to rampant misogyny and lack of support from her school’s administration, she takes inspiration from her mother’s Riot Grrrl past and creates an anonymous zine called Moxie, attempting to unite students under a banner of feminism. But like many before her, Vivian learns that effective feminist activism requires more than buzzwords and good intentions. Director Amy Poehler attempts to pass the torch from third to fourth wave feminism and delivers an empowering and cathartic look at the complexities of Girl Power. Adapted from Jennifer Mathieu’s inspirational novel, Moxie is a love letter to young people struggling to find their own voices and create the changes they want to see in the world. ...
Andra Day Brings the High Notes to The United States vs. Billie Holiday: Review
The Pitch: Recorded in 1939, Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” brought attention to the atrocious practice of lynching, specifically in America’s southernmost states. Its lyrics were created as a response to an infamous, horrific photo of a lynching taken by photographer Lawrence Beitler almost 10 years prior. It’s a magnificent song concentrated on an ugly truth. In some ways, Holiday’s life was similar — all her outer beauty paling in comparison to the pain and suffering that existed beneath the surface of her life. Directed by Lee Daniels and written by Suzan-Lori Parks, The United States vs. Billie Holiday focuses on the final decade of the jazz singer’s life — specifically, 1947 to 1959. Based on a chapter of Johan Hari’s 2015 book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the Wa...
Tom & Jerry Is Just a Lazy Brand Exercise: Review
The Pitch: Did you read that Vulture interview with David Fincher where he described Alien 3 as making “a library title for a multinational, vertically integrated media conglomerate”? And you know how Scorsese reasonably tsk-tsked the usage of the word “content” because of how media companies and journalists have been using that condescending term to describe works of art? Ladies and gentlemen, here’s the latest piece of content for vertically integrated media conglomerate WarnerMedia’s library, Tom & Jerry. Yes, Tom & Jerry 2021 arrives this weekend on HBO Max, and answers the age-old question of what a Tom and Jerry ‘toon would be like today, and whether they could fight to Eric B. & Rakim’s “Don’t Sweat the Technique”. The Short, Short, Short of It: Your kids will probably l...
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry Offers a Clear Portrait of Teenage Life: Review
The Pitch: When Billie Eilish was 13 years old, she posted a video of herself singing her song “Ocean Eyes”. Three years later, in 2018, she was already on a fast path to superstardom, and director R.J. Cutler somehow knew to pick up his camera. This is the starting point to his Apple TV+ documentary, Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry. Cutler, whose resume includes documentaries such as The September Issue and Belushi, couldn’t have predicted the kind of year he was about to capture. By circling around Eilish’s 18th year, Cutler documented the writing, recording, release, and reaction of her first full-length album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. He then continued to capture Eilish’s subsequent sold-out shows and festival appearances, radio and magazine interviews, and ...
Tom Holland Is Miscast In the Ambitious, Messy Cherry: Review
The Pitch: “Sometimes I wonder if life is wasted on me,” Cherry (Tom Holland) drawls wryly to us, godlike and incessant in his narration. When we meet him, he’s holding up a bank, and it’s not the first time. But how would a nice young man fall into such disrepute? From there, we rewind to see the life choices Cherry has made that led him to this point — from his furtive romance with a young classmate named Emily (Ciara Bravo) to the torment and torture of his days as an Army medic in Iraq, to the subsequent opioid addiction that would lead him to a life of bank-robbing to fund his drug habit. CHERK ‘Em If You Got ‘Em: In many ways, it’s going to be hard for Cherry to overcome its first real brush with public notoriety — a strangely-glitched version of the poster that messed...
Netflix’s I Care a Lot Is a Brutal Indictment of the American HealthCare System: Review
The Pitch: Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) cares a lot. She’s the legal guardian of dozens of elderly people who desperately need her help. This “care” comes in the form of decision making powers regarding her client’s finances and medical treatment. With a simple doctor’s recommendation and signature from a judge, she essentially has the legal right to decimate the lives and accumulated wealth of anyone who falls into her trap. But Marla’s newest client, Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), is more than she seems and may end up causing the conniving entrepreneur’s downfall. Writer/director J Blakeson’s new Netflix film is a black comedy that feels infuriatingly familiar given the rampant authoritarian greed and hypocrisy we see daily. Dressed up as a stylish thriller, I Care a Lot is a brutal ...
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar Deserved to Go to Sold-Out Theaters: Review
The Pitch: Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo reunite as screenwriters a decade after Bridesmaids, this time co-starring as the eponymous leads in a new raunchy comedy. Is the magic still there for another hugely successful laugh riot? A Movie That Oughta Be in Theaters: Movies like Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar are a good reason why it remains heartbreaking that movie theaters are mostly ghost towns these days. The new comedy from Lionsgate Pictures was originally intended for theatrical release last summer, and there’s little doubt that it would be best served by playing in front of a large, boisterous crowd. It’s not to suggest that Barb and Star is bad; anything but. Yet it’s undeniably the kind of film that would work at the height of its powers with a ready audience gobbling up every ...
Judas and the Black Messiah Puts a Nostalgic Lens On a Modern-Day Struggle: Review
The Pitch: The early morning of December 4th, 1969 served as an exclamation point for this country’s most tumultuous decade. The assassinations of Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X; became jarring reminders that the virtues of morality, peace, and equality would never supersede the ideology that the United States was built on – racism. At 21 years old, Fred Hampton’s life may have been cut short, but his legacy continues to live on. Directed by Shaka King, Judas and the Black Messiah is not only a film about the political killing of one of the movement’s most promising figures, but an exploration of the inner turmoil plaguing the man who set him up – and the mindset of many others like him. In a powerful montage, the film opens with footage focused on quotes and spee...
Robin Wright Tries to Ground Herself in the Sumptuous But Hollow Land: Review
The Pitch: Edee (Robin Wright) wants to get away from it all — life, family, civilization. She’s mourning something, or rather, escaping, but we don’t know precisely what. Flashbacks to a husband (Warren Christie), a son, and a concerned sister (Kim Dickens) give us plenty of clues, though. Packing up a U-Haul and driving across the country from Chicago to a remote cabin in Quincy, Wyoming, Edee makes it clear that she wants to be left alone to fend for herself. Edee sends the truck and U-Haul away, leaving only herself and a sparse collection of canned food to fill her new home. Naturally, the city slicker doesn’t make it long before weather, starvation, and dangerous wildlife force the intervention of a kind stranger named Miguel (Demián Bichir), who helps her back on her feet and t...
CODA Hits All The Right Notes: Sundance 2021 Review
This review is part of our Sundance 2021 coverage. The Pitch: 17-year-old Ruby (Emilia Jones) doesn’t have your typical adolescence: the child of a Massachusetts fishing family, she splits her time between the awkwardness of high school and helping her family out on the boat, doing her best to help her family keep the business afloat amid union disputes and predatory fish buyers who try to take advantage of them. There’s another complication: Ruby is the only hearing member of her family, the rest of whom — father Frank (Troy Kotsur), mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin), and brother Leo (Daniel Durant) — are deaf. This places added pressure on her as the one person who can translate ASL to the world around them; she’s inexplicably tethered to them. Of course, Ruby soon discovers she has dreams o...
