Category: Viral

There were a number of wild upsets in the first weekend of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, headlined by 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson taking down 1-seed Purdue and 15-seed Princeton shocking not one but two teams to reach the Sweet 16.

The first major upset though came in a 13-4 matchup, when Furman topped Virginia in the craziest endgame sequence of the tournament thus far, as Virginia just threw the ball up for grabs after being trapped in the corner, with the Paladins stealing the ball and drilling a three to take a one-point lead with two seconds to play. It was a truly insane play and one no one expected, particularly those calling the game as Kevin Harlan, Stan Van Gundy, and Dan Bonner lost their minds courtside watching the final sequence unfold.

Thankfully, CBS Sports gave us the announcer cam footage of their reaction to the play live, which is an incredible glimpse into the three very different ways they all took in a shocking turn of events.

Harlan is unquestionably the star, as the always excitable play-by-play man almost fell out of his chair, then begged his colleagues to explain what the hell they just witnessed. Then there’s Van Gundy, who immediately recognizes there’s about to be a disaster for Virginia as soon as the ball gets thrown into the air, and then just sits there in stunned silence while Harlan screams next to him. Bonner might be my favorite though, as the veteran of so many tournaments and wild moments, he just yells “oh you didn’t need to do THAT!” as the pass goes up and immediately just turns to check the time and score to see what Virginia is about to have to overcome.

Announcer cams are always fun to watch after big moments, and this one is immediately one of the best as they all take it in differently, with Harlan delivering a spectacular call as he always does to really hammer home the chaos of the moment.

It’s not unusual, these days, for young directors to go from making Oscar-winning films to working for Disney. After Nomadland, Chloe Zhao’s follow-up was Marvel’s Eternals. Now the same thing’s happening to the Daniels, aka Everything Everywhere All at Once auteurs Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the pair are working on Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, one of Disney+’s next big shows in the now mostly TV-based franchise. The series, starring Jude Law, has actually been filming in secret for months. Beyond being about a bunch of kids (not including Law, of course) lost in that far, far away galaxy, not much is known about it. For one thing, it’s not known how many episodes the Daniels helmed. (It’s also not their baby. It was co-created by Jon Watts, he of the last three Tom Holland Spider-Mans.)

After Everything Everywhere took home seven Oscars, including for Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, the Daniels are hot stuff in the industry. They recently inked a five-year deal not with Disney but with Universal. So they might simply be directors-for-hire on Skeleton Crew, bringing their special knack for hot dog finger wackiness, adding more flavor to a franchise that has enough room for both Baby Yoda and Werner Herzog.

(Via THR)

Keanu Reeves knows a good franchise when he sees it — which explains why he smartly declined to appear in Speed 2: Cruise Control but has signed up for second (and third and fourth) go-arounds with Bill & Ted and The Matrix movies. On March 24, Reeves will suit up, quite literally, once again as the eponymous un-retired hitman in John Wick: Part 4, a.k.a. The Longest John Wick Movie, which is getting stellar early reviews. Already, box office experts are predicting a record-breaking opening weekend for the film as far as the franchise goes — but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a fifth movie will be on the way.

While it was originally announced that the fourth and fifth films in the series would shoot back-to-back, director Chad Stahelski ultimately decided to scrap those plans. “I didn’t feel good about doing 4 and 5 collectively,” Stahelski told Total Film earlier this year, citing the 200-day production schedule that would be required as one (exhausting) argument against pursuing this option. (Reeves has already described the fourth film as the “hardest physical role” he’s ever had. In the same interview, however, the director hinted that more Wick would likely be on the way — though possibly in a few years from now.

“Keanu calls it the John Wick fever,” Stahelski explained. “You haven’t done John Wick for two years and you’re like, ‘We gotta go do something!’”

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, however, the director seemed less assured that there could be a fifth film on the horizon. When Stahelski’s habit of going “back and forth on whether or not you want to do a fifth John Wick” was addressed, the director laid out his current feelings on the franchise:

“In our minds, Keanu and I are done for the moment. We’re going to give John Wick a rest. I’m sure the studio has a plan. If everyone loves it and it goes kooky, then we’ll take a quiet minute. Wicks always, for some weird reason, always get the latest release date in Japan. It’s always like, three months later. If it’s the same this time, we’ll do a Japanese tour and release the movie in September. Keanu and I will take the long trip to Tokyo, we’ll sit in the Imperial Hotel Scotch Bar and go, ‘What do you think?’ We’ll have a couple 20-year-old whiskies and write some ideas on napkins. If those ideas stick, maybe we’ll make a movie.”

As for Wick himself? Reeves told Total Film that whether a fifth film happens really comes down to the audience. “You have to see how the audience responds to what we did,” Reeves noted. “The only reason we’ve had a chance to make these movies is that people have liked what we have done. So I think we have to wait and see how the audience responds to it. Hopefully, they’ll like it.”

Given that each film in the series (so far) has doubled the box office take of the entry that preceded it, one has to imagine that the official announcement of a John Wick 5 can’t be too far off.

In the meantime, however, Reeves has teased a possible appearance in Ballerina, the John Wick spinoff starring Ana de Armas.

