Child's Play Is A Surprising Cut Above Typical Horror Movie Remakes

I've never seen a Chucky movie before (though I'm certainly familiar with the character), so I had little in the way of expectations for what I expected to be yet another subpar horror movie remake in the form of Child's Play. After all, 21st-century horror movie remakes, unless they're Suspiria, rarely turn out well, as the likes of Pet Sematary can attest while the peculiar decision to make a new Chucky movie while the original creator of the character, Dan Mancini, was doing his own series of separate Chucky movies really left a sour taste in my mouth. So color me shocked to report that the new Child's Play remake, hailing from director Lars Klevberg, is actually a pretty well-crafted and fun enterprise!

If Beale Street Could Talk Is Masterful Emotionally Resonant Filmmaking That Should Not Be Missed

Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne) was only 19. Fonny Hunt was only 22. They were deeply in love in New York City in 1974 and are all set to start a life together, but then tragedy struck in the form of Fonny being arrested for a crime he did not commit. Shortly after he's arrested, Tish learns that she's pregnant with his child, a revelation that she shares with Fonny in one of the opening scenes of the new Barry Jenkins directorial effort If Beale Street Could Talk. From there, the rest of the story, which is based on a 1974 James Baldwin novel of the same name, chronicles Tish and her families attempts to try and free Fonny from his prison sentence as well as numerous flashbacks showing pivotal moments in Tish and Fonny's romance.

Thoughtful Heist Movie Widows Is The Very Best Kind of Expansive Cinema

Widows is so jam-packed with so many plotlines, themes, and social commentary that it feels like it shouldn't work at all, this should be the quintessential case of an overstuffed movie that people refer to as something that should have been an HBO miniseries instead.  A heist thriller with so much going on at once really does sound like it should be the kind of ambitious project that exceeds an artists grasp. Instead, Widows is more than just "not overstuffed", it's phenomenal cinema from top-to-bottom, an immensely impressive achievement that, like an expert magician pulling a tablecloth off a table without disrupting any items actually on the table, manages to do the seemingly impossible so effortlessly.

White Boy Rick Is Frequently Scattered But Also Frequently Engaging

For better and for worse, there's a whole lot that the crime drama White Boy Rick wants to explore in depicting the life of non-fictional individual Richard Wershe Jr. A.K.A. White Boy Rick (played by newcomer Richie Merritt), a 15-year-old from Detroit, Michigan who was hired by the FBI and the local law enforcement to become a supplier for local drug dealers as a way of gaining information needed to bring these people into justice. Despite being a teenager, Wershe is basically just dragged into being an informant under the threat of his father of the same name (portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), who sells guns, if he doesn't cooperate. Wershe is basically trapped between a rock and a hard place and he decides to get out of it by agreeing to serve as an FBI informant.

Hotel Artemis Is An Unusual But Delightful Getaway Spot

I've stayed in a number of oddball hotels in my life, including one located somewhere in Texas that totally felt like the sort of location that characters go to get either arrested, shot or both in a Coen Brothers movie, but I've never stayed at a hotel like the Hotel Artemis, a hospital/hotel exclusively for criminals located in Los Angeles in the near future. It's a place run by The Nurse (Jodie Foster) and her dutiful assistant Everest (Dave Bautista), who take care of any criminals who need some under-the-radar fixing up so long as said criminals have an official membership. The newest people to check into this hotel are bank robbers Sherman (Sterling K. Brown) and his intensely damaged brother Honolulu (Brian Tyree Henry).