You’ve seen one rom-com, you’ve seen it all, but yet there is something a little unique about the film Always Be My Maybe, and a lot of it has to do with its eccentric and diverse cast.

Always Be My Maybe stars Ali Wong (Sasha) and Randall Park (Marcus) as two kids who develop an impenetrable friendship. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes and Sasha and Marcus have a falling out. The two separate and don’t speak to one another for 15 years. One fateful day, Sasha is now a chef and opens a restaurant in the town where she grew up in San Fransisco. As she hires a local maintenance team for repairs, she unknowingly runs into Marcus her old childhood friend. The two now have significant others and very different lives, but their connection has remained the same.  

From filmmaker Nahnatchka Khan, most notably known for her work as showrunner for the sitcom series Fresh Off The Boat, Khan managed to find the time in her already busy schedule to create a cute rom-com for Netflix.

With a predominantly Asian cast, the comparisons to of Always Be My Maybe to the critically acclaimed Warner Bros film Crazy Rich Asians inevitably to be expected. However, what this rom-com captures that is unique is its relatability. While Crazy Rich Asians err to the side of more of a Cinderella fantasy rom-com, Always Be My Maybe is organic, authentic and could easily play out in the lives of anyone reconnecting with someone from their past. Marcus is kind of a goofball. He’s a weed-smoking blue-collar worker who plays in a band in his spare time. Sasha is a bit prudish, but she’s also a successful entrepreneur that has been so focused on her career she’s been blind to her choices in men.  Her fiancé Brandon Choi is even more successful but also very obsessed with his image and celebrity. His loyalty to Sasha is lacking and this relationship is hanging on by a thread.

However, when Marcus re-enters Sasha’s life, her perspective begins to change and she’s finally seeing through rose-colored glasses what she’s been missing in her life. Marcus, too, learns some lessons from Sasha and tries his best to become a better friend to her and accommodate her lifestyle. When the two begin to compromise for one another, you quickly see where this is going.

The story is as old as time and the plot is pretty predictable. The reason Always Be My Maybe is worth your time is for the laughs, a refreshing blend of culture and an appearance by actor Keanu Reeves which is the highlight of the entire film. The laughs will not end after you see Keanu Reeves appear as an off-the-wall character filled with camp and charisma, which is in perfect Keanu fashion.

Michelle Buteau plays Veronica, Sasha’s colleague and friend who is having a baby that is ready to pop in any day. Michelle does an incredible job of keeping up the funny in each scene that she’s in as Veronica waddles around in her ninth month of pregnancy.

The character development is well done establishing moments of Sasha and Marcus’ lives as kids and the loss of a loved one when tragedy hits their home. Always Be My Maybe also has an eclectic selection of music with a beautiful blend of hip-hop, R&B, and neo-soul. The music helped set the tone to the backdrop of this story set in San Fransico.

Always Be My Maybe is far from anything super original, but its cast makes up for its idiosyncrasies and there is a large audience that will likely devour this film.

Always Be My Maybe streams on Netflix May 31st.

The post Review: ‘Always Be My Maybe’ Tells Us Old Friendships Never Die appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

Cher made a joke that wasn’t in the best of taste, reverting back to the days of joking about prison rape. The joke, which has since been deleted from Twitter, insinuated that Cher wanted Trump to go to prison to be the “toy boy of Big Bubba.”

The joke was in terribly bad taste—something that Cher later recognized. While she did not apologize, she did delete the tweet and made a follow-up tweet stating why she deleted it and how she went too with her comment. So, before we jump in: Cher’s joke? Not great. Demanding that she apologize to the Donald Trump, personally, for that joke? Ridiculous.

It’s great that Cher recognized the line she crossed with this tweet, and that she took it down and owned up to that, but that has little to do with Donald Trump himself. She was adult enough to realizee the joke itself was in bad taste on a societal level. What’s great about Cher is that if she made a different joke about the president going to jail, it’d still be standing on Twitter. This deletion isn’t about the president, but about her understanding of what is not okay to joke about.

