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There’s a game we play around here, called Plot Recreated With Reviews. That’s where we take a movie we’re definitely not going to see, read every review we can, and attempt to piece together the entire thing using nothing but expository quotes from reviews. Some movies are just better secondhand.

I admit we have no excuse with Trolls World Tour. It was originally supposed to open in theaters this week, but thanks to COVID quarantines, Universal made the (very good) decision to release it directly to streaming on the same date. Many wondered if this unprecedented decision by a major studio would be the brick that shattered the previously sacrosanct 90-day theatrical window — presumed to help theaters stay in business.

Whatever the larger implications, you can stream it right now in your living room right now. Would you believe this movie is even tracking 70% recommended on RottenTomatoes? So yes, it is reportedly a decently watchable film that we could watch ourselves with minimum effort… but if I’m being honest, I’d rather hear from the people who saw than see it myself.

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THE SETUP

Once more we are in the spirited company of Poppy (Anna Kendrick), the exhaustingly joyful queen of the pop trolls (LA Times)

still ruling over her domain happily enough with the help of her friend (Guardian)

former grouchy survivalist troll (Polygon)

Branch (Justin Timberlake), who is unable to confess his feelings for her. (Guardian)

Their mismatched temperaments give rise to a lot of bickering and mixed signals but never fear: Differences, after all, are what make harmony possible. (LA Times)

It’s set in a storybook kingdom that’s all sweetness and light and glitter and fuzz and bursting psychedelic pastels. (Variety)

But this film, with a bit of sleight-of-hand, now reveals the importance of the queen’s name. (Guardian)

THE REVEAL

They have pretty much always thought of themselves specifically as pop trolls: pop music is their thing. But it is revealed to Poppy that the troll kingdom is bigger than they thought. (Guardian)

Neighboring kingdoms have trolls defined by Funk, Country, Techno, Classical, and Rock music. (IGN)

The brightly glowing techno trolls dwell in an underwater grotto that offers just the right bioluminescent arena for their neon-hued raves. (LATimes)

It’s a true wall of sound rushing at your children, an onslaught that begins with Anthony Ramos, of Hamilton fame, yelling, “What’s up, techno trolls??” (Vanity Fair)

THE ANTAGONIST

Their rave is then invaded by spaceships designed like mini-dungeons. They’re a fleet led by Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom), monarch of the Hard Rock Trolls. (Variety)

A heavy-metal hellion in a red mohawk, wearing fishnets and three thick hoop earrings, she’s a self-styled demon goddess of hard rock (Variety)

who wants to force the others to stop grooving and start moshing. (Empire)

“We’re all going to have the same vibe,” she announces, sounding like Jack Black crossed with Joan Jett merged with Maleficent. “We’re all going to be one nation of Trolls — under rock!” (Variety)

THE EVIL PLAN

Daughter of Thrash (voiced by Ozzy Osbourne), Barb is on a world-tour mission to conquer all the other troll kingdoms and make them submit to the awesome majesty of rock. It appears that way back in the mists of time, the six types of music were six strings on a mystical Orphean lyre. (Guardian)

But the Trolls grew hostile to each other’s tastes, resulting in a land of colonies that sound like Sirius XM channels. (Variety)

Barb plans to collect all six strings as trophies, put them on her guitar and play one single devastating power chord: a Tolkienian moment which will (Guardian)

turn all trolls into “rock zombies.” (IGN)

POP TO THE RESCUE

Poppy and Branch head off on a world tour – to save the other tribes from being enslaved by Barb and to enjoy their musical stylings (Empire)

in an agreeable but rather one-dimensional slow-poke road movie, in which Poppy, Branch, and their stowaway sidekick, the charmingly terrified Biggie (James Corden), pay a visit to each of these musical lands, which turn out to be visually captivating but borderline cliché places. (Variety)

And so we get to meet the classical trolls (presided over by a troll named Trollzart), who like to perform Beethoven’s Fifth in charming pastel-powdered 18th-century wigs. (Vanity Fair/LA Times)

The land of the country Trolls, known as Lonesome Flats, features Kelly Clarkson as a really big-haired C&W diva singing the lachrymose “Born to Die,” and yields one more fellow traveler for Poppy and company: a chivalrous Deep South centaur named Hickory (Sam Rockwell). (Variety)

