Take, for instance, its Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score. 55% is about what I’d expect from this film. It so divided critics that there’s apparently an equal amount of goodwill and disgust for this film. Look at the legacy of its soundtrack’s centerpiece, Trisha Yearwood’s version of LeAnn Rimes’s “How Do I Live.” Like the film for which it was penned, the song has a divisive legacy. In 1997 it was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Raspberry for Best Original Song and Worst Original Song respectively. Sadly (?), the song lost in both categories. 

So, no, a typical review will not do for this particular film. What will be more interesting, at least for me, is to figure out why and how this film can seemingly be two things at once: namely, the best action film ever or a prime example of Hollywood’s contempt for basic intelligence. 

Looking at the evidence, I will determine whether or not this film is bad on purpose, or if there’s a reason John Malkovich and John Cusack have all but disowned it. In short, I believe this film is bad to the point of being camp. Not “campy.” Pure, unadulterated “camp.” But unlike the queer-centric camp of old, Con Air is something new, something preposterously fantastic. Con Air, my friends, is straight-boy camp. 

To prove this, however, I’ll first have to define what “camp” is.

In general, as previously stated, camp is generally associated with queer culture — drag, Cher, and the films of John Waters. It is ostentatious and bombastic. It’s so bad that it’s good. In a New York Times interview, “Notes on ‘Camp’” author Susan Sontag describes a campy mood as one that is “serious about the frivolous [and] frivolous about the serious.” 

So, the question now becomes, does Con Air fit these criteria? Well, it’s honestly hard to say.

On the one hand, it is certainly serious about its ludacris content. Take its inciting incident. The film asks us to wholeheartedly believe that former U.S. Army Ranger Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) would spend even half a minute in a holding cell after such a clear-cut case of self-defense. 

It expects us to believe that a staunchly red state like Alabama — where the law allows the use of deadly physical force in the case of usually non-violent crimes like burglary — would convict a VETERAN of murder after a man pulled a knife on him and his PREGNANT wife. If you believe that setup, I have a lovely beach house in Idaho to sell you.

No, Con Air doesn’t treat Poe’s conviction with winks and nods at the silliness of it all. It asks us to sympathize with a man caught in a bad situation that’s about to get worse. Allegedly, producer Jerry Bruckheimer loved the script but wanted to add “more heart.” 

What he got were scenes so saccharine that I actually identified more with Cyrus the Virus (Malkovich) as he’s mocking the letters Poe’s daughter sent. The heart-on-its-sleeve approach the film opts to take is perhaps why it is so cheesily campy, or, at least, why it can be perceived as being so. 

Unlike other action flicks of the 80s and 90s, this film seems to want to be more. It wants one-liners, boom-bang shootouts, and even a “hilarious” dose of transphobia like those other films might have. It also wants teary eyes in the crowd as Poe finally reunites with his daughter. 

How can you square these impulses? You can’t. Not unless you’re willing to say that it is straight-boy camp — camp made for the “drinking Mountain Dew and eating Doritos in front of 7/11 at 10pm” crowd. 

Con Air is straight-boy camp because it never laughs at its audience for wanting to see things as hokey as a stuffed suit’s prized Corvette being dropped from an airplane and crushed. It provides viewers with the, um, fun(?) of being on a plane full of freshly escaped convicts rocking out to “Sweet Home Alabama” thinking they’ve finally gotten away. 

It ends not with one, but with two separate climaxes. One where a plane lands on the Las Vegas strip, and another where the leads get into a motorcycle/firetruck chase wherein the good guys get into a shootout/water-hosing with the main bad guy. 

If the movie fails at certain camp criteria, it’s because it refuses to pick apart its “serious” scenes.

We aren’t meant to laugh at Poe and his family reuniting. We aren’t meant to laugh at Cage’s dramatic line readings, and especially not at his actually hilarious “I’m gonna show you God does exist” scene. It’s all really supposed to be oh-so-serious. 

In a movie where Pinball’s body hitting an elderly couple’s car is played for laughs, and Malkovich seems to be having the time of his life, what are we to do with these disparate and seemingly incongruent parts?  

The only thing I can say is its camp, or at least something akin to it. 

Con Air exists as a divisive film because it puts as much attention into being cheesy as it does to being sincere without ever letting on which tone it actually aims to achieve. Witness: the heavy metal score and its juxtaposition with an admittedly fine vocal performance by Yearwood; the tonal whiplash of asking us to watch a man’s head get crushed by a hydraulic press and then weep tears of joy at Poe’s meeting his daughter for the first time; the requiring us in general not to think Cage’s Snoop from The Wire accent is peak comedy. Combine that with its heteronormativity, its explosions, and its essential Boys Club mentality, and you have a prime example of what I would call straight-boy camp.

Then again, there’s always the chance that this movie just sucks. At this point, I hardly even know myself.

Con Air is available on Amazon Prime Video.

The post Why ‘Con Air’ Is Peak Straight-Boy Camp appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

After all, what he is doing is technically legal. The 1973 Home Rule Act allows presidents to take during an emergency, the Trump administration, the first one to ever actually utilize this provision, is claiming the current situation in the nation’s capital is just that. However, there are pesky facts that get in the way of such claims. As the current administration continues its worrying trend of accelerating its authoritarian actions and rhetoric, it is worth considering five key issues with Trump’s recent deployment of the National Guard in DC.

5. It Defies Facts

While the President has made no secret of his appreciation for blatant lies that his supporters frame as mere exaggeration, the facts cannot support his claims that Washington is a city in an existential war with itself. While it is true that DC has a higher homicide rate than other major cities like New York and Los Angeles, its 2024 rate doesn’t even crack the top ten ranking of US cities.

Adding to this, the 2025 murder rate is trending even lower, with an 11% drop in homicides compared to this time last year. This is likely part of an overall drop in the national homicide rate that had spikes in 2020 and 2022 but is beginning to trend lower than even pre-pandemic rates. Another factor might be the preventative and restorative work that is happening in cities with high crime rates (more on that below). Whatever the case, it simply distorts reality to deny that DC, whatever issues it may have with crime, is not at a 30-year low in violent crime.

