Category: News

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.

1. The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It (HBO Max)

Terrific news for all of you, provided all of you want to hang out inside on a weekend in June and watch spooky stuff on one of the various screens at your disposal: The Conjuring is back and it’s coming straight to HBO Max. In this go-round, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga investigate the case of a confused and blood-soaked young man who says the devil possessed him and made him commit murder. You’d think the devil would have bigger fish to fry than forcing random guys to commit single murders but, hey, we’re not the paranormal investigators here. Watch it June 4 on HBO Max.

2. Bo Burnham: Inside (Netflix)

Epic in its emotional depth and scale (for a comedy special filmed within the space of one room during lockdown), this year-long voyeuristic musical voyage into Bo Burnham’s fraying mind seems at once deeply personal and stunningly relatable. It’s also a hilarious reclamation of satire that takes particular aim at tech and how it has impacted how we interact and live. Stunning and unlike anything you’ve seen before. Did we mention that it’s as funny as it is powerful? Watch it on Netflix.

3. Cruella (Disney+)

Yes, Cruella de Vil is finally getting her origin story. Even if you don’t agree that she needed one, no one can argue that Emma Stone is the actress who could deliver a damn good time in this role. Granted, the film starts out slow (the runtime’s over two hours) with a protracted childhood era that doesn’t illustrate much about why she villained out and murdered puppies. Yet it does speed up, with lots of mayhem and a cackling Emma hanging off a truck in a billowing dress. Fashion can be evil! Also, the soundtrack feels like a character in its own right. Watch it on Disney+ Premium.

4. Plan B (Hulu)

Plan B is a raunchy teen sex comedy from director — and former Parks and Recreation actress — Natalie Morales, and it looks pretty fun. Kind of a cross between a 90s throwback like Can’t Hardly Wait and a modern version like Booksmart with a little A24 arthouse thrown in. It’s a lot of things, basically, which is not something we are complaining about. Flip it on and give it a go if you’re in the mood for what appears to be, on paper, “Superbad but if the main characters were looking for next-day contraception instead of the kind of wild night that might require it.” This is also by no means a complaint. Watch it on Hulu.

5. Army of the Dead (Netflix)

Zack Snyder’s latest project hits Netflix this weekend and it brings with it a slew of zombies and Dave Bautista carrying big guns and Tig Notaro looking cool as hell. It has other things, too, one presumes, but it probably won’t take more to sell you on it than that, so let’s leave it there. Okay, fine. One more thing. This is not just a zombie movie. It is a zombie heist movie. It is a zombie heist movie that features Dave Bautista carrying big guns and Tig Notaro looking cool as hell. In Vegas. This is some quality Saturday business right here. Watch it on Netflix.

6. The Mitchells Vs. The Machines (Netflix)

Well well well, do you want to see a star-studded and fun animated film from the production team behind Into the Spiderverse? We have pondered this question for days and have yet to uncover a valid reason why you wouldn’t. It’s got everything you could want: an oddball family trying to put down a robot uprising; voice work from Abbi Jacobson and Danny McBride and Maya Rudolph and a slew of other people you probably like; and an ending that might tug your heartstrings a little bit. Sounds like a decent Saturday afternoon to us. Watch it on Netflix.

7. Those Who Wish Me Dead (HBO Max)

The latest of HBO Max’s straight-to-streaming-but-only-for-a-few-weeks releases features Angelina Jolie in a wildfire doing battle with bad guys with machine guns. This is a promising premise for any movie, let alone one from an established writer-director like Taylor Sheridan — probably most notable for writing the script for Sicario, another good movie — that all plays out kind of like a throwback 90s action movie. Think like Twister or Cliffhanger, but with, again, Angelina Jolie in a wildfire doing battle with bad guys with machine guns. It’s not going to win any Oscars, but it sure as hell might entertain you for two hours. That’ll play. Watch it on HBO Max.

