Over and over during the press tour for The Big Sick in 2017, I remember screenwriters Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon talking about how their producer Judd Apatow had kept hectoring them to make their script more real, more personal, to go with honesty over punchlines whenever in doubt. It was good advice then, and I wish director Apatow had taken producer Apatow’s advice.
Instead, his latest, The King of Staten Island, seems intent on turning Pete Davidson’s actually-interesting personal journey into yet another one of Apatow’s overlong Man-Child Belatedly Learns To Clean His Room sagas. It’s a movie that expends most of its energy trying to turn a unicorn into a horse. Because hey, people buy horses, right? We know how to sell a horse.
Pete Davidson is the rare, possibly historically unique comedian who is actually more famous for being a Famous Person than he is for being a comedian. Even before he started dating pop stars he had a compelling backstory: he was a teen comedian whose dad died on 9/11 (not to be confused with Steve Rannazzizi, the comedian who lied about 9/11). He got cast in SNL when he was just 20, one of the youngest cast members ever and the first to be born in the ’90s. As a person, Davidson also has the rare gift of being able to understand and joke about his own public persona (“I look like I make vape juice in a bathtub,” as he put it on SNL). I interviewed him a few years back, and to this day he stands out as one of my more candid and charming interviewees.
Apatow seems to understand that Davidson himself is part of the draw, so he incorporates much of Davidson’s real story, like his real hometown (Staten Island), the fact that his father was a fireman who died when he was a kid, and his struggles with mental health. Only now Davidson is “Scott Carlin,” whose father died not in a terrorist attack but in a hotel fire, and instead of a comedian he’s a directionless stoner who dabbles in tattooing and lives with his mom (played by Marisa Tomei). Notice how every change here seems to make the story less interesting?
Trouble is, we’ve seen “immature guy learns to grows up” before. The King Of Staten Island never fully reckons with its own central hook — Scott’s mental health issues, which are kind of just a cutesy punchline — and it simultaneously attempts to capitalize on Davidson’s celebrity status while for story purposes pretending it doesn’t exist. It’s a little reminiscent of the later seasons of The Jersey Shore, after The Situation and Snooki and the gang had become wildly famous, when the slavering hordes and exorbitant nightclub appearance fees that followed them wherever they went had become the most interesting part of the story, yet the producers had to painstakingly ignore it all in order to keep selling us the antiquated tale of regular young people hooking up and acting stupid. Sometimes selling what you know keeps you from realizing what you have.
Likewise, we now get Pete Davidson as a slacker whose overachieving sister — played by Apatow’s daughter, Maude, who’s a good enough actress for me not to mind the nepotism — both outshines and resents him, whose girlfriend (Bel Powley) just wants to be acknowledged, whose loser friends get him into trouble, etc. — all the totems of stunted adolescence, as it’s popularly conceived. Apatow’s movies are always notoriously too long, but this time it isn’t self-indulgence that’s keeping The King Of Staten Island over two hours (137 minutes, to be exact) it’s more a failure to choose between four or five different stock storylines.
“Scott” at one point attempts to tattoo a kid in a park. The kid’s irate father, a fireman played by Bill Burr, shows up at the door the next day and ends up dating Scott’s mom. Burr is shockingly great in the role and when he winds up becoming friends with Davidson’s character, the two have genuine chemistry. Bro-ing down at the firehouse, they share the film’s first non-contrived-seeming camaraderie, which might have made up for the slog of the film’s first two acts if they hadn’t been so damned long. Did we really need to wait 90+ minutes for them to get to the firehouse? Did Scott really have to try to sabotage his mom’s relationship first and have blowout fights over who she was dating? Is this story really to hinge on the assumption that a 24-year-old man would interfere in his mom’s love life? Woof. Also, gross.
The one bright spot in culture is that we now have a template for how this could’ve been handled better. Dave on FX stars Dave Burd/Lil Dicky as himself, in a show about an unexpectedly viral rapper trying to navigate sudden fame. It’s interesting precisely because it seems to understand what The King of Staten Island does not: that actual success and its byproducts are more compelling than fake failure.
