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‘NOPE’: Spielbergian Sci-Fi Falls to Earth, Proves Jordan Peele is Human

Icarus Who Flew Too High…

The name Jordan Peele carries weight. The sketch comic turned horror auteur cut his teeth mocking the familiar. Often quite brilliantly. His skill as a caricaturist made Peele the perfect tool to spin something new from the weathered clichés he so often lampooned. He – more than most – knew the difference between frail and fresh. You mock enough knock-offs and you become the expert on what hasn’t been attempted yet. In time, the satirist became a sacred commodity. From his mind, two horror greats (Get Out, Us) were born. Nope, Peele’s third feature film, is one of the most hotly anticipated films of the summer, if not the entire year. All because of Jordan Peele. Read More

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Sundance ’22: ’Til Distance Do Us Part With ‘ALICE’

’Til distance do us part. Not death. These are the vows of the slave – or “domestic” – in Krystin Ver Linden’s Alice. But death may always interfere. And distance – through space and through time – proves to be but an illusion. Alice (Keke Palmer) is a slave. She wants for liberation, daring for escape from the Spanish moss-covered Georgian plantation where she was raised. Freedom, it turns out, is just beyond her front door. All she needs is distance. Read More

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‘HUSTLERS’ Would Be a Guilty Pleasure, If It Weren’t Also Pretty Damn Great

This whole country’s a strip club. Or so says Jennifer Lopez’s hard-stripping, drug-dosing, cash-stealing Ramona. A stripper with a heart of mink fur, Ramona posits, “Someone’s got the money and the rest of us dance for it.” Her solution to this American ordeal is a brand of laissez-faire free market exchange: dress to kill, ensnare rich dudes, add drugs, run up their credit cards. Ramona and her merry band of clothing-optional pilferers trade in hitting the pole to hitting credit limits. And their gambit works. Skipping the whole lap dance flesh transaction and getting straight to the knock-out bling-bling money-please of it all, Ramona runs a crew of ambitious and unscrupulous ladies who take from the rich and give to themselves.  Read More