8. Nomadland (Hulu)

In his review of the film last year, our Mike Ryan wrote, “there’s a scene in Nomaldland so beautiful I gasped as it whisked my brain to some of Terrence Malick’s early work.” That pretty much sums it up well — Nomadland is one of the most beautiful and touching movies we’ve seen in a while. And now it’s a full-on Oscar winner. There has never been a better time to check it out, except for every other weekend before this one. Still! Watch it on Hulu

9. Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street (VOD)

This documentary lit up Sundance and is now finally available on VOD as of May 7. Is it cute nostalgia-bait? Maybe. Will you probably love watching a touching story about immensely talented creative-types making a thing that has shaped childhoods for decades now, include your own. Uh, yes. Of course. Track it down and be prepared to cry a little.

10. Bad Trip (Netflix)

Eric Andre, Lil Rel Howery, and Tiffany Haddish in a wild road trip prank comedy where they pull strangers into nutso stunts as they make their way to New York. You could do a whole lot worse on a Saturday night. Watch it on Netflix..

Earlier this week, Taylor Swift pulled off yet another impressive achievement: Evermore (the vinyl edition of which was just released on May 28) broke the record for biggest sales week for a vinyl album since that data was first tracked in 1991 (way after the heyday of vinyl, but still). Now Swift is celebrating by releasing a new version of “Willow.”

Swift wrote this morning on social media, “You guys went and did the nicest thing this week and broke the record for biggest vinyl sales week.. like ever? NOW WE DAHNCE. The willow (90’s trend remix) is a thank you from me, available today only on my site. Put her on repeat for a good time but if you don’t want to have a good time there’s always champagne problems & every other song on evermore so you can get deep in your deepest feelings. ”

The song is currently only available by buying new “digitally autographed” editions of Evermore from Swift’s website, but fans who purchased the song have shared it online. While the original version of “Willow” is more in the folk lane of the rest of Evermore and Folklore, the “90’s Trend Remix” takes the track in a more pop- and electronic-influenced direction.

Learn more about the new edition of Evermore featuring “Willow (90’s Trend Remix)” here.

President Trump’s been attempting to weasel his way back into the mainstream U.S. consciousness while staying rent-free in right-wing minds. He’d love to get back on Twitter, most of all, and that frustration is evident in the way that he deleted his sad blog after only one month. This week saw another delusional Trump claim, albeit a reported one, when New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman reported that Trump was wildly telling people that he was going to be back in the White House by August.

Naturally, there’s no way that this will happen, and the matter became not only a talking point but a laughing point, to which Lara Trump (wife of Eric) fielded a question from Brian Kilmeade on Thursday’s episode of Fox and Friends. She attempted to shut the story down like it was mere rumor and nothing that her father-in-law had anything to do with, in any shape or form.

“As far as I know, there are no plans for Donald Trump to be in the White House in August,” Lara declared. “Maybe there’s something I don’t know. But no, I think that that is a lot of folks getting a little worked up about something just because maybe there wasn’t enough pushback, you know, from the Republican side. So no, I have not heard any plans for Donald Trump to be installed in the White House in August.”

In other words, Lara’s trying to say that someone started a rumor, and it blew up because Team Trump didn’t shut it down fast enough. Yet of course, it’s very easy to believe that Trump — who incited the deadly January 6 insurrection in an effort to stay in power — would still be deluded enough to believe that the “stolen” election would suddenly go his way, seven months later. Interestingly enough, the Washington Post published a new report that says Donald spends his days obsessing over recounts, and his advisors try to tell him that it’s over, but the act is like “pissing into the wind.”

Longtime The Bachelor host Chris Harrison is not ready to get back into the game. The reality show puppet was sidelined earlier this year, when he made the incredibly stupid decision to defend a racist contestant’s past. So ABC has wisely decided to keep Harrison benched when Bachelor in Paradise returns to TV this summer. Instead of having one regular host, the network will bring in a series of guest hosts to oversee the action—and, according to People, actor/comedian David Spade is reportedly among them.

