Mar 03 2023
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Books, Music, Television

The Entertainment Forecast

March 3 – March 10, 2023

Snoopy returns, Mel Brooks’ new ‘History’ project & guess who’s coming to dinner?

Gigi Hadid and Tan France are looking for the next stars in fashion designing.

FRIDAY, March 3
The Snoopy Show
The world’s most iconic cartoon beagle returns for season three—with even more happy-dancing, fighter-ace plane flying and adventures with his birdie buddy, Woodstock (Apple TV+). 

Next in Fashion
Tan France and Gigi Hadid host season two of the high-stakes design competition series, in which talented designers complete for $200,000 and the chance to share their work with the world (Netflix).

SATURDAY, March 4
Black Girl Missing
Inspired by true stories of missing women of color, this original movie stars Garcelle Beauvais and spotlights the disparities of Black women by the media and authorities. It’s part of network’s ongoing “Stop Violence Against Women” campaign.

SUNDAY, March 5
Be My Guest
Dancer Misty Copeland, actors Stanley Tucci and Laura Linney, and singer-songwriter Norah Jones are among on host Ina Garten’s drop-in list for the new season of her series about sharing fabulous food, sparkling conversation and lots of laughs (11:30 a.m., Food Network).

The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia
Find out the story behind the explosive rise, and the abrupt decline in fortune, of the 2017 trivia-game app that was supposed to herald the beginning of a new era of television—but didn’t (9 p.m., CNN).

MONDAY, March 6
History of the World Part II
It’s been four decades since Mel Brooks’ seminal, sidesplitting comedy opus, and now there’s finally a sequel. The celebrity-packed sketch-comedy series stars Brooks, Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes and Ike Barinholtz, with appearances by Zazie Beetz, Quinta Brunson, Danny DeVito, David Duchovny, Hannah Einbinder, Johnny Knoxville and just about everyone else who ever tickled a funnybone (Hulu).

Rain Dogs
Dark comedy series about a single British mum, her young daughter and an upper-class gay man—a dysfunctional “family” on the fringes of society attempting to go straight in a crooked world (10 p.m., HBO).

TUESDAY, March 7
Unseen
Two women form an unlikely alliance when a gas station clerk receives a call from a nearly blind woman who’s fleeing her murderous ex. Can the gas gal guide the sight-impaired former spouse to safety? (VOD).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Bounce around through women’s basketball history and learn how it was shaped in Hoop Muses: An Insider’s Guide to Pop Culture and the (Women’s) Game (Twelve Books) by Emmy-winning journalist Kate Fagan, who brings a colorfully illustrated, time-traveling hipness to this under-recognized story of female hoopsters.

BRING IT HOME

Now on Blu-ray and DVD, the critically hailed Women Talking—based on a real incident—features an ensemble cast (Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Frances McDormand) in an inspiring tale of Mennonite wives and daughters who make a fateful decision after years of abuse by men in their community. (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)

WEDNESDAY, March 6
The Challenge: World Championship
This first-ever global “Challenge” event will feature veterans of the “extreme” elimination series competing in a new series of complex, sometimes grueling games (Paramount+).

Farmer Wants a Wife
Grammy-winning country hitmaker Jennifer Nettles (above, who starred in the hit TV series The Righteous Gemstones) helps wrangle romance in the heartland in this new dating series, already a smash in other countries but making its USA debut tonight (9 p.m., Fox). https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?projector=1

THURSDAY, March 9
School Spirits
In this new streaming series aimed at the YA market, a teen girl (Peyton List) stuck in the afterlife goes on an investigative journey to find out what happened to put her there—while adjusting to high school in the hereafter (Paramount+). https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?projector=1

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Mar 01 2023
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Movie Reviews

Crafty Criminals

Jason Statham does the dirty work in Guy Richie’s action-comedy ‘Operation Fortune’

Jason Statham, Josh Hartnett and Aubrey Plaze in ‘Operation Fortune,’ a movie that delayed a full year…but not for the reasons you might think.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
Starring Jason Statham, Hugh Grant, Aubrey Plaza, Carey Elwes and Josh Hartnett
R
Directed by Guy Richie
How to Watch: In theaters Friday, March 3

A high-stakes, slam-bang spy caper, director Guy Richie’s latest flick again shows off his fondness for crafty criminals, fast-moving action and wisecracking British gents.

In Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, a super-agent and his team recruit a Hollywood star to help them on a far-ranging mission to track down a heisted something-or-other. If they don’t get it, someone else will—and that would be bad news for, well, everybody else.

What they’re after, as they follow a $10-billion-dollar money trail, involves special agent Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) breaking bones, busting heads and blasting bad guys all over the place, from the French Riviera to Turkey and Quatar.

And it also involves a sexy-smart computer sleuth (Aubrey Plaza), a munitions and muscle man (British rapper Bugsy Malone), a government secret-ops liaison (Carey Elwes), a celebrity-obsessed billionaire (Hugh Grant) and his Hollywood movie-star crush (Josh Hartnett).

The film’s subtitle, Ruse de Guerre, is French for the “deception of war,” and deception is the name of Operation Fortune’s international cat-and-mouse game.

The movie’s been “in the can,” finished and ready to go for more than a full year. Reportedly, its release was postponed not by the COVID 19 pandemic, but for its depictions of Ukrainian gangsters.

Director Richie is known for his British gangster films Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; the Sherlock Holmes franchise with Robert Downey Jr.; The Man From U.N.C.L.E, the big-screen remake of TV’s 1960 spy series; Disney’s Aladdin; and the medieval epic King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. He likes his popcorn movies to have pop, ka-pow and lots of punches, and this one’s got all of those. It’s fast and nimble, sharp and stylish, with likably roguish, smack-talking characters doing dirty work.

The movie opens with the rhythmic click-click-click of shoes on a well-dressed character as he makes his way down a long, polished hallway, setting the stage for the film’s driving percussive beat of quick edits, dapper elegance, quippy banter and globetrotting, jet-setting travel that rarely pauses to catch its breath.

It’s a reunion for the director with Hugh Grant, who appeared in The Gentlemen, another of Richie’s criminal-caper flicks, and with Statham, with whom Richie collaborated Wrath of Man (plus four other projects). British actor Peter Ferdinando—who plays a disreputable rogue spy competing with Statham’s character for the whatzit—was an earl in King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword.

Aubrey Plaza fires away.

Grant, who became a star in British romcoms and costume dramas— like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually and Bridget Jones’s Diary—continues to flex his comedic chops. Plaza, best known as the deadpan April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation and more recently on HBO’s season two of The White Lotus, has saucy fun as the team’s cool, confident tech chick. And Hartnett—whose resume includes playing the Wolfman in the TV horror series Penny Dreadful—slips right into the movie’s meta-joke, as a Hollywood action star who now finds himself playing himself in some for-real, life-or-death cloak-and-dagger business.

But the movie is built around Statham, who continues to ride his reputation for intense, tough-guy roles, as established in the Fast & Furious franchise, The Expendables and a slate of other action-thriller films. His schtick ain’t Shakespeare, but he does elevate meaty, muscle-bound macho to a kind of movie art form—one he satirized to great effect alongside Melissa McCarthy in the rollicking comedy Spy. It doesn’t seem like any stretch at all for him here, playing a character whose quiet, coiled collectedness can erupt, when necessary, in a lethal torrent of bruising force, served up with a dry, wry slice of Brit wit.

There’s a car chase with a vintage Mustang; characters come and go between mansions in luxury jets and private yachts; there’s more than one discussion of fine wine. Everyone, even the thugs, looks dashing. The movie drips self-assured style and oozes money, and people take some realistic-looking pummeling in the fight scenes. But the action sequences seem almost like afterthoughts, paling in comparison to jaw-dropping James Bond moments or anything in the Mission: Impossible films. An explosion blowing out the end of a tunnel? A footrace to catch a guy on a motor scooter? A stuntman falling from off a building? Yawn.

Operation Fortune throws a lot at the screen—characters, breezy British repartee, exotic locales, and loads of kabooms and snapped bones. There’s a robbery—that’s also a ruse—that takes place to the tune of B.J. Thomas singing “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” In the end, there’s even a movie within the movie; make sure you stay through the credits. The plot is a knot of detail, a thread to be unspooled, a puzzle box to unpack. “Let’s not make this any messier than it has to be,” someone says at one point. Indeed.

It’s a bit wobbly and untidy but not quite a total mess, from a director clearly back in his comfort zone—his wheelhouse—with a brisk, propulsive, combustive British action-comedy. Operation Fortune won’t win any awards, but if this ruse of a romp sounds like your cup of English tea, well, just sit back and sip and let Guy Ritchie, Jason Statham and crew do their thing.

