Month: January 2023

On December 9, 2022, SZA released SOS, her latest album. Since it was chart-eligible, the LP has not known what it’s like to be anything but No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It debuted in the top spot of the chart, and that’s where it remains on the latest rank: Billboard announced today (January 23) that on the new chart dated January 28, SOS is No. 1 for a sixth total week.

That’s the most weeks at No. 1 on the chart among R&B and hip-hop albums since Drake’s Views logged 13 non-consecutive weeks in 2016. Narrow the scope to just R&B albums and SOS has the most chart-topping weeks since Usher’s Confessions was No. 1 for nine total weeks in 2004.

Furthermore, this is a notable moment for women artists. In the last decade plus, the only women with albums to spend at least six weeks at No. 1 are Adele, Taylor Swift, and now SZA. The last album by a woman besides those three to have at least six No. 1 weeks was Susan Boyle’s I Dreamed A Dream in 2009 and 2010. When it comes specifically to women in R&B, SOS has the most weeks at No. 1 since Mariah Carey’s Daydream, which had six non-consecutive weeks on top in late 1995 and early 1996.

Karol G proved to be the top female Latin artist of 2022 on the streaming and touring front. At last night’s Calibash concert in Los Angeles, she used her platform to highlight another Latina artist on the rise: Young Miko.

Calibash was a two-day Latin concert that took place at the Crypto.com Arena. Karol G headlined Sunday night. The line-up also included Becky G, Feid, Sech, Blessd, and Farruko. Puerto Rican duo Zion y Lennox dropped out of the event after their flight couldn’t make it to LA on time.

During her set, Karol G took a moment to cheers with the audience. She raised her cup to Puerto Rican rapper Young Miko who was in the audience. Karol G called Young Miko to the stage to cheers with. She also sang a bit of Young Miko’s song “Putero.”

“There are new artists constantly that one goes crazy over, and tonight, there is one in the crowd called Young Miko,” Karol G said in Spanish. “She’s from Puerto Rico! My second home. Invite me on a song so we can kill it together.”

Since the release of her debut EP Trap Kitty last year, Young Miko has emerged as a strong female and queer voice in the Latin trap scene. She freely raps about her bisexual identity in her sassy songs like “Bi” and “Riri.” During his homecoming concerts in Puerto Rico last July, Bad Bunny invited Young Miko to the stage to perform “Riri.”

The Drop, streaming on Hulu this past week, is one of those movies that feels like it should be really funny and just isn’t. Like everyone assumed that they could just get a bunch of talented people together and eventually a movie would break out, only it doesn’t. It mostly offers that vicarious feeling of watching a friend try to bullshit their way through a meeting they were clearly unprepared for.

The premise: a bunch of comedy actors you know and love, including Jermaine Fowler from Sorry to Bother You and Anna Konkle from Pen15, have gathered together at a quirky destination wedding in Mexico. It’s there that Konkle’s character drops her friends’ baby. “The Drop,” get it? It won’t make me forgive them for lifting the title from a much-better Tom Hardy movie, but I can acknowledge the soundness of the logic.

The Drop‘s seems like a perfectly cromulent premise (bonus points for the tagline: “it’s not the baby, it’s how you handle it!”) and I was one of the few people who actually loved writer/director Sarah Adina Smith’s sophomore feature, Buster’s Mal Heart. Unfortunately, it feels like everyone involved also thought the premise sounded good and just figured they’d work out the finer points on location.

Letting your actors improvise seems like a not-idiotic proposition when the cast includes veterans of funny shows like Aparna Nancherla from Corporate, Jillian Bell from Workaholics, Robin Thede from A Black Lady Sketch Show (et al), but it feels like they’re all trying to add quirks with no foundation. And so they just end up with this weird ball of quirks. At one point, Thede’s character performs an awkward one-woman show based on a character type that up until that point we hadn’t been introduced to yet.

Konkle and Fowler play Lex and Mani, newlyweds running an artisanal bakery in LA (I actually got most of this information from the official synopsis, in the movie Konkle’s character also seems like she’s a writer’s assistant for Robin Thede’s character?). They’re also in the midst of trying to conceive while jetting off for their friends’ destination lesbian wedding in Mexico. Plans go awry once they land when Lex drops the couples’ baby, and hijinks ensue. Or at least, you get the sense that they were meant to. Bits include Nancherla’s character maybe turning into a Republican, and Thede’s character’s adopted son, Levi (Elisha Henig) having a no-wanks-based YouTube channel. God help them, they keep trying to make this weird horny son funny and he never is.