There are even other pockets they find along the way, too, including those for hip-hop, Reggaeton and even dedicated yodelers. (AP)

BUT WAIT

While Barb’s cause seems patently unjust, it is a form of payback — a rebellion against pop’s colonization of other music. (New York Times)

Poppy learns that the history lesson unspooled by her father is willfully papering over her ancestors’ colonizer crimes. (“Scrapbooks are made by the winners.”) (IGN)

The pop trolls’ Torah (seriously) neglects to mention they have crowded out the marketplace. If you were to connect some dots and apply way too much thought to the movie’s iconography, there is a hint here of an anti-Semitic trope: Jewish domination of the entertainment industry. (NY Times)

Then, that shocking reveal is glossed over when the Funk contingent instantly forgives them with a hip-hop song about love and unity. (IGN)

QUESTIONS REMAIN

For some reason, the smooth-jazz Troll (Polygon)

a brainwashing creep called “Slow Jazz Chaz” (IGN)

(Jamie Dornan), also a bounty hunter, whose mellow sax playing induces lysergic visions and paralysis (New York Times)

is derided all the way through the movie, in spite of the preaching about acceptances and differences. (Polygon)

Nobody likes that guy. (New York Times)

[Trolls World Tour also delights in] getting in a dig at the 20th century’s most unfairly maligned sub-genre, disco. (Why not teach the little ones of 2020 to love disco? Why perpetuate the cycle all for the sake of one joke they won’t understand, and is actually too dated for even their parents?) (Vanity Fair)

The K-pop trolls, the reggaeton trolls and the yodeling trolls are depicted as bounty hunters. Does something about regionally associated music suggest unscrupulous, mercenary qualities to the filmmakers? (New York Times)

Why do the pop Trolls claim Psy’s “Gangnam Style” as “one of their most important songs,” but consider the K-pop Trolls, voiced by actual K-pop group Red Velvet, to be separate from them? (Polygon)

It is dangerous to over-read Trolls World Tour, which celebrates musical diversity — pushing back against pop music’s appropriation of African-American artists’ innovations — and whose multiculturalism is clearly intended in a spirit of inclusiveness and good humor. (New York Times)

EDITORIALIZING/BEGRUDGING COMPLIMENTS

It’s all very episodic and predictable, building to the inevitable genre mash-up singalong, but there’s a likeable simplicity to it. (Empire)

It’s essentially a sped-up version of the jukebox musical. It runs through so many songs that it might be better called a Spotify musical, with infinite skips. (AP)

Trolls World Tour doesn’t really require the full effect and may actually be more enjoyable — more endurable — at medium volume. A TV screen and living-room acoustics serve to mitigate the sensory overload. (LA Times)

When they’re not too loud and you’ve sufficiently shielded your eyes, their sugary highs are pleasant enough and occasionally tuneful. An animated movie can do worse than indoctrinate another generation to the joys of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September.” (AP)

The movie, directed by Walt Dohrn, still gives you the sensation of being barricaded in a karaoke lounge where all the attendees have snorted Sweet Tarts. (New York Times)

World Tour is essentially a primer for children on the vast diversity of musical styles, though pared down into a small handful of categories. I suppose there is some value in that, though a quick trip around Spotify could do the same, and spare you the cake-pooping giraffes. (Vanity Fair)

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Wow, I’ll be honest, I did not expect the Trolls sequel to be a veiled lesson about musical colonialism. I feel strangely like I want to see it now. Talk about a surprise, Josh Gad isn’t even in it.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. Read more Plots Recreated With Reviews here.

Spy movies already tend to be at least a little silly. How realistic is James Bond? Does any pencil-pushing agent get to ever leave cramped rooms, let alone jump on moving airplanes like Ethan Hunt? Even George Smiley, hero of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, leads a more exciting life than anyone in British intelligence. But spy movies mostly play it straight, and as a result, there are plenty of spy comedies to make fun of them. There are many kinds of spy comedies: they can be parodies, they can be satires. They can be farces, even rom-coms. As we wait a bit longer for the next Bond film, No Time to Die, now due in November, let’s put up our feet and take a look back at a genre that dares laugh at stuff that, in the real world, could end with us all killed.