Spade—whose celebrity heyday was in the 1990s, when he spent six seasons on Saturday Night Live; played the perfectly sniveling foil to Chris Farley in movies like Tommy Boy and Black Sheep (but mostly Tommy Boy); and starred in the for-some-reason-hit series Just Shoot Me!—may seem like an odd choice to some viewers. But he is a noted and devoted fan of The Bachelor franchise, and regularly recaps the show on his Instagram page.

Jimmy Kimmel asked Spade about his odd appreciation of the reality TV stalwart back in March, and whether he preferred The Bachelor or The Bachelorette. “I like it all,” was Spade’s response. “I just make fun of whatever’s in front of me.”

That Spade would have no problem roasting contestants is one of the reasons this pairing could work. Another reason it could work? The world doesn’t really need another privileged white guy who would suggest that “there’s a big difference” between what was racist in 2018 versus what is racist now making bank for doing nothing, which has essentially been Harrison’s role. (For the record, Chris: There is no difference, big or otherwise. Kicking it at an Old South antebellum-themed party is never a good idea.)

While neither ABC nor Spade has yet to confirm this news, something tells us Spade will have a lot to say if and when an official statement is made.

(Via People)

Donald Trump is not a very patient man. How else would one explain having a Diet Coke button installed in the Oval Office? Now, less than a month after he launched “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” a Creed Bratton-style blog, in order to share his regular… thoughts—is that what they’re called?—with the American people and realized that nobody cares, he has given up on that, too. And Jimmy Kimmel had plenty to say about it on Wednesday night’s show—beginning with how Trump “was very excited about this blog for the first month after he was banned on Twitter, and now he’s just abandoning it. It’s a move he calls ‘The Eric.’”

Kimmel went on to explain the apparent reason Trump lost interest in sharing his own unhinged thoughts:

“According to one of his advisors, they’ve learned that the reason he shut it down is because people in the media have been mocking how few people were visiting his site. Traffic to the website dropped 99 percent from last year. So from now on he’s just going to write bitchy little notes on the dry erase board at the Mar-a-Lago omelet station. More people will see them.”

You can watch the full clip above, which stars around the 2:55 mark.

Morgan Neville is the Oscar-winning documentarian behind 20 Feet from Stardom, which took a closer look at backup singers, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, about children’s entertainer Mister Rogers. For his next film, he’s exploring another icon: Anthony Bourdain, the chef-turned-author-turned-provocative travel and food show host who died in 2018 at the age of 51.

Named after a song by the Modern Lovers (“Roadrunner, roadrunner / Going faster miles an hour” could have been Bourdain’s motto in life), Roadrunner includes never-before-seen footage of the No Reservations host and interviews from fellow celebrity chefs, including David Chang and Éric Ripert. “One minute I was standing in front of a deep fryer,” Bourdain says in the trailer above, “the next I was watching the sun set in the Sahara.”

Here’s the official plot summary:

It’s not where you go. It’s what you leave behind… Chef, writer, adventurer, provocateur: Anthony Bourdain lived his life unabashedly. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon. From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), this unflinching look at Bourdain reverberates with his presence, in his own voice and in the way he indelibly impacted the world around him.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain opens on July 16.

It wasn’t that long ago that a new console generation felt like a breath of fresh air in video games. It was an opportunity for something completely new. 8 bit to 32. Polygons and 3D Environments. Standard definition to HD. Better graphics. Faster and more consistent frames. New consoles meant technology was ready for a change and video games were there to lead the charge.

However, video games may finally be at the point where there isn’t enough new technology to justify immediately leaping at new console generations. This does not mean there is nothing new of course. Virtual reality is finally a very real thing. Graphics are being pushed further than ever, and consoles are being pushed to their breaking point. Technology is always changing, but those leaps in technology that were once giant are feeling smaller and more incremental now. It’s kind of like a new car or a new phone. Yes, there’s a difference between last year’s model and this year’s, but for many it’s going to be barely noticeable.

Anyone who bought a PlayStation 5 is starting to feel that lack of a giant technological breakthrough. The PS5, effectively, is a more powerful and better performing console than the PS4. It’s faster, has little to no load times, runs smoother, and is, without a doubt, a technologically superior console. However, in terms of why people want to buy video game consoles, there is very little difference between a PS5 and a PS4. Here is a list of the exclusives for PS5.