The story is bare-bones yet still manages to be sort of confusing, and the construction doesn’t help either. One of the few moments that genuinely made me laugh was Jennifer Lafleur’s character leaning her baby in for Konkle to kiss, and Konkle accidentally burping on it. The idea was funny and it was nicely abrupt, though I actually didn’t even know who had burped at first. It was a shot of multiple people and Konkle was only half in the frame, and the burp sounded like an effect they added in post. Almost every facet of The Drop seems designed to prove the truth of the old comedy adage, “no one laughs when they’re confused.”

“Almost funny” sounds like an insult, and mostly it is, but it’s still important to draw a distinction between almost funny and unfunny, or anti-funny. Genuinely bad comedy makes you a little bit angry. The Drop is more sad, or merely disappointing. The experience is a little like the parts of Some Kind Of Monster where you watch the boys from Metallica noodling around trying to find melodies that, for whatever reason, just weren’t coming together for them that day.

‘The Drop’ is now streaming on Hulu. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.

As the 2023 NBA Trade Deadline approaches, I’ve been thinking about how few teams and fan bases seem happy about where they are at through the midway point of the season.

The NBA typically has a defined hierarchy at this point of the season. You have a few clear favorites, a handful of teams playing well enough to make fans believe with the right breaks they could go deep in the playoffs, the treadmill of mediocrity teams (those just happy to make the playoffs), and the rebuilders/tankers at the bottom. This year, those groups still exist, but there are far more teams that feel they should be in the top two that aren’t, which seems to have fans more on edge as trade season arrives.

The favorites tier doesn’t feature the usual suspects and proven commodities, aside from the Boston Celtics, and that creates a feeling of a void at the top, which means more fans believe this is the optimal year to strike. Every other preseason favorite beyond Boston seems vulnerable, and the teams that sit atop the standings are all otherwise unproven in the playoffs. Of the eight teams in top-4 position in each conference right now, only one has won a title this decade (Milwaukee), and the Celtics are the only other team to make a Finals appearance.

This only further breeds the belief for fans that if your team can just get in there, they could win it all, or at least make a conference finals run. The problem is, very few teams are taking advantage of this year of parity, and it’s driving fans insane. By my very unscientific measurements, there are eight fan bases that are probably happy where they are as the deadline approaches: the Celtics, Sixers, Nuggets, Grizzlies, Kings, Jazz, Thunder, and Pacers. There are another handful that are fine with how things are going, but aren’t exactly elated: the Bucks, Nets, Cavs, Pelicans, and Magic.

The Jazz, Thunder, Pacers, and Magic are all in the “playing with house money” tier, where they’re just thrilled to be in the mix and/or not in the cellar, winning some games and seeing positive impacts from their young players that figure to be in their long-term core. The Kings are enjoying their best season in literal decades, and they rightfully are relishing every moment of the Light The Beam era. Boston, Philly, Denver, and Memphis are all handling business and separating themselves from the chaos in the middle of the playoff races, while the Bucks, Nets, Cavs, and Pelicans are staying comfortably above water, but all have just enough injury concerns and/or have shown just enough uneven play to keep a bit of wariness.

Everyone else is desperate for a run, but can’t seem to put anything together, creating an awful lot of frustration. In both conferences, the difference between the 6-seed and out of the play-in is razor thin considering how much of the season is remaining, and it has people stressed. For how often we have complained that the NBA regular season doesn’t matter enough because of how long it is, this year feels as meaningful as I can remember on a night-to-night basis. The teams are still treating it as they long have, with rest for stars, load management, and all of that, but the losses feel more painful and the wins a little more important than we usually get in January.

In the West, the difference between the 5-seed Mavs and the 13-seed Blazers is three games (two in the loss column), which is outrageous this far into the season. Aside from OKC and Utah — again, they have a more long-term view on things — no one is happy to be in this predicament. The Mavs, Suns, Clippers, Timberwolves, and Warriors all believed they were contenders this season, and they’re now just trying to avoid the play-in, with fans wondering what trades might exist to turn things around. The Lakers and Blazers had slightly lesser expectations after missing the play-in a year ago, but with stars returning, they still figured to be in the playoff hunt but are again on the outside looking in.