And for folks like myself that have watched series like “The Wire” or “We Own This City” and are understandably wary of the bureaucratic chicanery that leads to “juking” or altering stats in order to make felonies into misdemeanors and thereby appear to reduce violent crime without actually doing so, simply look to the homicide rates. It’s easy for a police command structure to whitewash an assault; it’s much harder to hide an entire body.

4. It Contributes to False Notions of What Actually Decreases Crime

More policing forces alone do not stop crime. Full stop. Think back on any time America has occupied a nation. What happened the very moment we left? A quote attributed to a Taliban leader comes to mind: “You have the watches, but we have the time.” In other words, no occupying force will ever have the buy-in necessary to outlast the will of the occupied. Put into an American context, this means that “boots on the ground” in our cities will only do so much to prevent the tragic outcomes of the online back-and-forths that precipitate much of modern youth gun violence.

Sure, a police presence may stop that violence today or tomorrow, but what about months or years from now? The ego-bruising hurts that cause many senseless homicides will still be there long after the camera crews and confused Guardsmen have left, and there needs to be something to address it. Preventative programs and restorative justice are a key part of the answer. To quote one study, “successful crime prevention should be based on social programs and physical improvements to the built environment that are unique to the city.” It cannot all be based on simply occupying impoverished neighborhoods until crime magically dissipates.

Crime has a provenance, and unless you address those root causes—poverty, lack of access to education, a dearth of positive role models—you risk feeling like overpolicing is the only option. And then you produce countless ugly scenes in which residents rightly feel like their very existence is being criminalized.

3. It Militarizes Civilian Spaces

This part should be clear, so we’ll keep it short. THE MILITARY DOES NOT POLICE CIVILIANS. That’s literally what dictators do. The armed forces are meant to protect its citizens against other armies, not harass them about civil infractions. Even crimes as odious as murder are not within the military’s purview to investigate when it comes to civilians. That’s kind of the whole point of America’s founding emphasis on federal versus local power. Without that balance, we risk falling (deeper) into authoritarianism. Now, the Guard occupies an interesting role in that, unlike the Army or the Marines, it can be activated under Title 32 to do police work. However, that is usually done in times of complete civil unrest like widespread riots or Black teens trying to go to school in Arkansas. It is not meant to supplement the everyday workings of even the most overtaxed civilian police department. To do so risks making the analogy that police are like occupying forces into a bleak reality.

2. It Evokes Harmful Racialized Narratives

Among Trump’s list of “bad, very bad” cities, you will find Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and “of course, Baltimore and Oakland.” It’s not much of a riddle to ask what these cities have in common. Besides being Democratic strongholds, they are also “minority majority” cities that are part of a growing trend of nonwhite population growth outpacing that of whites. This has led to a frenzied, sometimes violent backlash from white supremacists and the rise of “Great Replacement” conspiracy theories that blame everything except the fact that many people simply don’t want kids.

Trump has seized this opportunity to claim what the future will look like if the “minorities” become the national majority. In short, it’ll be bedlam so dire an armed resistance is needed. By singling out these cities—many of which have Black mayors—Trump paints an image of the inevitable failure of Black leadership and the inherent violence of POC communities. He is essentially parroting white nationalist talking points and using federal might to support his claims. 

1. It Continues the Administration’s Federal Overreach into Various Institutions

Pity the poor people that thought Trump was a small-government conservative. Right now, they are likely shocked that the party of little-to-no government intervention currently has its hands in every institutional cookie jar. He’s attacking books, universities, museums, and key financial institutions that he feels don’t adhere to his vision of America. He is violating various norms in order to secure a version of America that seemingly has no people of color, no LGBTQ+ community, and has always been right in any decision it’s ever made. He’s using executive force to assimilate or annihilate institutions he sees as going against his will.

There’s an “f-word” for that, but it eludes me at the moment. Society cannot function unless there is a balance between various social institutions — churches, schools, families, governments, etc. They all have a role to play in a free and fair society. When one institution decides it’s the be-all and end-all, there’s a problem. This trend of federal overreach must end before a smarter, more clever politician perfects it.

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Well, here we are. After a nearly two-year hiatus, The Gilded Age,  one of our favorite shows returned. It promised a season packed with not just beautiful outfits and romance but with a bit of action as well. It didn’t disappoint. This season gave us so many beautiful performances, so much thoughtful writing, so many outfits that absolutely ate, that we couldn’t help but be overjoyed at the news it had been renewed for a fourth season. 

But before that season premieres, it’s worth dissecting and reminiscing on this past one to see what worked and what didn’t. Let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of The Gilded Age season 3. But, first a quick recap.

This season saw many changes, but one that will likely stick out to viewers is that Marian (Louisa Jacobson) has stuck with a fiancé through the season finale, however shaky the ground she and Larry (Harry Richardson) are on. Conversely, Larry’s parents George and Bertha Russell (Morgan Spector and Carrie Coon) are worse than they’ve ever been. Despite being shot last episode, George still finds the strength to leave Bertha confused and in tears as he continues their separation (more on that below).

Oscar Van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) has potentially found a partner in the newly widowed Mrs. Enid Winterton (Kelley Curran), Bertha’s former maid who will do anything to maintain her current, monied position. And elsewhere in the Van Rhijn household, Agnes (Christine Baranski) has finally made peace with the fact that Ada (Cynthia Nixon) is the head of the household. Finally, for Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), things are looking very good, as Dr. Kirkland (Jordan Donica) has decided to ask for her hand in marriage despite his mother’s colorist and prudish misgivings. In all, it was an exciting season that had a lot to celebrate and a couple things we could have done without. Here they are. 

The Good

The Exploration of Black Life in Newport

When HBO announced casting additions when production began for this season, it was exciting to see more Black faces, especially when one of those faces belonged to Phylicia Rashad. With Rashad’s casting as Mrs. Elizabeth Kirkland, in addition to that of Jordan Donica and Brian Stokes Mitchell as her son and husband, it became clear that a show that had previously alluded to a larger, aristocratic Black society would now be representing it in full. This was an excellent choice both for how it expanded the in-show universe and for how it complicates notions of Black life in the 19th century. 