But do you know who isn’t adulting correctly? Piers Morgan and everyone crying about how that joke was mean to the president.

Kathy Griffin received death threats for her severed head joke, they tried to cancel Star Wars because they thought it had an anti-Trump message (which is hilarious seeing as Star Wars has always had an anti-fascist message, but … okay), and those are just the tip of the iceberg. But what angers me so is that everyone who says something against the president in the public eye has to issue some apology because Piers Morgan starts whining.

Want to know what the president has not apologized for? The birther rumor, the Central Park Five, and … should I keep going? Oh, he did apologize for the “grab them by the pussy” comment, but only because, politically, he had to. He wasn’t remorseful; he just wanted to win.

Everyone around the president and the president himself can say what they want and do whatever they want to do, without having to apologize. Piers Morgan’s comment on the situation is laughable because he said that if this were about Obama, Cher would never work again.

BREAKING: Cher says she wants President Trump to be raped in prison as ‘Toy boy of Big Bubba.’
Disgusting, and if she’d said it about Obama she would never work again. https://t.co/m7qAwAi9SZ

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) May 30, 2019

I’m sorry, but did all Trump supporters just up and forget the Obama era and the rude things people said about him? Those in the public eye specifically? Donald Trump specifically? The only difference is Obama knew how to react with dignity, while Trump whines and cries and gets his lackeys to yell at people. You know … like a bully.

But, at least Trump and his fans aren’t deterring Cher anytime soon.

HE’S LIAR,RACIST,ANTI-SEMITE(NC),WHO TOOKFROM POOR,4 NON EXISTENT UNIVERSITY,LIED ABOUT BUILDING CONDOS &PPL LOST THEIR,HE LAUNDERED4,HE”BOUGHT”ATTORNEY GEN.BARR,HE’S CRIMINAL,&TRAITOR,WHO’S UNFIT 4 OFFICE.HE’S DICTATOR
(IN-WAITING) WHO PULLEDON DEMOCRACY 🥀️🥀

— Cher (@cher) May 29, 2019

I truly think that Cher did need to take down the joke, but I don’t think she owes Trump himself any kind of apology. She reacted in a way that wass honorable and was an adult about the situation. Trump’s supporters suddenly crying wolf about a prison rape joke when the president himself has condoned groping women without their consent? That’s laughable.

(image: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

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This week Netflix released the highly anticipated limited series about the story of the Central Park Five.

Created, written and directed by Ava DuVernay, the 4-part series chronicles the controversial case of five Black teens egregious accusations of rape against them towards a white woman named Trisha Meili taking an evening jog in Manhattan’s Central Park.   

Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise were each sentenced to prison for a crime they didn’t commit. The film begins with the incident that occurred in the spring of 1989 and follows the aftermath of their arrests. The teens were questioned without an adult present and they were coerced excessively into a confession of wrongdoing.

When They See Us, captures 25 years of the boys’ lives growing into men who were later exonerated in 2002 which inevitably led to a settlement reached by the city of New York under Mayor Bill de Blasio.

There are a number of pacing issues with the series, as it takes a while to get to the details surrounding the case, and the plot presented challenges consolidating the narrative of each teen, how they ended up in the Central Park area that fateful night, and the interrogation practices against each teen that led to lying about their guilt. However, as opposed to analyzing the entire series, what stands out is the story of Korey Wise played brilliantly by actor Jharrel Jerome (Moonlight).

Korey Wise’s sentencing was unique from the other victims accused, he received the longest sentence of them all — 12 years. Wise was the oldest and was 16 at the time he was convicted. He was incarcerated for sexual abuse, assault, and riot in the attack on the jogger and others in the park. In the film, Wise only became a person of interest because he chose to be there for his friend Yusef Salaam, who was brought in for questioning. If Wise had never made the fateful decision to support his friend, he may never have been involved.

