Month: March 2022

Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish movies available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.

10. (tie) Tick, Tick… Boom (Netflix)

Andrew Garfield is giving theater-kids everywhere a musical-thirst-trap performance in this Lin-Manuel Miranda-directed biopic that pays tribute to Jonathan Larson, the artistic genius who changed Broadway with his seminal musical Rent. This film examines Larson’s life before fans were belting out Season of Love though, with Garfield giving an award-worthy turn as a restless visionary who feels the suffocating deadline of turning 30 without having produced a great show. The supporting cast is terrific, Garfield is doing his best work, and Miranda infuses everything with a genuine sense of love and admiration that makes it hard not to root for this one. Watch it on Netflix.

10. (tie) The Power of the Dog (Netflix)

Benedict Cumberbatch gives a villainous performance for the ages in The Power of the Dog, the first film in 12 years from director Jane Campion. The western is expected (and deserves) to be an Oscars frontrunner, so hop on the horse-drawn bandwagon now. Watch it on Netflix.

10. (tie) Don’t Look Up (Netflix)

Jennifer Lawrence is back in Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s apocalyptic satire about two low-level astronomers (J-Law and Leonardo DiCaprio) who try to warn everyone on Earth about an approaching comet — but no one seems to care. The ensemble cast also includes Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Ariana Grande, Timothée Chalamet, Cate Blanchett, and Tyler Perry. Maybe that’s why no one cares about the comet. They’re too busy looking at all those stars. Watch it on Netflix.

10. (tie) The Matrix Resurrections (HBO Max)

The gang is all back. Mostly. They’re mostly all back. Keanu is there as Neo, with the John Wick beard. Carrie Ann Moss is back as Trinity even though Trinity kind of… died. It’s a whole thing. And it’s fun. This all could have gone a lot worse, really, which isn’t exactly the highest praise but is still important. Let’s do it all again in another 20 years. Let’s make it a thing. Watch it on HBO Max.

9. The Tinder Swindler (Netflix)

A man poses as a diamond mogul to lure in women online and bamboozle them out of millions of dollars, and then women get wise to the scam and try to figure out how to exact revenge. This is somehow both the best-possible description for an episode of SVU or a movie starring Charlize Theron as a vengeance-seeking assassin and the actual plot of Netflix’s latest true-crime documentary. Which will probably become an episode of SVU soon enough. It’s a whole ecosystem, really. Watch it on Netflix.

8. Encanto (Disney Plus)

The standout cut from the Encanto soundtrack, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” is the latest addition to the Maddeningly Catchy Disney Song canon, along with recent inductees “Let It Go” and “You’re Welcome.” (Lin-Manuel Miranda apparently knows a thing or two about songwriting, who knew?) The rest of the movie is fun, colorful, and teaches an important lesson about family and community, and you get to hear Rosa from Brooklyn Nine-Nine belt it out. But the best reason to watch Encanto is to learn firsthand why “Bruno” is one of the most popular songs in the country right now. Should you skip Encanto? Bruno-no-no-no. Watch it on Disney Plus.

7. Marry Me (Peacock)

Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson star as a preposterously attractive couple who get together after her character — one half of a global sensation pop duo — discovers her lover and music partner has been stepping out. That’s right, it is rom-com time over here. Will they? Won’t they? Whose hair will look better in the pivotal scene that will probably take place in the driving rain? There’s one way to find out: Grab some popcorn and comfy pajamas and set up shop on the couch. Watch it on Peacock.

6. Kimi (HBO Max)

Zoe Kravitz plays a stay-at-home digital detective in this latest thriller from Steven Soderbergh who — with the help of her friendly A.I. sidekick Kimi — uncovers a string of murders she traces back to the company she works for. She then must venture out into a pandemic-ridden Seattle in search of the reason why. Honestly, we can’t relate. But, Kravitz is quickly becoming a bonafide action star and a Soderbergh script rarely disappoints. Watch it on HBO Max.