It is likely many viewers, Black or otherwise, may not have known about Newport’s tony Black history. When so much of what we know about American history is Eurocentric, painful, or both, it is almost shamefully fanciful to imagine wealthy Black societies that began building their miniature empires around the time of the Revolution. When representation is impactful, it doesn’t try to be merely “positive.” Rather, it attempts to complicate what we think we know about a group by presenting us with the facts — highs and lows, warts and all. It is beautiful and eye-opening to see grand waltzes, marble interiors, and family paintings quietly telling generational stories in Black Newport homes. It is uncomfortably relatable to see Black characters deal with relatives who, like Mrs. Kirkland, are obsessed with propagating colorism and texturism. Indeed, it’s even great to see Rashad as a soft-spoken, underhanded villain who might have found herself at home in the social circle of the equally devious Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy) were there not a strict color barrier. 

For its educating the audience about an interesting piece of Black history and continuing the growing trend of complicating notions of Blackness, this part of the season is clearly The Good.

The Costuming (Obviously)

It’s almost perfunctory that if one mentions The Gilded Age, one must mention the top-tier outfits made possible by costume director Kasia Walicka-Maimone. However, just because something is routine does not make it needless. Of course every outfit in season 3 (with, perhaps, the exception of Marian’s season finale ball gown) is part of The Good because it enlivens, colors, and brightens an age that tends to exist in the collective imagination as monochromatic.

Think: before watching The Gilded Age, could you ever imagine someone saying “I love that 1880s look”? Of course you can’t, and anyone that says otherwise is either lying or Kasia Walicka-Maimone. But this season has continued the show’s trend of making one almost sorry that they missed the early 1880s, a historical period so obscure that it’s hard to state a notable president or event from it. The tireless work involved to make 36,000 pages of research come to life has been worth it. We might list every outfit we loved this season, but no website has the bandwidth. 

The Bad

The Times it Threatened to Become Monotonous 

Thankfully, Fellowes is self-aware enough to know that much involving Marian has been a variation on a theme: Boy meets girl, woos girl, loses girl. It was starting to seem like Marian’s trajectory was to be as a spinster of some sort or a new form of independent woman that could only be possible in an era of budding women’s rights and changing views on divorce. That would have been fine, but not if we had to see her live the same storyline every season to get there. Luckily, Fellowes and co-writer Sonja Warfield provide the Marian/Larry storyline the ability to grow into something more. Season four might be about them dealing with the pains of maturing as a couple rather than the less complicated pangs of ending a brief but powerful romance. However, because it made us fear that we knew where the story was going, this aspect goes into The Bad.

The Ugly

Bertha’s Treatment of Gladys

Let it be known: I’m not afraid of the Berthive. If the Bertha stans want to come for me for what I say next, then that’s okay. 

George is absolutely, one hundred percent right about Bertha. 

While George and Bertha Russell are both ruthless in their respective spheres, the age’s social values make it so that Bertha’s sphere of influence is mainly located within the family home. And she rules it like a despot. In his final scene with her this season, George was somewhat correct to point out that his unscrupulous behavior largely affects other businessmen. He neglects to point out that his robber-baron ways also affect workers toiling under his low wages and long hours, but the advantage he has is that those workers are elided and forgotten. They don’t live in his home or even his neighborhood.

Bertha, on the hand, has to see first-hand what misery her conniving creates. Although Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) seems happy now with her arranged marriage to the Duke, historical spoilers say that may not be the case forever. And all this emotional ruin is because Bertha Russell, the former working-class girl now living a dream existence, cannot help but to want more. And imposing that on your family is downright UGLY. 

The Gilded Age season 3 can be streamed in its entirety on HBO Max.

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The importance of invitations is immediately established

Besides the opening voiceover (which gives us a film feel) that establishes the intimate relationship between music and spirituality, one of the first lines we hear is preacher boy Sammie (newcomer Miles Caton) being invited into the church by his father. Sammie’s ultimate fate has been the focus of many fan theories, including one that suggests he sold his soul to the devil, (that devil being Remmick, played by Jack O’Connell) and one might be forgiven for momentarily thinking that his hesitation to enter the church, combined with his ability to do so seemingly being predicated on his father’s invitation, means that Sammie has joined the ranks of the undead.

There’s just one problem with that in my personal opinion. Sinners, while highly imaginative emotional movie, is still very conventional as far as its vampire lore is concerned: garlic hurts them, silver has great stopping power, and one of the only ways to truly defeat them is with a stake to the heart. A ticket straight to hell. What that also means is that Sammie can’t be a vampire in this opening scene because the morning sun would have cooked him long before he could complete his drive to the church. Still, what this helps establish is one of the film’s themes: A sanctuary, whether it is a church, a home, or a cherished juke joint, is sacred, and one must always be wary of who and what one invites in. There’s a reason Swedish writer John Ajvide Lindqvist titled his 2004 vampire novel and its later film adaptation Let the Right One In. 

Adding to this, in a line I missed during a first viewing, when Sammie sees a guitar in his unnamed father’s church, his father says, “I brought it in here.” Once again, we see that someone is making a choice as to who or what can enter sacred spaces. The guitar makes Sammie’s father uncomfortable, but he risks “inviting” whatever risks it might bring in order to make his son more likely to enter his church.  An even greater evil, if you will. It is, like later invitations we will see in the film, one that will not end well for the father as far as his pastoral hopes for his son are concerned.

Smoke and Stack’s outfits reveal their character and backgrounds

Obviously, a first-time viewing will reveal that twin brothers (or cousins?) Smoke and Stack wear contrasting colors: Stack in his fiery red and Smoke in his cool blue. Besides telling us that these two adult twins no longer feel the need to wear cute matching outfits, it also allows the audience a shorthand of who is who before we can dive deeper into their character traits. However, there is more than meets the eye with the costume design.

Besides wearing different colors, Smoke and Stack also wear different subculture-specific accessories and costumes that reveal much about their 1930s hometown Chicago affiliations. Stack, with his red fedora and tie combo, has all the trappings of a Prohibition-era Italian mobster. For reference, look at any image of Al Capone from this same time period. What you will see is a similar fedora-tie-vest combo as what we see on Stack. Contrast that with Smoke who brings a decidedly more Peaky Blinders flair to the table. That is no accident, as his scally cap, tweed suit, and blue button-up shirt are more typical of the era’s Irish gangs.