‘The King of Staten Island’ streams this weekend via VOD. Vince Mancini is onTwitter. You can access his archive of reviewshere.
Jemaine Clement has had a rich and varied career since debuting with Flight of the Conchords, from voice appearances in Moana and on Rick and Morty to appearing in Steven Spielberg’s The BFG to getting a plum role in the Avatar sequels. But his most cherished non-Conchords work may be the What We Do in the Shadows-verse. Clement co-directed the mockumentary movie with Taika Waititi, and then went on to create the FX TV version, which focuses on a squadron of vampires in Staten Island. It’s had two great seasons thus far, and while it’ll be back for a third, Clement will be a bit less involved.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly (in a bit picked up by ComicBook.com), Clement — who’s twice swung by the show as long-haired stud Vladislav the Poker, his character from the movie — was asked what on earth he has left after the wild Season 2 conclusion. Here was his answer:
The writers will have to figure that one out because I won’t be in the writers’ room next season. I’m leaving them with this big problem to work out. I think it’s a good idea to end on a big cliffhanger, we did the same thing last season. Now they can figure out how to get out of this big mess.
So that’s pretty funny. It’s almost like a game of Exquisite Corpse, kind of, with Clement helping steer the writers’ room into a wall and see if they can plot their escape. It also means What We Do in the Shadows will remain a lively and surprising program that doesn’t rest on its laurels or give fans the same-old.
Elsewhere, Clement reveals one of his Vladislav appearances wasn’t supposed to happen. “I wasn’t even going to do this until the day before, because we had trouble getting anyone in time,” he revealed. “We were hoping we’d get someone who has played a vampire before, like in ‘The Trial’ last season with the vampire council, but we didn’t have enough time. So I happened to be in Toronto, where we shoot the show, so I put my wig on again, but it wasn’t planned.”
We finally have two consoles to be excited about for the next generation that arrives later this year. While Microsoft officially showed the Xbox: Series X as recently as last December, and had a showcase event in early May, Sony had remained oddly quiet. All details of the PlayStation 5 were released via statements, leaks, and articles in Wired. The most information anyone had about the console came from a very dry event for the Game Developers Conference that explained how the PS5 was going to function on a hardware level.
Finally, on June 11, Sony gave video game fans what they have been asking for in the form of a gameplay trailer event that showed some of the games that will be available in the near future on the PlayStation 5. In typical Sony fashion, the games ranged from exciting and cinematic to artistic and playful. It was a wide range of games and there was reason to be excited about all of them, but with any event like this, there are going to be those games that stick out from the crowd. Here are some of the trailers that left all of us anticipating Holiday 2020 and early 2021.
The Heavy Hitters
These games are console sellers. You buy the console because you want to play these games the most.
Spiderman Miles Morales
Marvel’s Spider-Man was one of the best games on the PS4 when it launched in 2018 and it didn’t take Sony and Insomniac long to get working on a sequel. This time they’re going with fellow Spider-Man Miles Morales. The star of Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse, Morales will now be starring in his own game. The trailer begins with Peter Parker from the previous games telling Morales what it is that makes him a hero. Donning his black and red spidey suit we see him in a winter setting swinging through the city doing his job as Spider-Man.
I’m really excited to see what direction the franchise goes with Morales as the main protagonist of the game. To explain why this would be exciting would get into spoiler territory for the end of the last game, but let’s just say that Spider-Man fans everywhere will be picking up a PS5 to play this.
Horizon Forbidden West
Horizon: Zero Dawn was an incredible new IP on the PlayStation 4 that was unfortunately overshadowed by other exciting games at the time. Despite this it carved out a very strong and vocal fanbase that can spend hours explaining to you what makes Horizon such an incredible game. Taking that IP and giving it a sequel was a no brainer and there is heavy anticipation about what they are going to do with the franchise now that they have experience with it under their belts.