• Astros Playroom
• Demon’s Souls
• Destruction All-Stars
• Returnal
• Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart (not released yet)
• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade (DLC, not released)

Admittedly, that’s not a terrible lineup of exclusives for a console that isn’t even a year old yet, but there is more to it than that. The PS5 can also play PS4 games, which is great for everyone who owned a PS4 because now they can just jump right into the next console generation, but it’s led to a lot of developers sticking with what’s comfortable. Multiple games have come out since the PS5 was released, and it’s not uncommon for a game to only be made for PS4 and for PS5 owners to be playing a PS4 game on their PS5. That or they release it for both, with an enhanced version that maximizes the game on the PS5’s capabilities, but offers nothing different in terms of actual gameplay. The current generation of consoles may be happening right now, but the last generation is still going just as strong as ever. Right now, it’s becoming increasingly hard to make an argument to buy into the new generation of consoles.

Even games that were originally going to be PS5 exclusives, such as Gran Turismo 7 and God of War: Ragnarok, are now going to be released on PS4 too.

Hermen: It very much is. You can’t build a community of over 110 million PS4 owners and then just walk away from it, right? I think that’d be bad news for fans of PS4, and frankly not very good business.

Where it makes sense to develop a title for both PS4 and PS5 — for Horizon Forbidden West, the next God of War, GT7 — we’ll continue looking at that. And if PS4 owners want to play that game, then they can. If they want to go on and play the PS5 version, that game will be there for them.

That being said, it’s also very important to have showpieces for PS5, hence the development of Returnal and Ratchet that are exclusive to PS5.

For PS4 owners this is great news. For PS5 owners it’s hard to not wonder what the point of their purchase was. Returnal is fun and Ratchet and Clank looks exciting, but is that enough to buy an entirely new console? Were the hardware improvements really that worth it, or would a PS4 Pro have sufficed?

What’s interesting is that these comments sound oddly similar to how Xbox has been approaching its current console generation. The Xbox Series X/S has for the most part been advertised as just a hardware upgrade.. They haven’t tried particularly hard to move away from the Xbox One and their list of exclusives is even smaller than the PlayStation 5, but that’s because their main focus has been getting people into their Gamepass ecosystem. Similar to how Apple cares more about you using the latest version of iOS rather than the latest smart phone.

Is this PlayStation acknowledging the Xbox strategy and trying to replicate it in their own way? Or did the year that was 2020 delay their plans and they had to extend the lifespan of the PS4 generation of consoles? It could be as simple as that, but it raises an interesting question about the entire idea of a console generation. Do we still need them? Is there a reason why the PS4 should not have access to the majority of PS5 games? If the coding of the game is capable of playing it then there shouldn’t be a problem in theory. Yes, it will eventually become too complicated and a new console will become a requirement, but how is that different from waiting until a phone or PC ages out?

We may be seeing PlayStation forced into a realization they didn’t want to be at. Console generations are mattering less and less. The longer PlayStation continues to say their new games can be played on PS4, the more they are acknowledging this. Eventually the PS4 will age out and a PS5 will be a requirement, but will that be due to technology or because enough people finally bought PS5’s to justify making that happen? It’s starting to feel like the latter more than the former.

Over the years and on multiple occasions, Grimes has shown that she is a creative thinker who sees the world differently than a lot of other people do. She reinforced that last night, when she shared a TikTok video in which she makes a connection between artificial intelligence and communism. The clip left a lot of people scratching their heads, which caused Grimes to become a trending topic on Twitter.

In the clip (which features a panel from the manga Berserk as the background), Grimes says:

“I have a proposition for the communists. Typically, most of the communists I know are not big fans of AI. But if you think about it, AI is actually the fastest path to communism. So, if implemented correctly, AI could actually theoretically solve for abundance. Like, we could totally get to a situation where nobody has to work, everybody is provided for with a comfortable state of being… comfortable living.