Since dropping its first three episodes on March 3 on Prime Video, Daisy Jones & the Six has become a hit for Amazon’s streaming network. But are the events chronicled in the series — about the eponymous Daisy (played by Riley Keough, Elvis Presley‘s granddaughter, who apparently dropped an Easter egg to her legendary grandpops) and her band’s rise to extreme fame in the 1970s — based on a true story? Yes and no.

Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of the producers of the Amazon series, and also the author of the 2019 novel of the same name on which the series is based. And while Daisy Jones and her band members are fictional characters, Reid based the band on the very real Fleetwood Mac.

As Collider reports, Reid was inspired to write the book after seeing the band perform live in the 1990s. While the band was originally formed in 1967, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks didn’t join until 1974 — and it is their relationship that was of most interest to the author. Prior to joining Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham and Nicks performed together as a folk duo (Buckingham Nicks) and released one album in 1973. In addition, the duo were romantic partners from 1969 to 1976, yet continued performing together for decades afterward. Reid wrote about the inspiration behind the book for Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon’s book club:

​​Two years ago, when I decided I wanted to write a book about rock ‘n’ roll, I kept coming back to that moment when Lindsey watched Stevie sing ‘Landslide.’ How it looked so much like two people in love.

And yet, we’ll never truly know what lived between them. I wanted to write a story about that, about how the lines between real life and performance can get blurred, about how singing about old wounds might keep them fresh.

Of course, Reid’s Daisy is only loosely based on Nicks and what she could learn about the one-time couple from extensive research. She looked to other singing duos to flesh out some of the other details, though could never shake that specific image of Buckingham and Nicks performing “Landslide” from her head.

“Even after copious amounts of research about Fleetwood Mac and a host of other duos and bands, I’m still taken with that moment between them,” Reid wrote. “I can’t help but marvel at the idea that, despite everything they’d been through, Stevie and Lindsey still loved each other then. Or how, despite what it looked like to us all, they no longer did.”

(Via Collider)

Bob Saget led a double life, starring in family friendly programs while moonlighting as one of the bluest stand-ups out there. So, too, does his Full House co-star Dave Coulier have a skeleton in the closet, maybe: He’s long been the random target of an urban legend that he’s the inspiration for Alanis Morrisette’s scorched earth classic “You Oughta Know.” Coulier is well aware of this rumor, and over the years he’s sort-of-not-really said it might be about him. When another of his Full House colleagues dared to bring it up, he even had a joke at the ready so he could quickly change the subject.

Some of the Full House gang reunited once more at the second annual ’90s Con, where they reflected on the beloved/cringey family sitcom. At one point, Coulier wandered into a report done by Candace Cameron Bure. She may be the most conservative member of the cast, but even she couldn’t resist shocking Coulier with a joke about his alleged relationship history.

“I remember a good ‘90s song that may or may not have been written about you,” Cameron Bure jokingly told him.

Coulier made a faux-gasp that might have been at least a little real. But he knew how to deflect. “’You gotta keep ’em separated’ — is that it?” he replied, pivoting to The Offsprings’ contemporaneous “Come Out and Play.”

“You Oughta Know” has always been the ‘90s version of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” at least in the sense that it’s a poison pen letter to an unnamed old flame. Morissette has refused to confirm whether or not it’s about Joey Gladstone, telling Entertainment Weekly last year that “everyone can guess all they want,” adding, “I wasn’t writing ‘You Oughta Know’ for the sake of revenge, but I think revenge is really, really important in fantasy.”

As for the Coulier-Cameron Bure interview, it quickly recovered and the two soon descended into warm nostalgia. It was still pretty surprising seeing anyone, let alone Cameron Bure, joking about a rumor involving a song that goes into pretty explicit detail about a failed relationship that left at least one of them very raw. Then again, Cameron Bure has a history of getting into tiffs with her Full House fam.

You can watch the exchange over at Entertainment Weekly.

If you thought that Hulu was only for watching FX shows the morning after they premiere, think again. From newer hits to must-see classics, Hulu has a solid list of movies waiting just a few clicks away. Here are the 25 best movies Hulu has to offer right now.

25. Deep Water

Year: 2022
Cast: Ana de Armas, Ben Affleck, Tracy Letts, and Lil Rey Howery
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 115 minutes
Director: Adrian Lyne
Trailer: Watch here

Divisive? Yes. This thriller is dripping wet with divisiveness, but where else are you going to get your 1990s sleaze fix nowadays? To wit, this psychological marriage thriller brought Adrian “Fatal Attraction” Lyne out of a 20-year retirement, and while it’s not nearly as steamy as his previous work, it offers up a lot of the same bodily motions. Melinda and Vic have a unique matrimonial union: they stay together for the kids, and Melinda gets all the lovers she wants. Sadly (and predictably), Vic gets more than a little jealous, and one-night stands go a little missing. But is Vic really to blame? And if he is, and Melinda is into it, is that super duper weird? Affleck channels big Gone Girl energy, and his work alongside de Armas will challenge you not to yuck someone else’s yum.

Watch it on Hulu

24. Rosaline

Year: 2022
Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, Kyle Allen, Sean Teale, Minnie Driver, Bradley Whitford, and Christopher McDonald
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 95 minutes
Director: Karen Maine
Trailer: Watch here

As most everyone in a high school literature class might remember (or be plagued by), Rosaline is the “immature” love that Romeo sloughs off in order to pursue the forbidden hottie he spied across the crowded party. Real mature. Now, she gets her due in an excellent rom-com that injects some well-trod Shakespeare with Dever’s deadpan and scorned woman revenge. It’s a genuine delight with 2020’s sarcasm stuffed into gorgeous period costumes, utilizing the most familiar story in the Western canon to let us imagine how the side characters must have felt when the spotlight drifted away from them.