10. The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997)

You can separate Bill Murray’s career into two halves: There’s before he made Rushmore and there’s after. When Wes Anderson cast the deadpan comedy god as Herman Blume, a depressed Texan industrialist competing for the affections of a private school teacher with a 15-year-old boy, he unlocked the man’s deep, melancholic side, which had always been there but rarely been so visible. Anderson also saved a career that, by the late ’90s, was in trouble. No one, wisely, saw the wan elephant comedy Larger Than Life, nor, tragically, did they turn out to watch him, and his hair, steal the Farrelly brothers’ Kingpin. They didn’t see this spy comedy either, which is also a shame. Murray plays a dense Iowan everyman who winds up mistaken for a cunning secret agent by Russian intelligence, and he spends the majority of the film unaware that his life is in danger. Murray has always played cool and above-it-all, but here he leans full-tilt boogie into square silliness, throwing himself into ludicrous misunderstandings and energetic slapstick. And it’s probably the last time we’ll ever see Murray in full goofball mode, smiling, doing pratfalls, playing a happy idiot, not a brooding know-it-all.

9. Undercover Brother (2002)

Eddie Griffin had a short-lived stint as a Hollywood leading man, the best of which was this two-pronged spoof that sent up spy movies and blaxploitation. Based on the animated internet series from future 12 Years a Slave writer John Ridley, it’s silly and savage, stupid and smart, with Griffin’s titular freelancer joining a secret African-American agency called The B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. that battles white power, led by a villain known, of course, simply as The Man. The plot finds The Man trying to take down a black politician (Billy Dee Williams) running for president, a whole six years before Obama beat McCain. It was funny then and there’s no way this hasn’t aged like wine. All that, plus Neil Patrick Harris doing some excellent pre-Harold and Kumar comedy as the agency’s “token: white intern.

8. True Lies (1993)

Action and comedy don’t tend to go together, no matter how many times they’re combined; it’s hard to be funny when you’re worried about your next stunt. Moreover, James Cameron is not a funny guy. His movies are big, serious, sometimes painfully didactic. The weirdest outlier on his CV isn’t his debut, Piranha II: The Spawning; it’s the fact that he made an absurdly expensive action movie that’s actually funny. A remake of a far more modest French comedy called La Totale!, it’s got a great premise: Arnold Schwarzenegger is a spy so good at anonymity even his family doesn’t know his secret. The story’s middle section goes to some strange places; the stretch where our hero tries to punish his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) for considering, but not actually going through with, an affair with a sleazy car dealer (a godly Bill Paxton) — complete with him blackmailing her into a private striptease — is such a skeezy look into the mind of neurotic men it could have been written by Albert Brooks. But mostly Cameron is able to have his cake and eat it, too, satirizing the spy genre while delivering eye-popping set pieces — and, unfortunately, peddling some casual anti-Arab racism that was on the verge of finally becoming uncool.

7. Our Man Flint (1966)

The ’60s were the Golden Age of spy movies. They were everywhere! Everyone wanted their own James Bond franchise, and there were countless knock-offs, the best of them being Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer series. But there were also countless spy movie spoofs. Dean Martin did four stints as Matt Helm (including The Wrecking Crew, prominently featured in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Doris Day was mistaken for a Russian spy in The Glass Bottom Boat, and Columbia spent a gazillion dollars on the bloated, star-studded parody Casino Royale. The only good early Bond era spy comedies are the two with James Coburn as Derek Flint, a renaissance man and wealthy playboy whose many talents include espionage. Coburn is arguably the coolest actor who ever lived, and his Flint is even more of a badass than Connery’s 007. Here and in the sequel In Like Flint, he plays it straight, which only makes the wacky, psychedelic hijinks around him all the funnier.

6. Spy (2015)

Paul Feig’s movies with Melissa McCarthy are always far better than they had to be, and this one takes a basic premise — what if Melissa McCarthy was in a spy movie? — and goes above and beyond. She’s a CIA desk jockey who winds up trotting the globe, getting involved in intrigue and mayhem and not going only for easy fish-out-of-water gags. McCarthy’s a very generous performer, and she lets numerous others steal her stage: Jason Statham as a foul-mouthed, self-serious agent, Miranda Hart as her gossipy friend, and best of all, Rose Byrne as a posh terrorist who at one point compares McCarthy to “a sad Bulgarian clown.” And while Feig loves improv, he’s also cares about camerawork and mise-en-scène, meaning its action scenes are almost actually exciting.

5. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Guy Ritchie’s blockbuster career is a bit dodgy; what did you expect the guy who made Snatch to bring to Aladdin? But adapting the titular ’60s spy show turned out be a perfect fit. Ritchie is both a hyperkinetic, inventive stylist and a man with a cheeky sense of humor, and though it’s more a thriller than a comedy, the fact that the comedy is character-based — and delivered by two leads, Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer, who aren’t natural comedians, and aren’t trying too hard to earn yuks — is what makes this such a charming brew. Get on that sequel, Guy!

4. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

In the late ’90s, Mike Myers could do whatever he wanted, and what he wanted in 1997, for whatever reason, was a ’60s Bond spoof. Why not! It took a while for audiences to feel the same way, and while the bigger, actually badder sequels aren’t much to speak of, the original is still a solid and weird gag machine. Horny Austin himself has always been of limited interest, but it’s his Blofeld-ish Dr. Evil who’s always been secret weapon, from his love of sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads to that absolutely bonkers monologue he delivers to guest star Carrie Fisher. And of course, there’s this excellent visual gag.

3. Burn After Reading (2008)

The Coens’ goofiest — but also bleakest — movie isn’t really a spy movie. But it’s spy-adjacent, and that’s good enough for this list. John Malkovich plays a former CIA agent who decides he’s going to write a tell-all about his career. (By the way, this is the same set-up for another great spy comedy: 1982’s Hopscotch, starring Walter Matthau at his slyest, though the plots diverge from there. Please watch it, it’s on the Criterion Channel.) But the disc containing his memoir winds up accidentally in the possession of some dundherheaded gym employees (Frances McDormand and an unforgettably coifed Brad Pitt), and eventually Russian intelligence get involved, and at a time when still fearing the Russians seemed ridiculous. It’s the Coens at their broadest, with Clooney, in particular, acting like he’s in a Tex Avery cartoon. But it’s also their darkest treatise on humanity, on life, on America, in which stupidity reigns, lives are destroyed by other people’s mistakes, and the film’s nicest, kindest character winds up with a hatchet to the head. “What did we learn?” asks J.K Simmons CIA honcho as he surveys the damage in the hilariously chilling final scene. “I guess we learned not to do it again. F*cked if I know what we did.”

2. Charade (1963)

There are scores of Hitchcock knock-offs, but few as wonderful as Stanley Donen’s fizzy, twisty-turny Parisian romp. Audrey Hepburn plays a woman whose husband is mysteriously killed, leaving behind a secret fortune that’s gone missing. While trying to avoid three former spies who want the dough, she’s wooed by a stranger played by Cary Grant who — shades of Hitchcock’s own Suspicion — may not be trustworthy. A smooth blend of spy thriller, romance, and comedy, it’s as much Hitchcock as it is Donen, a filmmaker (best known for musicals like Singin’ in the Rain) of great warmth and humor, who made something Hitchcock never quite could.

1. Top Secret! (1984)

They’re known as ZAZ — the team of David Zucker, Jim Abraham, and Jerry Zucker. Their trade, during their ’80s peak, was rapid-fire parodies, one gag after another, teeming with references and non-sequiturs, no dead air, and filled with actors all playing it straight. Everyone knows Airplane! and Police Squad and The Naked Gun and Hot Shots! But the cool kids know the real ZAZ apex is this under-the-radar parody of Cold War spy movies, with Val Kilmer —in his screen debut — as a fresh-faced agent taking on the Nazis. There are Elvis-esque songs, there are priceless one-liners (“I know a little German. He’s right over there”), there are elaborate sight gags (the backwards scene with Peter Cushing), there’s even an underwater fight, complete with aquatic bar stools. It’s ZAZ at their peak powers, never letting up, and it’s time it held the same cultural currency as Airplane!