—Neil Pond

Feb 28 2023
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History, Music

The Mother Church is More Than a Country Club

Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium rocks—and rolls out the red carpet for all kinds of music

It’s been around since the World War II era, when it was renamed after the death of the steamboat captain, Tom Ryman, who had it built. But before that, it was a church, the Union Gospel Tabernacle. And for decades, appropriately enough, the Ryman Auditorium has been known as country music’s Mother Church, a nod to its house-of-worship roots as well as its unparalleled prominence as a world-class performance spot. The Grand Ole Opry made the venerated venue its home for 31 years, beginning in 1943.

But this iconic temple for Music City royalty has always been a place for more than country music, says general manager Gary Levy, who’s been in his Ryman role for nearly five years. “We just celebrated our 130th birthday, and part of that was to expand on the idea that we’re much beyond the legacy of country music and the Grand Ole Opry.”

Levy points out that from its earliest days, all kinds of showbiz superstars played at the Ryman—including magician Harry Houdini, Italian opera legend Enrico Caruso, composer and conductor John Philip “Stars and Stripes Forever” Sousa, singing cowboy Roy Rogers, comedian W.C. Fields, silver screen goddess Mae West, jazz crooner Nat King Cole, silent film superstar Charlie Chaplin, and Bob Hope.

And the Ryman wasn’t just known for music. It also hosted political rallies, community events, theatrical productions and ballet. It developed a rarified rep one of America’s most venerated performance spots, for acts of any kind. 

“The Carnegie Hall of the South,” says Levy. “Our philosophy here is all are welcome, and we believe that.”

Just this week, the Ryman received its 14th Pollstar Award, an honor voted by the trade industry publication, as the Theater of the Year.

The Grand Ole Opry still comes home “to roost,” for a series of shows during the winter, and other country stars showcase there at other times throughout the year. Garth Brooks, Vince Gill and Amy Grant, and Ricky Skaggs are no strangers to the Ryman stage.

And other times, the Ryman presents a wholly eclectic and ecumenical lineup, opening its iconic doors in downtown Nashville to U2 front man Bono, flute-playing rapper/singer Lizzo, the Wu-Tang Clan (which made history in 2019 as the first hip-hop act to play the Mother Church), pop star/actor Harry Styles, and former First Lady Michelle Obama (on her book tour).

On March 1, the Ryman will host “Rock the Ryman,” an annual event featuring Nashville artists like Little Big Town, The War & Treaty, Caitlin Smith and Charlie Worsham, all performing music from Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees—and continuing to connect the dots between the venue and the long line of non-country artists who’ve taken to the Ryman stage over the decades.

“People feel like they’ve ‘made it’ when they play the Ryman,” he adds, “no matter how big they [already] are.”

Left: The suit worn by James Brown during his appearance at the Ryman is on display as part of the venue’s exhibits of memorabilia from artists who’ve played there.

Is the Ryman haunted???

Is there a ghost in the house at one Nashville’s most revered musical places?

“Many artists and a lot of staff members truly do believe the building is haunted,” says Gary Levy, the GM of the Ryman. “My guess is that, if any concert venue is going to be haunted, it would be this one.”

And why is that?

Maybe it’s haunted by the ghost of Elvis, whose first and only appearance at the Grand Ole Opry was a bit of a disaster; audiences just didn’t know what to make of him and his hip-shaking, but he knew what to make of them—he vowed to never return. And he didn’t…or maybe he did, and he does. Could that be Presley’s otherworldly specter, lurking in the shadows of the balcony, or around the labyrinth of corners and corridors backstage?

Or maybe it’s the ghost of riverboat captain Thomas Ryman, who founded the building—which eventually became the Opry—as a gospel tabernacle? After he died, and the facility was renamed in his honor, the Ryman began getting away from its “spiritual” roots, hosting a variety of entertainers and events. Perhaps Ryman wasn’t too pleased with all the secular sounds and “risqué” performances. It’s about that time that reports of a strange “apparition” began circulating. 

One of the Opry’s earliest stars during its Ryman years was Hank Williams, who met an untimely death, at age 28 in 1953, after mixing drugs and alcohol. What if the Ryman’s “ghost” is the fabled “I Saw the Light” singer, who perhaps grew so fond of rapturous responses from the Opry crowd, he decided to keep coming back, seeking an encore? Ryman staffers have for years recounted episodes of hearing Hank Sr.’s unworldly voice or his songs in the building—with no explanation or source to be found.