In the East, the difference between the 6-seed Heat and the 12-seed Wizards is five games (four in the loss column), which is still very tight and, aside from Indiana, all of the teams involved had higher hopes for this year. Inconsistency is the hallmark of all of these teams. The Knicks and Hawks made big additions this offseason to try and push for contender status, while the Heat stayed pat after being the 1-seed a year ago, but all three can be infuriatingly hot and cold. At times they each have looked capable of a run to push them firmly into a playoff spot, but can’t help but always drop back into the morass with a cold spell.

Chicago, Toronto, and Washington are perpetually three losses in a row away from calls to blow it all up, with fans working overtime on the trade machine to figure out how they can change their fortunes on both the short and long-term. However, because the teams above them refuse to pull away and put them out of their misery, they find just enough wins to keep fans believing that maybe, just maybe, they can figure it out and put the pieces together.

Finally, there’s the tankers, as the Rockets, Spurs, Pistons, and Hornets have emerged as the four leading contenders for the Victor Wembanyama Sweepstakes. But even with a prize as big as Wemby, it’s hard for there to be too much excitement when those teams have shown such little improvement this season (and the smoothing of lottery odds means they still only get a 14 percent chance, at best, at Wembanyama).

All of this makes for a fascinating trade season, which got started in earnest on Monday when the Lakers flipped Kendrick Nunn and three second-rounders to the Wizards for Rui Hachimura. There is a sense that an awful lot of teams want to be buyers, which tends to create a flat market until someone decides to be a seller. For now, I expect a lot of posturing and very few significant deals until much closer to February 9, as teams are going to want every data point possible before they make their short and long-term plans.

The glut of near-.500 teams coupled with the outrageous prices we saw paid for All-Star talent this offseason has put a damper on trades, and it remains to be seen just how much it opens up. Until it does, the trade machine is going to work overtime and if teams are only able to really do work to improve their rosters on the periphery, the misery and frustration is going to continue building all the way up until the playoff field is set.

While The Last of Us has done an impeccable job of adapting the critically-acclaimed video game into a compelling drama series, the show has already made some noticeable tweaks in the jump from Playstation consoles to HBO. One such moment is the death of Anna Torv’s Tess, who was taken out by a completely different set of characters than in the game.

In the show, Tess reveals she was infected during a terrifying encounter with a trio of Clickers while traversing through a rundown museum in Boston. Knowing full well that her time is limited, she encourages Joel (Pedro Pascal) to not abandon their mission of delivering Ellie (Bella Ramsey) to the Fireflies. Ellie was also bitten in the attack, but unlike Tess, she’s showing no signs of infection, which only further proves that Ellie is somehow immune to the cordyceps outbreak.

As Joel and Ellie leave Tess behind in the old statehouse, she attracts a horde of Clickers to her as she attempts to detonate spilled barrels of gasoline. As Tess finally gets her lighter to work, one Clicker approaches her and sticks his tendrils in her mouth in one of the show’s grossest moment. (Fans were freaking out on social media.) Fortunately for Tess, the “kiss” doesn’t last long as the place goes up in flames.

In the game, things play out differently. Via PopBuzz:

However, instead of being attacked by the infected and blowing herself up, Tess dies at the hands of FEDRA in the game.

The Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA) manage to catch up with Joel and Tess, as they try to get hold of Ellie. Tess then stays behind and acts as a distraction while Joel and Ellie move on. Tess attempts to kill as many as possible, before dying off-screen. The gameplay shows Joel overlooking the lobby as it’s confirmed Tess has been killed.

As for the reason for the change, showrunner Craig Mazin explained that it made no sense for FEDRA to be in the area, and more importantly, they wanted to emphasize the connective nature of the Clickers.

“We wanted a chance to show a different result of being infected, which was not one of mere violence or horror, but rather a sick kind of community,” Mazin told HBO’s The Last of Us Podcast. “Now, at the end, we had an opportunity to show how connected they were.”

(Via PopBuzz)

Okay, the secret is out: Paramount+ has one of the best libraries of film out of all the many streaming services, making it easier than ever to have more options on what to watch.

