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https://nerdist.com/article/hunters-series-review/
Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming series Hunters immediately intrigued fans with an ambitious premise. creator David Weil teamed up with Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions to bring this show to fruition and, if the first episode is any indication, it’s going to be a brilliant mix of heartbreak, vengeance, humor, and mystery all wrapped up in one.
The plot follows Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman), a teenager who lives in Brooklyn with his Holocaust survivor grandmother Ruth in 1977. His life changes when Ruth’s murder introduces him to Meyer Offerman, a rich man who was in a concentration camp alongside Ruth. Jonah discovers that Ruth and Meyer started The Hunters, a group of skilled people who are on a mission to stop Nazis living in the United States from starting a Fourth Reich.
Hunters builds its foundation with a movie-length premiere that properly establishes a few main players. It kicks off with a chilling opening scene, then works on building the relationship between Jonah and Meyer, played by the incomparable Al Pacino.
The layers quickly begin to build as Jonah’s desperate investigation into Ruth’s life and death parallels FBI Agent Millie Malone (Jerrika Hinton) and an odd case that cracks the door to a harrowing discovery. The actors all slip into their roles with ease, establishing their motivations and shaping their engaging personalities. Will Jonah be a beloved protagonist? Probably not. But, his shortcomings leave room for reality checks and maturation.
Unlike many shows and films that attempt to rationalize or create empathy for Nazis, Hunters has no interest in a crafting a rosy narrative. The antagonists vary widely from those who are outwardly menacing and violent to others who have learned to put on a trustworthy persona to mask their true nature.
It’s incredibly unsettling and will have viewers wondering about full extent of this Nazi network. There are also disturbing looks to the past that dive into the psychological torture experienced by Jewish people and how it affects their current state of affairs 30 years later.
Jonah and Meyer’s conversations about life, the present, and what it means to seek justice strike an emotional chord and open the door for deeper conversations. And, as expected, there are an abundance of breadcrumbs, minute details, and themes established early in Hunters that beg to be dissected by eagle-eyed viewers. Hunters does a lot of work to quickly give several characters layers before it expands its world and it’s going to be thrilling to see how all the pieces mesh together.
Meyer’s words describe the show’s premise best: “This is not murder. This is mitzvah.” The Hunters are on a mission to stop mayhem before it unleashes on society and there’s nothing (or no one) who can prevent their revenge. Jonah has the motivation to join the hunt, but the premiere will leave viewers wondering if it will be enough to step across a bloody line.
Featured Image: Amazon Prime Studios
The post HUNTERS Is a Riveting and Righteous Revenge Drama appeared first on Nerdist.
Don’t go Hollywood on Tichina Arnold. She’s a homegirl all the way. She acts for a living but is never actressy. She has “people” but they are relaxed, not overly fussy.
BGN caught up with Arnold having a quick bite with her publicist while chatting with an industry executive fan and giving a quick wave and hello to NBA great, Norm Nixon (father of Vivian Nixon, a TV actress) at the Doris Bergman Luxury Lounge and Party at the trendy Fig & Olive restaurant during Oscar weekend.
After praising Nixon (and wife Debbie Allen in absentia) on their parenting skills, Arnold briefed BGN on her current outlook on life and how that has created some new situation comedy material for her TV character.
Catch us up. What is going on with you?
I’m a menopausal woman with a teenager, a mean-ager. So there’s a vortex going on in my life but it’s one of those things that is a wonderful vortex. I am finally on a major network. This is my first time doing a sitcom on a major network.
Besides that, I am working with amazing people. Working with Cedric the Entertainer is a joy because he’s a wonderful human being. Life is good.
I want to continue to inspire people. I want to keep my feet on the ground. I want to raise a very productive daughter so she can become a woman who can give something to humanity. So I am pretty simple and…I like my coffee in the morning.
Anything that we should know about your character that is coming up on the show?
There’s some funny stuff coming up on The Neighborhood but I have a movie coming out on Netflix called The Main Event. It’s the first time I’ve ever played this type of character. They call me G-Ma. So working on that film and creating a relationship with Netflix as well as doing a film for kids…it’s one of those films that everyone can watch.
I used to watch the World Wrestling Federation, WWF. That is what it was back then, now it’s WWE. For them to research and reinvent themselves in a way where it’s conducive to what’s happening now… We don’t have many family movies so they are in a genre where I want to be. To have films that everybody can come to see.
Fans of The Neighborhood are also going to want to know what’s coming up.
We’re doing an episode right now about menopause.
As you know I share my menopausal moments with everybody, with the world! I’m not taking this burden on by myself. If I feel it, everybody around me is going to feel it.
Jim Reynolds, our executive producer and creator walked up to me and asked, ‘Would you mind if we did a menopause episode?” I said, “Absolutely do it!”
I don’t mind and I like to make fun of menopause; to find the funny moments where you laugh instead of cry. I think that it is making me a better person because you are conscious of something. You are battling something.
My sister has lupus, and we have a foundation. We are learning so much by having our issues, our problems. But we welcome them because we are working on ourselves.
The Neighborhood is just a great show, especially in this day and age. We need to laugh. [The show] is not too racy. It’s not too corny. People can watch our show and see a Black woman and a white woman really enjoying their relationship.
They can see a Black man and a white man learning how to get along and coexist. So I think it’s an amazing show.
