LX 2048 (2020)

After years of silence, trauma, and backlash, Rose McGowan tells her own story in this miniseries.

Middle school best friends reunite in middle age - Magalie is a chaotic free spirit “freeloader”, Blandine is a divorcée “sourpuss” with severe depression. The Palm Beach Film Festival opening night was glamorous for “Two Tickets to Greece”, the first screening of the French film in the United States.

The Bluff unravels its mystery slowly, opening on the capture of a ship captain named Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and the swift execution of his entire crew. Then, viewers are treated to a tranquil British settlement in the Cayman Islands in the 1850s, where a mother bakes a coconut birthday cake for her son in a house suspiciously rigged with makeshift tripwires and burglar alarms. As it turns out, that mother is Priyanka Chopra’s quick witted and resourceful ex-pirate Mrs. Ercell Bodden, and her husband’s captors are on the way to the island to hunt her down for abandoning them and stealing their loot. The pirates of the Libertas land on the beaches of Cayman Brac, and the scenes that follow show a Viking-esque slaughter of half the island.

There’s been a longstanding criticism of sci-fi films about its lack of Black characters. For the past few years, Anthony Mackie has been successfully representing Black masculinity in the otherwise homogenous genre and I am here for it.

I hadn’t heard of it either until recently—and yet, it’s one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

Between its problematic nature, its lack of originality, and the senselessness of its violence, Onslaught cannot be recommended in good faith.