Scorned 

You'd better buckle up, pack spare underwear, & maybe lay off the drinking for a night, for a gnarly ride in New York!

Disney's live-action remake is vibrant and beautiful, with updated music and classic enthusiasm, but it fails to push the envelope and provide nuance for Ursula.

I write for a diversity-focused film review blog, so I’ll be honest: I really wanted to like Pretty Lethal. Starring Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Avantika, and Millicent Simmonds, Amazon Prime’s new thriller seemed like it would be a girl power movie about dancers with a horror action twist. Sort of a Suspiria for teens. But with shallow and unlikeable characters, a confusing plot, an overreliance on violence, and cringey dialogue, any fun the movie started out with was quickly lost. What was left was a faint echo of greater horror movies about dancers made before. 

Facing the world with our fair share of uncertainties and/or apprehensions, many of which, sadly, may be well-founded, is nothing to sneeze at. Influenced and buffeted by the constant barrage of social media, fake news, and general upheaval present in our contemporary reality, what IS real and what's not becomes a blur.

The film does not add anything to its own conversation or genre, and falls flat once it’s about to end and must declare some sort of conclusion.

American Fiction is a genuinely entertaining film with a few lessons.