I’ve been enjoying watching Cole Sprouse as Jughead on Riverdale. I was only vaguely aware that he was previously a Disney kid actor with his twin brother, so when offered the chance to check out Dylan Sprouse’s role in Dismissed, I thought I’d enjoy it. Particularly since it seemed like a modern take on The Bad Seed. Here’s the trailer for the thriller, which is about how a perfect student (Sprouse) reveals his dark side when disappointed. Unfortunately, the movie […]

An amusing concept turns into an unfunny slog. At least Killing Hasselhoff is only 80 minutes long. Chris (Ken Jeong) owns a nightclub. David Hasselhoff is supposed to have a party there, but he cancels, which means Chris can’t satisfy his debt to a tough guy (Will Sasso, who never seems that menacing). Since Chris has already picked Hasselhoff in a “celebrity death pool” with a huge payoff, he decides that the best thing to do would be to murder […]

Unleashed opens tomorrow in selected theaters and on demand. It’s a cute romantic fantasy in which a woman finds healing through her pets in a very unexpected way. After she is betrayed by a loser boyfriend, Emma moves to San Francisco. The only ones she trusts are her cat Ajax and dog Summit. Things get complicated, though, when her pets turn into men. She doesn’t know who they are, but suddenly, two gorgeous guys are interested in her, and although […]

The 24-hour comic started in 1990 as a creative exercise Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics) posed to his friend Steve Bissette as a speed challenge. The goal is for an artist to create 24 pages in 24 hours. Since then, it’s become a day for cartoonists to gather, stretch their talent, and commiserate. (It’s now held the first Saturday in October.) Milan Erceg has made a documentary about the phenomenon, 24 Hour Comic, that follows eight cartoonists trying the challenge at […]

Last night, Marvel Studios released the first trailer for the upcoming Black Panther movie starring Chadwick Boseman. It’s framed as a conversation between Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue (seen in Avengers: Age of Ultron) and Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross (previously seen in Captain America: Civil War and familiar to fans from Christopher Priest’s epic run on the Black Panther comic). I like the way they’re engaging the contradiction of Wakanda head-on: outsiders think it’s a third-world country, but […]

Coming out July 28 in New York and Los Angeles is an odd little film starring Kyle Mooney (Saturday Night Live) called Brigsby Bear. James (Mooney, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kevin Costello) is obsessed with the kids’ show Brigsby Bear, having seen all of its hundreds of episodes. His life is isolated, residing in a bunker with only his parents and the show for company. Then it’s all uprooted, and James decides to make a movie to finish […]

Shout! Factory, bless them, has issued on Blu-ray Streets of Fire, the 1984 bad movie classic, a self-described “rock and roll fable”. I loved it. It’s a mashup of motorcycles, guns, macho posturing, fights, DA haircuts, 50s cars, over-the-top romantic gestures for a doomed relationship, and retro-flavored music. Diane Lane plays Ellen Aim, local girl made star, who’s returned to her old bad neighborhood for a concert. She’s kidnapped by a hoodlum (Willem Dafoe, first appearing in rubber overalls and […]

Get Out is the best-reviewed movie of the year, and it’s well-deserved. Writer/director Joran Peele stretches from comedy into horror, using the genre to create a very human portrait of fear of seemingly normal people with horrible secret motivations. I don’t normally watch horror movies, but I loved this, because it had so much relevant to say (and there isn’t anything visually terrible or bloody until the end). It’s more suspenseful — what’s going on? — than full of gross […]