5. Lucy and Desi (Amazon)

Parks and Recreation star Amy Poehler directs this documentary about legendary Hollywood power couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. It’s a story about success and making things that last and fighting for what you believe in, but mostly, really, it’s a love story about two extremely driven people. Lucy and Desi are having a moment here in 2022 between this and Aaron Sorkin’s biopic about them, so there’s never been a better time to get involved. Watch it on Amazon.

4. After Yang (Showtime)

A24’s latest sci-fi drama After Yang promises one of our favorite movie premises: Colin Farrell being very sad. He’s sad, you see, because his adopted daughter’s technosapien companion Yang (Justin H. Min) has malfunctioned. He’s sad because the android might be beyond repair. And he’s sad because, up until now, he didn’t realize what a fixture Yang was in his family’s life. So, Sad Colin Farrell goes on a journey, first to try to bring Yang back, then to try to figure out his own internal emotions. It’s all very beautiful and melancholic and poignant and sweet. But mostly, sad. So sad in fact that, at one point, to relay his sadness, Sad Colin Farrell does a Werner Herzog impersonation which, oddly enough, will be one of the few times in the film that you’ll likely laugh out loud. Still, despite playing with themes of grief and identity, there’s something undeniably hopeful here – yet another reason to watch. Watch it on Showtime.

3. The Adam Project (Netflix)

Ryan Reynolds plays Mark Ruffalo’s time-traveling son, so there’s a little MCU crossover there for you before Deadpool makes his possibly sooner than expected MCU return. They’re going to save the future, of course, and this film also has Ruffalo’s 13 Going On 30 co-star, Jennifer Garner, so there’s reteaming aplenty here. Expect both family drama and romance and drama across four dimensions. Watch it on Netflix.

2. West Side Story (Disney Plus)

Steven Spielberg brings the classic musical to the big and/or small screen, to the delight of both older fans and newer ones who get to experience it all for the first time. Get in there. Really let the experience wash over you. Sing along. Dance around your living room. Get in a knife fight with your sworn enemy. Okay, maybe not that last one. But the other ones, definitely. Watch it on Disney Plus.

1. Turning Red (Disney Plus)

In Domee Shi’s Turning Red, a boy band-loving teenage girl turns into a red panda whenever she experiences strong emotions, which as every parent of a teenager knows all too well, is often. Too often. It’s all the time, really. Turning Red is being called Pixar’s best movie in years, as it should. It’s about time red pandas got the cinematic showcase they deserve. Watch it on Disney Plus.

Donald Trump Jr. is very likely the kid who threatened “my dad could beat up your dad” back in kindergarten. Even today, at the age of 44, he’s doing an equally immature version of it—except now it’s on the world stage. In his latest public plea for his dad’s approval and love, Don Jr. has posted yet another rambling, bleary-eyed video in which he came to the former president’s defense, this time over his seeming admiration (though some say fear) of tyrannical dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.

HuffPost shared Jr.’s latest wild rant, in which he essentially claims that his father’s years of praising and slobbering all over people like Putin are just his wily dad’s way of playing the long con.

Junior kicked it off by parroting some of the most obvious criticisms plenty of smart people have had for his father, bellowing, “‘I can’t believe Trump said something nice about Putin, Kim, Xi [Jinping], anyone. He must love them! He’s folding to them! If it was me in charge, I’d tell them to go screw themselves.’ Right?” But Don the Lesser isn’t buying it:

“This is some nerd, in his mom’s basement, who’s never dealt with anything. Never actually had any power, [and] never understood those people, because he’s never been in the same room as them. In academia, they’re writing this stuff like it’s real, like they actually have a say, like they actually know what the hell they’re talking about.

Do you ever think that, like all other things, maybe Trump understood that. He knew exactly how to play these guys, and he played it like a fiddle.”