No matter the circumstances or mood, you’re guaranteed to find something decent, maybe even a few masterpieces on Paramount+, which boasts a catalog including Paramount films, A24 films, and more. Here’s our selection of the best movies streaming on Paramount+ right now:

Last updated on January 23, 2023

1. Top Gun/Top Gun: Maverick

Year: 1986, 2022
Starring: Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Miles Teller, Glenn Powell
Genre: Action
Rating: PG, PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes, 2 hours 11 minutes
Director: Tony Scott, Joseph Kosinski
Trailer: Watch here

It is not at all hyperbolic to say that Top Gun and (especially) its sequel Top Gun: Maverick are cinematic miracles. Even if you’re not into planes or military propaganda or both, both films — the sequel being the stronger of the two — are significant to their respective years’, and respective decades’ pop culture. The original film embodies the ’80s in its songs, costumes and overall cheese and broke new ground for what action movies could do and be. The film also cemented Tom Cruise as an action star who could lead any kind of movie with ease and unprecedented physical commitment. For Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise made sure it could not be done without the proper technology, training, and cast: the actors in the film playing pilots, even those in supporting roles, went through flight training to prepare. The film also marked the first truly significant theatrical release since the pandemic, bringing many people back to the cinemas for a good, fun time after a long, sad break.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

2. The Wolf of Wall Street

Year: 2013
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 3 hours
Director: Martin Scorsese
Trailer: Watch here

It’s the performance that Leonardo DiCaprio should have won his Oscar for. After a series of dramatic collaborations in the aughts including The Aviator, Gangs of New York, and Shutter Island, Scorsese and DiCaprio loosen up a little in the strongest entry to their little series. DiCaprio, who often chooses extremely serious, emotionally demanding roles, applies his signature intensity to a more comedic role in a comedic film with Scorsese’s signature energizing style. In his performance as the disgraced Jordan Belfort, DiCaprio proves he has more range than anyone thought, and the presence of co-star Jonah Hill undoubtedly helped him get there. The Wolf of Wall Street also introduced the world to Margot Robbie, one of the best actors working today and now, a two-time Oscar nominee. DiCaprio and Scorsese reunite ten years later and for the first time since this film in 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

3. A Quiet Place

Year: 2018
Starring: John Krasinski, Emily Blunt
Genre: Horror
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes
Director: John Krasinski
Trailer: Watch here

Who could have possibly predicted that Jim Halpert from The Office would direct and launch a modern horror franchise? John Krasinski stars in and directed A Quiet Place, co-starring his wife, Emily Blunt. Creatures who are blind but have incredibly sharp hearing have taken over Earth, leaving few survivors. The film follows a family living in upstate New York, who have survived by speaking in American sign language. When they accidentally make noise that draws the creatures to them, things go awry. A sequel came out in 2020, and Lupita Nyong’o will star in a spin-off film, A Quiet Place: Day One.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

4. Everything Everywhere All At Once

Year: 2022
Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Curtis
Genre: Action Adventure
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours 19 minutes
Director: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Schneinert
Trailer: Watch here

Michelle Yeoh delivers a meta, layered, all-encompassing performance in the wild and weird non-Marvel multi-verse movie Everything Everywhere All at Once from the Daniels. Yeoh is one of the frontrunners for the Oscar for best actress for her incredible performance as Evelyn, a Chinese immigrant who runs a laundromat. While getting audited by the IRS, Evelyn discovers that she is the only person who can save the universe from being destroyed by a powerful being. The film is action-packed but also an emotionally moving story about love, family, and relationships.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

5. Midsommar

Year: 2019
Starring: Florence Pugh, Will Poulter, Jack Raynor
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours 51 minutes
Director: Ari Aster
Trailer: Watch here

Florence Pugh is the final girl in this bright and stylish horror film from Ari Aster. A young couple in a toxic relationship that just needs to end already attends a seemingly idyllic midsummer festival in Sweden only to discover that the pagan cult behind it is creepy, violent, and willing to make human sacrifices. The retreat tests the young couple’s rocky relationship, and the film is both scary and a poignant depiction of how humans process trauma.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

6. Jackass Forever

Year: 2022
Starring: Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Dave England, Wee Man
Genre: Reality, Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour 26 minutes
Director: Jeff Tremaine
Trailer: Watch here

The original cast of Jackass unites for the first time in over a decade (with newcomer Rachel Wolfson joining) in another entry into the most important franchise of the 21st century. Although the Jackass cast is grappling with aging (they can’t exactly perform the same ridiculous stunts they could 20 years ago), there are still plenty of gross, unbelievable things, most of which have to do with their penises.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

7. Interstellar

Year: 2014
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain
Genre: Sci-fi, Drama
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours 49 minutes
Director: Christopher Nolan
Trailer: Watch here

Christopher Nolan’s space epic has an epic runtime and might not make any sense, but it looks good. In the near future, Earth is becoming increasingly inhabitable, with a global crop blight and a second Dust Bowl. A team of researchers is sent to space to enter a wormhole and explore three different planets in a different galaxy to discover which one is habitable. Matthew McConaughey delivers the most intimate performance of his career as a NASA pilot turned farmer who goes on the mission. The movie will leave you confused and wondering how time works, but that was probably Nolan’s intention.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

