Dinogeist 

Sam Levinson's latest film can't keep up with the excellence of its performances.

It’s not often in America that you turn on the TV and see a show or a movie with a Muslim protagonist. And when they do, they're usually a negative stereotype. Ms. Marvel changes all of that.

To say Hollywood has had a troubled past is the understatement of the century. In Ryan Murphy’s (American Horror Story) new Netflix series, Hollywood, that past is confronted and even rewritten.

At first glance, Black as Night is a strange title choice for a film about vampirism in post-Katrina New Orleans. However, the title alludes to the world's anti-black and colorist messages.

Honey Don't! is a chaotic queer noir that's part detective story, part midnight movie madness. Margaret Qualley is fantastic as the wise-cracking private eye Honey, with Aubrey Plaza and Chris Evans adding their own dry humor to the mix. The mystery itself is pretty loose, but the film makes up for it with crackling sexual tension, weird side characters, and razor-sharp dialogue. It's messy and uneven, but in the best possible way.

The Gates, John Burr’s new thriller film, is a disturbingly realistic portrayal of three Black twenty-somethings - Derek (Mason Gooding), Kevin (Algee Smith), and Tyon (Keith Powers), as they accidentally take a wrong turn into a gated community that’s more like a modern-day sundown town. The three friends witness a variety of crimes in their new surroundings, including an attempted homicide and an attempted rape. As they attempt to alert the authorities and do the right thing, they are thwarted at every turn by the worst horror stories of American conservatism - racist white suburbanites, reckless gun violence, corrupt police, religious mania, and a megalomaniacal pastor.