Emory Film Studies Graduate, Kids Video Connection Communications Manager, Drink in the Movies Staff Writer, former Crazy Legs Productions Intern. Can store a lot of useless Marvel trivia in my head.
Be Prepared for Your Opportunity - A Leadership Talk with Gerald Yarborough
FUTURE NOW’s Founder & CEO, Peggy Kim, hosted a Leadership Talk on June 9 with Gerald Yarborough, the Creative Director of Global Licensing and commerce for Rock the Bells, the preeminent voice for classic and timeless hip-hop. Yarborough is no stranger to FUTURE NOW. He was a Mentor for the Speed Mentoring Sessions at the FUTURE NOW Media & Entertainment Conference in 2020 and 2021, and recently joined the board. Still, this hour-long talk with Kim offered a solo platform where he could go d...
RETROSPECTIVE: The Avengers
In these retrospectives, Anna will be looking back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, providing context around the films, criticizing them, pointing out their groundwork for the future, and telling everyone her favorite scene, because her opinion is always correct and therefore her favorite scene should be everyone’s favorite scene. Avengers, assem— wait, not yet, that comes later.
80/100
Take a moment, if you will, to go back to summer of 2012. I was 13 years old, about to enter eighth grade ...
TRIBECA 2021 FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: Wu Hai
65/100
Yang Hua (Huang Xuan) has not been having a very good day, or week, or year in Zhao Ziyang’s Wu Hai. Hua has debtors tailing him at every corner after a failed investment into a dinosaur theme park, and his investment into his friend Luo Yu’s (Wang Shaohua) desert resort has so far coughed up nothing except empty promises. His wife, Miao Wei (Yang Zishan), has reached the end of her rope, and a surprise pregnancy doesn’t help things. In Wu Hai, money is truly the root of all evil; the characters may have flaws to begin with, but the debts they incur mercilessly bring out these flaws..
RETROSPECTIVE: Captain America: The First Avenger
In these retrospectives, Anna will be looking back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, providing context around the films, criticizing them, pointing out their groundwork for the future, and telling everyone her favorite scene, because her opinion is always correct and therefore her favorite scene should be everyone’s favorite scene. Time to punch some Nazis!
75/100
Captain America has recently come under fire for a new comic from Ta-Nehisi Coates featuring the star-spa...
TRIBECA 2021 FILM FESTIVAL INTERVIEW: Producer Natalie Metzger Talks “Werewolves Within” and “The Beta Test”
Interview by Anna Harrison
Natalie Metzger is an award-winning director, writer, and producer based in Los Angeles and known for films such as Werewolves Within and The Beta Test, both of which had their premieres at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. Additionally, she has produced The Wolf of Snow Hollow and Thunder Road, which won the Grand Jury Award at SXSW.
Keep up with Natalie and her projects on Facebook, IMDb, Instagram, Twitter, Vimeo, and her website.
Werewolves Within and The Beta Tes...
REVIEW: Black Widow
70/100
Over a year since it was first slated to come out, Black Widow has finally arrived on our screens, marking the first Marvel Cinematic Universe property to grace theaters since Spider-Man: Far From Home in July of 2019. Its titular character has been through quite the wringer with Marvel: introduced as little more than kickass eye candy in Iron Man 2, shoved into an inorganic romance with the Hulk in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and then killed—albeit in a poignant and affecting fashion—in ...
RETROSPECTIVE: Thor
In these retrospectives, Anna will be looking back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, providing context around the films, criticizing them, pointing out their groundwork for the future, and telling everyone her favorite scene, because her opinion is always correct and therefore her favorite scene should be everyone’s favorite scene. Time for space shenanigans.
70/100
So far, the burgeoning MCU has remained grounded—relatively speaking, of course, as they feature a man ...
REVIEW: Zola
“Y’all wanna hear a story about how me and this bitch fell out???????? It’s kind of long but full of suspense.”
So begins the viral Twitter thread from 2015, and so begins the movie it inspired: Janicza Bravo’s Zola. The original thread from A’Ziah “Zola” King, consisting of 148 tweets, became an internet sensation, garnering thousands of likes and retweets over the course of its posting not just due to the story of the tweets but the voice with which Zola told them, the humor and no-bullshit...
RETROSPECTIVE: Iron Man 2
In these retrospectives, Anna will be looking back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, providing context around the films, criticizing them, pointing out their groundwork for the future, and telling everyone her favorite scene, because her opinion is always correct and therefore her favorite scene should be everyone’s favorite scene. Next up is Iron Man 2, which made the first Iron Man seem like a one-time stroke of good fortune.
60/100
If the MCU started with a bang with the first Iron Man, it...
REVIEW: In the Heights
80/100
Back before Hamilton, when Lin-Manuel Miranda was still a sophomore in college at Wesleyan, he wrote the first draft of what would become In the Heights, which would eventually premiere on Broadway nearly ten years later in 2008. While Heights would later get overshadowed by Hamilton (practically everything gets overshadowed by Hamilton, to be fair), at the time it was a fantastic success, running for almost three years on Broadway. John M. Chu’s adaptation of In the Heights serves as ...
RETROSPECTIVE: The Incredible Hulk
In these retrospectives, Anna will be looking back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, providing context around the films, criticizing them, pointing out their groundwork for the future, and telling everyone her favorite scene, because her opinion is always correct and therefore her favorite scene should be everyone’s favorite scene. Now, onto the movie that everyone forgets is canon.
55/100
Thor: The Dark World might have the distinction of being the worst Marvel movie, depending on whom you a...
TRIBECA 2021 FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW: No Man of God
55/100
No Man of God director Amber Sealey recently posted on Instagram a lengthy email from director Joe Berlinger, in which he accused her of taking aim at his own films about Ted Bundy—Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile with Zac Efron, and the documentary Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes—in a Refinery29 interview, where Sealey stated, “I don’t personally believe that any of the movies that have already been made up until now have really shown the real Bundy… They al...
RETROSPECTIVE: Iron Man
In these retrospectives, Anna will be looking back on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, providing context around the films, criticizing them, pointing out their groundwork for the future, and telling everyone her favorite scene, because her opinion is always correct and therefore her favorite scene should be everyone’s favorite scene. We start at the very beginning (of release order, that is).
80/100
“I am inevitable.”
These words, spoken by Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, seem as if they could eas...
INTERVIEW: “Aura” Short Film Interview with Director Chun Chun Chang
It is exceedingly difficult to give a numerical score to a film like Chun Chun Chang’s animated short Aura. Clocking in at under four minutes, the story—if it can be called such—follows a man adrift at sea and then beset by a storm. As the man becomes lost in the storm, he becomes connected with the being or goddess at its center, simultaneously benevolent and violent. The film has no dialogue, only a stirring, string-filled soundtrack to carry us alongside the beauti...
ATLFF 2021 INTERVIEW: Director Charlene Fisk Talks "Rideshare"
Interview by Anna Harrison
Summary: After a fun night out with friends, Gina grabs a rideshare. An uncomplicated lift home shifts gears when the driver’s intentions become questionable.