So the show is teaching?
Yeah, and through what better way than laughter. Also, a lot of people don’t have anything to compare it to. Maybe you have people who are racist, or whatever label you want to put on them, who may watch the show and see something they’ve never seen before, or something that makes them inquisitive.
Celebs Talk Kobe Bryant Memorial
Party attendee Norm Nixon had thoughts on the tragic death of Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles public memorial scheduled for the Staples Center on February 24.
Black-ish and Mixed-ish star Anthony Anderson, at the same event, said he planned to attend the service. “I plan on being there if work doesn’t get in the way.”
Here’s excerpts from BGN’s conversation with Norm Nixon.
Are you going to go to the memorial and do you have any idea of who’s on the program?
No one has any idea. So we’ll just see. I’m sure there will be a ceremony for a lot of the Lakers players, but we will have to wait and see.
How is everyone in your camp?
We are all good. Kobe was a big supporter of our dance academy. I had a chance to spend time with him within the last several months and talk about a guy who made a transformation.
He left sports. That was a chapter of his life, and he was on to something new. I think his work and his impact on the world had just started.
I know this affects so many fathers and daughters.
Oh, all those kids. The parents with their daughters, the coach, the wife and his daughter. He has two kids that are orphans. The mother that died. The father has those three kids. Kobe’s baby girl will never really meet him. It’s just tragic.
The post ‘The Neighborhood’s’ Tichina Arnold On Her New Movie, Menopause and Kobe Bryant appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.
The Sonic the Hedgehog movie has had an interesting journey to make it to the big screen. It started out with teases and leaks to a newly designed and more “realistic” take on the blue blur. When the first trailer dropped and showed off what he looked like there was such a (deserved) backlash that it made the studio redo Sonic completely. It’s unprecedented that a backlash was so loud and heated that a studio decided it was worth it to listen to the fans and change something. But was it really worth it? HELL. YES. While the story is a more paint by numbers set up, Sonic’s acting and his expressiveness, along with Jim Carrey circa 1994 elevate this film to a fun and carefree ride.
Sonic the Hedgehog, directed by Jeff Fowler, starts out with a look gorgeous at his world with baby Sonic running through Green Hill Zone. I shudder to think what the original design’s baby form would have looked like but this baby Sonic is adorable and feisty. We learn that enemies are after him for his power and he is sent away to our world using his rings as portals a la the original Sonic the Hedgehog game. He sets up shop in the small town of Green Hills in the Pacific Northwest where he stays in hiding for ten years in fear of being captured. After being discovered by Dr. Ivo Robotnik (Jim Carrey) and a mishap that loses his rings, Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) must team up with the reluctant local sheriff Tom Wachowski (James Marsden) to ride down to San Francisco to get sonic to safety and off-world. The plot itself is nothing new, in fact, it’s a pretty standard formula for this type of movie. The Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, Hop, it’s been done before. But Sonic sets itself apart because of two reasons. The care and respect for the property, and the fun portrayals of the characters, which includes sonic design.
Let’s talk about the design first ‘cause it’s important. They really capture Sonic here, I never once felt like this take of him wasn’t true to the character. It is a kid’s movie, so it’s no surprise that a hyperactive blue ball of quills and speed would make pop culture references or do the floss dance when he’s excited. It never gets to Deadpool levels, it’s a pretty good balance that Sonic has done before in the old Adventures cartoon or more recently in the Boom cartoon. He’s a super-expressive character and Ben Schwartz nails this role. But this would NOT have worked with that original design. Changing it for this movie was the smartest thing they could have done. There are a few genuinely touching scenes when Sonic is sad or hurt and it would have fallen flat without the new design.
We also need to talk about Jim Carrey for a second. This is Jim Carrey’s return to form, this is Ace Ventura, The Mask, In Living Color Jim Carrey and it’s great to see him again. He’s never super over the top but you can tell he’s having a great time with the character. In fact, it feels like everyone is just having a ball in this movie. There’s a lot of nods to the original Sonic games and even some of the comic book lore. It’s never enough to make non-Sonic fans to feel left out. There’s actually a really good set up at the beginning of the film and at the end that I hope we can explore more in the future. James Marsden is no stranger to road movies with a CGI character but he does a good job, you can really feel the building comradery between him in Sonic.
These are all really good aspects of the film, but it’s not like it’s a perfect movie. The biggest flaw here and most movies with this set up, that there’s too much focus on the human characters and not enough on Sonic and Robotnik. The leftover effect from the original design being more “realistic and grounded” puts more focus on our human world and Tom and his family. Sonic and Robotnik are there, and there more than the previously mentioned films, but I wanted so much more of them. I don’t know if we’ll get a sequel but if we do I really hope we can explore Sonic’s world and characters a lot more.
It’s not going to be the best film of the year, it has problems that does drag it down a bit, but what it does right it does in spades. It’s a fun, energetic movie the shows off Sonic’s speed and characteristics well. There is a level of love and respect for the original source and make sure you stay for the mid-credits stinger. Kids will love and parents and older audiences can have a lot of fun with. While it doesn’t go as far as it should, it still shows respect to the longtime fans without alienating those who aren’t. If you have kids or are a longtime fan I recommended seeing this movie. If you don’t fall into any of those characters I think you can still have a good time if you’re looking for something fun to watch.
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The post Going Fast: ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ Review appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.