Tinseltown Reviews

Luke Cage  is a Marvel-Netflix series created by Cheo Hodari Coker starring Mike Colter, Simone Missick, Alfre Woodard, Mustafa Shakir, Gabrielle Dennis, Theo Rossi, and Rosario Dawson. The second season follows Luke Cage as he starts to embrace his status as Harlem's local hero for hire before being entangled in a feud between Mariah Stokes--a secondary antagonist from the past season--and Bushmaster, a long-time rival of the Stokes' who wants to claim the throne to Harlem. Both prove a substantial threat to Cage as Mariah Stokes slowly begins rising up the ladder of the criminal underworld while Bushmaster reveals his own superpowers which rival those of Cage. Times have been a bit rough for the Marvel-Netflix franchise for the past few years, with every entry (except The Punisher ) since 2016 ranging from "it's pretty good" to "this is so bad my brain hurts". Unfortunately, Luke Cage  season 2 is no exception, and while it eventually gets pre...

Yappie  is a 2018 web series written and directed by Taylor Chan and Philip Wang, produced by Asian American filmmaking group Wong Fu Productions. Its five episode run follows Andrew, a Chinese American who deals with everyday race-related issues, particularly those that apply to Asian Americans, ranging from being a token minority to yellow fever to unfair treatment from other races. The series is absolutely free and available on YouTube. YouTube played a large part in my formative years, as I'm sure many Asians my age could relate. TV and movies in the 2000's and 2010's were--and still are--not particularly famous for having a lot of Asian figures. There you'd find mostly white people, with your occasional black or Hispanic actor here and there. However, YouTube was completely different, with a surprisingly large number of Asians becoming very prominent in early YouTube. Everyone knew KevJumba, nigahiga, and Markiplier, and there's a very good chance you...

Incredibles 2  is a Pixar animated superhero film written and directed by Brad Bird, starring Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Huck Milner, Eli Fucile, Samuel L. Jackson, Bob Odenkirk, and Catherine Keener. The movie is the long-awaited sequel to 2004's The Incredibles  with almost the entire core cast reprising their roles. Incredibles 2  picks up where the first movie left off, with the Parr family operating as the superheroes called the Incredibles for three months after Syndrome's defeat. However, supers are still illegal, and this film centers around Helen Parr/Elastigirl being recruited by a telecommunications company to regain the general public's support of supers with the hopes of one day making supers legal once more. The Negatives I was very nervous about this movie from the moment it was announced, and that's because Pixar doesn't really DO sequels--and for good reason, too. All of Pixar's movies have the same basic formula: a ...

Hereditary is a 2018 supernatural horror film written and directed by Ari Aster in his feature directorial debut. The film stars Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro,  Gabriel Byrne , and  Ann Dowd, and tells the story of the Graham family following the death of their grandmother. The family slowly crumbles apart as each member struggles in their own way to cope with a family tragedy while also dealing with what may or may not be a supernatural haunting. The film first premiered on January 21, 2018 at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, receiving a high amount of critical acclaim, with several critics comparing it to the likes of The Shining  and The Exorcist --the two films that basically defined the horror genre--and while I hesitate to say that Hereditary  reaches their level, it definitely comes close. Unlike most horror movies, it is a very well made film and a truly powerful experience that haunted me long after watching it. Hereditary 's trailer imm...

Won't You Be My Neighbor?  is a documentary film directed by Morgan Neville and follows the life of Fred Rogers as he created and hosted Mister Rogers' Neighborhood , an American children's television program that aired from 1963 to 2001. The documentary features interviews with several of Fred Rogers' family and friends interspersed with clips from Mister Rogers'  and other sources, and ultimately shows us that the quiet, humble, loving man who was a key figure in the early lives of millions of people really was that perfect in real life. I often find that it's hard to keep your childhood heroes pure. Far too often, the stars of our youth whom we idolize tend to be complete and utter assholes in real life (see Jackie Chan) or they get swallowed by Hollywood celebrity culture and become self-entitled narcissists (see basically every child star that ever was). And I think that really is the central idea behind this documentary. It's so scary to bel...

Solo: A Star Wars Story  is a 2018 space Western directed by Ron Howard, starring Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Donald Glover, and Joonas Suotomo. The film, which takes place a few years before the events of Episode IV: A New Hope , follows the titular Han Solo on one of his early adventures in which he first meets Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian and acquires the Millennium Falcon. I went into this movie with pretty low expectations, as I think most people did, but while many others came out pleasantly surprised, I just felt pretty "meh". This movie is very by the book and exactly what you expected, which is kind of antithetical to Star Wars . A defining aspect of the Star Wars  franchise is that you kind of never know what you're going to get, for good (see the original trilogy) and for bad (see the prequel trilogy). I mean, look at the past three movies: The Force Awakens  was a nice homage to the original trilogy while also introducing ...

Deadpool 2  is a satirical black comedy superhero movie from the studio that killed Wolverine. The movie is directed by David Leitch, and stars Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Morena Baccarin, Julian Dennison, Zazie Beetz, Brianna Hildebrand, and Stefan Kapičić. In the movie, Deadpool must overcome a personal tragedy, which he tries to cope with by protecting a young mutant using the newly formed X-Force team from the time-traveling soldier Cable. If you liked the first Deadpool , you'll like this movie as well. You won't love it, but you'll like it. It's a wild avalanche of snarky fourth wall-breaking humor and comic violence that seeks to please the comic book nerds as well as the regular movie-going audience. There are a lot of great jokes in here and the movie stays consistently funny from beginning to end, especially with every time it pokes fun at the superhero movie industry which has only grown since its last debut in 2016. Of all the new characters in ...