The visual storytelling here foreshadows the reveal that the guys have been playing both factions against one another in order to steal wine (from the Italians) and beer (from the Irish) that will supply their Mississippi juke joint. Other than providing an easy way to tell characters apart, this easily overlooked detail also lets audience members know that the Smokestack Twins are well apprenticed in the art of being a gangster.

Bo and Grace own two Stores: one for whites and one for Blacks

I’ll confess, on my first watch, I simply thought that Chinese-American couple Bo (yao) and Grace (Li Jun Li) were very prosperous. In the shot where we follow their daughter Lisa from the general store Bo is managing to the grocery store Grace is manning, I figured that the most this scene signified was that the couple were effective business owners. On a second viewing, however, it becomes clear that Lisa is not simply crossing the street but also traversing worlds. One side of the town’s main drag is entirely Black while the other is wholly white.

As Chinese-Americans living in the racist segregated South, the Chow family represent part of the messiness inherent to a world divided by absolutist notions of “Black” or “white.” As histories of Asian-Americans living during segregation can attest, not falling into either category left one both freer and more restricted. You could exist in the white world, but you could not comfortably inhabit it. You could relate to the color prejudice experienced in the Black world, but your unique identity also made it possible to (in some cases, at least) attend alleged “whites-only” public schools. Bo, Grace, and Lisa Chow represent the limits of Black/white segregation that would almost be comical had they not also been so deadly. 

Stack foreshadows his and Mary’s fate

In the scene where we are introduced to Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), we learn about her romantic (and X-rated) history with Stack. Stack, ever brash and apparently unsentimental, tries to brush her off. For one, she is white-passing and married to a white man in St. Louis. One wrong eye on their interaction and any knowledge of her past could result in her being shunned from white society or, more likely, worse. In his attempt to protect Mary, Stack dismisses her rudely. As a result, she tells him to rot in hell. He responds, “Yeah, I will,” and adds that he will save her a room next to him.

This presages the fact that these two sinners will eventually be doomed to share a fate arguably worse than hell. In the second half of the film, according to Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), vampires exist in a perpetual state of hatred because their souls are trapped and cannot rejoin the ancestors. They are cursed to live in the shadows, thriving on blood and manipulation. The only seeming silver lining is that Stack and Mary, as Stack teasingly promised, share this fate together. In a post-credits scene (that I stupidly missed during my first theater viewing), we see that they are still together, sharing this hellish existence with one another and even offering Sammie a place with them. Stack has finally allowed Mary fully into what is left of his heart. This was one of the most bold single parts of the movie for me in my second-viewing. This offered a kind of emotional level I didn’t appreciate during the first viewing.

Sammie named his own juke joint after Pearline

Finally, speaking of the post-credits scene, we see that the aged Sammie is still playing his heart out. But as Sammie jams onstage, we see the name “Pearline” blazoned on large display behind him. Pearline (Jayme Lawson) was the love of his life.  It seems that decades later, that night has left him scars of every kind, but that day, “before the sun went down,” was one of his brightest. And he has chosen to carry the best part of it with him to his dying day. Sinners is such a good film and gets better after multiple viewings. Absolute cinema! Just quit it with the From Dusk Til Dawn comparisons already!

Sinners is now streaming on HBO Max.

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In a far less intellectually rewarding way, this is kind of what it feels like to prepare to watch the MCU’s 36th film, Thunderbolts*. Indeed, there are 10 MCU projects you can watch just to be fully abreast of what is happening. If we (very conservatively) assume that each of those projects took two hours to complete, that’s nearly a day’s worth of content in order to understand a film that clocks in at two hours and six minutes. But, the question is this: Is it worth it?

The answer, overall, is yes. 

The basic story is this: Florence Pugh (Black Widow, Dune: Part Two) reprises her role as Yelena Belova. Yelena has been mourning the death of her sister, Natasha Romanoff, who is left unnamed. More on that later. This sense of mourning has left her feeling listless and bored. In a stunningly shot opening scene, she more or less sleepwalks through a fight with henchmen while seeking to recover — or destroy — some research on behalf of shady CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). When Yelena asks Valentina for more of a front-facing role, one that allows her a sense of visibility and ends the monotony of covert black ops, Valentina promises she will get that after One Last Job.

On the OLJ, Yelena quickly realizes that she has been duped. Valentina, in an effort to clear her name and evade impeachment from her CIA role, has opted to have every assassin she has ever contracted kill one another and have the last person standing die in an evidence-destroying incineration. The problem is Yelena isn’t the only one to realize she’s been had. Ava Starr, aka Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp (Hannah John-Kamen) and John Walker, aka the failed Captain America from Falcon and the Winter Soldier, also realize that they have been double-crossed. Worse, they have awoken a seemingly harmless, largely aloof young man named Bob (Lewis Pullman) and must now protect him from Valentina’s traps.

From here, the story becomes a revenge mission. These misfits, along with the Red Guardian Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and the Winter Soldier — and freshman congressman — Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), must find a way to stop Valentina before she can unleash a power held within Bob that threatens the young man and everyone around him.

It is here that I should make a full disclaimer: This film is certainly the most interesting Marvel has been in a while, but it is still very “Marvel,” much to the chagrin of anyone who has tired of that entire film subgenre. To its credit, the film makes good use of lesser-known characters and allows audiences to see origin stories other than Uncle Ben (or Aunt May) dying for the umpteenth time so that Peter Parker can truly comprehend that with great power comes great blah blah blah. While the movie largely elides the back stories of everyone besides Yelena, it is interesting to see how it deals with darker themes related to guilt, shame, and a sense of lacking real purpose. The film, a bit too literally, depicts how one can get trapped in one’s shame, in the part of the brain that, rather than saying “You did a bad thing,” declares “You are a bad thing.” It is here where the film shines.

Florence Pugh is, as always, a breath of fresh air, elevating would might otherwise be senselessly dismissed as a Suicide Squad ripoff. The pathos Pugh brings to Yelena is by far the main reason to see this film. Yelena is a mess, and messes recognize, empathize, and connect with fellow messes. Her scenes with Pullman and Harbour anchor the film with an emotional weight that allows the audience to connect with stakes other than “Will our heroes be able to fend off these decently rendered CGI effects?”