One thing we know for certain is that the world is going to be beautiful. The last game looked great, but if the trailer is anything to go by, then the follow up in Forbidden West is going to blow it out of the water. There is color everywhere and what appears to be a vibrant and growing world. While the trailer should obviously be taken with a grain of salt, because it’s a trailer, you cannot help but be excited when watching it.
Resident Evil Village
Resident Evil Village might as well be called Resident Evil 8, because that’s what it is. The Resident Evil series underwent a mini reboot with seven and went back to their horror routes in creating a scary, but still very Resident Evil, kind of game. Village is going to continue the format RE7 and stick with the first person view focused on horror.
You might be wondering why it’s so surprising to see a horror franchise actually have horror elements in the trailer and that’s because Resident Evil is also known for being extremely campy. For example, Chris Redfield almost gets crushed by a boulder in Resident Evil 5 and starts punching it to escape. Speaking of Chris, he shows up at the very end of the Village trailer leaving a lot of us long time Resident Evil fans wondering what role the former member of STARS is going to play in all this.
The Welcome Returns
These games might not be console sellers, but it’s great to see them make an appearance on the console.
Hitman III
It’s hard to say too much about Hitman III with the trailer itself being so vague, but it’s exciting to see that they’re making another Hitman game. There was concern that the franchise didn’t have much life left in it five years ago and now we have them as one of the major parts of a console event. The video game industry changes fast!
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a welcome sight for long time PlayStation fans. The franchise was a major part of the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 eras but surprisingly did not have a major role in the lifespan of the PlayStation 4. The Ratchet and Clank series has always been a lot of silly games with a great variety of weapons to choose from as you mow down enemies and platform through the colorful worlds.
This iteration sees Ratchet and Clank traveling through dimensions and if the developers can deliver on their promise of being able to do so at will, this could be one of the most creative games in the franchise and on the PlayStation 5 itself.
Sackboy: A Big Adventure
If you never played Little Big Planet on the PlayStation 3 then you did yourself a disservice. They were some of the best platformers of that generation and the player creation aspect led to some really unique level design. However, as the game grew it moved farther away from its traditional platforming roots and leaned heavily on the player creation aspect. This of course eventually led to developer Media Molecule making an entire game around that in “Dreams.”
Sackboy A Big Adventure sees the protagonist of Little Big Planet, Sackboy, returning to his roots and starring in his own 3D platformer. The trailer is absolutely charming and features some really unique levels that will be fun to traverse. As a fan of platformers, this is going to be in my cart on day one.
Demon’s Souls
We don’t need to spend too much time on this one. Demon’s Souls is a remake of the 2009 cult classic of the same name. Fans of this game and the Souls franchise have been waiting for a remake ever since the PS4 came out. They will be pleased.
Some Exciting Newcomers
Not everything needs to be a sequel or remake. Here are some exciting and fresh IP’s that stuck out.
Pragmata
Pragmata left me fascinated. Why is this world empty? Why is this person in a space suit? Why is there a little girl there? What in the world is happening to the world around them? Why are they now on the moon? I need to know the answer to these questions and it’s painful I will not know until 2022.
DEATHLOOP
DEATHLOOP is a game that, as a concept, is not entirely original but in execution is completely original. You play as a character who is put on an island where everyone is trying to kill him. When he dies he quite literally “respawns” and has to try and do it all over again. His eventual goal? Kill everyone on the island so he can escape. Simple enough right? Well, considering how often he’s been through this scenario based on the trailer, apparently not.
I’m a sucker for games like this. They’re extremely meta and the concept of a never ending loop that you have to solve is an interesting one. DEATHLOOP even throws in the extra caveat of an opposition character. A woman whose sole job in life is to kill the man stuck in the DEATHLOOP. They also potentially teased a multiplayer aspect at the end when they showed what appeared to be a player perspective taking control of her. Perhaps this is a 1v1 multiplayer game of some kind? I’m fascinated to know more.