Watch it on Hulu

23. Hellraiser

Year: 2022
Cast: Jamie Clayton, Odessa A’zion, Adam Faison, Drew Starkey, Brandon Flynn, Aoife Hinds, Jason Liles, Yinka Olorunnife, Selina Lo, and Zachary Hing
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 121 minutes
Director: David Bruckner
Trailer: Watch here

It’s usually easy money to bet against a horror remake, especially one as revered as Clive Barker‘s 1987 gore masterwork. However, this is one time you’d lose your wager and at least a pound of flesh. Proving that his V/H/S and Southbound horror shorts were no fluke, Bruckner imbues this reimagining with profound reverence for the original while making the new breed its own thing. That largely means dropping the beloved video nasty saturation for the slick polish of high-tech filmmaking, giving the Hannibal treatment to scenes of exquisite torment. This time around, it’s a young woman trying to solve what happened to her brother after he gets nicked by the blade inside a hellish puzzle cube that summons otherworldly sadists. As a bonus, Jamie Clayton absolutely owns as Pinhead.

Watch it on Hulu

22. Hell Or High Water

Year: 2016
Cast: Ben Foster, Chris Pine, Dale Dickey, Katy Mixon, Gil Birmingham, and Jeff Bridges
Genre: Neo-Western, Crime, Mystery
Rating: R
Runtime: 102 minutes
Director: David Mackenzie
Trailer: Watch here

In case you weren’t sure about it, robbing banks with a chaotic neutral partner is not a great idea. That’s what Toby has to put up with while stealing FDIC-insured money with his hyped-up brother Tanner. Their sibling dysfunction is the bad news. The badder news is that two Texas Rangers are on their trail, but Toby and Tanner are doing all the marauding for a good reason: to save the family farm from disclosure by using the bank’s money to pay what they owe. Mackenzie’s direction is confident and potent, but screenwriter Taylor Sheridan is the one who used the success of the film to launch an emergent career of crafting your dad’s favorite modern movies. It’s revitalized the genre enough that Yellowstone would not exist without it.

Watch it on Hulu

21. The Assistant

Year: 2019
Cast: Julia Garner, Matthew Macfayden, Makenzie Leigh, Kristine Froseth, Alexander Chaplin, and Juliana Canfield
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 87 minutes
Director: Kitty Green
Trailer: Watch here

Green’s incisive film came on the heels of the 2017 reinvigoration of Tarana Burke’s MeToo movement. With its unseen, abusive film producer boss, it’s about Harvey Weinstein without being about Harvey Weinstein. But more than a single bad apple, it’s about the spoiling of the whole bunch, straight from the tippy top on down to the assistant class who is bullied into absorbing their demeaning existence with the slim hope of “hitting it big.” The entire film is on Julia Garner’s shoulders, and she carries it beautifully, starring as a junior assistant with a serial sexual harasser boss. When she takes a complaint to HR, she’s given a lesson in real power and who has it (read: not her). It’s a tough, amazing movie.

Watch it on Hulu

20. Plan B

Year: 2021
Cast: Kuhoo Verma, Victoria Moroles, Mason Cook, Rachel Dratch, and Jay Chandrasekhar
Genre: Comedy, Coming-Of-Age
Rating: R
Runtime: 107 minutes
Director: Natalie Morales
Trailer: Watch here

This uproarious comedy sees two teenagers in South Dakota in an epic road trip trying to hunt down an elusive Plan B pill to ward off a potential unplanned pregnancy. It was released almost exactly a year before the Dobbs decision, so it’s become even more relevant (while staying just as funny). Like Harold and Kumar getting continually sidetracked from their beloved White Castle, Lupe and Sunny just can’t seem to get the help they need, bouncing off a series of hilarious characters either helping or hindering their quest. Firmly in the realm of Book Smart and Blockers, it’s another worthy addition to the well-informed teen sex comedy genre.

Watch it on Hulu

19. I, Tonya

Year: 2017
Cast: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Caitlin Carver, McKenna Grace, Julianne Nicholson, and Paul Walter Hauser
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Biopic
Rating: R
Runtime: 119 minutes
Director: Craig Gillespie
Trailer: Watch here

In 1994, professional figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked after practice, presumably with the intent to make her physically incapable of competing in the U.S. Championships. Screenwriter Steven Rogers was inspired to write I, Tonya after interviewing beset figure skater Tonya Harding and her attach-plotting ex-husband Jeff Gillooly to discover that both had very, very different views on how the infamous scandal all went down. The result is a gonzo ride through identity, the lengths the ego will go to defend itself, and the ultimate question of how the public chooses to believe or not believe rumors about celebrities. Margot Robbie is dynamite (as is the rest of the cast). She was also four when the scandal broke and grew up in Australia, so she had no idea that it was based on real events until after reading the script.