That’s the good of the film. The bad, as I said, is that this is still a Marvel film, with all the hallmarks attendant to that. In other words, if you need actual stakes or a sense that someone or something might actually be lost in a meaningful sense, go watch Sinners. If you’re not a fan of the quippy brand of Marvel comedy, run for your life. This movie has never seen an emotional moment it didn’t want to undercut with a silly line in order to prevent the audience from having to sit with any negative emotion for too long.

To be fair, most of the lines come from Harbour, who is having so much fun that you’d have to be heartless to begrudge his joy. But, still, what about our joy? Or, more importantly, our sadness? Our ability to recognize in a character the loneliness that wanders in and out of everyone’s lives from time to time. Marvel, we’ve been watching your movies for the past 17 years. We’ve grown up with you. We are big kids now. We can sit with an uncomfortable emotion without needing assurance that there’s a joke around the corner. 

Still, there are signs that Marvel is growing with us. It understands that new fans may not know who Natasha Romanoff is, so they omit her name so the audience can focus on Yelena’s loss rather than have to recap a series of films starting in 2012. The main antagonist is more at war with himself than anything else, and we are thankfully denied a sky beam in the climax. This is the best Marvel film in years, but sometimes I wonder if that means much to people other than its core audience. 

To be sure, this film is conversing with past and future Marvel. As a viewer, you’ll be able to pick up the flow of conversation pretty quickly, but unless you are fully invested in all three interlocutors, you might lose interest in their reminiscing and predictions. Indeed, you may just decide your time was better spent trying to finally decipher Fanon. 

Thunderbolts* premieres in theaters May 2, 2025.

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In fact, this show is so uninterested in bringing novices and the uninitiated up to speed that Damon Lindelof, the mind behind Lost and The Leftovers, might think Fielder was being a bit too opaque and self-referential. But please understand: I never once said that this made the show bad. It’s just not something that will likely be enjoyed by anyone unfamiliar with Fielder esoterica dating back to his pre-Nathan for You days.

But perhaps I should attempt to summarize this work without spoiling it or driving people from it in droves.

This sophomore season of Fielder’s HBO production The Rehearsal centers on Fielder’s thesis that airline disasters caused by human error on the captain’s part can be avoided if only the plane’s copilot were more assertive. Like Season 2 of The Leftovers, this second run feels like a soft reboot, maybe even a requel. There are minimal rehearsals for individuals like Kor Skeete, who found the Season 1 experience largely positive but the resultant hipster fame a tad frustrating. The show seems to have moved away from its apparent original intention to have a “person of the week” in favor of a traditional season-long arc more concerned with Fielder’s anxious scenarios than anyone else’s. However, this is not a complete departure from what came before.

Fielder’s fans know that Season 1 went from following a formula that matched Nathan for You in terms of a new person (victim?) weekly to exploring Fielder’s onscreen persona and his fears about parenthood. Those fans will likely recall the many highlights that pivot gave us: Fielder’s visit to Dr. Fart, who encouraged — demanded, in fact — that his patient eat poo; Fielder’s realization that rehearsing fatherhood with another fully grown man might hinder his ability to fully invest in this parental practice run; or the time Fielder had his teenage actor “overdose” and die so the character could be softly rebooted.

While these moments were shockingly hilarious, one also gets the feeling that they were the result of necessary improvisation. In 2021, Fielder and co-writers Carrie Kemper (The Office, Beef), Adam Locke-Norton (The Curse), and Eric Notarnicola had to wrestle with the weight of the pandemic and the pressure it put on all productions. The more I watch Season 1, the more I get the feeling that the plan was to have more real-world characters like Patrick deal with their issues rather than to spend so many claustrophobic moments with Angela and her wacky proselytizing. Like the rest of the planet, Fielder and company had to make due with restrictions on the amount of people that could be in proximity to one another. Regardless, the result was beautiful, but it was likely a happy accident.

This new season, on the other hand, has no such restrictions. To put it succinctly, Season 1 will survive as a testament to how strange and ad hoc of a time the pandemic was, but Season 2 will remain notable as a monument to the grandiose absurdity Fielder will revel in if given time, space, and HBO’s seemingly endless resources. Indeed, this review is spending so much time talking about the season obliquely because to discuss it in full would lessen the impact of the journey. Let’s try this: I’ll give you a set of words, and you’ll predict what they might mean for this new season.

Here goes.

Planes, Tinder ban, First Officer Blunt, George W. Bush statue, Congress, “Wings of Voice,” the Miracle on the Hudson, “Bring Me to Life,” the Fielder Method, animal pack mentality.

Alright, did you do it? Did you create a season-long arc that conceivably connects each of these seemingly disparate things? Did it make sense at all? If you said yes, I don’t believe you. If you said no, you should plan on watching Season 2 of The Rehearsal in order to see how Fielder’s writing team connects these far-out dots. 

If you consider yourself a fan of absurd humor, this will be the show for you. There are moments that happen that I wouldn’t describe for two reasons.

First, so much of this show, one ostensibly based on the value of predictability, is, in fact, predicated on taking its audience to the most unexpected, outlandish spaces. To say too much would be to dilute the experience and the humor.

Second, I don’t want to get fired. Fielder gets really gross really fast, and I don’t need an editor mad at something a television comedian made me say. Still, this occasionally gross-out unpredictability is a major reason to watch this show. Like the best performance art, it is entirely unconcerned with mass appeal. It has a specific vision of how to bring its plausible, seemingly sincere thesis to light, and it will use every warehouse set and Fielder Method-approved actor in Los Angeles to do so. 

If you got past the first paragraph, if you read that messy jumble inspired by the chaotic ode to predictability that Fielder and Co. have created, then you are one of the true believers for whom this season of The Rehearsal was made.

The Rehearsal premieres Sunday, April 20, 2025, at 10:30 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.

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I keep that in mind, because if I don’t, I will be tempted to gush about how everyone should see it, and I know that that is not necessarily the case. If everyone saw it, the people that are, like me, denizens of subreddits, parody X accounts, and Facebook meme groups dedicated to The Sopranos, would find themselves enraptured in the nostalgia for a show that premiered a quarter of a century ago. However, the other folks — a likely sizable group of people that either watched the show occasionally or never felt the need to begin it in the first place — may be left feeling a little underwhelmed. And, believe me, it pains me to say that.