The PS5 Itself
No one actually came into this event expecting to see the PS5 itself. Sony pushed hard that this was an event meant to show the games and nothing else. So to suddenly drop the look of the PlayStation 5 immediately caught everyone off guard.
Today was a major win for Sony and PlayStation. It’s now Microsoft’s turn to see if it has an answer with the Series X.
From Bon Appétit to CrossFit, top editors and executives are being called out for racism. But the Black Lives Matter movement is about much more than white-collar accountability.
True crime is a bit of a weird genre. There’s a lot to be gleaned from learning about the abuses, failures, and corruption of our various systems. Finding out how police coercion works or bearing witness to full-on criminal activities by the police teaches lessons many of us need to learn right now. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the voyeuristic side to true crime that’s almost a celebration of crime — especially white male serial killers. It’s weird but often hard to turn away from.
All of that makes finding the “best true crime documentaries” a balancing act between the teachable moments and thriller-esque viewing pleasure. For this list, we’re going to try and skip the more sensational pieces of My-Favorite-Murder bait and focus on stories that expose, not celebrate crime. The 12 true crime documentaries below touch on several sectors of society — police discrimination, our broken justice and penal systems, ingrained bigotry, sexism, and highlight some bizarrely evil crimes. Hopefully, instead of stoking fear, these docs will help to educate and illuminate the world we live in.
In April 1992, William Ford was shot dead at an auto shop. The 24-year-old black man was murdered by a 19-year-old white man, Mark P. Reilly, over complaints Ford had with the quality of work at the auto shop. He was unarmed and shot dead for it. Of course, this being a story of white-on-black violence in the United States, the story doesn’t end there. An all-white grand jury gave the white Reilly the benefit of the doubt and decided his murder was an act of self-defense.
The Oscar-nominated documentary walks us through the murder and the bafflingly-yet-familiar aftermath wherein the police and judicial systems failed Ford’s family in bringing his murderer to justice. The ending of this doc is too familiar to spoil and will leave you ready to take to the streets.
Bikram Hot Yoga is a fad that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Its founder — who has made tens-of-millions of dollars off the practice — is an at-large predator who spent decades sexually assaulting and raping his students, predominately women of color. Yet he’s still not in prison. In fact, he’s living the high-life with his millions still intact.
The documentary follows Bikram Choudhury’s rise to fame in the U.S. throughout the 1970s and 1980s and then takes a turn into the very dark side of his power. There’s a clear feeling of cult leader behavior as Choudhury abuses his female students psychologically, physically, and sexually. Perhaps most amazingly, after Choudhury fled from arrest in the United States, he continues to attract people to his Bikram training seminars in Europe and Mexico to this day, adding to the cult-leader vibe.
Wow. Where to begin with this documentary? Jan Broberg was abducted twice by the same family friend in her teens. The kicker, the parents of Broberg knew what was going on and let it happen, even dropping charges for the first kidnapping.
That’s only the tip of the shit-show iceberg of this story. The twists and turns this documentary takes in telling the story of how one man could convince two parents that his kidnapping and raping of their 12-year-old daughter — twice — was not a crime has to be seen to be believed and helps illustrate how society’s ingrained trust of the “charming man” continues to fail women and girls.
One of Us follows two former members of Brooklyn’s Hasidic community as they adjust to life outside the neighborhood they grew up in. On the surface, that doesn’t really sound like a true-crime documentary.
But once the documentary dives into why the protagonists left, it becomes clear that heinous crimes are lurking just under the surface. Memories of domestic violence and child sexual abuse emerge and drive a further wedge between those trying to leave the community and those who are trying to keep it together.
Speaking of cults, Holy Hell is a bizarre look at the Buddhafield cult and the abuse doled out by its leader, Jamie Gomez, or “Michel” as Gomez prefers his followers to call him. The film is fairly straightforward in how it depicts the cultish behavior. Gradually, as with so many of these stories, Gomez becomes a monster. He starts emotionally abusing his female followers and sexually assaulting his male followers.