Watch it on Hulu

18. Alien

Year: 1979
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm, John Hurt, Yaphet Kotto, Bolaji Badejo, and Helen Horton
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi,
Rating: R
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Ridley Scott
Trailer: Watch here

Is it one of the best sci-fi films of all time, or one of the best horror films of all time? Yes. Seven crewmembers on a spaceship are returning to earth when they investigate a beaten-up alien ship filled with a bunch of adorable glowing eggs. They leave them alone and enjoy an uneventful trip back home. Just kidding! They do not leave them alone, and the ship is threatened by terrifying beings trying to eat and/or lay eggs in them. It’s a classic that every human being should see (if just for its educational safety message), and if you’ve only seen it a dozen time, why not dive in for a thirteenth viewing.

Watch it on Hulu

17. Die Hard

Year: 1988
Cast: Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald VelJohnson, Alan Rickman, Paul Gleason, and William Atherton
Genre: Action, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 132 minutes
Director: John McTiernan
Trailer: Watch here

When NYPD cop John McClane travels to LA for Christmas, he’s hoping to reconcile with his wife Holly and spend some time with their kids. Instead, he has to defeat a band of German terrorists while running barefoot through a labyrinth of skyscraper floors. The action flick that redefined the genre and launched a decades-spanning franchise that eventually spat in the face of physics before Dom Toretto ever could, Die Hard is so good that it quenches the thirst of action fans while being taught at prestigious film schools. There’s more that unites us than divides us, cinephiles. That’s the biggest lesson of this Christmas-set tale, with the second biggest being that making little fists with your feet is the best way to wind down from a stressful flight.

Watch it on Hulu

16. I Am Greta

Year: 2020
Cast: Greta Thunberg, Pope Francis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emmanuel Macron, Jean-Claude Juncker, and other documentary subjects
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Rating: Not Rated
Runtime: 97 minutes
Director: Nathan Grossman
Trailer: Watch here

It’s rare to see Pope Francis on a cast list (other than his cameo in Die Hard), especially considering he’s a minor player here. The young woman in the spotlight is Greta Thunberg, the climate activist who has risen from solo protests to international acclaim by telling people that they should really be panicking a lot harder than they have been. For those not sold on taking action to alter the current course of human-made climate change, this documentary offers loads of insight into why Thunberg has dedicated her relatively short life to the cause. To those who are already on her side, it will be a rallying cry to get reinvigorated.

Watch it on Hulu

15. The Town

Year: 2010
Cast: Ben Affleck, Rebecca Hall, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Chris Cooper, Blake Lively, Titus Welliver, and Pete Postlethwaite
Genre: Crime, Thriller, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 125 minutes
Director: Ben Affleck
Trailer: Watch here

Four Charlestown-bred BFFs plan one last heist at Fenway Park, while one of their number starts to have a conscience and a budding romance with a bank teller who they took hostage during a clunky robbery attempt. Ben Affleck’s second outing as a director is a muscular, mature crime drama that showed a clear path forward from the excellent Gone Baby Gone to the Oscar-worthy Argo. It was proof of his staying power as a director, as well as a leap forward for almost all the other actors involved, minting stars and statue-holders from up-and-comers. It also had the distinctive honor of premiering at the very baseball field that the crew planned to rob in the movie.

Watch it on Hulu

14. Blue Velvet

Year: 1986
Cast: Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern, Brad Dourif, and Dean Stockwell
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 120 minutes
Director: David Lynch
Trailer: Watch here

While cutting across a vacant lot, college kid Jefferey stumbles upon a severed human ear that draws him deep into a bizarre mystery of sado-masochistic sex, extortion, and a dangerous madman with an affinity for huffing an unnamed gas. It’s unlikely that David Lynch fans haven’t already seen this one, so this is more of a public service announcement than anything else, but for the rare, uninitiated who are willing to take a trip into a singularly weird filmmaking mind, this is your opportunity to be immersed in one of the most shocking cinematic visions of the 20th century. An enduring enigma that dares you to see it again and again.

Watch it on Hulu

13. Fresh

Year: 2022
Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Sebastian Stan, Jojo T. Gibbs, Charlotte Le Bon, Andrea Bang, Dayo Okeniyi, and Brett Dier
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 114 minutes
Director: Mimi Cave
Trailer: Watch here

This delightful terror from Mimi Cave has a lot of the markings of a rom-com: the struggling single 20-something fed up with dating apps, the loving best pal with harsh truths, and the meet cute with the handsome guy who’s a little rough around the edges. When lovelorn Noa hits it off with the dashing Steve (can a “Steve” be “dashing”?), it should be a matter of time before they’re in rom-com heaven, except for the hard left turn into horror town. If you think you know what happens, you’re probably only about 34% correct as this terrific film twists and turns down a dark rabbit hole filled with excellent surprises.

Watch it on Hulu

12. Nightmare Alley

Year: 2021
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Bradley Cooper, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, Rooney Mara, and David Strathairn
Genre: Drama, Crime, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 150 minutes
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Trailer: Watch here

Guillermo del Toro has emerged as the rightful heir to Hitchcock without all the personal baggage. He’s a wondrous filmmaker with a boundless imagination, and his love for genre means that he’s a loving encyclopedia in front of the page and behind the camera. In Nightmare Alley, Cooper plays a carnival-trained psychic pitching himself to the wealthy and powerful in order to move up in the world. When his act has devastating consequences, he spirals into a psychological fit of despair, but he’ll have to fight his depression while trying not to lose everything else he’s got.