Runners-Up: Kingsman: The Secret Service, Spy Kids, The Brothers Grimsby, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, RED, Jumping Jack Flash, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, Get Smart, Johnny English

Decidedly Not On This List: Leonard Part 6, Spies Like Us, The Experts, Spy Hard, The Avengers (1998), Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs

There’s never really a bad time to discuss the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, one of the most captivating teams in NBA history. That’s been magnified lately due to ESPN’s upcoming 10-part documentary series The Last Dance, which takes a deep dive into that team thanks to interviews and hours upon hours of footage. Add in that the network moved its release up amid high demand from basketball fans during the COVID-19 pandemic and that Bulls squad has been a major topic of conversation recently.

Ahead of the documentary’s debut on Sunday evening, Michael Jordan sat down with Robin Roberts of Good Morning America for a rare interview. At one point, Roberts asked Jordan what he remembered most about that season, with Hall of Fame inductee looking back on how difficult it was going through the campaign.

“Well, it was a trying year,” Jordan said. “We all were trying to enjoy that year knowing that it was coming to an end. I was hoping that … the beginning of the season, it basically started when Jerry Krause told Phil that he could go 82-0 and he would never get the chance to come back, and knowing that I married myself to him, obviously, if he wasn’t gonna be a coach, then obviously I wasn’t gonna play. So, Phil started off the year by saying, ‘This is the last dance,’ and we played it that way.”

M.J. went on to express that going through such a mentally taxing year was hard, but did make it clear that playing under those expectations helped them in their championship pursuit.

“It also centered our focus to making sure we end it right,” Jordan said. “As sad as it sounds at the beginning of the year, we tried to rejoice and enjoy the year, and finish it off the right way.”

Of course, that Bulls team did end things on the highest of notes, taking down the Utah Jazz in the NBA Finals before Jackson departed and Jordan retired for the second time. Plenty has been written and said about that team, and starting on Sunday, The Last Dance promises to give an unprecedented look into Jordan and co., even if it doesn’t necessarily portray His Airness in the most positive of lights. Its director, Jason Hehir, recalled a conversation he had with Jordan regarding his skepticism about the documentary in a piece by Richard Deitsch of The Athletic.

“I said to him, ‘why do you want to do this?’ And he said, ‘I don’t.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ And he said, ‘When people see this footage I’m not sure they’re going to be able to understand why I was so intense, why I did the things I did, why I acted the way I acted, and why I said the things I said.’ He said there was a guy named Scotty Burrell who he rode for the entire season and, ‘When you see the footage of it, you’re going to think that I’m a horrible guy. But you have to realize that the reason why I was treating him like that is because I needed him to be tough in the playoffs and we’re facing the Indiana’s and Miami’s and New York’s in the Eastern Conference. He needed to be tough and I needed to know that I could count on him. And those are the kind of things where people see me acting the way I acted in practice, they’re not going to understand it.’ I said to him, ‘That’s great because this is an opportunity. We have 10 hours here to peel back the onion and have you articulate all the things you just articulated to me.’

Part 1 of The Last Dance airs this Sunday at 9 p.m. EST on ESPN. The second chapter of the series will air immediately following. You can check out the entire broadcast schedule for the series right here.

While artists like Lady Gaga delay the releases of their albums amid the pandemic, Laura Marling was one of the few musicians who opted for the opposite. Originally slated for a summer release, Marling pushed her album, Song For Our Daughter, to April. Celebrating the record’s early release, Marling grabbed her acoustic guitar and performed three tracks for NPR’s At-Home Tiny Desk concert series.

Opening with her album’s lead single, Marling begins crooning the lyrics to her gentle ballad “Held Down.” Next, the singer picks up the pace to strum along to “Strange Girl.” Marling ends her three-track set with a rendition of her record’s title track. “Do you remember what I said? / The book I left by your bed / The words that some survivor read,” Marling swoons.

In a statement ahead of her album’s release, Marling poetically detailed its theme:

“I’d like for you, perhaps, to hear a strange story about the fragmentary, nonsensical experience of trauma and enduring quest to understand what it is to be a woman in this society. When I listen back to it now, it makes more sense to me than when I wrote it. My writing, as ever, was months, years, in front of my conscious mind. It was there all along, guiding me gently through the chaos of living. And that, in itself, describes the sentiment of the album — how would I guide my daughter, arm her and prepare her for life and all of its nuance?”

Watch Marling’s Tiny Desk concert above.

