Cocaine Bear — a dark comedy about a 500-pound black bear, who consumes an obscene amount of cocaine and goes on a killing rampage — is just about as over the top as the title suggests.
Continue reading “‘Cocaine Bear’ is a Ridiculously Good Time with Over-the-Top Gore”
Hello, Wisconsin! The Formans are back, and so is the basement. Set 15 years after the events of That ‘70s Show, Netflix’s That ‘90s Show is a direct sequel to its predecessor. Season 1 takes a bit to get off the ground, but once it finds its footing, the sitcom mostly succeeds at being a fun, nostalgia-filled time.
Continue reading “NOC Review: ‘That ‘90s Show’ is a Pretty Fun Return to the Basement”
It’s hard to believe that rom-com royalty — Jennifer Lopez (The Wedding Planner, Maid in Manhattan) and Josh Duhamel (Life As We Know It, When in Rome) — have never made a movie together until Amazon Studio’s Shotgun Wedding. It makes sense to put these two together in a romantic movie as both are beautiful people with experience in the genre. But unlike their sappy romantic films that follow the same formula, Shotgun Wedding gets mixed in with some action and adventure with pirates, money laundering, and lots of explosions.
Continue reading “Say ‘I Don’t’ to ‘Shotgun Wedding’”
How much are you willing to pay to become king? Is the price of having wealth, power, or respect worth the pain or death it brings? Hot Blooded: Once Upon A TIme In Korea succeeds in tackling these themes, as well as the perpetual cycle of violence, with a poetic focus that left me intrigued with what it was trying to say, even though I’m not sure if it was clear enough.
Continue reading “‘Hot Blooded: Once upon a Time’ is Intriguing But Disjointed”
Having a falling out with a family member you are close with can be difficult and the same can be said when you fall in love with a person you’ve never met online. Both experiences can leave you with the empty feeling of realizing you don’t really know them as well as you thought. In I Love My Dad, writer-director James Morosini crafts an endearingly funny and real film that displays that feeling honestly and cathartically.
Continue reading “NOC Review: ‘I Love My Dad’ is Endearingly Funny and Real”
Ever since audiences were introduced to the multiverse in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, storytellers had to figure out a way to incorporate that into future storylines. With Marvel’s Loki and Spider-Man: No Way Home, it made sense to include multiple worlds and versions of our favorite characters, while also providing a little bit of fan service along the way.
Continue reading “‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ is Far from Perfect”
Occupation: Rainfall is a confusing enigma. At moments, it feels at home in B-movie schlock delivering campy actor performances that chew on scenery and heavy action sequences drenched in CGI screen filters and explosions. Other moments, there’s a sincerity in its attention to detail in the story it weaves. Crafting interesting cinematography to amplify its thoughts on trauma, war, and moving forward.
Continue reading “‘Occupation: Rainfall’ is a Fun Sci-Fi Opera Hindered By its Own Weight”
Coming-of-age films are defined by what it means for their young characters to grow up. And, like the experience itself, no one story about growing up is the same as the next. It takes a special kind of film to capture the growing pains of a young person as they transition into adulthood. Turning Red, Pixar’s heartfelt and hilarious film, examines that journey through the lens of a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl who finds out that growing up may be a smelly beast — literally.
Continue reading “‘Turning Red’ Finds Heart and Humor in the Messiness of Growing Up”
Solar Ash on the surface feels ethereal yet familiar. The premise of trying to stop a world ending event has never looked so beautiful, and in conjunction with smooth controls and a haunting soundtrack, Solar Ash solidifies itself as a serviceable gaming experience on a console that has been in desperate need of unique games since its launch.
Continue reading “‘Solar Ash’ is Introspective and Beautiful”
After playing well over 300 matches of Halo Infinite’s multiplayer through my Christmas break, a Covid scare followed by an actual Covid infection, and a 10 day isolation period has left me with a feeling of nostalgia. Halo is back in its most traditional form with some modern sensibilities and missteps.
Continue reading “‘Halo Infinite Multiplayer’ is a Breath of Fresh Air”
Mister Miracle: The Great Escape is a bit of enigma. Like the titular character himself, the book is an incredible romp of humor and excitement with a genuine heart at the center.
Continue reading “The Best Magic Trick of ‘Mister Miracle: The Great Escape’ is its Heart”
Director Roland Emmerich knows his way around a disaster. After Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 — to name a few, many audiences can expect grandiose special effects and top-tier actors trying to save the world. In his latest disaster film Moonfall, the moon is literally falling towards the Earth — causing chaos as gravity is affected.