Watch it on Hulu

11. Spencer

Year: 2021
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall, Jack Nielen, Freddie Spry, Jack Farthing, and Stella Gonet
Genre: Drama, Biopic
Rating: R
Runtime: 117 minutes
Director: Pablo Larrain
Trailer: Watch here

From The Crown to a handful of documentaries, there’s been a burst of renewed interest in Princess Diana. With all that competition, it’s difficult to say who’s crafted the definitive performance, but Kristen Stewart certainly gave it her all in this laser focused drama. Unlike other projects that want to tell the full story or capture Princess Diana as a symbol for something larger, Spencer homes in on one Christmas in 1991 when she contemplates seriously divorcing Prince Charles and leaving the royal family. How do you weight a choice like that? It’s a stirring film, made outstanding by Stewart’s humane take on the real-life role.

Watch it on Hulu

10. Crimes Of The Future

Year: 2022
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux, Scott Speedman, Kristen Stewart, and Lihi Kornowski
Genre: Horror, Drama, Sci-Fi
Rating: R
Runtime: 107 minutes
Director: David Cronenberg
Trailer: Watch here

How many ears is too many ears? In this new work by body horror master David Cronenberg, Mortensen plays a performance artist who has his organs removed in each foray only to have new ones grow back due to an experimental genetic process. It’s a (not so far off) future where computers interface with body implants, but these performances push the boundaries of thought and taste even for this plastic surgery numbed crowd. Originally planned for 2003, this long-gestating project has been through many incarnations and is absolutely worth the wait. It’s one of the best films of 2022, raising more questions than it answers and offering a potentially prescient look into one possible direction for body modification.

Watch it on Hulu

9. Black Swan

Year: 2010
Cast: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder, and Barbara Hershey
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 108 minutes
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Trailer: Watch here

In 2008, Aronofsky released The Wrestler, a drama about a has-been looking for one last taste of pure perfection in the ring. He followed it up with a companion story about a ballerina seeking the same. Nina Sayers is a young dancer in the world-renowned New York City Ballet, striving to score the lead role in a performance of Swan Lake while managing an infantilizing, over-protective mother and a frenemy who may or may not want to take Nina’s place. It’s a phantasmagoria of obsession and the violent lengths some might go to in order to reach an artistic pinnacle.

Watch it on Hulu

8. Triangle Of Sadness

Year: 2022
Cast: Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Dolly de Leon, Zlatko Buric, Iris Berben, Vicki Berlin, Henrik Dorsin, Jean-Christophe Folly, Amanda Walker, Oliver Ford Davies, Sunnyi Melles, and Woody Harrelson
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 147 minutes
Director: Ruben Ostlund
Trailer: Watch here

The less said about the plot of this wealthy-skewering black comedy the better, because it’s jaw-dropping surprises are worth staying in the dark. Suffice it to say that a famous couple and a bunch of richie rich types are on a private luxury cruise where things do not go according to plan. In addition to a Best Picture nomination, Triangle of Sadness has earned a slew of nominations and awards, primarily for its performances and its deft satire of people who should be taxed into oblivion. Funny and shocking, it makes a wonderful companion to The White Lotus.

Watch it on Hulu

7. Heat

Year: 1995
Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd, Ted Levine, Diane Venora, and Tom Sizemore
Genre: Crime, Action, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 170 minutes
Director: Michael Mann
Trailer: Watch here

One of the best crime films of all time, Michael Mann‘s cat-and-also-cat story about a thief and LAPD detective has aggressive staying power. First, it’s Mann at his grisly best with the unbeatable duo of Pacino and De Niro. The rest of the cast is absurd, and the script is as tight as a snare drum. It’s a thrilling, endlessly quotable movie worthy of (at least) an annual rewatch. It pulls exactly zero punches, placing an immovable object in the way of an unstoppable force and planting a truckload of fireworks next to them. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself the favor of scratching it off your To See List pronto.

Watch it on Hulu

6. The Shape Of Water

Year: 2017
Cast: Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, and Michael Stuhlbarg
Genre: Fantasy, Drama, Fish-Based Romance
Rating: R
Runtime: 123 minutes
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Trailer: Watch here

Another beautifully weird del Toro flick, The Shape of Water forced the Academy Awards to reckon with the forbidden love between a woman and some kind of fish monster. There’s just no way that del Toro wasn’t inspired to make this film by his time working on Abe Sapien in the Hellboy movies, but instead of diving headlong into superhero action, he chose romance. Sally Hawkins plays a mute custodian working at a secret government lab where the humanoid amphibian thing (Doug Jones, naturally) swims around and, ultimately, learns to love. Sadly, the government isn’t super into these two being together, so they have to race against the powers that be in order to secure their fishy future.

Watch it on Hulu

5. Nomadland

Year: 2020
Cast: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Bob Wells, Peter Spears, and a cast of dozens
Genre: Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 107 minutes
Director: Chloe Zhao
Trailer: Watch here

Shortly after her husband dies, Fern loses her job at a gypsum plant and dumps all of her savings into a van so she can finally see the country. Boy does she see it. This film is largely a showcase of Frances McDormand‘s peerless acting talents, as well as a series of interwoven vignettes about the weird Americans you meet on the road. All of it is wrapped inside a drama about how hard it is to be poor in the United States, viewing through Fern the limited choices people get to make when they have to navigate without a safety net. It’s easy to see why it won Best Picture at the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, and the Indie Spirit Awards.