Numerous other Opry entertainers met unfortunate early demises, from accidents, overdoses or even murder—including Patsy Cline (plane crash), Stringbean Akeman (killed during a robbery) and Dottie West (automobile accident…on the way to play Opry, after it moved to its “new” home at Opryland). Maybe they’re just hanging out at a place that they just weren’t ready to depart.

There’s also the legend of the “Grey Man,” believed to be one of the Confederate soldiers who visited the venue after the War Between the States was over; he’s sometimes been “seen” sitting in the balcony, as if waiting for another show to start. Another spooky school of thought concerns “The Lady,” a recurring female apparition specifically believed to be Patsy Cline.

Levy says he’s heard things from some clearly “spooked” Ryman employees. “Sometimes they’ll see something, or someone, when the building is otherwise completely empty,” he says. “Maybe it’s late at night, after a show, and they’ll notice the stage curtain fluctuating, or what they think is someone standing behind it. Or they think they notice in someone in a place where there should be no one.”

While Levy hasn’t seen any of that himself, he won’t go so far as dismissing it. “I have never personally experienced anything,” he says. “But I’m not [going] to discount anything either. There’s a lot of things out there we don’t know about, and I respect the opinions of everyone who believes it might be haunted. Who are we to say if it is, or it isn’t?”

—Neil Pond

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Feb 24 2023
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The Entertainment Forecast

Feb. 24 – March 2

Eugene Levy on the road, cowboys in the saddle & Satan spooks a school

‘Schitt’s Creek’ star Eugene Levy travels the globe in his new series.

FRIDAY, Feb. 24
The Reluctant Traveler
Emmy winner Eugene Levy (Schitt’s Creek) hosts this globetrotting travel series, visiting exotic and beautiful destinations in Costa Rica, Finland, Italy, Japan, South Africa…and even the good ol’ US of A (Apple TV+)

Liason
Espionage, political intrigue, passionate love—Vincent Cassel and Eva Green (left) star in this high-stakes, high-energy thriller about how our pasts have ways of destroying our futures (Apple TV+)

The Consultant
Biting workplace satire series follows a dapper consultant (Christoph Waltz) who comes to the rescue of an emerging tech company after its CEO dies and a hoped-for merger falls through (Prime Video).

Western Night
Saddle up for a trail-mix trio of cowboy flicks, all starring Robert Ryan, the prolific, genre-spanning actor who appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows during the 1940s through the ‘70s, including war dramas, high-seas epics and crime capers. And oh yeah, also Westerns! (TCM).

SATURDAY, Feb. 25
Chaos Reigns: The Films of Lars von Trier
Danish filmmaker von Trier has always been a controversial director, for his exploration of dicey subjects and gritty, fem-centric parables—like Nymphomaniac I and II, a pair of bridged erotic accounts about a woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who, well, just can’t get enough sex. It’s notable for its all-star cast and a stylish flair that elevates it to the realm of “art” instead of pornography, with appearances by Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman and Connie Nielsen (Mubi).

12 Desperate Hours
Held hostage by a home intruder, a quick-thinking mother (Samantha Mathis, right) offers to drive him anywhere he wants to go, becoming his unwilling accomplice on a rampage of destruction (8 p.m. Lifetime). 

SUNDAY, Feb. 26
Shock Docs: The Devil’s Academy
Was there really a mass demonic possession at the Miami Space Academy in 1979? This harrowing documentary takes a look at the scarifying chain of events that began hells-a-poppin’ after a student claimed she was possessed by the devil (9 p.m., Travel Channel).

The Circus
Just as the new political season heats up, the Emmy-nominated docuseries returns to pull back the curtain on this extraordinarily fractured and fraught moment for American democracy (8 p.m., Showtime).

TUESDAY, Feb. 28
Black Broadway
This concert special featuring a current generation of Black Broadway stars celebrates iconic stage performances made famous by Black singers, with songs from The Wiz, The Color Purple, Porgy & Bess and more (8 p.m., PBS).

