On Screen

Words By Harry Moore   “Poker Face” (Peacock)          Television may be several years removed from the days of “case of the week” shows being a mainstay of airwaves with season-long stories and characters who endure growth becoming the vogue of the medium. But “Knives Out” director Rian Johnson has managed to bring the once reliable genre into the 2020s with his new show “Poker Face.” We all know how this works: There’s a murder (often committed by a famous guest star), and our hero sleuth rolls onto the scene to unravel the mystery and serve justice before the hour’s …

Words By Harry Moore   “Avatar: The Way of Water” After a 13-year sabbatical, James Cameron takes us back to the alien world of Pandora with his ambitious science-fiction epic, “Avatar: The Way of Water.” The self-proclaimed “king of the world” flexes his technologically advanced muscles and shows audiences once again why he is among the greatest conjurers of cinematic spectacles that there has ever been. Picking up over a decade after the events of the record-setting original, “The Way of Water” sees human-turned-Na’vi Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), and his family being forced to flee their home when the threat …

What Happens When One of the Most Popular Video Games Becomes a TV Series? ‘The Last of Us’ might be the first to get it right Words by Tysen Romeo   The Last of Us, a video game originally released on PlayStation 3 in 2013, is now one of the most critically acclaimed new TV series with only a couple of episodes out so far. While the gamers adore how devoted the script and setting are to the game, critics are amazed by the performances of Pedro Pascal (as Joel) and Bella Ramsey (as Ellie). As a gamer myself, let …

Best of the year Top 4 TV Series of 2022 Words by Harry Moore  4) We Own This City          David Simon and George Pelecanos’ miniseries charts the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force, revealing the extent of the unit’s excessive corruption set against the backdrop of citywide protests following the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who was killed while in police custody in 2015. Told through a non-linear structure, where the internal affairs investigation unfolds into flashbacks that detail the moblike behavior of these police officers whose actions had a major …

Movie Reviews  Words by Harry Moore Black Panther: Wakanda Forever          Marvel’s sequel to its 2018 sensation Black Panther is tasked with the burden of continuing the story of the people of Wakanda, while also paying tribute to the original film’s star Chadwick Boseman who passed away in 2020. For director Ryan Coogler, it is a delicate undertaking that he manages to handle with grace – for the most part. Coogler doesn’t shy away from the real, palpable loss that looms over the film, allowing for grief to be a driving theme of the picture. When it comes to creating …

Words by Harry Moore   <Black Adam> Warner Bros. and DC comics take another swing at its interconnected universe of superhero movies with this Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson-fronted bore about a god-like antihero. The film begins in the ancient country of Kahndaq, where a tyrannical king has enslaved much of the population and rules with an iron fist. When a young slave boy attempts to stage a revolution, he is given mythical powers by the Council of Wizards and becomes the heroic champion of Kahndaq, known as Black Adam, who kills the king before going into an eons-long slumber. But …

A close-up of local native and filmmaker Harry Williams II regarding his recent projects. Words by Molly Britt “A Life Worthy” is a short film based on the book “Blessed” written by Harry Williams II. The story touches on the life of a young man “who grew up in the hood” and found himself dealing with drugs and violence, despite his loving parents and his path in life, and the film touches on the book’s topics of gang violence, drug deals, life and death situations, and a man simply promising to change his ways and move toward a faith-based life. …

Words by Harry Moore    Halloween Ends David Gordon Green directs the closing chapter in his Halloween trilogy which promises to be the final clash between the mask wearing killer, Michael Myers and Jamie Lee Curtis’ original final girl Laurie Strode. Halloween Ends takes place four years after the events of the previous two films, 2018’s Halloween and last year’s Halloween Kills, with the constantly terrorised town of Haddonfield grappling with the communal trauma that Michael has inflicted upon them. That trauma manifests in the townsfolk looking for a new bogeyman as Michael has disappeared into the shadows since his …

  Best new movie Smile When a psychiatric doctor watches as her patient commit a violent and disturbing suicide in front of her, she begins to experience host of horrifying and increasingly hostile hallucinations which lead her to believe that she is being haunted by a supernatural presence. Filmmaker Parker Finn makes his feature length debut with Smile, an effective horror film that reveals an emerging director who possesses a strong sense for creating unsettling imagery, most notably the recurrent eponymous smile that reveals that the entity is present. Finn should also be commended for delivering well-worn horror tropes in …

Best of the Silver Screen and the Small Screen   Best New Movie: Confess, Fletch The latest adaptation of Gregory McDonald’s Fletch novel series does an admirable job of bringing the comedic detective series to modern audiences, many years after Chevy Chase’s iteration of the character. Jon Hamm stars as the investigative reporter, Irwin M. “Fletch” Fletcher, hot on the case of searching for his wealthy fiancé’s (Lorenza Izzo) stolen collection of priceless paintings—until he stumbles into a murder investigation where he gets labeled the presumptive prime suspect. Greg Mottola, the director behind Superbad and Adventureland, helms the picture keeping …