Flix At :48

Shalayne Smith Needham: Flix at 48 is up next with our film critic Casey T. Allen. Hi, Casey.

Thunder Force is a superhero comedy first released on Netflix April 9th, and it inspired me to send a personal message to the film's leading actress, Melissa McCarthy (Superintelligence, 2020). The message reads like this: "Dear Melissa McCarthy, Please stop making movies with your writer/director husband Ben Falcone. Sincerely, Casey T. Allen. The end."

Choosing to produce a fresh contemporary horror film is so often a bad decision, like rollerblading as an adult, or naming a newborn infant Kenneth. Thankfully, the film Relic has proven me wrong with a horror film that is lasting, patient, and chilling. Relic was officially released in July 2020 but has recently become available through both Amazon Prime and Redbox.

Shalayne Smith Needham: Our conversations recently have focused on award season for the film industry. There has been a lot of talk about the Oscars, which are coming up in about a month from now. It's been a difficult year for the industry, of course, with COVID-19. First, tell us how will the 93rd Annual Academy Awards be different this year?

Biopic films are an especially challenging mountain to climb. They’re done a lot, so they can get formulaic; and some go too far to sanitize their subject (Bohemian Rhapsody, 2018) or vilify them (Mommie Dearest, 1981). The United States vs. Billie Holiday miraculously doesn’t fall into any of these metaphorical ravines.

Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, 2014) plays another villainous role as Marla Grayson, a professional guardian who takes care of old people who can no longer live independently. But Marla's care is a finely-tuned scam forcing the innocent seniors into a retirement home against their will, liquidating all their assets, and draining their life savings. But her crooked scheme takes a left turn when the latest victim she swindles turns out to be connected to a mobster.

Actress Robin Wright (Wonder Woman 1984, 2020) co-produces and stars in her feature film directorial debut as an emotionally shattered woman retreating from life in the drama Land. After suffering a deep loss, a quiet woman moves into an abandoned cabin alone with no car, no electricity, no running water, and no phone deep in the mountains of Wyoming. Suffering dangerous winter storms, wild intruders, and persistent hunger, this woman places herself firmly in her grief with no intentions of escape.

Supernova is a heartfelt love story of two married men straining against loss, aging, and time. During a road trip through the countryside of England, one husband struggles to remain strong while the other husband struggles with dementia.

The Midnight Sky is a quiet contemplative drama, set in the future, about survival and human connection adapted from the 2016 novel Good Morning, Midnight by Lily Brooks-Dalton. Since The Midnight Sky premiered on Netflix recently, it has inspired a persistent philosophical question in my mind: “What is happening to George Clooney?” I don’t mean to suggest that Gorge Clooney is sliding into Nicholas Cage territory. (Color Out of Space will forever remain one of the worst films of 2020.) What my question means is, “When did George Clooney become so sentimental in his work?”

One Night in Miami is a powerful portrait of the anxieties and hopes of Black Americans in the 1960s, and it has strong connections to the culture of today. This film is adapted from a one-act play, written by an African American man Kemp Powers (who also worked on the screenplay), that was first produced in 2013 in Los Angeles. The story is a fictionalized gathering of four famous African American men celebrating in a motel room together in 1964.