Homestead Rescue
Have a homestead that needs rescuing? Then call Marty Rainey and his kids (above), who thrive on helping people rehab and revive to create more self-sufficient lives, as they do in tonight’s new-season premiere episode, assisting a Wyoming family resurrect a legacy home place (8 p.m., Discovery Channel).

Bring It Home

Extras on the home video release of Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) include a sing-along “jukebox” feature, deleted scenes and featurettes that bring you deeper into the complicated story of the late, great singer and how she became a superstar.

Hollywood’s top palooka goes for extra rounds in The Rocky I-IV Collection (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment), a set of all five feature films in Sylvester Stallone’s epic boxing saga (Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III and Rocky IV, plus Rocky Vs. Drago). And the knockout punch: They’re all in 4k Ultra HD for the first time (plus standard Blu-rays with commentary).

In Salvatore: Shoemaker of the Stars (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), director Luca Guadaginino (Bones and All, Call Me By Your Name) turns his lens on the Italian shoemaker who made sure all the stars of Hollywood’s silent era were well-heeled, founding the luxury footware and accessories company that still bears his name. Actor Michael Stuhbarg (currently on Showtime’s His Honor) narrates.

WEDNESDAY, March 1
Star Wars: The Mandalorian
Season three of creator Jon Favreau’s hit sci-fi adventure series, starring Pedro Pascal as a bounty hunter who becomes a protector of Baby Yoda, begins its third season today (Disney+).

Beauty and the Bleach
Documentary looks at the global beauty trend of skin lightening—and how “lighter” skin taps into a wider issue of racist bullying and prejudice against people who aren’t white (9 p.m., Fuse and Fuse+).

THURSDAY, March 2
Omega: Gift and Curse
The Dominican singer-songwriter known as Omega (real name: Antonio Peter De la Rosa) lifts the veil in this new five-part docuseries to give fans an exclusive look at his life and career (WE tv and ALLBLK).

Topic
New series stars Mark Strong as a talented surgeon who opens an “underground” clinic beneath a London tube station to treat those who cannot, or will not, seek more legitimate medical care. But as anyone who’s had to deal with insurance knows, it doesn’t always go smoothly (Topic).

NOW HEAR THIS

Revisit one of Britain’s most legendary rock bands with Genesis BBC Broadcasts (Rhino), a 5-CD (or 3-LP) collection spanning the group’s music between 1970 and the late 1990s, featuring vocalists Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel and Nick Davis. It features live tracks recorded by the BBC, including an historic set from Wembley Arena in 1987. 

The legendary late Nashville songwriter Harlan Howard once defined country music as “three chords and the truth.” Now the legendary Willie Nelson sings it and brings it in his new album, I Don’t Know a Thing About Love (Sony Music Entertainment), an all-new celebration of Howard’s classic songs, including “Tiger By the Tail,” “Life Turned Her That Way,” “Busted” and “Streets of Baltimore.”

Feb 23 2023
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Movie Reviews

Grin & Bear It

Cast of familiar faces put a ferociously flip, rip-roaring spin on a true incident from the ’80s

Cocaine Bear
Starring Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Margo Martindale and Alden Ehrenreich
Directed by Elizabeth Banks
R

In theaters Friday, Feb. 24

Sometimes, movies have titles that leave you wondering, or might be misleading. Quantum of Solace? Don’t look for it on a map—and what the heck is a Quantum of Solace, anyway? Reservoir Dogs? Watch the whole movie, and you won’t see a single reservoir, or any canines. A Clockwork Orange? No clock, no orange. I screened Armageddon Time last year and liked it, but when it was over, I still felt the title was, well, a tad obscure for a story about a Jewish boy growing up in Queens during the 1980s.

There’s nothing misleading or obscure, however, about Cocaine Bear. It’s 100% on the nose, about a bear that does cocaine—a lot of cocaine.

It’s an outrageously fun—and often quite hilarious—spin on the old “man vs. nature” theme, about people pitted against an apex predator and fighting to keep the body count low. Think Jaws in the Great Smoky Mountains, or Leonardi DiCaprio getting mauled by that grizzly in The Revenant, but, well, a lot more unbridled, unhinged fun than either of those. In this case, the predator is a black bear flying high on blow from a drug smuggler’s crashed airplane.

Black bears—as we learn from some onscreen information from Wikipedia, which opens the film—aren’t generally threats to humans; they’re mostly just looking for something to eat.

But a bear hoovering copious snootfuls of snow? Well, watch out!