Song For Our Daughter is out now via Partisan/Chrysalis. Get it here.

Joji is ushering in a new era. Following his acclaimed debut record Ballads 1, Joji announced his sophomore album Nectar. To celebrate the upcoming album, Joji released the dreamy single “Gimme Love” along with a captivating, narrative video.

The accompanying visual was directed by Joji himself and Andrew Donoho, who has worked with the likes of Khalid, Janelle Monaé, and The Strokes. Touting Joji as a mad astrophysicist, the fast-paced video chronicles the singer’s tumultuous rise to an astronaut. While he begins with lots of ambition, Joji’s vision eventually goes haywire as he frantically throws items around the lab and someone loses a hand in the process. But that doesn’t stop Joji, who has gone insane from his ambition. Eventually, he makes his dreams come true. Joji locks up the other astronauts, rushes to the rocket, and flips off the control center before launching himself in the air.

The visual mirrors the tempo of the single. Beginning with a frantic tempo that was produced by Joji himself, the video cuts between scenes in unison. Halfway through the track, the tempo drops and expansive synths build toward an orchestral crescendo, offered by Joji’s collaborator Bekon & The Donuts.

Watch Joji’s cinematic ‘Gimme Love’ video above.

Nectar is out 7/10 via 88rising. Pre-order it here.

Along with the tragedy and uncertainty that a pandemic brings, some bizarrely delightful stories keep emerging.

Indiana’s 14 First Alert Chief Meteorologist Jeff Lyons set up a green screen in his living room and has been giving weather forecasts from home during the lockdown. And though he usually broadcasts alone, he’s gotten a new partner to share the weather with—his cat, Betty.

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Betty made her debut last week when she wanted some attention during a weather broadcast. Lyons picked up the fluffy feline and cradled her in his arms while he talked about the weather. The response was so great, the station shared a little behind-the-scenes green screen fun with Betty and the clip that ended up airing on television.

Sometimes Betty just hangs out watching her human do his professional human thing.

However, like all cats, Betty doesn’t like to perform when requested. (Like how they only want to sit on your lap when you’re trying to work. Cats gonna be cats.)

People are loving Betty’s cameos in Lyons’ from-home forecasts, though. Viewers have even been sharing photos of their own cats on Lyons’ Facebook page, and fans have begun tuning in from around the world to see Betty being Betty.

Pets have become even more beloved companions as everyone’s lives during the pandemic, as people find themselves spending more time at home and less time with other living, breathing beings. At this point, anything sentient that we’re allowed to get close to feels like a best friend.

Thanks for bringing an extra measure of joy to people right now, Betty, and enjoy your newfound fame. (We’d warn you not to let it go to your head, but you’re a cat—the diva is already built in.)

There are only six blockbuster movies still left on the schedule between now and Labor Day: Tenet (Christopher Nolan is going to pull a Newsroom at the first person who suggests the film comes out on VOD), Mulan, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, Wonder Woman 1984, Bill & Ted Face the Music (which barely counts as a “blockbuster,” but let me have this), and A Quiet Place Part II, already on its second release date. No wonder the internet went nutso over the first looks at Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. We’re starved for content (it’s our “the spice”) — and thirsty for the film’s cast, including Timothée “Timmy” Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Momoa, Josh Brolin, and, most importantly, Oscar Isaac. Most importantly for me, at least.

I mean.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say: Oscar Isaac, handsome man. Which makes it all the more baffling that he’s virtually unrecognizable in X-Men: Apocalypse, which might as well have been called X-Men: Anonymous for much I remember about it. I saw it opening night, and bits and pieces of it on cable afterwards, but four years later, the only thing I can recall about the movie is: why would you do THIS to Oscar Isaac?

It’s a classic example of hiring a famous hot person to play a role that could have been done by anyone, because you don’t see beneath the makeup and CGI. You’re paying for the goods, but not showing us them. (“The goods,” in this case, is Oscar Isaac’s beard.) I, an extremely shallow not-hot person, would have gladly played Apocalypse in an X-Men movie. Not for scale, though. I have too much pride for that. At least $2 million. Anyway, seeing all the Dune love led me to wonder if Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse is the most egregious example of a hot person being unrecognizable in a (recent) movie.