Continue reading “NOC Review: ‘Moonfall’ is a Fun, Absurd Blockbuster”
Naomi McDuffie (Kaci Walfall) is a normal Oregonian 16-year-old who has a fascination with superheroes, particularly her favorite, Superman. So much so that she has a whole Superman fan website (we can relate to something like that here at The Nerds of Color). A key reason she relates to him is the fact that they’re both adoptees. However, in her new story starting in her titular series Naomi, she finds she may have more in common with the legendary figure than she ever expected.
Continue reading “‘Naomi’ Establishes an Intriguing Story for a New Hero”
The trials and tribulations of indie filmmaking are taken to their absurd, action-y, lengths in Marc Price’s Nightshooter, a story about a film crew finding themselves at the scene of a harrowing gang (mob?) execution at an abandoned and soon to be demolished business center on the last night of shooting a zombie film.
Continue reading “‘Nightshooters’ is One of the Best Action Films This Year”
Chaos Magic, 4chan, the 2016 election, and Egyptian gods were not the things I ever thought I would experience all at once but in You Can’t Kill Meme, a documentary film by Haley Garrigus that explores the idea of memes being magic and the magicians who use them. My third eye has been opened and I am looking deeper into the images I find funny and retweet on the internet.
Continue reading “‘You Can’t Kill Meme’ is a Genuine Attempt to Pull the Curtain on Meme Magic”
Directed by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by Tony Kushner, West Side Story revives the classic tale of fierce rivalries and young love in 1957 New York City. Now, fans of the Broadway show and original film might be wondering not only why it was remade, but if it’s worth going to see or if it does the story justice. With the stellar performances and amazing musical numbers, West Side Story has all the elements that make the story a classic and is definitely worth a trip to the movies.
Continue reading “NOC Review: ‘West Side Story’ is a Beautiful Retelling Worth Seeing”
We obviously look forward to the holidays for the food. Whether it’s for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Passover, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, Diwali, Día De Los Muertos, Seollal (Korean New Year), Nowruz (Persian New Year), or some other holiday, we always enjoy diving into a scrumptious feast with our loved ones to commemorate these occasions. But how exactly did some of these food traditions develop here in the United States, and what were the specific contributions of Immigrant and Indigenous communities?
Continue reading “Padma Lakshmi’s ‘Taste the Nation: Holiday Edition’ is Wonderful and Moving”
“The Bullet Blondes” shows our heroes in a dire place. When we left our lovable band of time-traveling misfit superheroes at the tail end of Season 6, the unthinkable happened. Their precious Waverider ship was blown up by another Waverider that simply appeared and left! Now stranded in 1925, the Legends must figure out how to time-travel out of this period and make sure they don’t mess up history along the way.
Continue reading “NOC Review: A Unique Premiere for a Unique ‘Legends of Tomorrow’ Season”
Waking from a dream never felt so unfinished as it did when I reached the end credits of When I’m A Moth, an independent film directed by Zachary Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak, written by Cotler. It’s a film that on paper has all the markings of being an arthouse darling — a small cast, eerie poetic dream visuals, pontifications on choice and fate with a going nowhere protagonist and yet, as I rose from my seat afterwards, it felt as if I was remembering a half dream. Unable to finish the thought of what it wanted to be but fascinated by the parts I could remember.
Continue reading “‘When I’m A Moth’ is Beautiful but Doesn’t Say Anything”
Two years ago, in the midst of the Keanussance, I took the red pill and didn’t look back when I watched The Matrix for the first time. It was an intense yet awesome first showing and it has since come to be one of my favorite films.
Continue reading “Thoughts and Reactions to Watching ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ For the First Time”
It has been four days, eight hours, fifty minutes and twenty-nine seconds since I played 12 Minutes and I’ve been perplexed as to how to write this review. Normally, this would be kind of a good thing. The moment of reflection that comes after seeing something that feels profound, provoking an introspection as to why it resonated so much doesn’t happen with 12 Minutes.
Continue reading “‘12 Minutes’ Wasn’t Long Enough to Be Compelling”
Iman Zahawry provides a refreshing and heartwarming romantic comedy centered in a community that is so often ignored in media. What might feel like a run of the mill indie film straight from the early 2010s, the films sets itself apart and elevates itself with its likable characters and message of trying to find one’s independence and what it means to be Americanish.
Continue reading “‘Americanish’ Shines a Heartwarming Light on its Community”
“What is this helping?” is one of the first sentences uttered by a white restaurant patron unsettled in Unapologetic’s first scene, where protestors express the reality of the recent deaths of Black residents in their community to unsuspecting people eating brunch at restaurants. The scene perfectly encompasses the themes and motives of this documentary: a large and triumphant call to arms to make a more honest and equal world while people sit quietly trying to ignore not only the performance, but the actual knowledge of those who are destroyed and subjugated by these injustices.
Continue reading “‘Unapologetic’ is an Unflinching Exploration of Activism”