HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Holly (Julia Roberts) welcomes her son Ben (Lucas Hedges) home with open arms on Christmas Eve, even though he left a drug rehab facility without permission. She soon comes to regret that decision in the harrowing family drama Ben Is Back. (Photo Courtesy of Black Bear Pictures)

Holly (Julia Roberts) and Neal (Courtney B. Vance) are raising a family in a quaint country home in upstate New York, ostensibly far removed from the sort of woes that plague the inner city. It’s Christmas Eve, and we meet Holly in church where she’s patiently watching three of her four kids practicing for the Christmas pageant.

However, looks can be deceiving, since missing from the idyllic picture is her eldest child, Ben (Lucas Hedges). The troubled 19-year-old has been living at a drug rehab center, where he’s managed to keep clean for the past 77 days.  more

WE ARE GOING TO BE BIG STARS: Bohemian Rhapsody tells the story of the rock group Queen, which was founded in the early seventies by, from left, bassist John Deacon (Joseph Mazzallo), drummer Roger Taylor (Ben Hardy), lead singer Farrokh Bulsara, aka Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek), and guitarist Brian May (Gwilym Lee). (Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox)

By Kam Williams

Prior to seeing Bohemian Rhapsody, I knew precious little about the rock group Queen. Sure, I’d enjoyed lots of their pop hits like “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Another One Bites the Dust,” but I was totally unaware of the legendary British band’s back story. more

By Kam Williams

Back in the ’70s, Ron Stallworth became the first African American to join the Colorado Springs Police Department. The young, ambitious college grad was soon promoted to detective, and his first undercover assignment was to cover a Stokely Carmichael (Corey Hawkins) rally when the Black Power advocate was invited to speak at Colorado College.

However, his most unlikely mission was to infiltrate the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Using his real name, he answered a KKK classified ad recruiting new members, not knowing what to expect.

When the organization contacted him by phone, Ron adopted a white accent and complained that his sister was dating a black man. That was all it took for him to get invited to the next Klan meeting and to secure a membership card signed by Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace). more

By Kam Williams

Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) is starting her last week of middle school, and graduation can’t come soon enough for her. After all, the lonely, 13-year-old has just been voted “Most Quiet” by her classmates, despite being desperate to make friends.

Nevertheless, she finds herself routinely ignored because she’s overweight, pimply, and not from a prominent family. So, between being ostracized by the popular cliques and going unnoticed by the cute boy (Luke Prael) she has a crush on, Kayla leads a very solitary and unhappy existence.

It doesn’t help matters that she’s an only child, and that her well-meaning single dad (Josh Hamilton) doesn’t have a clue about how to connect with a daughter growing up in the Digital Age. The two barely talk to each other at the dinner table. She just scrolls through social media on her cell between bites while grudgingly giving monosyllabic responses to his questions about how her day went.   more

By Kam Williams

Collin (Daveed Diggs) and Miles (Rafael Casal), who are black and white, respectively, have been best friends since they were kids. Now in their 20s, they both still live in the rough Oakland neighborhood where they grew up, although it‘s been gentrifying in recent years.

The change in the neighborhood has made it hard for the two of them to get along with their new neighbors because Collin is a convicted felon on probation, and Miles has ghetto written all over him, such as the tattoos all over his body.

When Collin was paroled, Miles got him a job with the moving company where he works. more

By Kam Williams

To describe Cassius “Cash” Green (Lakeith Stanfield) as struggling would be an understatement. He and his girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), are four months behind in their rent on their unfinished garage apartment in inner-city Oakland. The only reason they haven’t been evicted is because their landlord is Cash’s Uncle Sergio (Terry Crews), who is willing to wait to be paid, and has even given his nephew a car. more

By Kam Williams

When they were kids, five best friends from Spokane, Washington began playing a game of tag that, over the years, morphed into a cutthroat version where each would go to extraordinary lengths to pass on — or avoid becoming “It.” Several decades later, despite bearing all the responsibilities associated with adulthood, the guys were always trying to avoid a tap on the shoulder.

The five friends came to the attention of Wall Street Journal reporter Mark Steilen who wrote an article about them entitled, “It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being ‘It’.” Soon thereafter, Hollywood obtained the rights to their story. more

By Kam Williams

Super Fly (1972) was one of the most profitable of the blaxploitation [black exploitation] era movies. Released during the genre’s heyday, the picture was about its iconic title character, Youngblood Priest, a flamboyant cocaine dealer who dressed like a pimp, drove flashy cars, and distributed his wares from a spoon, shaped like a cross, that was draped around his neck.

With a modest budget of just $500,000, the film’s box-office success led to several sequels, (Super Fly T.N.T. (1973) and The Return of Superfly (1990).  more

By Kam Williams

Mechanic Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) is a vanishing breed. He’s an an old school grease monkey who rolls up his sleeves and repairs classic cars without the help of diagnostic computers.

He asks his wife Asha (Melanie Vallejo), to follow him in her self-driving car so he can return the Pontiac Firebird that he’s just finished working on to its owner, high-tech mogul Eron King (Harrison Gilbertson). The eccentric billionaire has a subterranean research laboratory hidden just beneath the ocean’s shoreline. He proudly tells Asha and Grey about his company’s latest invention, an implantable computer chip that is programmed with artificial intelligence (AI). more

By Kam Williams

Deanna Miles (Melissa McCarthy) was a junior in college when she became pregnant and dropped out of school to have the baby. She married her boyfriend, Dan (Matt Walsh), who finished his degree and started his career while she remained a stay-at-home mom.

Fast forward to the present and we see the couple dropping off their now-grown daughter Maddie (Molly Gordon) at their alma mater, Decatur University, where she’s about to begin her senior year. She’s moving back in with her girlfriends at the Theta Mu Gamma sorority house.  more