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Aaron Sorkin's second film as director is another legal drama. His directorial debut, Molly's Game  (2017), was more or less a biography of a young woman, but it also involved a type of courtroom battle. Before Sorkin sat in the director's chair, he was principally known as a screenwriter and two of his most popular scripts were essentially legal dramas, that of A Few Good Men  (1992) and The Social Network  (2010). As such, it seems as if legal dramas are Sorkin's favorite genre. They're also my favorite genre, so I've been inclined to like much of Sorkin's works. I wasn't a fan of The Social Network  because I didn't feel like Sorkin understood what the true effect of social media, particularly that of Facebook, truly was. It wasn't necessarily due to his age, which is near 60. I didn't feel Sorkin really understood who the men truly were that he was writing, which is fine, because his characters can be whatever he chooses. That's not t

Created by Mary Laws ( The Neon Demon ), this series is an adaptation of Nathan Ballingrud's book North American Lake Monsters: Stories  (2013). Here, we get an anthology series where each episode features a new cast and brand new story. Unlike The Twilight Zone  (1959), which are tied together through a common host or narrator, this series does try to tie together each story with some common narrative link. For example, the main character in the first episode makes a cameo appearance in the third episode and in the eighth episode. An object that appears at the end of the fourth episode shows up again at the beginning of the sixth episode. A similar theme runs throughout several of the episodes. For example, for all the supernatural creatures that may or may not exist in this series, it would seem the real monster is poverty. The first, two episodes barely register any kind of supernatural creature or evil force. The first, two episodes are basically watching two young, white peopl

Ever since the mega-success of Empire  (2015), FOX thinks that it can score big again with another trashy soap opera-like series about a wealthy family, fighting over their wealth and among each other, all while being in and trying to navigate the media industry. Unfortunately, HBO's Succession , which just won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, has sucked all the oxygen out of the television landscape in terms of this kind of show about a wealthy family in-fighting about their lives and business. Even if it hadn't, this series would still be eclipsed by Empire . The reason is because it doesn't have as strong characters as Empire . It tries to have comparable characters, but, sadly, they just don't measure up. They're not as engaging or as entertaining. There's potential for some, but the rest are just boring. Kim Cattrall ( Tell Me a Story  and Sex and the City ) stars as Margaret Monreaux, a TV evangelist, living in New Orleans. She has a TV show on what&

Michael Bay's directorial debut, Bad Boys  (1995) was a hit at the time. It was about two Miami police detectives, working to take down powerful and deadly drug dealers. It starred Will Smith as Mike Lowrey and Martin Lawrence as Marcus Burnett as two wise-cracking cops. It spawned two sequels. The first sequel was Bad Boys II  (2003), which introduced Marcus' sister, Sydney Burnett as an undercover DEA agent. Around the time that the second sequel Bad Boys for Life  (2020) was put into production, so did the development of this spin-off series, which follows Sydney as she goes from Miami to Los Angeles. The series actually premiered on the cable channel Spectrum in 2019. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which halted Hollywood productions this year, FOX picked up this series and is now airing that 2019 season this year. If one likes the Bad Boys  trilogy of films, it's undoubting that you would like this series, which is fairly entertaining. It's essentially Bad Boys  but

Ever since COVID-19 shutdown Hollywood, new TV shows on broadcast networks have been not so new. This series is from Canada. Back in February, this series aired on CTV, Canada's largest terrestrial network. When NBC needed content to fill its fall schedule, it bought this series. It's a bit of a progressive step forward because it's rare for a broadcast network to do a series that centers around a Muslim character and in fact has that Muslim as the titular and lead character. Actually, of all the examples that come to mind where American TV shows have featured a Muslim character in a significant, if not leading role, they have all been either on cable TV or Internet streaming services. HBO's  Oz  (1997) gave us a Black Muslim who was in prison, but he fought for prisoner rights. Yes, the character was a criminal, but he was trying to reform. He was essentially a good, normal guy. In a lot of cop shows or even shows about FBI agents or those that deal with terrorism, the

Given the success of Jordan Peele's Get Out  (2017), more content involving African-American characters in horror or supernatural scenarios were obviously in demand. Peele was in demand, particularly in the TV realm to produce content that could be as successful as Get Out . Mark Ruff's 2016 novel fit the bill in terms of literature that could be easily adapted into a TV series and basically be a weekly Get Out  but one that commented more on historical racism instead of the racism that exists today. Written by Misha Green ( Underground  and Sons of Anarchy ), the series seems like a somewhat faithful adaptation of Ruff's novel with some liberties taken here and there, but seems mostly true to text. Yet, playing off the same themes, it does come across as Get Out  the TV series. Jonathan Majors ( Da 5 Bloods  and The Last Black Man in San Francisco ) stars as Atticus Freeman, a young black soldier who served in the Korean War. It's now 1955 and he's returning home t