8. Licorice Pizza

Year: 2021
Starring: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Pen, Bradley Cooper
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 34 minutes
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Trailer: Watch here

Licorice Pizza is the most Paul Thomas Anderson film Paul Thomas Anderson has ever made: it’s set in California in the 70s and has an impressive ensemble cast. The film stars Cooper Hoffman, son of frequent PTA collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gary, a teenager, and actor who gets into waterbed sales. He meets Alana, played by Alana Haim of the band Haim, who is feeling a bit mid-20s lost. It’s a coming-of-age story for them both and a bit of a love story as they begin to learn and appreciate one another. What the film lacks in plot, it makes up for with slow but in-depth character development, including a small role played by Bradley Cooper.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

9. Moneyball

Year: 2011
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Chris Pratt, Robin Wright, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Genre: Drama, Sports
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 13 minutes
Director: Bennett Miller
Trailer: Watch here

In this sports drama based on the nonfiction book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Brad Pitt plays Oakland Athletics director Billy Beane, whose analytical strategy to create a competitive baseball team with undervalued talent on a limited budget put the team on the map. Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman co-star in the film, along with a pre-movie star version of Chris Pratt. The screenplay was co-written by Aaron Sorkin. It’s Sorkiny, but not too Sorkiny.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

10. Beavis And Butt-Head Do The Universe

Year: 2022
Starring: Mike Judge, Andrea Savage, Jimmy O. Yang
Genre: Comedy, Animation
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: 1 hour, 26 minutes
Director: John Rice and Albert Calleros
Trailer: Watch here

Beavis and Butt-Head are back and possibly dumber than ever. In Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, the friends who want nothing more than to lose their virginity inadvertently become astronauts which leads them to time travel from 1998 to 2022, where they meet intelligent versions of themselves.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

11. The Lighthouse

Year: 2019
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 50 minutes
Director: Robert Eggers
Trailer: Watch here

Hollywood’s most iconic, reliable weirdos Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe unite in this equally weird psychological thriller about wickies (lighthouse keepers) who are driven mad on a job on a rocky island. The men drink, fart, laugh, and fight, and as the days pass, the island with rocky beaches, which may or may not have supernatural elements, begins to get to them. There are seriously so many farts in this film.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

12. Red Rocket

Year: 2021
Starring: Suzanna Son, Simon Rex, Bree Elrod
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 8 minutes
Director: Sean Baker
Trailer: Watch here

In this charming and eccentric film designed to make you feel uncomfortable, Mikey, a Los Angeles-based porn star and con man returns to his home small hometown in Texas. While living with his estranged wife and her mother, he falls for a seventeen-year-old girl named Strawberry, who works at a donut shop.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

13. Confess, Fletch

Year: 2022
Starring: Jon Hamm, Marcia Gay Harden, Roy Wood Jr., Ayden Mayeri
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 38 minutes
Director: Greg Mottola
Trailer: Watch here

Jon Hamm found his post-Mad Men niche in the grossly under-marketed crime comedy, Confess, Fletch. Hamm plays the snarky and quick-witted investigative journalist Irwin M. Fletcher, who stumbles upon a crime scene while visiting Boston. The detectives on the case think he’s the murderer, and he investigates the crime himself while making zero effort to look innocent. The role was originally played by Chevy Chase in two Fletch films from the ’80s. In this case, we stan a reboot.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

14. Lady Bird

Year: 2017
Starring: Saorise Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Beanie Feldstein, Tracy Letts
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 34 minutes
Director: Greta Gerwig
Trailer: Watch here

Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut is a classic. The semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film tells the story of Lady Bird, a high school senior who recently changed her name to Lady Bird. She has a tense relationship with her mom and wants more than anything to get away from her home of Sacramento, hoping to attend college on the east coast. Throughout her final year of high she has new relationships, a falling out with her best friend, but one thing is a constant: she always comes back to her mom, played by Laurie Metcalf, who should have won an Oscar for the role thank you very much!

