Writer and director Shane Black follows up his underrated 2016 buddy cop crime drama, The Nice Guys, with 20th Century Fox’s, The Predator. Starring Boyd Holbrook (Logan), Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight), and Jacob Tremblay (Room), The Predator is the latest entry in the Predator franchise where the eponymous character comes to Earth for reasons unknown to his fellow characters. Along the way, secrets are split open and the Predator’s motivation is revealed through blood, guts, vulgar language, and alien technology. John McTiernan’s 1987 classic is still the gold standard for the Predator franchise due to it’s vicious simplicity. McTiernan’s ability to limit…
Author: Guest post
Directed by Peter Berg and starring America’s everyman, Mark Wahlberg, Mile 22 is this Summer’s latest blockbuster offering. Co-starring audience favorite, Iko Uwais (The Raid), Ronda Rousey, Lauren Cohan, and John Malkovich, Mile 22 is a 90-minute journey where bullets fly and grenades explode across the screen. Thankfully, the aforementioned 90-minute runtime is the only good thing about Mile 22 as it ensures you won’t have to stay in the theater to endure its brain-numbing assault on the senses very long. As the film opens, it’s not hard to tell what demographic Peter Berg has his crosshairs set on. Berg…
Written and directed by Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing) and based on the novel Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth, BlacKKKlansman stars John David Washington (Ron Stallworth), Adam Driver (Flip Zimmerman), Topher Grace (David Duke), and Laura Harrier (Patrice Dumas) in a story about “some fo’ real, fo’ real shit”. It’s a story where rookie detective Ron Stallworth leads the investigation of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter in an attempt to get closer to the Grand Wizard of the Klan, David Duke. Anyone familiar with Spike Lee’s work will recognize the stylistic techniques Lee brings to every joint. Anyone…
Hitting theaters this weekend is the sixth installment of the 22 year-old Mission: Impossible franchise, Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Despite being the sixth entry, Fallout manages to be the first film in the franchise to have a returning director in Christopher McQuarrie, and is also the first true sequel to a previous entry. Whereas most sequels in this franchise are usually separated by an unidentified amount of years, Fallout takes place two years after the events of Rogue Nation (2015), when Ethan Hunt and the rest of the IMF team are still suffering from the ramifications and consequences of the demise…
Ant-man and the Wasp is Marvel Studios’ follow up to the colossal, game-changing events of Avengers: Infinity War. In Scott Lang’s second adventure we see him team up with Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) once again to rescue Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the Quantum Realm. Director Peyton Reed returns to try and cleanse our palette from the “dark”, “heavy”, and “intimidating” epic Infinity War. Unfortunately for us, Reed’s second outing in the MCU is a small scale, unimaginative vision of a frustratingly awful script. Ant-man and the Wasp starts like many of the recent MCU…
It’s been three years since Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 crime drama Sicario hit theaters. Along with screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, composer Johann Johansson, and cinematographer Roger Deakins, Villeneuve created a masterpiece that made its way into the discussion of being “one of the best films of this generation”. Villeneuve’s subtlety and powerful images drew audiences into a grim reality not too far from the world we live in today. Villeneuve never had a sequel in mind, but Hollywood does what Hollywood does. They seize an opportunity when they see one, and now we have the less than rewarding follow-up Sicario: Day of…
Set three years after the events of the collapse of Jurassic World, director J.A. Bayona guides the “Jurassic” franchise down a familiar, but imaginative path in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. In the first scene, Bayona sets the tone for an exhilarating ride that isn’t without its fair share of cheesy moments. It’s a film that maintains franchise congruity while implementing new directorial enhancements to its complicated history. After the unparalleled success of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic, the “Jurassic” franchise instantly hit a steep decline. Despite The Lost World’s visceral endeavor, it simply didn’t measure up to the original’s seamless blend of…
Solo: A Star Wars Story, the fourth film in Star Wars’ “Disney Era”, just hit theaters for longtime fans and newcomers alike. Solo has already received plenty of backlash since its announcement and it’s been fighting an uphill battle ever since. From the concerns over the casting of the unknown Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, and the infamous behind the scenes fiasco with Phil Lord and Chris Miller, it seemed as if Solo was a doomed project from the start. Thankfully, Disney ended up recovering as best they could by hiring a Lucasfilm alum in Ron Howard to build some optimism…
Deadpool 2 hits theaters around the country this week as Ryan Reynolds returns as “The Merc with a Mouth” in a bigger, longer, and funnier sequel. If you’re familiar with Deadpool, you know exactly what you’re in for. From the get go, Deadpool 2 pulls in audiences with the anticipated meta nature of the titular character and the film never lets up from there. As the story progresses, the jokes get bigger and funnier as Deadpool and his supporting cast deliver a sequel that surpasses the first film in every way. The first thing to take note of is director David Leitch’s…
Black slavery in Libya is affecting a million Black Africans, and the world is silent proving Black lives don’t matter says Peter Donaldson. “Inconceivable”, “egregious”, and “unfathomable”, are just a few words that come to mind when presented with the realities of modern day slavery. A few weeks ago, I was shaken to my core, even to the point of uncontrollable tears, in witnessing the savagery in Libya. This devastating reality was brought to light by CNN and, for a brief moment, was at the forefront of global media coverage. Suddenly the western world became aware of something that evidently has been ongoing…
Empty shelves and used up testers in the Fenty Beauty section at Sephora are nothing new. The store location I frequent had several women gathered around it when I visited, searching for something to try – or buy. One woman was on her phone buzzing away at a friend to let them know they were at the store and was filling them in on the product line. Some were getting assistance from employees with the perfect shade of foundation that they wanted to purchase. I was mingling around checking out the textures of everything on display. I smiled to myself and thought…
With the upcoming release of four new colorways for the Pharrell x Adidas “Human Race” NMD’s this fall, the Tennis HU NMD just hitting stores and the Trail version on the way, we thought we’d take a look back at how the collaboration has evolved over the past year. Chapter 1: Where It All Began Pharrell’s collaboration with Adidas debuted back in July 2016. The collection was dubbed “Human Race” and corresponds to the split slogan embroidered on the sneaker. The ten-time Grammy-winning musician explained the collab saying, “Hu is short for human – human being, human race, humankind. But Hu,…