And, as you might have heard, it’s based on a stranger-than-life true story from the mid-1980s, when a 175-pound bear did, indeed, come upon a duffle bag filled with cocaine cargo dropped from a smuggler’s airplane in the mountains of east Tennessee. When wildlife agents came across the bear, its stomach gorged with about $15 million worth of nose candy, it was dead. A medical examiner at the time said no creature, not even a large one, would have a chance surviving that much coke. There was no rampage, no attacks on people, just a major, unfortunately fatal OD, a sad end to a majestic creature of the forest.

So, the movie takes a few liberties—well, a lot—with the facts, as movies sometimes do. Actor-director Elizabeth Banks adds to her behind-the-camera resume (which includes directing one of the Pitch Perfect movies, and the 2019 remake of Charlie’s Angels) with this ferociously entertaining action-comedy romp as an ensemble cast of familiar-face characters converges, eventually colliding with the cocaine bear. She finds just the right tone of black (bear) humor, spicing the story with a few severed limbs and goosing it all with some well-timed, funhouse-level gotchas.

Keri Russell is menaced by a bear coked up on nose candy.

It’s a wild ride as a park ranger (Margo Martindale), wildlife inspector (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and single mom (Keri Russell) venture into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to look for a couple of young school-skipping teens (Brooklyn Prince, who made her debut as a wayward kid in the critically hailed The Florida Project, and Christian Convery). Meanwhile, the bear has already attacked a tourist couple (Kristofer Hivju from Game of Thrones and Dutch actress Hannah Hoekstra), while a motley crew of small-time drug-smuggling middlemen (rapper/actor O’Shea Jackson, Alden Ehrenreich—he was young Han Solo in the Star Wars spinoff Solo—and, in one of his final roles before his death last year, Ray Liotta) arrive in the area. They’re hoping to intercept the dropped drugs and scoot before a local cop (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) can sniff out their trail.  

Brooklynn Prince and Henry Christian get more than a tardy slip when they skip school.

You can’t have a movie about a wild, drug-crazed bear without a few bear attacks, can you? The mama bear in Cocaine Bear is completely computer-generated, designed by the same topline effects company that crafted amazing creatures for King Kong, Avatar and Lord of the Rings. But she behaves, well, certainly not like Yogi, Fozzie Bear or Paddington—more like you might expect a big wild animal on toot would really behave, out-of-its mind crazy and desperately craving another snort. (At one point, mama bear does a quick line off a lower leg recently detached from, well, you’ll just have to see it.) There’s blood and guts, but they’re balanced by the well-calibrated, giddily gruesome humor of watching an ensemble of recognizable actors gamely throw themselves into the merry, deep-woods mayhem.

As one of them finds out, pinned underneath an exhausted, zonked-out black bear passed out on top of him, that’s not somewhere you want to be.

Isiah Whitlock Jr. is a cop on the cocaine trail.

Do kids and baby bear cubs get into the stash, too? Yep. Can a cocaine-fueled bear outrun a speeding ambulance? Yes, she can. Is it wise to try to escape a bear—especially one zooming on coke—by climbing high into a tree, or locking a door? Um, no, it is not.

This could very well become a new cult classic, in the vein of some other movies that have successfully found ripe, riotously rich comedic tones in dangerous, deadly situations, like Werewolves Among Us and Snakes on a Plane, turning something frightfully fearful into something else, something fun, flipped-out and funny.

It’s a rip-roaring romp, with lots of rip and lots of roar—and a message from the ‘80s that still resonates today: Keep your stash of cocaine away from the bear!

—Neil Pond

Feb 17 2023
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Books, DVDs, Photography, Pop Culture

The Entertainment Forecast

Feb. 17 – Feb. 23

‘Idol’ returns, Billy Crudup sells timeshares on the moon & Monopoly’s twisted roots

Who’ll hit the jackpot on the new season of “American Idol”?

FRIDAY, Feb. 17
Hello Tomorrow
Ten-episode dramady stars Billy Crudup (from The Morning Show) as a traveling salesman in a future world offering timeshares on the moon. Far out! (Apple TV+).

Carnival Row
Second half of the final season of the fantasy drama, set in a world where humans and creatures clash and starring Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne, starts tonight (Prime Video).

The 12th Victim
True-crime four-part docuseries sheds startling new light on an infamous 1958 case of Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, a teenage couple charged and convicted of brutally killing 11 victims at random (8 p.m., Showtime).