Watch it on Hulu

4. Prey

Year: 2022
Cast: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro, Stormee Kipp, Michelle Thrush, Julian Black Antelope, Stefany Mathias, and Bennett Taylor
Genre: Action, Adventure, Horror, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 100 minutes
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Trailer: Watch here

Just as he took Cloverfield in an intimate, powerful new direction, Dan Trachtenberg has reimagined the slumping Predator franchise into something fresh, ground-level, and fun as hell. Leaping hundreds of years back from our first Schwarzenegger-soaked encounter, Prey focuses on a young Comanche healer who wants to be a warrior. She gets her chance when the iconic alien hunter tries to take out her tribe. Filled with fantastic performances and more depth than a Predator film maybe deserves, it’s the truly refreshing late-franchise film that wins by being serious about being different than what came before.

Watch it on Hulu

3. Pig

Year: 2021
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Brandy the Pig, Alex Wolff, Adam Arkin, Nina Belforte, Gretchen Corbett, and David Knell
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Rating: R
Runtime: 92 minutes
Director: Michael Sarnoski
Trailer: Watch here

Rob Feld is a truffle hunter living in an isolate cabin in Oregon. He’s attacked, and his prized truffle pig is stolen, launching him on a challenging quest to get it back. While everyone was making gags about Cage being an unhinged actor, he made this raw, quietly profound story (in between performances that are, let’s not joke, truly unhinged). The point is that Cage has absolutely phenomenal range that has only broadened and deepened with age. Think of this as Okja meets John Wick without all the gunplay.

Watch it on Hulu

2. Palm Springs

Year: 2020
Cast: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons, Peter Gallagher, Camila Mendes, June Squibb, Meredith Hagner, and Tyler Hoechlin
Genre: Comedy, Sci-Fi, Rom-Com, Mystery
Rating: R
Runtime: 90 minutes
Director: Max Barbakow
Trailer: Watch here

Groundhog Day was so good at what it did that the idea of a repeated-day plot seemed impossible for years. That’s changed recently, with a handful of inventive, successful movies (like Happy Death Day) which spun the concept into new territory. Palm Springs hits that sweet spot beautifully, dumping two wedding guests into an endless cycle that challenges them to break loose, live honestly, and solve the mystery of why they’re perpetually at an annoying reception. Samberg and Milioti are a killer pair here, ignoring Bogey and Bacall style chemistry for more sardonic flair that nonetheless makes you want to root for them as individuals and as a romantic team. It’s also funny, strange, and very sweet.

Watch it on Hulu

1. Parasite

Year: 2019
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Jang Hye-jin, Lee Jung-eun, and Park Myung-hoon
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 132 minutes
Director: Bong Joon-ho
Trailer: Watch here

The Kim family are struggling in every way possible. They live in squalor, can’t keep jobs, and squabble. When their son pretends to be a university student to take over his friend’s tutoring gig for a wealthy family, he draws the rest of the Kim clan along for the ride, earning them dubious positions as driver, housekeeper, and art therapist, using deception to get the original post-holders fired. It’s a scammers paradise, until the ram-don hits the fan. Anchored by a perfect cast, Bong Joon-ho‘s satire of wealth and lies pulls off the impossible task of delivering every emotion, huge laughs, and legitimate tears, while never feeling false or clunky. It’s a smooth ride through a forehead-slapping slew of scenarios where everyone has a secret.

Watch it on Hulu

It’s almost time to see your family again, and in this instance, I am referring to Dominic Toretto and Co. Fast X will run a few dozen stoplights and race into theaters this spring, and the whole crew is back for another spin, including Vin Diesel, Alan Ritchson, Charlize Theron, Scott Eastwood, Brie Larson, Rita Moreno, and Michelle Rodriguez. Of course, the one thing that has everyone talking is the highly anticipated reveal of Jason Momoa’s villain Dante, and Rodriguez says that fans have no idea what’s coming.

When asked about what Momoa brings to the franchise, Rodriguez told Collider, “Revenge with a smirk.” Momoa joined the latest installment as Dante, who Rodriguez calls “the best male villain we’ve had in the entire franchise.” Hopefully, John Cena doesn’t hear about this.

Fast X will introduce Momoa as the most unhinged bad guy in the series, which Rodriguez says will surprise even the biggest of fans. “I think people are gonna be really, really surprised and we’re gonna get a lot of open mouths at the end of Fast X,” the actress explained teasing a seemingly catastrophic ending. “Let’s just put it that way. It’s gonna be like, ‘Really? What?’ Like that! Like that’s how I was in theater. I was like, ‘Oh my god. What have we done?’” Here’s a fun idea: what if they replace cars with bicycles in an effort to raise awareness about global warming? That would surely be a monumental surprise!

There is one more planned sequel in the series which is being teased as the final ride, so here’s to hoping everyone survives the events of Fast X. But if Momoa manages to make it out alive, he will surely make for a great series finale villain. If not, it seems like he had the time of his life making this movie either way.

Fast X hits theaters on May 19th.

(Via Collider)

The Daily Show is in a fascinating place right now, grabbing headlines and attention with splashy guest hosts and the fresh energy that they bring in a sort of audition process that keeps making a case that maybe it should never end. After all, complacency breeds indifference, and while ratings aren’t where they were in the era of Jon (Stewart) or at the high point of Trevor Noah’s run (an industry-wide situation), at least people are noticing, driven in part by this fascination with new.