But the reality is that in the seventeen years since The Sopranos ended its run, it has now, as John Mulaney quipped about himself and Louis Farrakhan, come to mean a lot to a very small group of people. For viewers less invested in the mythos of David Chase and the television show that is generally cited as commencing the modern Golden Age of Television, this documentary may not translate as well. It’s clearly a love letter to the series, the man who created it, and the fans that sustained it. And who wants to read a love letter meant for someone else?

All that said, though, yes, everyone should see this documentary.

Director Alex Gibney (The Inventor, Totally Under Control) sits down with Sopranos creator and showrunner David Chase in a recreation of Dr. Melfi’s iconic office as they explore both Chase’s history and the show’s. The doc is cut into two parts, although I’m not sure why, considering they’ll premiere on the same night and clock in at just over two and a half hours when watched consecutively. Given the generally elongated runtimes of modern cinema ranging from Marvel to Nolan to Scorsese, this shouldn’t be a problem for most viewers.

The documentary begins as most biographical films do: at Chase’s early days. The difference, though, is that this doc literally starts speeding through Chase’s recollection of his childhood and adolescence. I became concerned initially, thinking I was watching a defective copy, but then it dawned on me that the doc is telling one of two jokes: that they’re fast forwarding to the more Sopranos-focused parts for us, or that Chase simply talks too much. Maybe both. Still, they speed run through his life, so I will too.

Chase was born, as lore tells us and Chase confirms, to an anxious, morose mother that would end up inspiring Livia’s character. He lived in suburban New Jersey, fell in with a bad group during adolescence, went to college, got married, found Fellini and Polanski, and decided filmmaking out West would be his best bet. He got work as a part of a company that made trashy, softcore pornography until he managed to get hired as a screenwriter for a more respectable outfit.

From here, he worked in television until enough people were able to convince him that he should write about his mother and sell the script as a feature or to a network as a show. Finally, we get to the mid 1990s, when HBO executives are greenlighting his pilot episode and Chase began the slow, integral work of casting. It is here that those two previously mentioned audiences will have wildly different viewing experiences.

Part 1’s behind-the-scenes footage of auditions is its strongest section. For dilettante Sopranos viewers, it will certainly be interesting to see the stressful process of choosing between so many actors auditioning for the same role and hearing so many plausible deliveries of the same few lines. For those diehard, expert viewers, the ones who can quote scenes at length and remember even peripheral and one-off characters fondly, it will be delightful and horrifying seeing what happened versus what could have been. Those people will cheer when they first see Michael Imperioli (The White Lotus) auditioning for Dean Moltisanti, but they will be disturbed seeing other, admittedly good actors saying words we know belong to him. It’s like viewing an alternate timeline where your spouse marries someone else — it might work out fine for people in that world, but it’s a terrifying prospect to everyone here. 

Part 1 then shows us the stress of filming a pilot, screening it for test audiences, and waiting to hear if a company like HBO (then considered a television “backwoods”) will risk millions betting on a series. As we all know, the bet pays off a hundredfold, and Part 2 deals with the impact the series’ success has on the two men seemingly most responsible for bringing Tony Soprano to life: David Chase and the late James Gandolfini.

To say more about Part 2 would spoil what I consider to be the more interesting section of the documentary. We learn more about Gandolfini, an actor who (for better or worse) will always be associated with the iconic crook from New Jersey. We see how success was a double-edged sword both for a man who was a relatively unknown character actor prior to 1999 and a man who was ready to quit writing television in favor of feature films. Interviews from cast and crew include most of the principal players and even feature archival footage of Gandolfini and Nancy Marchand, who played demonic matriarch Livia Soprano. They lend a sense of loss to the doc, a feeling that both, but especially Gandolfini, died long before they had shown the world just how truly astonishing they were as actors. 

If those divergent audiences I mentioned at the outset are able to agree on anything, it is this: Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos is a well-made documentary that acts as a reminder to the fans of how funny, tragic, and abominable Sopranos characters could be and just how idiosyncratic of a mind one would need in order to create them. If Part 1 feels a little stale to the point where even the filmmakers are joking about it, Part 2 makes up for that by questioning just how much a writer or actor can look into an abyss like Tony Soprano without the abyss staring back. Or, perhaps worse, questioning if that abysmal creature was a part of us all along. 

Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos premieres Saturday, September 7, 2024, on Max and HBO at 8pm ET/PT.

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My hope is that viewers of HBO’s The Regime, in between the genuine laughs this excellent political satire and black comedy elicits, will be reminded of the very real stakes it discusses. Navalny- and Trump-like figures make excellent martyrs and villains onscreen, but once transposed to the real world, they represent the need for urgent political action. The Regime is excellent viewing about the revitalized and ever-growing issue of autocracy around the world and even in the States. That said, it is often a very funny show, so please don’t imagine it’s as dreary as this opening paragraph.

The Regime, starring Kate Winslet as autocratic Central European chancellor Elena Vernham and Matthias Schoenaerts as loyal right-hand man Corporal Herbert Zubak, is a pitch-black comedy and political satire with excellent dramatic elements to round it out. The story begins when Vernham feels that she needs bodyguards that will resort to even the most brutal tactics to protect her. Enter Zubak, known to people in the unnamed country as “The Butcher” for how he and several other soldiers slaughtered unarmed mining protestors in a recent incident. Where others are disgusted, Vernham is intrigued.

As an audience, we too are intrigued with the ghastly characters onscreen. This comedy-drama is the brainchild of The Menu co-writer and Succession alum Will Tracy. Tracy’s tenure as a writer there, on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and even at satirical news site The Onion has left him well-equipped to create and act as showrunner for a piece of television about the absurdities that attend absolute power and the strange people that crave it.

Elena Vernham is a ridiculous woman. She’s vain, yet insecure. Cunning, but also a bit stupid. She’s a hypochondriac with bizarre beliefs about mold despite having been a well-trained physician in her pre-dictatorial career. She’s a daddy’s girl who has been on a steep mental decline since her father’s death, but she also revels in the fact that she actually achieved the chancellorship while he never could. That she does this reveling in front of his preserved corpse — which she keeps in her palace embalmed and a decorated à la Lenin’s Mausoleum — should tell you all you need to know about the depth and multitude of their relationship’s issues. 