Not everyone was buying what Junior was selling about dear old dad—a man who once publicly swooned over the “love letters” he Kim Jong-un sent each other (letters that were later seized from Mar-a-Lago).

(Via HuffPost)

With the release of the Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer, Star Wars fans got their first glimpse at the upcoming Disney+ series, which catches up with Ewan McGregor‘s venerable Jedi Knight 10 years after Revenge of the Sith. Exiled to Tatooine to keep an eye on Luke Skywalker, it would seem like Obi-Wan had a simple task: lay low and don’t draw attention to himself. However, as the trailer shows, that’s not an easy thing for a Jedi to know, and soon, Obi-Wan is on the radar of the Inquisitors, an elite force of lightsaber-wielding assassins tasked with exterminating what’s left of the Jedi.

In one of the Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer’s biggest reveals, the Grand Inquisitor (Rupert Friend) makes his live-action debut after first appearing in the animated series Star Wars: Rebels. As he instructs Reva (Moses Ingram) on how to hunt down their prey, the Grand Inquisitor speaks of a “Jedi on the run.” As for who that Jedi might be, well, we have some guesses.

Obi-Wan

An extremely likely candidate is the Jedi Master who presumably made his presence known by getting involved in a local matter on Tatooine instead of keeping a low profile. In the trailer, Reva is on Tatooine searching for a Jedi, and later, Obi-Wan is seen on a new Star Wars planet called Daiyu, which suggests he’s on the run from the Inquisitors and/or drawing them away from Luke.

Ahsoka

With her own solo series on the horizon, Anakin Skywalker’s former apprentice Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) could be in the mix and inadvertently drew the Inquisitors to Tatooine unaware of Obi-Wan’s secret mission of hiding in exile to protect Luke.

Kanan Jarrus

Considering Obi-Wan Kenobi is pulling heavily from Star Wars: Rebels, Kanan Jarrus is another potential candidate as his character is one of a handful of Jedi who survived the Emperor’s Order 66. The timeline also tracks as Obi-Wan takes place four years before Rebels, which tees things up pretty nicely for Kanan to make his live-action debut.

Cal Kestis

As the main character in the hit video game, Jedi: Fallen Order, which takes place five years before Obi-Wan Kenobi, Cal Kestis is another prime candidate especially considering the game saw him tangle with the Inquisitors. Cal is already on their radar, and the Inquisitors absolutely have an axe to grind with the young Jedi.

Of course, the “Jedi on the run” could be an unknown character who either survived the events of Revenge of the Sith or is only just now coming to the Empire’s attention. There’s also the mystery of who saved a certain green guy from the Jedi Temple so he could start stealing hearts on The Mandalorian. Could Grogu and his savior pop up in Obi-Wan Kenobi? Anything is possible.

Obi-Wan Kenobi starts streaming May 25 on Disney+.

Donald Trump has three obsessions in life: his hair, water pressure, and windmills. He will take any opportunity to discuss any of these topics, even when (especially when!) he’s being asked about what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine on a podcast hosted by “YouTube pranksters” that describes itself as “just the boys havin some honest convos.”

In response to a question from Full Send podcast host Kyle Forgeard about whether the Ukraine-Russia war will be a “long-term thing,” Trump replied, “Well, and I said this a long time ago, if this happens, we are playing right into their hands. Green energy. The windmills, they don’t work. They’re too expensive. They kill all the birds. They ruin your landscapes, and yet the environmentalists love the windmills. And I’ve been preaching this for years. The windmills ― and I had them way down ― but the windmills are the most expensive energy you can have. And they don’t work.”

Trump has made numerous baffling comments about windmills over the years, including that Vladimir Putin wanted Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 election because “energy prices would go up and Russia as you know relies very much on energy,” and that they cause cancer. He’s also used the bird-killing defense before, as if that has anything to do with Ukraine or Russia. At least he didn’t start ranting about showers… yet.

