Am I feverish or is something wrong with this movie?? — I’ve been feeling generally under the weather a while now, and for the first couple of weeks I was pretty sure I’d finally caught that flu that’s going around — but I’m starting to suspect that these symptoms are due to the fact that I saw Three Billboards Outside Ebbing…

The first time I learned about Emmett Till I was in fourth grade, which is now thirty years ago. I have never once stopped feeling a slight cold wave over my chest at just hearing his name. …

“IMDb Is Shutting Down Its Discussion Boards” — Variety, Feb 3, 2017 (Assume that every question contains a SPOILER for the movie title in bold.) 9. Was that last scene in Dead Calm tacked on because test audiences thought Sam Neill looked like a cuck? 8. The nutritionist’s office in…

Tonight we (I and the pets) are watching a version of Macbeth with Fassbender and Cotillard because the Sir Patrick Stewart version was not available on streaming. It’s very Game of Thrones-y from a makeup, costuming and set design perspective (so far). There has also been a, like, three-minute slo-mo…

I came to love Doctor Who as an adult because it respected the sentimental and moral sci-fi/fantasy fiction that I loved as a child, but last weekend’s “Thin Ice” (Season 7, episode 2) made me realize that it had been a long time since I’d loved an episode of Doctor…

After four bitingly funny and two still-very-good seasons, “Portlandia” is back for a seventh and final spin in a world much different now than when the show premiered and gained instant cult status. Like the Tolstoy truism, all humor seems less funny now in a multitude of different ways. For…

Being a wealthy black family in a predominately white world can be an exercise in compromise and contradiction. How much psychological comfort do you give up for convenience and financial comfort in a system that’s generally apprehensive of you and lacks the language or experience to overcome that apprehension? In…

The “Angry Black Woman” trope is nothing new, but it’s been under increased scrutiny since its derided inclusion in a 2014 New York Times profile of Viola Davis. It’s even more dangerous than the “Magical Negro” and “Sassy Black Best Friend,” which also see black personhood as parts of a…