Watch it on Paramount Plus

15. Almost Famous

Year: 2000
Starring: Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 2 minutes
Director: Cameron Crowe
Trailer: Watch here

Cameron Crowe’s beloved, ’70s-set journalism movie follows a teenage music fan, who is assigned to follow the fictional band Stillwater on tour for a profile in the magazine. Along the way, he falls in love with groupie Penny Lane — played by Kate Hudson, who received an Oscar nomination in the best supporting actress category along with co-star Frances McDormand — and learns about life, ethical journalism, and the reality of being in a rock and roll band. Crowe’s semi-autobiographical screenplay (he, too, wrote for Rolling Stone as a teen) won the Oscar for best original screenplay.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

16. Minari

Year: 2020
Starring: Steven Yeun, Youn Yuh-jung, Han Ye-ri
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour, 55 minutes
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Trailer: Watch here

Minari stars Oscar nominee Steven Yeun and Han Ye-ri as parents in a Korean family who move from California to rural Arkansas in the 1980s. While their deep South setting is a tense culture shock, tensions rise at home, too when Monica’s mother Soon-ja, played by Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung, comes from Korea to live with the family. It causes trouble within Jacob and Monica’s marriage. David, the couple’s son, shares a room with her and grows frustrated because she is not what he expects a grandmother to be due to her culture. It’s a sad but mostly sweet story with remarkable performances you’ll never forget.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

17. Smile

Year: 2022
Starring: Sosie Bacon, Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robin Weigert
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 55 minutes
Director: Parker Finn
Trailer: Watch here

Sosie Bacon stars as a therapist who, after witnessing the traumatic death of a patient who claims she was haunted by smiling people, starts to see the smiling people herself. As you can probably imagine, she spends the majority of the movie trying to figure out the source of the problem before it’s too late. There is a lot of smiling and a lot of trauma.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

18. Mission: Impossible — Fallout

Year: 2018
Starring: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg
Genre: Action, Thriller
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 28 minutes
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Trailer: Watch here

Tom Cruise returns as the at this point superhuman Ethan Hunt for yet another impossible mission (the sixth film in the franchise). Cruise performs even more impressive life-threatening stunts in Mission: Impossible Fallout, including but certainly not limited to a helicopter chase. It’s long, but every minute is truly more thrilling than the next. Henry Cavill assimilated as well into a villain role — the role that required him to have the infamous mustache that was questionably edited out of his scenes in Justice League.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

19. Candyman

Year: 2021
Starring: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 31 minutes
Director: Nia DaCosta
Trailer: Watch here

Nia DaCosta, whose Marvel film The Marvels is due out this summer, directed this follow-up to the ’90s cult classic starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as an artist who investigates a serial killer for a new project. His investigation leads him to other Black men who were murdered and secrets about his own lineage. DaCosta is a visionary director with a deep understanding of disturbing, thrilling, and impactful imagery.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

20. The Virgin Suicides

Year: 1999
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, Kathleen Turner, AJ Cook
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 37 minutes
Director: Sofia Coppola
Trailer: Watch here

Sofia Coppola’s directorial debut introduced the world to the unique, feminine, dreamlike atmosphere of her filmography. Based on the 1993 best-seller of the same name by Jeffrey Eugenides, the film follows the lives of the sheltered Catholic Lisbon sisters living in an upper-middle-class suburb in Michigan in the 1970s. The overprotected girls are an enigma to everyone, especially a group of boys in town, who are enamored with them. The film is told from their perspective as they reminisce on the Lisbon girls as adults.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

21. The Green Knight

Year: 2021
Starring: Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Director: David Lowery
Trailer: Watch here

Ambitious director David Lowry creates put his own awe-inspiring interpretation of Arthurian legend on screen in the vivid adventure adapted from the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Hoping to prove himself to his family, which includes his uncle King Arthur (ever heard of him?), Sir Gawain, played by Dev Patel, goes out on a journey to face the Green Knight. On his grand adventure, he comes across ghosts and giants and, along the way, grows as a person.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

22. Minority Report

Year: 2002
Starring: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow
Genre: Action, Sci-fi
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 25 minutes
Director: Steven Spielberg
Trailer: Watch here

In Steven Speilberg’s underrated sci-fi masterpiece, Tom Cruise stars as Precrime Chief John Anderton, whose job is to arrest people for crimes they are predicted to commit. Despite his trust in the system, John becomes one of the hunted when he is predicted to commit a crime. So, like everyone he hunts, he runs, and in the process unravels a conspiracy. The film also includes a compelling supporting performance from Colin Farrell, then early into his stardom.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

23. The Italian Job

Year: 2003
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton, Charlize Theron
Genre: Action, Thriller
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour, 51 minutes
Director: F. Gary Gray
Trailer: Watch here

