The new British horror film Hosts seems designed to provoke people, with a mix of long, slow buildups and sudden, ghastly unpleasantness. This is never better exemplified than in a dinner scene that replaces Chekhov's gun with a hammer, very unsubtly. 

Hosts features a classic setup: a family invites a neighborhood couple over for Christmas dinner. But an unknown entity has taken over the neighbors' bodies and forces them to act out murderous violence. Hosts weaves together elements of several horror sub-genres, including home invasion, possession, familial violence, and supernatural mystery.

Does it work? We discuss.

Hosts is directed by Adam Leader and Richard Oakes and stars Neal Ward, Nadia Lamin, Frank Jakeman, Samantha Loxley, and Lee Hunter.

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Today we talk about The Boys, Amazon's anti-superhero story.

Season 1 used superheroes to represent police, military, sports stars and Hollywood celebrities and explore blind hero worship. Season 2 delves into the dirty underside of manufactured heroism with a character named Stormfront (Aya Cash) who uses memes to gain fame and try to steal the superhero group The Seven from its leader, Homelander (Anthony Starr), a kind of demented cross between Superman and Captain America.

There are Nazis, a BDSM relationship between Stormfront and Homelander that involves lasers, and so, so many exploding heads.

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Today's episode is about Residue, the impressionistic debut from Merawi Gerima.

The award-winning film, which just premiered on Netflix, follows Jay, a young filmmaker who returns from Los Angeles to his hometown of Washington, DC and finds that white people are taking over his neighborhood, disrespecting the Black residents they're pushing out.

We talk about the challenging pace of the movie, its unconventional use of offscreen voices, and its complicated presentation of Jay's motivations.

Keith and Aaron also talk about their experiences with gentrification in Memphis, and Tim discusses his white interloping.

We almost talked about Cuties this episode and decided to do Residue instead. You're welcome, everybody.

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Hulu's new TV show 'Woke' follows the story of black cartoonist Keef Knight's "woke" awakening after a brush with police brutality leads him to re-evaluate his relationship with art and social critique. Also, inanimate objects are now talking to him about embracing his blackness.

It's a weird concept with great ideas, but 'Woke' makes some of the same mistakes it means to shed a light on. Keith and Aaron discuss in one of the most contentious episodes of the pod yet.

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We talk about 1BR, the little horror movie that could... unseat Project Power as the top movie on Netflix. It's a story of utopian societies, utilitarianism, and keeping your cat close. Plus, Aaron and Keith recount their experience with a charismatic religious leader who eavesdropped on their conversation at the International House of Pancakes.

f you like this episode, check out our interview with 1BR producer Alok Mishra and writer-director David Marmor. And read Alok's piece for MovieMaker about the insane misadventures that went into making the film.

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Project Power, the latest Netflix action-adventure hit, has a new spin on super powers: What if a pill could make you outrageously powerful — for just five minutes?

The film by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, written by The Batman co-writer Mattson Tomlin, stars a trio of stellar actors: Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dominique Fishback.

But it also raises a question about the current action movie emphasis on universe-building: How can a movie tell a self-enclosed story while also hinting at the endless sequels and spinoffs to come? Can a movie do too good a job of universe-building, to the point that its main story feels incomplete?

We liked Project Power well enough, don't get us wrong. But we wondered at times if it was doing too much... or not enough. It definitely gave us a lot to talk about.

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Shirley is about the brilliant American Gothic author Shirley Jackson, whose mid-20th century work has influenced many of the creators we admire today. Shirley specifically dramatizes the period that Jackson wrote the novel Hangsaman, by introducing a young, recently married couple into her home. Jackson and her husband Stanley Hyman, a literary critic and university professor, provide the couple room and board as the young husband seeks university tenure.

In exchange, Rose, the young wife, acts as a daily helper to Jackson who is struggling to write her book or finish chores around the home, let alone come up with a galvanizing idea to write her next great piece of fiction.

The set up is straightforward but the execution is anything but.

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The lead for a superhero film has to be in phenomenal shape, capable of imposing criminals with their physical presence - or do they? Robert Pattinson, the newest actor to take on the role of Batman in the upcoming 2021 film, adamantly disagrees. In an interview with GQ conducted in April 2020, Pattinson made the case that anyone advocating for working out at all times is “part of the problem.”

Presumably, his conviction against exercise is about the pressure to have the perfect physique in a capitalist, image driven society that makes us obsessed with striving for unattainable goals. Detractors would say he simply doesn’t want to work out. This episode of the Low Key podcast begins with a rant arguing the latter. 

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Today’s episode of the Low Key pod covers Beyonce’s visual album Black Is King, a re-envisioning of the classic Lion King tale through the talent and vision of black folks across the globe. In fact, each song for this project was part of Disney’s CGI-live action 2019 Lion King remake, but Black Is King adds additional layers and textures to each rendition by introducing a wide array of African people, tradition, and modern experience. Some audiences will be bewildered and others will not be able to find the words to explain why this is such an important piece of art beyond typical rating critique.

Black Is King is streaming now on Disney Plus.

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