The ripple that makes this a unique watch is the insider view of the cult thanks to footage shot by Will Allen, Buddahafield’s main videographer for 22 years. The film offers a sort of behind-the-scenes glimpse inside the everyday life of a very active cult.
This documentary should leave you shaken to the core. The rapes of teens Audrie Pott in California and Daisy Coleman and Paige Parkhurst in Missouri, 15, 14, and 13 respectively at the time of their attacks, highlights pretty much everything wrong with, well, everything.
The documentary looks at how a community and social media bullying turned against the young rape victims to protect the perpetrators of these horrific crimes. It’s absolutely baffling. The vitriol and bullying these teens and their parents went through will make your blood boil. One of the most disturbing moments comes when the mayor and sheriff of Coleman’s town says on camera that “Girls have as much culpability” in their own rapes. The horridness doesn’t end there.
Sam Cooke’s murder was played as a simple robbery by the white authorities at the time. That white-police narrative has become harder and harder to swallow every day since the icon’s untimely death.
This doc takes a deep look at Cooke’s amazing rise to stardom and how he was parlaying his fame into life as an activist for Black rights in America alongside leaders like Malcolm X. If you don’t know anything about Cooke, this is a great look at his life and very dubious murder.
Marsha P. Johnson was one of the loudest voices for gay and trans rights in America. The untimely death and possible murder of Johnson after 1992’s Pride parade was written off by police as a suicide due to clear and deeply-rooted bigotry against the black community, the gay community, and the trans community in New York (and across the country). Eventually, the case would be reopened and investigated as a murder, adding a clear true crime element to this doc.
As much as the murder acts as a hook, the backbone of this documentary is really Johnson’s life as an activist who lived through big moments in LGBTQI history from the Stonewall Inn Raids and following riots to the AIDS crisis. The doc will leave you in awe of Johnson and the massive amount of bravery it took to keep up those fights while also feeling enraged that her death was written off so quickly by the police.
It’s almost unbelievable that a person could be tried for murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison based on a witness’ dream. Yet here we are. Dream/Killer looks the case of Ryan Ferguson, who received that sentence for a murder he had nothing to with. However, he was implicated in it based on a ridiculously coerced confession to the police.
The backbone of the film follows Ryan’s father, Bill Ferguson, as he spends nearly ten years trying to prove his son’s innocence. If you don’t know the case, go in without knowing how it all ends.
If you still hold the very flawed idea that everyone in prison is there because they deserve it, you need to watch this doc from the U.K. The story is about Nick Yarris who spent 22 years on death row fighting for his freedom. He didn’t get that freedom until DNA evidence proved his innocence and he was circulated back into society.
The film’s draw is its unique style. The narrative is told with Yarris taking a stage, so-to-speak, and monologuing over atmospheric reshoots of his experiences. It’s an engaging way to flip the script visually on the usual true-crime style, and it’ll hook you right away.
If you haven’t seen 2013’s Blackfish, you might want to do that now. The film has become the seminal testament to the horrors of for-profit captivity of large mammals in amusement parks.
The film follows the story of the captive orca, Tilikum, and the three deaths the orca caused while in captivity at Sealand on the Pacific. The film also features interviews from SeaWorld employees and lays bare the tactics of captive orca breeding. Thankfully, this doc was single-handily responsible for waterparks like SeaWorld losing massive ticket sales. When you watch the doc, you’ll understand why.
This documentary from National Geographic feels more relevant than ever right now. It takes an un-polished look at how police violence and systemic racism has been tearing Los Angeles — and the nation — apart for a long time before the police beat Rodney King and got away with it.
The film looks at the L.A. Riots of 1992 using archival footage with voice over from actual reports, police scanners, activists, politicians, and people at the time. The doc takes you right there and is so visceral you can feel the heat from the fires and the anger of the people on the streets. This is what happens when the cops and the justice system are the ones committing the crimes and the people just can’t take it anymore.
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