BTS has one of the most excitable fan bases in all of entertainment, so the group’s upcoming concerts in South Korea may be tough for them to deal with.

Variety reports the band has shows taking place on March 10, 12, and 13 and Seoul’s Jamsil Olympic Stadium, but new rules will make those concerts tamer than most BTS shows. BTS’ management company Big Hit Music said in a statement, “Cheering loudly, yelling, chanting, and standing up during ‘BTS Permission To Dance On Stage — Seoul’ is strictly prohibited according to government guidelines.”

They added, “Seating for the in-person performance will comply with spacing guidelines mandated by local government performance venue COVID-19 control measures. The event may be changed or canceled depending on the social distancing level.”

South Korea’s Ministry Of Culture, Sports, And Tourism has limited each show at 15,000 attendees per night, which is well below the stadium’s 70,000-person capacity. Meanwhile, Big Hit also plans to provide attendees with clappers to help create a more lively environment.

For American fans who want to see BTS (and cheer as loud as they’d like), the group recently announced a four-night run of shows at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium, on April 8, 9, 15 and 16. For those just wanting to know what a BTS concert is like, revisit our review of one of the group’s 2021 shows at Inglewood’s Sofi Stadium.

20 years after their debut album dropped, The Black Keys will be releasing their 11th studio album, Drop Out Boogie. Arriving on May 13th, the new album was recorded at Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound Studios in Nashville.

The new album features collaborations with ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons, Greg Cartwright of Reigning Sound, and Angelo Petraglia of Kings Of Leon. Cartwright and Petraglia both appear on new single “Wild Child,” which hearkens back to the Midwest blues rock tinged with soul that the duo have ridden to the tune of five Grammy Awards and multiple Platinum records.

“I knew Pat would love working with both of these guys, so we decided we’d give it a shot,” Auerbach added. “It was the first time we’d ever really done that. It was fun as hell. We just sat around a table with acoustic guitars and worked out a song ahead of time.”

Cartwright’s vocals sit slickly alongside Auerbach’s on the hook and the song feels like it’s right out of a roadside blues rock get-down. “The cool thing with Greg is that he wants to approach stuff with a story in mind — there’s a plot, almost,” Carney said.

The Nashville sound has suited the two kids from Akron well. Auerbach has been busy at the locale as of late, producing albums for artists on his label like Yola, Aaron Frazer, and Shannon Shaw. While Carney has been busy in Nashville himself, bringing his Audio Eagle studio on the road, and producing for artists like Tennis and Michelle Branch. “Living in Nashville and making records here has opened both of our minds to that experience a little bit more,” Auerbach said in a statement.

The band have also announced their first tour in three years. There’s 32 tour dates throughout North America beginning in Las Vegas on July 9th and ending in Dallas on October 18th.

Listen to “Wild Child” above and check out the Dropout Boogie album artwork and the band’s full tour dates below.

07/09 — Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena
07/11 — Salt Lake City, UT @ USANA Amphitheatre
07/13 — Denver, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
07/15 — St. Louis, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre St. Louis
07/16 — Indianapolis, IN @ Ruoff Music Center
07/17 — Chicago, IL @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre Tinley Park
07/20 — Saratoga Springs, NY @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center
07/22 — Jones Beach, NY @ Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater
07/23 — Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Center
07/25 — Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion
07/27 — Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music Pavilion
07/29 — Boston, MA @ Xfinity Center
07/30 — Philadelphia, PA @ Waterfront Music Pavilion (formerly BB&T Pavilion)
08/24 — West Palm Beach, FL @ iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre
08/25 — Tampa, FL @ MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
08/27 — Atlanta, GA @ Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
08/28 — Huntsville, AL @ Orion Amphitheatre
08/30 — Charleston, SC @ Credit One Stadium
09/01 — Raleigh, NC @ Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek
09/03 — Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music Center
09/06 — Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage
09/07 — Detroit, MI @ Pine Knob Music Theatre
09/09 — Cuyahoga Falls, OH @ Blossom Music Center
10/02 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
10/03 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
10/05 — Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
10/08 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Forum
10/10 — Phoenix, AZ @ Ak-Chin Pavilion
10/13 — Rogers, AR @ Walmart AMP
10/15 — Houston, TX @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
10/17 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center ATX
10/18 — Dallas, TX @ Dos Equis Pavilion

Dropout Boogie is out 5/13 via Nonesuch Records. Pre-order it here.