This time around, the guest host is former Senator Al Franken, a veteran political satirist who was among one of the first writers on SNL nearly 50 years ago and a best-selling author (who once got sued by Fox News) and radio personality in another life before getting elected by the people of Minnesota to go to Washington. We all know what happened next. Leann Tweeden, who was performing with him on a USO tour made allegations of sexual misconduct against Franken, to which he apologized and readied for an ethics investigation. Several former colleagues came out in support of Franken, but members of his party pushed for him to resign fearing charges of hypocrisy if they didn’t come out as strong against Franken as they did with Donald Trump. Franken eventually stepped down but has said that he regretted the decision and that he should have allowed for due process to play out, saying, “Differentiating different kinds of behavior is important.” Several Senators who called for Franken’s resignation have also said, in 2019, that they regret their role in pushing him out.

A lot has happened since all of that with Franken slowly re-merging into public life as a comedian and commentator. This at a time when everything in and around Washington has gotten a lot louder and more chaotic with the pandemic, nationwide protests, a fiercely contested election, debunked charges of election fraud, the January 6th assault on the US Capital, revelations about FOX News’ role in stoking anger around those baseless charges, anxiety in the banking sector, and now a looming arrest of Trump for possible campaign finance crimes. And some of this stuff only just happened in the last two weeks.

We spoke with Franken a couple of weeks ago right after texts from Fox News personalities saw the light of day, calling bullshit on a lot of their on-air reporting around Trump’s stolen election narrative. We start the conversation there before going into the power of shows like The Daily Show to inspire change and the evolution of political satire and impact of bad actors on the cultural conversation.

Lachlan Murdoch saying that Fox News “reports without fear or favor.” Thoughts on that? Without Fear. No favor at all.

All of a sudden, no fear. Oh my God, our stock is tanking. That seemed like fear. And favor is “I’ve hated Trump forever, but we’ve got to say he’s great.” But other than that, no fear or favor.

None whatsoever. Very fair and balanced.

That’s amazing. You see, that’s what’s so funny about Fox is that you can’t get caught more red-handed, right? Which is, okay, they knew Dominion machines worked. They knew that Sidney Powell was lying. They knew that Hugo Chavez hadn’t programmed them, and Italian satellites weren’t changing Trump votes to Biden votes. They knew that, but they kept saying, “It looks like this election’s been stolen,” and they’re caught red-handed. And yet, three days later, Tucker releases this video, this edit of January 6th saying, “They were a meek and orderly crowd.”

Tourists.

And of course, they’re not covering this story at all. I wrote a book, Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at The Right, 20 years ago. And it was at a time when you didn’t call people liars. It was something you just didn’t do. And because of that, in the book, I proved that they were liars very methodically and very well-documented. And they sued me. They sued me before the book came out. They hadn’t read any of the book. So they weren’t suing me because they said I was lying. It was that I used a fair and balanced look at the right, and that had been their slogan at the time, fair and balanced. And so Bill O’Reilly was the one who made them sue me because I had embarrassed him at something. But he didn’t understand that satire is protected speech, even if the object of the satire doesn’t get it.

The idea of all this coming out, these statements, the Dominion stuff, does any of it make an impact on Fox viewers and the populace as a whole in terms of the interpretation of what Fox is? Is it going to shake anybody off that tree?

That’s a really, really great question. I don’t know the answer. As I said, immediately Carlson released that video of January 6th, which is ridiculous. And just a few days after all of his texts were revealed showing that he knew that Powell was lying, I think he called her a f-ing liar and et cetera, and then continued to have her on. But even after that, he just goes right back to, “it was a meek and orderly crowd.” And so does that work for them? I think they think so.

I think they think that, okay, we’ll weather this. And usually, things like this are weathered. With Trump, anytime some scandal hit or some weird thing he said, the first one was, “I like guys who weren’t captured.” This is about McCain being a POW. I thought well, that’s the end of him. And then there’s been a million of those. “That’s the end of him.” And I have the feeling that this does not affect Fox viewers at all. In fact, I think people have gotten accustomed to, “I believe them until it turns out it wasn’t true, but even so, I’m on that side and it’s okay.”

Where does The Daily Show fit in current-day political discourse as a tool for information and showcasing hypocrisy? And what are you looking to do with your time on the show?

Well, it’s interesting that one of the challenges of doing the show is if an event happens that day, 10,000 people have written jokes about it on Twitter by the time it gets to the show.

I think well over 13 of them are good.

All you need is one.

Yeah, I guess so.

And hopefully, you’re the one who thought of it. You’re a comedian or a comedy writer, and so are the people at The Daily Show. But that makes it harder, I think, to do a show like this than it was (before Twitter). So that’s a little different, but it’s the same format, and you’re just hoping that day something interesting that you can write something funny about happens.

Outside of being funny, does the show have the ability to still have an impact on politics, the discourse? When you were in the Senate, obviously this is a different time than a few years ago, but did the movements of a show like The Daily Show (or John Oliver or Sam Bee when she was on) still ring in the halls of power?