AI could automate all the farming and weed out all the corruption, thereby bringing us to… as close as possible to genuine equality. So, basically, everything everybody loves about communism, but without the collective farm. ‘Cause, let’s be real, enforced farming is really not a vibe.”

Grimes later wrote in a comment on the video, “Haha I am not a communist! this iz a joke- but maybe the technocrats and communists could get along!”

The whole situation has left Twitter users wondering just what the heck Grimes was talking about:

Watch the video below.

Netflix’s Geeked Week is officially coming, y’all. That means that fans of The Witcher, The Umbrella Academy, Stranger Things, The Sandman, and Cobra Kai (and more) should get a good fix from the streaming platform as franchises get back on track following pandemic delays. Netflix has released the above teaser to get genre fans ready for a full-on week (June 7-11, beginning at 9:00 am PST/12:00 pm EST) for the inaugural edition of this event, which will feature five days of appreciation for everything that fandoms do to keep the passion alive for their favorite characters, TV shows, and gaming endeavors.

Geeked Week promises to dig into five broad categorizations — comic book, sci-fi, fantasy, gaming, and YA — both for films and TV series, with a ton of trailers, news, and appearances from the stars themselves. First looks, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, live performances, and you name it, things will be happening. The streaming services’ YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, Facebook and TikTok accounts will be ground central for releases as they happen, and the entire week should be pretty bonkers for fans of 50+ Netflix projects, including the following:

The Sandman, The Umbrella Academy, The Witcher, Gunpowder Milkshake, The Cuphead Show!, Arcane, Lucifer, Fear Street Trilogy, Kate, Castlevania, Masters of the Universe: Revelation, La Casa de Papel, Resident Evil, Cowboy Bebop, Cobra Kai, Godzilla: Singular Point, Sweet Tooth, Vikings: Valhalla

Previously, Netflix revealed that GeekedWeek.com will be a daily wrap-up location to give “fans a wide array of exclusive news, new trailers, live art, drop-ins from your favorite stars and much more about all your favorite Netflix series and films.” The event will be completely free, too, and watchable later on, if you aren’t able to partake live. Hopefully, we’ll see more on the streaming service edging into the gaming realm, and here’s a Twitter announcement below.

After the Lakers won two in a row to take a 2-1 series lead, the Suns have rattled off their own two-game streak to take a 3-2 lead and put the defending champs on the brink of elimination going back to L.A. for Game 6 on Thursday night.

Game 5 was a rout from the beginning, with the Suns leading by 30 at halftime as the Anthony Davis-less Lakers had no juice and no answers for a Suns team that was clearly ready to take advantage of the Lakers being without one of their two superstars. Davis’ status for Game 6 remains in question, with Frank Vogel simply offering a “we’ll see” on Wednesday when asked about Davis playing with his groin strain, and his presence obviously is a pivot point in this series. When Davis has played well, the Lakers have won, and when he hasn’t or when he’s been hurt, they haven’t. LeBron James’ workload as the lead creator for the Lakers is already immense when Davis plays, and when he doesn’t, they simply lack the offensive firepower to keep up with a team like Phoenix.

As such, everyone is waiting on Davis’ game time decision, although based on how the books are placing this game they seem to be expecting him to play with L.A. as a slight favorite. It’s hard to take much away from Game 5 other than the Lakers just aren’t good enough sans Davis, but how good they are with a likely below 100 percent version of Davis against a Suns team feeling very confident remains to be seen.

In Game 5, the Suns covered with ease as five-point favorites and the Under moved to 4-1 in the series, holding below 207 in the 115-85 Phoenix win.

Game 6 TV Info

Tip Time: Thursday, June 3; 10:30 p.m. ET
TV Network: TNT

Game 6 Betting Lines (via DraftKings Sportsbook)

Series Prices: Suns (-278), Lakers (+210)
Spread: Lakers -2 (-112), Suns +2 (-109)
Total: Over 207 (-112), Under 207 (-109)
Money Line: Lakers (-129), Suns (+108)