The Black Keys is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It was all of last week when Pat Sajak asked Wheel of Fortune viewers to be nicer to contestants. “It always pains me when nice people come on our show to play a game and win some money and maybe fulfill a lifelong dream, and are then subject to online ridicule when they make a mistake or something goes awry,” the host tweeted, adding, “These are good people in a bad situation under a kind of stress that you can’t begin to appreciate from the comfort of your couch.”

First off, “good people in a bad situation” is an objectively funny way of describing someone who’s trying to win a Dalmatian statue on a syndicated game show. Also, Sajak wasn’t listening to his own advice during Wednesday’s episode: he (hilariously) mocked a contestant for sharing the “most pointless story ever told.”

During the interview portion of the show, Sajak looked at the card for contestant Scott Ingwersen and, with a confused look on his face, said, “Why am I mentioning this? It’s on your card. You had your big toe chopped off. Why are you telling this?”

Ingwersen explained:

“It’s important to know that when I was 12 years old, I was riding a 10-speed bike with flip-flops, and I fell and completely cut off the top of my toe. The next car that came by were two paramedics that were on their way to their job, and they said, ‘It’s just a laceration.’ But I didn’t know what that was, so it freaked me out even more. And my toe is reattached, and I just want to say thank you to them 30 years later.”

Sajak could barely hide his disgust. “That may have been the most pointless story ever told,” he said. “And you told it, Scott. Congratulations to you.” Some Wheel fans on Twitter were insulted by the host’s response to Ingwersen’s tale (“Pat Sajak is such an a**hole who says to someone ‘that’s the most pointless story ever’ when someone is opening up on National TV???” reads one), but he’s not wrong: that story went nowhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So…

You can watch the clip from the episode here.

(Via Yahoo!)

X AE A-XII Musk, the son of Grimes and Elon Musk, was born in early 2020. That was the pair’s first child together, but now we know he wasn’t their last: In a new Vanity Fair interview, Grimes revealed (initially on accident) that she and Musk had a second baby together, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk.

In the feature, writer Devin Gordon notes he heard the “unmistakable” sound of a baby crying in another room while talking with Grimes in her home. He then geared up to “ask the strangest question of my career” and asked Grimes if she had another baby. Grimes replied, “I’m not at liberty to speak on these things. Whatever is going on with family stuff, I just feel like kids need to stay out of it, and X is just out there. I mean, I think E is really seeing him as a protégé and bringing him to everything and stuff… X is out there. His situation is like that. But, yeah, I don’t know.”

Gordon continues to write, “She’s rattled, and I’m mortified by even accidentally making a woman — a new mother, no less — feel exposed and vulnerable. I suggest we pause for a moment to discuss the surreal professional ethics at play, which are that I can’t pretend I don’t know she’s got a secret baby with the world’s wealthiest man hiding upstairs. Especially when she invited me here.”

Grimes then shook her head and confirmed the new bundle of joy, saying, “She’s a little colicky, too [laughs]. I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Due to health complications during Grimes’ first pregnancy, she and Musk had their second child via a surrogate. Later, Grimes texted Gordon, “Her full name is Exa Dark Sideræl Musk.” She’s also referred to by her nickname, Y.