It was interesting. John Oliver did something on net neutrality. I don’t know if you remember that, but I was a big net neutrality advocate, and he did a really good piece on it, and it made a difference, and it crashed the website at the FCC. So these things can make a difference. Now, I don’t know how many people watched The Daily Show 10 years ago. And there’s a lot of late-night comedy so, I don’t know. I can’t measure it.

Obviously, you go from the Senate back to comedy. How has that transition been? Is that reigniting a part of your brain? Is it like riding a bike?

I did comedy for so long. I started doing it in school and started working with Tom Davis; we were two of the original SNL writers. And so comedy was my first career. I was a caddy actually for a while when I was younger. But then comedy. But it’s different after you’ve left it. I’m very impressed with a lot of the young comedians and not so young comedians who really work hard and churn out a new hour every year or something like that. I thought Chris Rock’s latest concert was really great and admire that work ethic and the talent. Now, I will say this, I don’t see a lot of comedians doing standup who do bits about pharmaceutical prices and why they’re the way they are. I do. They’re expensive.

Political comedy, obviously the relationship to the kind of jokes you can tell and how fully in you can go (is different). I think about how educated the audience is also. I think this is a more educated audience now than maybe back in the ’90s and ’80s.

I’m not sure about that.

More informed, I would say. Not smarter, but there’s more information in front of them.

Well, let’s see, I was at SNL from ’75 to ’80 and from ’85 to ’95. And during that period, I wrote a lot of the political sketches and a lot of them with Jim Downey and a lot of other people. And Jim is a very, very, very thoughtful and smart conservative. And we felt that the job of the show was to do well-observed comedy that rewarded people for knowing stuff, but didn’t punish them for not knowing stuff. That was how we viewed what we were doing. And I was really very happy with what we did then, and we were very often asking the audience, not demanding that they know stuff, but rewarding the ones who did. And I felt a lot of reward for that. We got, at that time, huge ratings, but that’s when there wasn’t streaming, and there wasn’t other stuff.

Where do you stand in terms of comedians when they step over the line with the level of offense, the term cancel culture, things of that nature?

Well, I think they’re real judgments. People can get up and say things that are truly offensive, truly obnoxious. And they could be saying something that’s truly obnoxious and offensive, and they were deliberately doing that to demonstrate, obviously this is I’m showing what’s obnoxious and offensive and doing it in a way that’s clearly demonstrating that, “I’m on the side of not being.” (Laughs) You know what I mean? That’s a lot of satire. That’s a lot of dark humor. And then there are also people who just do stuff that’s offensive, and they mean it. They are inappropriate. Genuinely racist humor is not acceptable. Making fun of racist humor in a way that is clear that that’s what it’s doing, depending on who you are and it’s complicated and you can go awry, but I think there are differences.

‘The Daily Show’ with Al Franken begins its week-long run tonight at 11PM ET on Comedy Central

Chris Rock brought down the house while joining an all-star line-up to roast Adam Sandler as he accepted the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Sunday night. The comedian, who’s riding high off his latest Netflix special Selective Outrage, showed up with more than just jokes about Sandler and proceeded to drag Donald Trump‘s upcoming arrest before taking more shots at the Oscars, likely due to both The Slap and a subject related to Sandler.

Rock ended his set by managing to both praise Sandler and rip the Oscars (which didn’t nominate him for his acclaimed turn in Uncut Gems) at the same time. “Nobody works as hard as the Sandman!” Rock said via The Hollywood Reporter. “Those folks at the Oscars, man… they’re f*cking a**holes.”

Before that happened, he went off on Trump: “Are you guys really going to arrest Trump?” Rock joked. “Do you know that this is only going to make him more popular? It is like arresting Tupac. He’s just going to sell more records. Are you stupid? He slept with a porn star and paid off someone so his wife wouldn’t find out. That’s romantic.”

After mocking Trump, the comedian couldn’t resist making a crack about his Will Smith incident after he spotted Paul Pelosi in the audience. Via Deadline:

One stand out moment came when Rock made a reference to being slapped by Will Smith on the Oscar stage last year. He quipped that Paul Pelosi, who was in the audience, was “the only guy who knows how I felt.” Pelosi, the husband of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, was seriously injured in a hammer attack by an intruder last year. He was in the audience with his wife.

On that note, Rock declared, “Just you and me Paul. Just you and me, babe.”

(Via Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter)

Donald Glover doesn’t need to write a memoir about his personal life. He already has Swarm. Janine Nabers, who co-created the Amazon Prime Video series about stan culture, told Insider that a memorable scene from the sexy show was inspired by something that actually happened to Glover.

“Donald told this funny story about a girl who he really liked, and how after they hooked up, he was standing there with a bowl of cherries, just being like, ‘Hey.’ She was, like, so not into it, because it’s so weird to hook up with a guy that you barely know and then wake up with him holding a bowl of cherries,” she said. Something similar (but with a different fruit) happens in Swarm:

In the scene, Dre (Dominique Fishback) wakes up after having lost her virginity to a random man (Rory Culkin) she met at a bar. To her surprise, the man is naked, washing a bowl of strawberries. He then walks over to her and offers her some fruit, with the glass bowl pressed directly against his flaccid penis.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the Swarm writers room when they debated whether the hookup should be holding cherries, like Glover did in real life, or strawberries. No one voted for a banana. Too obvious.

Swarm is available on Amazon Prime Video now.

(Via Insider)