SATURDAY, FEB. 18
A Rose for Her Grave: The Randy Roth Story
Christell Stause, Colin Egglefield and Laura Ramsey star in this TV adaptation of a best-selling novel by true-crime author Ann Rule, about a notorious serial wife-killer and the fearless woman who final brings him to justice (8 p.m., Lifetime).

Two contestants survey their surroundings in new episodes of “Naked and Afraid.”

SUNDAY, Feb. 19
Naked and Afraid
Cue the naked bums and the pixels—it’s a new season of the ultimate survival series, which puts contestants in all kinds of inhospitable places wearing nothing but their birthday suits. Who’ll endure, and who’ll “tap out,” in Mexico’s notorious Devil’s Canyon, or the brutal jungles of Guyana? (8 p.m., Discovery Channel).

Magnum: P.I.
Re-filling the sand-filled shoes originally worn by Tom Selleck, Jay Hernandez returns for a new season of this reboot to the role of the Oahu private eye now solving crimes in the same TV universe as Hawaii Five-0 (9 p.m., NBC).

American Idol
The show that pioneered TV’s musical competition genre returns for season 21 with judges Luke Bryan, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie leading the search for America’s next singing sensation (8 p.m., ABC).

Biography: WWE Legends
In this corner… Explore the careers and private lives of wrestling superstars in this new docuseries (8 p.m., A&E).

Tournament of Champions IV
Who’s tough enough to chew their way to the top? You’ll find out in this new season of Guy Fieri’s food-competition series, in which chefs from across America clash in a series of high-stakes challenges (8 p.m., Food Network and Discovery).

MONDAY, Feb. 20
American Experience: Ruthless—Monopoly’s Secret History
And you thought the popular, iconic board game was just about moving little tokens around a square, gobbling up property deeds, buying houses and hotels and collecting rent. But the story of how it came to be, as told in this insightful documentary, is one of theft, deception and corporate double-dealing. Should we be surprised? (9 p.m., PBS).

Secrets of Spain
Where are the best stops to pause for a nosh in a trek across Spain. Siblings Giaconda and George Scott, who grew up there, take viewers on a guided tour of great places to dig into the cuisine (and the culture) of the region off the beaten tourist track (10 p.m., Cooking Channel).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Just ahead of this year’s 95th annual Academy Awards, Red Carpet Oscars (Thames & Hudson) is a lavish, photo-packed coffee-table treasury of some nine decades of fashions at the entertainment world’s biggest, most culturally impactive annual event. Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett wrote the foreword.

“Get Back” to the heyday of mop-top mania in this lavish, luminous re-release of Harry Benson’s The Beatles (Taschen), a coffee-table compendium of images (some classics, others rarely seen) by the esteemed Scotland-born photog who chronicled most of the Fab Four’s tours, TV appearances, press conferences, play times and movie productions.

TUESDAY, Feb. 21
Bodycam: On the Scene
Tonight’s episode, “Miracle Escapes,” follows officers as a suspect suddenly pulls off, with a policeman wedged half-inside, half-outside of the car, and then other officers rescue a man perilously stuck on a train track (10 p.m., Investigation Discovery).

Snowfall
Tune in for the beginning of the sixth and final season of the gritty drama series about the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic in California, and various lives it directly affected (FX and Hulu).

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 22
Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal
True-story documentary series about a prominent South Carolina family whose lives start to unravel after the death of a teenager in a boating accident (Netflix).

Breaking Ground
Documentary about a Kansas neighborhood working to restore their community—and trying to “break ground” by rebuilding other Black and brown communities across the country (streaming on PBS Voices on YouTube).

THURSDAY, Feb. 23
Outer Banks
The adventure continues in tonight’s kickoff of season three of the teen mystery drama, set on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, as the scrappy group known as the Pogues—washed ashore on an idyllic island—face more obstacles in tracking down the legendary treasure (Netflix).

Jabari Banks as Will as Olly Sholotan as Carlton in “Bel-Aire”

Bel-Aire
Season two of the Fresh Prince “reimagined” spinoff series begins tonight, with Jabari Banks as young Will Smith, who journeys from the mean streets of Philadelphia to the gilded, gated mansions of Hollywood (Peacock).

