2 Best Movies To Watch After The Wrath of Becky (2023)
The Blackening
The Blackening is a horror-satire based on a popular 2018 short film of the same name. It mercilessly skewered the genre conceit that the Black character is always the first to die—a notion so familiar that this year saw the publication of an examination of Black-related horror films entitled The Black Guy Dies First. To do so, it presented a scenario in which all the potential victims are Black. They argue about who among them is truly the Blackest while downplaying their own ethnicity to survive. (“I qualified for the Winter Olympics.”) Continue Reading →
Kandahar
Gerard Butler's CIA-agent-on-the-run thriller aims to be more than a power fantasy, but for all its virtues, it doesn't stick that landing. There's an expected cognitive dissonance that comes with watching a man-on-a-mission genre piece set in the Middle East. Whether it's a glorified shooting gallery or a power fantasy where the hero stops just short of bleeding red, white, and blue - one needs to practice a mental limbo to either ignore or maybe be pleasantly surprised with the bare minimum concessions to showing the opposite side's perspectives. Continue Reading →