Not to be outdone, Vernham’s co-lead is similarly plagued with personal conflict. He wants to make his country better, but he’s in love with the autocrat who’s selling it out to the highest bidder. He sees her in his dreams, and in his mind this is a sign of their shared destiny. What he also sees is a version of his homeland that is independent financially and an emblem of self-determination for other world powers. He wants the Americans out of his country’s lucrative cobalt mines, and he wants the working-class people of his region and throughout the country to be given their dignity and respect. This, of course, puts him at odds with Vernham and her cronies, the government officials and oligarchs that are bleeding the country dry.

Tracy’s writing cements him as one of the best out, worthy of the inevitable comparisons to Armando Iannucci. What makes his writing team’s work so good is that it avoids pamphleteering in favor of something more literary. While her methods are disastrous and unethical, Vernham is sincerely trying to solve the problem of being a nation caught in the middle of two superpowers. America or China? These are, in effect, the only options available to a small Central European country whose glory days have long since faded, if they were ever that great in the first place.

When Vernham declares that her country will become an isolationist powerhouse, we, like her cautious and cunning advisors, know this is a contradiction and an impossibility. But Vernham enjoys contradictory aims. Despite her populist aims, she never understands, as Zubak tells her, “You can’t be Robin Hood and the king at the same time.” 

HBO’s The Regime works as a political satire because, like Succession, it lampoons people while remembering their humanity. While the characters are often selfish, odd, or even cruel, there isn’t one that seems one-note or unbelievable. As I said, it’s literary in its understanding of character and relationships: relationships between leaders and their people, between superpowers and satellite states, between lovers and the secret shared world their love creates. Were Elena Vernham simply a cold, calculating Machiavellian, The Regime would be less interesting.

Cunning and amorality are a part of wanting absolute power, but only a part. The other part, that Kate Winslet plays so expertly, is the desperation for adoration — for the people to say they love you and mean it. It’s no wonder Vernham begins and ends her addresses to the nation by calling them “my loves.”

The Regime is welcome viewing in this time of political crisis because, by the end of it, we see that justice can be done in a small fashion. That doesn’t mean that the bad guys always get the cinematic ending we think is just for them, but sometimes they have to live out the rest of their days a shell of their former selves. And other times, as may be the likely case with Mr. Putin, they die in power having dragged their country down with them.

Still, there is hope that their legacy suffers the abuse we hoped they might get in life. There is hope that the death of Alexei Navalny and all the other Navalny-like figures throughout time won’t have been for nothing. Without spoiling too much, I will say that a popular revolt in her country forces Vernham to think about the choices she’s made. We can only hope that the maniacs and misfits trying to grab power in the real world have a similar moment of introspection.

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With the help of an energetic coterie of producers, choreographers, videographers, and even “horse designers,” Lil Nas X brings his vision of an extravagant, kinetic concert to life. Like Nas himself, the stage production revels in doing the most. What the documentary crew provides is a glimpse behind the scenes. Directors Carlos López Estrada (Raya and the Last Dragon) and Zac Manuel capture the things we’ve come to expect from a peek-behind-the-curtain concert film — sweaty choreography practice runs, queues of adoring fans outside the venues, delicate hair and makeup sessions — but also some things we don’t.

It’s legitimately heartwarming to see confessional shots of fans, many of whom are queer people of color, explaining what Lil Nas X means to them. More than one talks about what Lil Nas X made them realize about things like self-love and self-care, especially as it concerns people who feel marginalized by a society that sees them as offensive simply for being themselves. Nas is their hero for being openly queer in every sense of the term. It is when it covers topics like this that the documentary is at its best.

Nas is surprisingly candid. When it begins, the film seems like it might just be another film about what it’s like to be on tour. The singer might have a meltdown. There could be a minor electrical/mechanical inconvenience that threatens to prematurely end the show until an enterprising stage tech gets the problem figured out just in time. We’ll see the crew’s antics on the road throughout, and then the credits will roll as the musician takes their last bow. In short, the movie, at first, threatens to be a queer version of The Up in Smoke Tour. But then Nas starts talking about his life.

It’s small doses at first. We learn about how his great-grandmother’s death led to anxiety issues that made music production a necessary escape. We meet his nephew Chase, an adorable nine-year-old who goes with his uncle everywhere. We start to see a few of his (many, many) brothers. Then Nas talks about what coming out meant for him. It’s about here that I should say that this movie is very, very gay. And I say that lovingly.

At its best, Long Live Montero is about Black queer self-love, and it frames any instances of its subject being flamboyant or “extra” as a joyful stretch of a long, hard road towards self-revelation and self-acceptance. Lil Nas X employs as his backup dancers other queer men of color who may have faced similar journeys. He admits to feeling most like himself when he is with them. They are his subordinates, but they also seem to make up his found family. This is not to say Nas is estranged from his biological family, but there are tensions about which he is refreshingly honest. 

Lil Nas X first came out to his father, Robert Stafford. The gospel singer wondered aloud whether or not his son, who had just blown up to superstardom fast enough to merit “industry plant” speculations, was just being “tempted” by the devil and the excesses of fame. It hadn’t occurred to him that one does not “turn” gay. It’s this tension between who he is and who his family sees him as that makes Nas most compelling to watch, particularly during his Atlanta homecoming.

Here, we see glimpses of a Nas who (perhaps inadvertently) does a type of code-switching. He’s less loud and his register is more subdued, more in line with his brothers’ bassy Atlanta twang. He more conspicuously performs masculinity in a way he probably did for years before coming out and even after. He almost tells us as much when he admits that, when he first came out, he was “against doing anything feminine.” “I wanted to stay an acceptable gay person,” he says, imagining an invisible, conservative audience that happily notes, “‘This is the one that doesn’t shove it down our throats.’” Time has a way of happily changing folks. 

