"Can I Be Your Legacy?": A Review of Queen & Slim

Though it eventually sprawls out into becoming a movie following two people evading law enforcement across multiple state lines, Queen & Slim starts out under extremely mundane circumstances. Angela (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Ernest (Daniel Kaluuya) are sharing a first-date dinner together at a diner. It's not going ideally, their conversations keep going nowhere, perhaps because their personalities couldn't be more polar opposite. Angela is a defense attorney determined to always stand up for something as small as a miscooked order of eggs while Ernest is a soft-spoken go-with-the-flow Costco cashier. Sparks don't exactly fly between the two of them.

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.

Believe The Hype Folks, Get Out Is Sublime Horror Movie Cinema

Hollywood absolutely loves to imitate whatever's popular and making money and the genre of horror is no stranger to this rule. Because horror movies tend to be made on the cheap, it's way easier to crank out films in this genre that imitate whatever spooky motion picture is raking up big bucks. Thus, slasher movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday The 13th begat numerous slasher movie knock-offs in the 80's while Paranormal Activity spawned countless found-footage movies that heavily featured possessed people. Lately, it feels like The Conjuring, and its emphasis on old-timey objects being creepy and chilling sound effects, has been the one many recent horror fare have been imitating.

Four Ways To Fine-Tune the James Bond Franchise

Let me start this essay out by saying upfront, no, I don't think the James Bond franchise is "doomed" or "busted" or any phrase like that. Financially, the series is doing just fine, and while Spectre was a sloppy mess of a film, it wasn't a Batman & Robin level disaster that capsized an entire saga. Long-term franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, Batman and, of course, the granddaddy of all summer blockbuster franchises, 007 himself, have high points and low points. When you're around for that long, it's just the law of averages that you'll miss a film every so often. For every excellent Skyfall, there's bound to be a film like Spectre waiting in the wings.