The early aughts’ most reliable action star Mark Wahlberg stars as professional fixer Charlie Croker seeks revenge for the murder of a friend in this remake of the 1969 film which starred Michael Caine in the role of Charlie, a far cry from Mark Wahlberg, to be sure. To get his revenge, Charlie leads a team of people with various useful skills when it comes to a heist. Edward Norton plays a villain with a little mustache and a thing for beanies. It is set in Italy, hence the name.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

24. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

Year: 1999
Starring: Trey Parker, Matt Stone
Genre: Comedy, Animation, Musical
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 21 minutes
Director: Trey Parker
Trailer: Watch here

In this meta feature film version of the popular and controversial Comedy Central animated series South Park, the gang sneaks into an R-rated Canadian film. The children’s parents and teachers are alarmed by the vulgarity they’ve learned from the film and a censorship war begins, obvious commentary on the reception of South Park itself in the United States. Long story short, the kids become the only people who can save the filmmakers from death row.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

25. August: Osage County

Year: 2013
Starring: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Benedict Cumberbatch
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 1 minute
Director: John Wells
Trailer: Watch here

In this film adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning play of the same name from Tracy Letts, Meryl Streep leads a star-studded ensemble cast as the pill-popping matriarch of the Weston family. Following the disappearance of their father, the Weston siblings come home along with their families. As the film goes on, the dysfunction continues. If you’re a fan of House of the Dragon, the mild incest theme in August: Osage County will seem familiar.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

Chloe Domont’s Fair Play (premiering at Sundance this week) is very entertaining. It does feel like a throwback of a special kind of trashy movie that came out in the ’80s and ’90s. But some of the comparisons to Adrian Lyne movies are going a bit far. They literally don’t make movies like that anymore and they still don’t (have you actually seen Fatal Attraction recently?) but I’ll concede there’s some shared DNA here, or at least as much as there can be in 2023 for a movie premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. What’s kind of impressive here is Fair Game does have a lot to say about gender dynamics in a “boy’s club” work environment, but it doesn’t get bogged down in that to the point we are watching a lecture. Like I said in the first sentence, this is a very entertaining movie.

Both Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich are great as Emily and Luke. (Also, it’s kind of funny that in his first movie since playing Han Solo, Ehrenreich is now playing a character named “Luke.”) These two are really going for it. It’s great to see some old-fashioned screaming matches. To the point, I can envision after one of these Ehrenreich telling his publicist, “use that scene for my Oscar campaign.”

Anyway, Emily and Luke are newly engaged, and they work together at some hotshot investment firm that some people seem to actually like working at but always looks like my own personal hell on earth. (I’m sure the money is nice.) No one is aware of their personal relationship because it’s against company policy. After a manager is fired, Luke hears a rumor that he’s in line for a promotion. But the promotion actually goes to Emily and now Luke reports directly to her. The thing is, Emily is actually really good at her job and Luke is mediocre at best. When she hints to her bosses that Luke should also get a promotion, she is told they don’t like Luke and the plan is to just make his life miserable until he quits.

Luke grows more and more paranoid that Emily slept her way to the promotion and spends pretty much the rest of the movie either telling her how lousy she is or giving her terrible business advice… to the point it’s not clear if he’s purposefully trying to sabotage her career or he’s just truly bad at his job. She listens to him once, which costs the firm $25 million. She ignores his advice the second time, resulting in a big win for the firm. Eventually Luke stops showing up to work – drinking his days away instead – which then leads to a dramatic blow-up between the two. All the while Emily still has to navigate her boss – who like to call at 2am for long phone chats and literally calls her a “dumb bitch” after the $25 million mistake – and her other employees who don’t like her very much.

But the thing is, this movie moves. Like I said, it has a lot to say, but says it while keeping the proceedings on a timely tempo. Also, I’m happy Alden Ehrenreich gets a meaty role here. I do kind of worry about him. It did appear like he got thrown in actor jail after Solo under-performed. Fair Play is literally his first movie released since Solo. Someone had to take the fall and there were plenty of candidates, but it did seem to fall on him and that never seemed fair. When Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were directing, Ehrenreich was hired to basically play the lead in a comedy romp. During production, Lord and Miller were let go and all of a sudden he’s the lead in a straightforward action drama. I actually think Solo is a good amount of fun, but you can tell Ehrenreich kind of has a look on his face, “This is not the part I signed up for.” Anyway, my point here is Ehrenreich is really great in this movie and I really hope this jumpstarts him back into more movies. (He does have Cocaine Bear and Oppenheimer coming up, though I have no idea how big his roles are in either.)