HBO’s Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero may not do much for you for most of its runtime unless you are a Nas fan. Much of it is your average concert film fare with nothing new to offer as far as the genre is concerned. However, fan or not, what is most compelling about this film is its glimpses into Nas’ growing sense of self-discovery. Going from a potential internet one-hit-wonder to a queer icon notable enough to get free press in Dave Chappelle’s latest comedy special cannot be an easy journey. And issues with this can be compounded by having to come to grips with yourself despite yourself.

If Lil Nas X is, as Chappelle says, “The gayest n**** alive,” then he deserves to be. It’s better than the self-effacing alternative. And though the movie ends with a butterfly motif — something that implies having reached a final form — Nas rightly tells us that this is only the beginning. At the young age of 24, Montero Hill is only now meeting himself. Time will show us the many more metamorphoses to come. 

Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero premieres Saturday, January 27, 2024, at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Max.

The post Review: HBO’s ‘Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero’ Brings His Vision of an Extravagant, Kinetic Concert to Life appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

What I won’t say is that, in my opinion, he scammed underprivileged young men out of an education and potential athletic careers — since libel becomes an actionable claim once it’s made about criminal actions — but I will stick to the gray areas Johnson seems to adore so much and say that, at the very least, that’s just what I heard from HBO’s captivating new documentary.

Executive produced by Adam McKay (Succession, The Menu, Don’t Look Up) and directed by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe (Two Distant Strangers), BS High is the story of Bishop Sycamore High School, a so-called charter school that failed to either educate its players or prepare them for college athletics via the football team it was built around. Further, it is about Roy Johnson, aka the Big Bad Wolf if he were a balding, self-satisfied middle-aged man.

The well-crafted doc does its best not to make everything about Johnson, so I will make the same attempt in this review. But you have to know that’s a tall order. If the cliché is true that a story is only as good as its villain, then this story is amazing.

What can one say about Johnson as presented in this documentary? He’s occasionally charming but always with something behind his wide-eyed demeanor that reads as either neurotic, acquisitive, or both. The first time we meet him, he explains that he has studied body language in school (with no way to tell if that’s true or something he just says to confer authority upon himself), and he worries about how he’ll come off depending on the position of his hands. 

“Do I look like a con artist?” he asks the directors with a smile. “I don’t wanna look like a con artist.” Later, while giving a list of his “qualities,” he explains, “I’m insecure, I’m an extremist, and I’m very resourceful.” And, as he’s just self-aware enough to know: “This is a bad combination.”

He’s a man who has ostensibly spent his entire adult life trying to profit off of others while providing nothing in return. He doesn’t see his actions in terms of “good” or “bad” but rather “legal or not.” This is not to say he doesn’t often break the law; he certainly does, leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid hotel bills, parking tickets, etc. in his wake. It just means that when he isn’t outright disregarding the rules, he’s contorting them in his favor. In all, Roy Johnson is a man who has studied the topography of the law enough to ascertain the depths of its gray areas.  

All of this culminates in the day his “school” plays against IMG, a Florida sports academy that houses one of the nation’s best high school football teams. Bishop Sycamore (cheekily referred to as “BS” in the doc) is trounced. It’s a 58-0 blowout that, because it was broadcast by ESPN, leaves the BS players humiliated on a national scale. From here, investigations begin and the results leave people like journalist Andrew King, Ohio student athletics investigator Ben Ferree, and Johnson’s former partner John Branham Sr. feeling annoyingly vindicated that they were right about Johnson back when no one cared to listen.

BS High transitions from comedy into tragedy when we see the toll of Johnson’s eager mendacity. He is a preposterous figure, and it’s definitely funny to watch him equivocate and half-truth his way into a bad facsimile of a justification for his actions, but then there’s the effect these lies had on his players. 

Testimonials from former BS players suddenly make this an uneasy watch. Quarterback Trilian Harris was depressed to the point of suicidal ideation after not only feeling duped but having the result of this confidence trick play out on live television and, worse, Twitter. Cornerback Adrian “Pahokee” Brown Jr. feels cheated out of his football dreams and his opportunity to focus on getting into a real college. And stories like these repeat themselves until the joke has lost its punch. 

Roy Johnson, in his hubris and delusion, is hilarious; what he did to these kids is not. As featured sports journalist Bomani Jones puts it, “The coach is seen as another father,” and Johnson exploits this expectation of a positive role model to the detriment of disadvantaged and vulnerable teens. 

What may surprise some viewers, as it surprised people at the time, is that Johnson is a Black man. Bomani Jones makes it clear why this shouldn’t shock anyone. If there is a question of “how could he do this to his own people,” people that, for one reason or another, likely would have a hard time getting into college and especially college football, Jones posits the answer as this: “He did that to his people because that’s who you could do this to.” 

What makes the documentary ultimately a devastating viewing experience is that we see how much these kids, young men aged anywhere from 18 to 20, wanted this to work out. They came to Johnson because they were love bombed and promised the world. What they got was a $12k “tuition” fee and injuries from the IMG game that may last a lifetime.

If it sounds like I’ve exhausted every narrative thread in this doc and spoiled it, please believe me when I say there’s so much more. There’s the school’s precursor, Christians of Faith Academy, that failed spectacularly before morphing into BS. There are the bizarre, occasionally disturbing anecdotes about Johnson’s actions, including the time he ran over geese for fun. And then there’s the legal fallout (or lack thereof) that Johnson faced for his actions beyond his two fake academies. There’s so much more, and it’s all packaged into a nice 97-minute runtime. 

Directors Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe set out to tell a wacky story about a woefully overmatched team from a fictitious school and the con man behind it. What they got was this and also a meditation on how this was only possible because the con man knew how much import is placed on high school football in America and how much money, which students never see, can be made from someone enterprising enough to put together a robust program. Johnson’s problem was that he was foolish enough to think he could do this with only his oily smile and Grandma-why-are-your-eyes-so-big disposition.

I want to stay in a Johnsonian libel loophole, so I’ll say this: I think this documentary is amazing, necessary viewing because it is about a man who (I think) preyed on the disadvantaged remorselessly. Johnson will be (I think) silly enough to really believe all publicity is good publicity and will continue his life being (in my opinion) a tiresome, egoistical bore.

It’s just a good thing this documentary is out to warn about folks like him and the problems they represent.

BS High premieres Wednesday, August 23, 2023, at 9:00–10:40 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Max. 

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