For this highly scientific exercise, I’m excluding any Hot People playing real-life figures (i.e. no Charlize Theron in Monster, Margot Robbie in Mary Queen of Scots, etc.) or animated movies, obviously, and mo-cap performances; also, they have to be actually unrecognizable. Michael Keaton — hot in the ’80s, still hot in the ’20s — is the pale-faced Ghost with the Most in Beetlejuice, but he’s still unmistakably Michael Keaton (that sounds meaner than I meant it to). Let’s go through some of the other possibilities.

Keri Russell in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

You: The Rise of Skywalker is a mediocre movie because of its pacing problems and silly plot twist and unearned emotional climax.

Me: The Rise of Skywalker is a mediocre movie because Keri Russell wears a helmet the entire time. While I’m happy that Russell got paid to be in a Star Wars movie, and she’s a talented physical actress with a pleasant voice, J.J. Abrams of all people should know better than to conceal her very famous hair. Rian Johnson would never.

Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises / many movies

This piece might as well be dedicated to Tom Hardy, who apparently hates his face as much as we love it. As the Ringer wrote in 2018, “For whatever reason—a deep insecurity or just a pure love of characters in masks—Hardy’s upward trend toward full facial obscurity seems destined to continue. We can safely expect Tom Hardy to keep covering his face like he’s got a hickey or a hangover to hide, well into the future.” It was obscured in Dunkirk, it was obscured in Venom (when he wasn’t munching on a lobster, that is), it was obscured in The Dark Knight Rises, where we only see his full face, without the face-hugger over Bane’s mouth, for all of three seconds. Unacceptable.

Karen Gillan in Avengers: Infinity War / Endgame / Guardians of the Galaxy, etc.

Nebula is probably Karen Gillan’s most well-known role, but she’s rarely synonymous with the Marvel Cinematic Universe character, because so many people can’t tell it’s her. “I WAS TODAY’S OLD WHEN I FOUND OUT THAT NEBULA AND RUBY FROM JUMANJI ARE LITERALLY THE SAME PERSON WTF,” goes one tweet, while another adds, “I have just been informed that Amy Pond and Nebula are the same person and now my brain hurts.” Wait until that person finds out she was in Selfie, too.

Karl Urban in Dredd

I would also accept Sylvester Stallone in Judge Dredd, if you’re into codpieces.

Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire

Oh wait, Mrs. Doubtfire is based on a real person. Doesn’t count.

Ralph Fiennes in the Harry Potter movies

I can deal with the baldness and the “Saul Goodman in the most recent episode of Better Call Saul“-looking chapped lips and the blobfish skin, but it’s the nose. The nose is the thing that gets me.

[redacted] in [redacted]

Those are all bad, but honestly, this is a two (hot) person race.

Do you recognize who this is? I sent the image to three friends who a) find this individual very attractive, and b) saw the movie it’s from, and they all drew a blank. It’s Idris Elba, the one-time Sexiest Man Alive, in Star Trek Beyond. Krall (definitely had to look that character name up) makes Macavity look dignified by comparison, but is it worse than Oscar Isaac in X-Men: Apocalypse, the only other true competitor to “why would they do that to their beautiful face” throne? It is not. Oscar is the clear winner (loser?).

For two reasons:

1. Unlike Star Trek Beyond, and Avengers: Endgame, Harry Potter, The Dark Knight Rises, etc., X-Men: Apocalypse is a bad movie. I’m too busy enjoying Guardians of the Galaxy to be annoyed by Karen Gillan being unrecognizable, but all I could think about while watching Apocalypse is: why would they do this to Llewyn Davis? That’s probably not what the filmmakers were going for. The billboards only made a bad situation worse.

2. Here’s how Oscar Isaac described filming X-Men: Apocalypse:

“That was excruciating. I didn’t know when I said yes that that was what was going to be happening. That I was going to be encased in glue, latex, and a 40-pound suit that I had to wear a cooling mechanism at all times… I couldn’t move my head. And I had to sit on a specially designed saddle, because that’s the only thing I could really sit on, and I would be rolled into a cooling tent in-between takes. And so I just wouldn’t ever talk to anybody, and I was just gonna be sitting and I couldn’t really move, and like, sweating inside the mask and the helmet. And then getting it off was the worst part, because they just had to kind of scrape it off for hours and hours. So, that was X-Men: Apocalypse.”

