Thomas Matich

Is Jussie Smollett even really gay?

I think that's a fair statement and one that I've been wondering in my head ever since the details of him faking his gay-bashing became breaking news in the last 48 hours. It also seemed that this plot could've been ripped from one of the episodes of Empire, the hit show where Smollett plays Jamal Lyon, a talented singer-songwriter who has issues coming to terms with his homosexuality, partly due to the bigotry of the family patriarch roughneck Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard). Jamal is accidentally shot in the Season 2 finale of Empire and I wonder if that storyline eventually influenced his idea. If you weren't aware by now, Smollett paid (with a check no less) two extras from Empire to act out the bashing. I read a New York Times article with the headline "Who is Jussie Smollett.." -- but in my head, I was thinking "Yeah, who is Jussie Smollet, really?" All actors are chameleons to a certain degree, but I fear S…

 Isle of Dogs Burning Bad Times at the El Royale Vice  Unsane If Beale Street Could Talk Crazy Rich Asians  First Man Roma Sicario: Day of the Soldado






 First Reformed Blindspotting A Quiet Place The Last Movie Star Annihilation  Widows  Mission: Impossible - Fallout   A Star is Born Searching Ready Player One








Some movies I didn't get to watch yet but want to:
The Favourite
Shoplifters
Green Book
Tully
A Private War

From Post Malone to Morrissey, there were blazing hot tracks released this year. Enjoy!

Daily life is mundane until someone is murdered or goes missing around midnight. This is when habits and errands, downloads and web browsing history can point to intrigue. Searching streams the mouse clicks, window sweeps and video chats of David Kim (John Cho), as he sleuths the internet for clues to locate his missing teenage daughter. A recently widowed father, Kim discovers a disconnect between the teenager he thought he knew and the life she was living online. Suddenly, every Instagram heart, online banking transaction and video feed leads Kim down a dizzying rabbit hole.

Searching was picked up by Sony Pictures at Sundance for $5 million and is the feature film debut of Aneesh Chaganty, who left Google a few years prior to pursue a career in Hollywood making movies. The irony of someone who worked at a FAANG company directing a film about the invasive nature of technology and social media isolation shouldn't be lost on viewers, it would've only been more ridiculous had …

Tangerine Dream's sultry synths pulse in the background as the camera zooms out from twinky Tom Cruise's wayfarers, a slim cigarette dangling from his lips as he flashes back to a reoccurring dream of sneaking into the neighbor's house and stumbling upon a beautiful girl showering, she invites him to wash her back, but the steam obscures his reach for her until he finds himself transported to a classroom, three hours late for the college entrance exams.

With the aforementioned opening scene following the moody neon pastel credits as a night train rolls through a gritty Chicago twilight, we are introduced to Joel Goodson and for the most part, Tom Cruise, in Paul Brickman's 1983 classic Risky Business. The film was a breakout for Cruise, who some 35 years later has both delivered and disappointed on the potential of his brilliant performance in this early movie. Cruise can act and when he truly slips into character, as he did when portraying the innocent "Good so…

The 90th Academy Awards are this Sunday and there can't possibly be a bigger screw-up at this year's show than last year's Best Picture envelope opening fiasco. There are some really good films being nominated this year so let's get right into this...

Best Picture:

Call Me by your Name - it would be awesome if two gay themed movies won the big Oscar award two years in a row, CMBYN is deserving and a great film, but I just don't see it winning against some of the other big dogs... but stranger things have happened.

Darkest Hour - omfg no! This was just a really boring Masterpiece theater reject.

Dunkirk - Christopher Nolan is obviously a visionary -- but Dunkirk lacked vigor and passion, character development and a plot worth buying into.

Get Out - Reader of this blog know I loved Get Out, it would be absolutely amazing if this won and it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Lady Bird - I much would've preferred to see The Florida Project nominated in place of …