After watching the first 15 to 20 minutes of this film, it dawned on me that it felt like something Spke Lee would do if he were a woman and twenty-five years younger. Writer-director Radha Blank's debut feature feels like early Spike Lee, like his films of the 1980's, such as She's Gotta Have It  (1986) and Do the Right Thing  (1989). It makes sense when I learned that Blank was a writer-producer on Spike Lee's TV show, that of She's Gotta Have It  (2017) on Netflix. If she continues as strongly as she is here, she could be that black female voice that comes from that same school but for some reason hasn't risen up as Spike Lee has risen up. However, the reason as to why a black female voice hasn't risen up in the same way is in fact explored in this film. We see echoes of that reason in works, such as Issa Rae's Insecure  (2016), but Blank's work here puts that reason into real perspective. Radha Blank stars as Radha Blank, a fictionalized version

This is another film in a recent trend I've noticed. There's been a trend of science-fiction or fantasy films featuring people of color, such as African-Americans and Latinos, specifically young African-Americans and Latinos in the lead role. The trend didn't perhaps start until Attack the Block (2011), which was an independent, British flick. An independent, American flick called Sleight (2017) was another such example, but it wasn't until A Wrinkle in Time (2018) that the trend became a more mainstream one. Since then, we've seen more mainstream hits like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019). Over the past year, Netflix has really run with this trend more than anyone else. As such, Netflix has given us See You Yesterday (2019), The Old Guard (2020) and Project Power (2020). Now, this one is another to add to the growing list. Directed and co-written by Emmy-winner Oz Rodriguez ( Saturday Night Live and A.P. Bio ),

Kirsten Johnson is a cinematographer who has been working in the film industry for over 20 years. She's worked on numerous documentary films, including titles that have been nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars. Examples are The Invisible War  (2012) and Citizenfour  (2014). The latter even won the Academy Award in that category. She even directed a few documentaries herself. Her most critically-acclaimed work was Cameraperson  (2016). In that film, Johnson introduced us to her mother who was ailing and in fact dying. This film could be considered a sequel to her 2016 work, which was a memoir of sorts. She continues in memoir mode, this time focusing her camera on her widowed father. There is some symmetry because seemingly Johnson's mother died of Alzheimer's. Ironically, her father is possibly developing the same disease. Whereas Johnson wasn't able to document her mother prior to her decline and eventual death, she is able to document her father and s

In terms of films about war and depictions of certain real-life battles, the bar has been set with Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998). This film doesn't exactly rise to that bar. However, if you look at the war films that have been nominated for Academy Awards over the past 20 years, even the Oscar for Best Picture, then I would argue that this film is just as good, if not better than those titles. It's not as much as a visual wonder and feat of great cinematography as 1917 (2019). It's not as much of a critique on war as Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) or The Hurt Locker (2009). It's not as jingoistic as American Sniper (2014) or evangelical as Hacksaw Ridge (2016). Unlike some of the war films, this one is trying to be a faithful depiction of one specific, real-life battle. It's not necessarily trying to tell a grander story about the overall conflict. It's also not trying to be a character study. It's simply trying to show how a group of

At first, I thought this film might be a modern-day or Millennial version of Amadeus (1984). When it comes to artistic rivalry, one artist being jealous of another who's more successful or more famous, the Oscar-winning classic starring F. Murray Abraham as the iconic Antonio Salieri is the prime example. Yet, the idea of competitiveness and envy go rather quickly out the window, as this film, written and directed by Cory Wexler Grant, really establishes itself as being more about a woman dealing with loss and grief through an intense and controlling relationship where she stands as a rather domineering mentor and surrogate mother-figure. Betsy Randle ( Boy Meets World  and Home Improvement ) is that domineering mentor named Joanne Marco. She's a wealthy widow with a passion for art, specifically painting, having done some of which in her past. She also had a late son who was a painter as well. Her mentoring is perhaps masking a kind of substitution she's doing with the yo

Cory Wexler Grant's debut feature Painter  (2020) premieres October 13 on digital platforms. The psychological thriller centers on a young artist who becomes the object of obsession for a wealthy, elder benefactor and gains in her a surrogate family member, sharing in his love and passion for the same visual medium. In an interview with Grant, he talked about himself being a young artist but not having a surrogate family but actual family members who also shared in his love and passion for visual media. Grant isn't a painter. He's an actor-turned-filmmaker. However, he says his mother was a painter. He referred to her as a "Sunday painter." She was talented but not committed, according to him. It might have been a hobby to her, but something that she thought wouldn't earn her any kind of profit. Grant's father was also an artist, a sculptor whose preferred medium was wood, or wooden objects. For Grant's father, it was more than just a Sunday dalliance