Gordon explains the name:

“Exa is a reference to the supercomputing term exaFLOPS (the ability to perform 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second). Dark, meanwhile, is ‘the unknown. People fear it but truly it’s the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe.’ She texts me a voice memo with the pronunciation of Sideræl — ‘sigh-deer-ee-el’ — which she calls ‘a more elven’ spelling of sidereal, ‘the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time.’ It’s also a nod to her favorite Lord Of The Rings character, the powerful Galadriel, who ‘chooses to abdicate the ring.’ […]

Grimes is prepared for Y to dislike her name or get tired of it — Grimes got tired of Claire a long time ago — and if she ever decides to change it, her mother will be first in line to help her choose a new one. She’s already got dozens of ideas. She might even change it herself before this article comes out. In addition to Y, she and Musk occasionally call her Sailor Mars, a nod to the Sailor Moon manga series. Exa Dark Sideræl was actually something of a compromise, and she worries it’s a little boring.

‘I was fighting for Odysseus Musk,’ she writes. ‘A girl named Odysseus is my dream.’”

Grimes also described the status of her and Musk’s relationship; The two were reported last September to be “semi-separated.” Now, Grimes says, “There’s no real word for it. I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we’re very fluid. We live in separate houses. We’re best friends. We see each other all the time… We just have our own thing going on, and I don’t expect other people to understand it. […] This is the best it’s ever been… We just need to be free.”

Furthermore, it appears Exa Dark Sideræl Musk won’t be the Grimes and Musk’s last child together, as she noted, “We’ve always wanted at least three or four.”

Read the full Vanity Fair feature here.

The season of scammers is upon us, and Hulu has entered the ring with their Elizabeth Holmes scripted series, The Dropout. The show follows the tumultuous story of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who duped the science community, along with the rest of the world, when she made false promises about the company’s mission and technology. The series dropped its first three episodes on March 3rd, with the rest of the episodes premiering weekly on Thursdays through April 7th. The season will consist of eight episodes.

Amanda Seyfried joined the cast after Kate McKinnon dropped out (no pun intended) of the project last year. Seyfried plays Holmes, complete with her bizarre accent (not as bizarre as Anna Delvey, of course) who drops out of Standford to pursue a biotech company that never really got off the ground, though Holmes somehow navigated the press to make it seem like she was making scientific breakthroughs. Holmes had promised to change the way blood tests were performed and analyzed, but it all turned out to be fake.

In an interview with UPROXX, director Michael Showalter said Holmes’ story is so fascinating and heartbreaking because people wanted her to be right and real, but she was faking the whole time. “You have The New York Times putting her on the cover of the Sunday magazine and you have every single news outlet fawning over her, and you have major international figures getting in line to shake her hand and sing her praises and all of this stuff. There was nothing there. They never got it off the ground. It’s not just like it was close. They were faking it.”

The first three episodes of The Dropout are streaming on Hulu and Starz on Disney+ now, with new episodes every Thursday.

Kanye West has spent a lot of the newish year attacking Pete Davidson, be it through songs, videos, or posts on Instagram. The rapper is far from pleased that the SNL comedian who is now with Kim Kardashian, Kanye’s ex-wife and mother of his four children. Recently he released a claymation video for “Eazy,” his collaboration with The Game, which shows Kanye putting a hit on Pete, But apparently that wasn’t enough to show his disdain towards Pete. Now, the two have returned with a second video for the same song, in which Pete is yet again the victim.

In the new “Eazy” video, the rappers opt for an animated look that features the skinned monkey that appeared on the song’s cover art. The trio takes a trip through Los Angeles in a Maybach where they visit a tattoo parlor and church. They also stop by a courtroom, where Kanye and his crew turn up as he raps, “N****, we havin’ the best divorce ever / If we go to court, we’ll go to court together.” As the song comes to a close, Kanye sends the skinned monkey to attack a man with his face blurred out while rocking a hoodie that says “Skete,” a name that Kanye has often used to refer to Davidson. As the attack goes down, Kanye raps, “God saved me from that crash / Just so I can beat Pete Davidson’s ass.”

You can watch the new video for “Eazy” above.