Poor Oscar Isaac. X-Men: Apocalypse: the only movie that can make Dune look fun.

As the pandemic rolls on, restaurants are closed and a lot of people are home for most of the day. Consequently, some folks are doing more cooking than ever, with mixed results. Lizzo, for example, had a kitchen mishap during a recent Instagram Live session.

Lizzo took to Instagram to chat with her fans for bit yesterday, offering some insight about what she’s been up to, saying of her upcoming music, “I’ve been working on sh*t in my studio with people, and I have songs, I’m really excited about them. Any maybe when they get a little bit more finished, I’ll play them for you hoes. I might give you little snippets, because I know every artist…” At this point, she had a sudden and urgent realization, as she stopped mid-sentence and exclaimed, “Oh my god, my f*ckin’ pizza nuggets! F*ck, sh*t. My f*cking pizza nuggets, bro. Oh sh*t, I left them in the f*cking oven. F*ck!”

In some follow-up videos posted on her Instagram Story, she detailed how that situation ended up, saying, “Sh*t was burnt, but you know what I’m saying, I’ll just put a little bit of barbecue sauce on ’em.” “Pizza nuggets” may not be a household name sort of food, but Tyson introduced pizza-flavored chicken nuggets last year, so perhaps that’s what Lizzo was having.

While Lizzo’s culinary endeavors may not be going so well, at least she’s feeling creatively inspired.

Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

“Air Drake” has joined the fight against the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Drake is offering fans flights on his private jet as part of Michael Rubin‘s #AllInChallenge circulating on social media among various celebrities. After being nominated by NFL star Tom Brady, Drake posted a video to Instagram explaining how he wants to help raise money.

After joking that he would give away Brady’s house and car, he said, “Whoever wins, you’ll get the chance to fly on Air Drake. I’ll have the OVO package waiting for you on the plane, the Nike Air package waiting on the plane, fly you to LA, where you’ll get to come and party with us at one of our private parties at Delilah, we’ll have a great time.” He then sweetened the deal by throwing in a pair of tickets to a show in the winner’s city whenever it’s possible to tour again.

Drake’s baseline for entry is a $10 donation to AllInChallenge.com, where donors can see all of the available auctions from celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, Kevin Hart, Justin Bieber, Mark Cuban, Magic Johnson, and more.

Drake’s getting the most out of his 767 Boeing private plane, which he was reportedly given for free by Cargojet as a promotional gimmick. By putting up the flight for auction, he’s contributing to a good cause — although there are many who would argue that these millionaire entertainers could just as easily donate way more money directly than they could fundraise from their fans’ pockets, plenty of stars are doing just that, as well. Anyway, you can enter the contest here.

One of the nation’s most promising young basketball players will not attend college. According to a report by Jonathan Givony of ESPN, five-star guard Jalen Green has decided to forgo suiting up for an NCAA program and will instead opt for a more unconventional path that will involve a pit stop in the G League.

Green, the No. 3 recruit in the class of 2020 based on 247Sports’ composite rating, will take up what Givony calls “enhanced version” of the G League’s professional pathway, which the league launched back in 2018 as an alternate to playing college ball. The program offers recruits $125,000, although it is unclear how a player the caliber of Green following this pathway impacts that.

It was announced earlier this week that Green’s decision — which was expected to be between Auburn, Memphis, or a professional career — would occur on Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. EST on his Instagram account. However, a video Green put on social media indicated the professional league in his sights was Australia’s NBL, not the G League.

Additionally, Gary Parrish of CBS Sports reported earlier in the week that going the pro route appeared to be the most likely result, with that decision getting reflected on Green’s 247Sports Crystal Ball.

An important thing to stress is that recruiting is an incredibly weird endeavor, and you never should assume you know what is going to happen until everything is signed, sealed, and delivered. Having said that, Green picking the G League would be quite the turn of events. Auburn, which boasts the No. 7 recruiting class in America, could stand to lose him, while Memphis, which sits at 137 nationally, will really regret not landing him. If this works out, though, and Green is able to parlay his year in the G League into potentially being the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, it would add some serious legitimacy to a path that has not been previously traveled.