The biggest thing working against Fair Play is that this is 2023. And movies like Fair Play don’t play in movie theaters. So, I actually just paused to look up if anyone bought Fair Play out of Sundance yet and, yep, it was Netflix. So look for Fair Play to be streaming on your television or mobile device sometime this year.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Sam Smith served as the musical guest on the January 21 episode of Saturday Night Live, performing their No. 1 hit “Unholy” and “Gloria.” Adele was busy carrying out yet another weekend in her 32-date Weekends With Adele Las Vegas residency. Whether Adele and Smith are the same person is an absurd conspiracy, but for those conspiracy theorists that believe it, it would have been very difficult for Smith to be in Las Vegas and New York City at the same time.

Smith stopped by The Drew Barrymore Show today, January 23, and played a game of “Pop Quiz.” The last question in the game was to name the “craziest rumor you’ve ever heard about yourself.” Smith responded, “Everyone seems to think that I’m Adele… in drag. ‘Cause we’ve never been seen in the same room together. And if you slow down her voice, it sounds maybe a bit like mine. So, people think that we’re the same person, and I’m just in drag right now.”

They continued, “I get asked all the time in every interview about it, and it’s really frustrating.” When Barrymore asked how Smith felt about it, they admitted, “I mean, it’s a fabulous compliment, but I am not Adele!”

Under that logic, I guess it’s not the best argument that Adele and Smith weren’t in the same room — let alone the same city — over the weekend, but I trust (probably naively) that common sense largely wins out here.

Elsewhere in “Pop Quiz,” Smith described a strange fan encounter that involved a saucepan, identified Leonardo DiCaprio as his first celebrity crush, gave themselves a Spice Girls name, and expressed a desire to transform into Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Watch the full segment above.

In 2022, Netflix canceled Warrior Nun, The Midnight Club, Fate: The Winx Saga, The Midnight Gospel, The Baby-Sitters Club, Space Force, and Archive 81. Every channel and streaming service will cancel fan favorites (I’m still salty about Freaks and Geeks), but that’s a lot of popular and/or critically-admired shows to axe in one year. Especially while the hurt from the premature cancelations of GLOW, Everything Sucks!, Santa Clarita Diet, and my beloved The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (RIP) still remains.

Recent comments from Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos will not make Sense8 fans feel better. “We have never canceled a successful show,” he told Bloomberg. “A lot of these shows were well-intended but talk to a very small audience on a very big budget. The key to it is you have to be able to talk to a small audience on a small budget and a large audience at a large budget. If you do that well, you can do that forever.”

If Sarandos meant to say, “We have never canceled a successful show… as long as that show is Mindhunter, because it wasn’t technically canceled,” he’s not wrong. But otherwise, his remarks have united the fanbases of many so-called unsuccessful shows.

(Via Bloomberg)

Lady Gaga has surprisingly been linked to Netflix lately by way of the streaming service’s Wednesday series and its impact on her 2011 song “Bloody Mary.” Who knows if Gaga will make a Wednesday cameo, though Jenna Ortega hopes so, but for now, Gaga is admiring a different Netflix production.

Earlier this month, a Taylor Swift fan account on TikTok posted a clip from Swift’s 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana. In it, Swift says, “I’m a lot happier with who I am, and I’m happier with, like — I don’t care as much if somebody points out that I have gained weight. It’s just something that makes my life better. The fact that I’m a size six instead of a size double-zero. I mean, that wasn’t how my body was supposed to be. I just didn’t really understand that. At the time, I really don’t think I knew it.”

Swift continues, “I would have defended it to anyone who said, ‘I’m concerned about you.’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about? Of course I eat. It’s perfectly normal. I just exercise a lot.’ And I did exercise a lot. But I wasn’t eating, and you can’t — just, I don’t think you know you’re doing that when you’re doing it gradually. There’s always some standard of beauty that you’re not meeting. ‘Cause if you’re thin enough, then you don’t have that ass that everybody wants, but if you have enough weight on you to have an ass, then your stomach isn’t flat enough. It’s all just f*cking impossible.”

Gaga somehow stumbled upon the TikTok and commented last week, “That’s really brave everything you said [black heart emoji] wow.”

More recently, Swift was vulnerable about her history of body and eating disorders in her “Anti-Hero” video that included her standing on a scale and judging herself.

Gaga also has experience with using Netflix as a vehicle for showing more intimate, private thoughts. Her documentary, Five Foot Two, came out in 2017.