Movie review Director Juel Taylor’s feature debut is a slick and stylish celebration of the Blaxploitation genre and the black culture it spawned. By means of Charles Pulliam Moore, a reporter who focuses on film, TV and pop culture. Before The Verge, he spent nearly five years writing about comics, labor, race, and more at…
There are, by my count, at least 14 different versions of Barbie the Album: a huge, brightly colored array of vinyl and cassette variants and alternate covers, all ready to purchase from your favorite major retailer, streaming service, or online retailer. For a certain kind of record collector, I imagine it will be hard to…
“Do Tell” by Lindsay Lynch (Doubleday) Edie O’Dare was there that night, the night that changed the lives of a dozen names in Hollywood – the night Sophie Melrose, newcomer to the FWM studios, was sexually assaulted by Freddy Clarke, famous for playing dashing heroes. And despite Edie wanting to be hardened and unattached, Sophie…
One of the most interesting bits in Wham!, director Chris Smith‘s documentary about the four years of the eponymous pop duo made up of British musicians and childhood friends George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley deals with the syrupy Careless Whisper (1984) – a song that became one of Michael’s most remembered pieces in the decades…
The best crime stories are embedded in their very specific context: knowing the victim’s history helps you understand why he/she was murdered. Nor is it ever the only one who dies; very often those who are left behind also experience some sort of dying. Both history and geography are important indicators in Sudip Sharma’s atmospheric,…
“DO TELL” by Lindsay Lynch (Doubleday, 353 pages, $28). In Lindsay Lynch’s sparkling, sharp debut novel “Do Tell,” a hard-working artist weighs her friendships with A-list stars against her own aspirations. Edith “Edie” O’Dare came to Hollywood in the 1930s to become a star herself. Those dreams seemed within reach until another red-headed actress named…
In a scene from Netflix’s Kohrra, two cops share common misery. “Ye pyaar badi fu**u cheez hai,” says the senior, who has come to a kind of personal revelation. There is no learning in life without living with the consequences of social illiteracy. You can’t really accept love until you’ve perhaps tried all the avenues…
WWith the vast majority of Netflix movies now being thrown onto the airwaves without the slightest fanfare, it’s hard to imagine the stir the streamer’s slick survival horror Bird Box caused in December 2018. to record views (it remains the fourth most-watched movie ever on Netflix) and become a shocking pop culture phenomenon, spawning countless…
They Cloned Tyrone debuts on Netflix Friday, July 21 Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone is a surprisingly hilarious mix of genres. On the one hand, it is a campy exploitation film in which the exaggeration of certain social ills is central. On the other hand, it is a sci-fi mystery/satirical comedy that uses horror elements to…
Readers hankering for Golden Age Hollywood tales may find distraction in Lindsay Lynch’s ambitious debut novel, “Do Tell,” which evokes the scandals, manipulations, and rumors of that world’s players. Narrator Edie O’Dare, a Boston-born, depression-driven, mediocre actress who got into the industry by winning a contest, understands the jungle laws of the movie world: people…
SShould you find yourself falling behind on your summer fitness goals, you might find belated inspiration in The Deepest Breath, which makes running a marathon feel like a walk through the park. Laura McGann’s stunning documentary is a love story embedded in the world of freediving, the deadly extreme sport whose practitioners plunge to the…
It is as if Ra himself decreed it. The arrival of Netflix‘s Unknown: The Lost Pyramid, the same weekend in which audiences around the world collectively shrugged at the empty spectacle of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, couldn’t have been more appropriate. Because the only logical thing left to do after being let…