Cynthia Erivo Brings Top-Notch Work To A So-So Biopic In Harriet

As of April 2016, only one* theatrical movie has featured Harriet Tubman and that film was 2012's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Though a solid action/horror tale in its own right, even the filmmakers behind that project would be the first to admit that it's ludicrous that this high-concept exercise in historical fiction is the only cinematic representation for such an important historical figure like Harriet Tubman. For Gods sake, the man who killed John Lennon has gotten his own feature film but not a woman who was an integral part of the Underground Railroad! Such a massive oversight has been combated by the release of Harriet, a new feature film hailing from writer/director Kasi Lemmons.

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.

Bad Times At The El Royale Is A Mostly Good Time

After six years of waiting since his directorial debut project The Cabin in the Woods turned out to be such a phenomenal blast, writer/director Drew Goddard finally returns behind the camera with Bad Times at the El Royale. Interestingly, despite having a larger cast and a bigger budget to work with, Goddard (who also wrote the scripts for Cloverfield and The Martian) goes smaller-in-scale than he did on Cabin in the Woods. No threats of zombie rednecks or possible worldwide consequences for the actions of our lead characters here, instead, Goddard does a Rashomon-esque take on a quasi-Hateful Eight set-up wherein we follow the differing perspectives of a group of strangers staying in one location over the course of a solitary night.