The young teen was viciously beaten by police, and was made as an example of what can happen if you don’t “tell the truth”. In When They See Us, Korey Wise is also depicted as being a bit inarticulate and illiterate.  His lack of understanding, as well as his age, and not having an adult present to tell him right from wrong, ultimately led to him confessing to a crime he never committed.

It was gut-wrenching to see actor Jharrel Jerome deliver the same confession Wise did, and state, “I only raped her once, and don’t plan to do it again”. Jerome’s bewildered expression and unflinching desire for hope weren’t enough to save him from a wrongful conviction.  The final part of When They See Us focuses on Korey Wise making it on his own in prison. He was first sent to Riker’s Island and then transferred from one prison the next. The transfers were all by his request as he wanted to make it easier on his mother to visit him in hopes she would come often.

Unfortunately with each transfer request, landed him in a prison much farther away. Wise is beaten by inmates, mistreated and sabotaged by prison guards, and his mother becomes more and more distant.

He spends a great deal of his time in solitary confinement and begins to see visions of his sister, the only relative he had a deep connection with. Throughout this whole process, Wise keeps going and doesn’t give up. He does eventually give up on the parole board hearing after being turned down several times, but he doesn’t give up on himself.

There was a deep sense of connection while watching Jharrel Jerome depict Korey Wise on screen and tears began streaming down my cheek by the end of Korey’s story.

Jerome should heavily be considered for an awards nomination for this performance, it was breathtaking to watch him in nearly every scene.

It’s unfathomable that this could even possibly be true and that the lives of these young souls were violated in such a horrendous way. DuVernay also makes certain that the audience knows that Donald Trump was responsible for calling for the death penalty of these young boys after taking out an $85,000 full-page ad in several New York newspapers. It should also be noted that Trump stood by his claims that the young men were guilty even after the state made their settlement.

If there is one thing to take away from watching When They See Us, it’s the story of Korey Wise and his faith that something good would happen in his lifetime. It also forces you to reflect on your own life and the trivial things that get you down. Nothing compares to what these boys went through, but what is significant here, is that they survived. They are still here to tell the tale of what happened to them and why and their story should never be forgotten. When They See Us is a story about beating odds, even when the circumstances around you seem like all hope is lost.

When They See Us streams on Netflix May 31st.

The post Review: Let’s Talk About Jharrel Jerome’s Performance in ‘When They See Us’ appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

Source: Johnny Nunez / Getty

Over the weekend, there were rumors that 50-year-old former “Love & Hip Hop” star Peter Gunz was not only dating a 19-year-old, he’d gotten her pregnant. The rumor was spawned by a Media Takeout report and the fact that on an Instagram Live video from a year ago, Amina wrote a caption meant to expose Gunz.

“You don’t gotta show her to this mean world out here but u can admit you dating a younger woman while you at the topic. Especially when you planning on marrying her while we haven’t finalized our divorce…Yes Peter needs to turn the papers into the courts but hasn’t Meanwhile he engaged new lol.”

This caption with Media Takeout’s post, was all it took.

As you can imagine the reaction from the internet was as follows:

For those of us who’ve lost count, Peter Gunz already has ten children. The thought of him having another with questionable and likely inconsistent income would be irresponsible, to say the least. It’s hard to be a present and active father when your children live in various parts of the country. And we would be remiss if we didn’t mention that the relationship he’s shared with at least two of his children’s mothers has been strained, as many of us witnessed.

But men having more babies than they can take care of is only part of the problem here. Peter’s oldest child, Cory, is 31-years-old. That would mean this alleged new girlfriend is younger than his oldest child. And there’s something skeevy about that and the thought of a 50-year-old man manipulating a teenager in this way.

Thankfully, the rumors weren’t true. Peter addressed them via Twitter yesterday.

Hopefully that “can’t make a baby if I wanted to” speaks to a possible vasectomy. But who knows. Even though Peter is not having another child, this admission didn’t keep people from roasting him anyway. See what folks had to say on the following pages.