Feb 15 2023
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Movie Reviews, Movies, Pop Culture

Ant-y Warfare

Paul Rudd returns to the teeny-tiny character that’s become a major cog in the Marvel movie machine

Paul Rudd, Kathryn Newton & Evangeline Lilly confront a new challenge in ‘Quantumania.’

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
Starring Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas & Michelle Pfeiffer
Directed by Peyton Reid
PG-13

In theaters Friday, Feb. 17, 2023

“From small things, mama,” sang Bruce Springsteen back in 1979, “big things one day come.”

The Boss wrote and recorded that song some 35 years before the first Ant-Man movie, in 2015, which introduced fans of the Marvel Comics character to Paul Rudd as the pizza employee, doting dad and petty thief who ends up with a high-tech, form-fitting super-suit that can shrink him down to become an insect-size do-gooder.

Or, when necessary, enlarge him into a towering colossus.

Just like real-life ants who can engineer and construct entire mega-colonies, form themselves en masse into bridges and boats, lift up and carry up to 5,000 times their body weight, and (of course) change the course of picnics, Ant-Man is a teeny-tiny “small thing.” But he’s become a big player in the Marvel movie franchise. Quantumania is the third in the Ant-Man movie franchise, and as the title suggests, it takes place in the “quantum realm,” a hidden dimension in the sprawling Marvel multiverse that’s only accessible through dark sorcery or weird science.

Or the movies like this one.

Quantum-ville is like Oz buzzing on super steroids and maybe some crystal meth, an explosively colorful place of breathtaking awesomeness, unfathomable peril and outrageous oddity—like Alice in Wonderland crossed with Mad Max: Fury Road, Lord of the Rings, Dune and the cantina scene from Star Wars, with a dash of Terry Gilliam’s fanciful Monty Python whimsy. Giant snails are used like horses, there’s a character who looks like a walking stalk of broccoli, and an army of minions with heads that resemble light bulbs. And another character (Carey Stoll) is practically all head.

Oh, and yes, there’s also Bill Murray, playing…oh, does it really matter? It’s Bill Murray.  

And this being a marvel movie, there are some very high stakes—not just the fate of the universe, but the fate of the multiverse and all universes, existence itself. Director Peyton Reed, who’s steered both previous Ant-Man movies, keeps the ka-pow factor high and the tone bounding giddily between high tragedy and quippy silliness. The fate of everything may hang in the balance, but even in the quantum realm, inappropriate, selfish, annoying behavior is still known as a dick move.

And rest assured, you’ll see the movie’s superbad bad guy, Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors—from The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Lovecraft Country, Devotion) again. Dudes who want to rule the world, and more, aren’t easily dissuaded or dismissed. Like Taylor Swift tells us, haters gonna hate. And conquerors gonna conq.

Ant-Man confronts Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors).

It’s a wild rush of heady stuff, but such is the Marvel way, which connects everything in Quantumania to the larger MCU (that’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe), a sort of multi-dimensional superhero realm for the interconnectivity of film properties based on Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Avengers, Dr. Strange, Deadpool, Spider-Man and other characters rooted in Marvel comic-book ink.

I won’t get into the cosmic weeds of all the mind-bending details, but in this latest adventure, Scott Lang (pssst—he’s really Ant-Man) is sucked into the quantum realm (in case you forget what it’s called, it’s mentioned about a dozen times in the first 10 minutes of the film). He’s accompanied by Hope van Dyne (the returning Evangeline Lilly), whose superhero alter ego is the Wasp, and Hope’s brainiac-scientist parents (Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas, also reprising their roles). Kathryn Newton (Little Big Lies, Freaky, Supernatural) comes aboard as Pym’s young-adult daughter, Cassie, whose social activism keeps getting her in trouble on Main Street USA but well suits her for what she’ll end up doing alongside revolutionaries in the quantum realm.

Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas somehow keep their coifs looking stylish, in any dimension!

Can the multiverse be saved? Can Kang be defeated, or at least contained? Will Scott finally bond with his daughter? Will Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas’ expertly coiffed hair ever be unfashionably mussed, even after being violently downsized to microscopic scale, sucked into the vortex of inter-dimensional debris and finding themselves in the middle of a quantum-realm war?    

MCU fans will geek out over the sheer spectacle and the bountiful bombast of CGI—two hours of mind-numbingly expensive zipping and zapping and crashing and smashing. There’s one particular scene (involving gazillions of Lang and Ant-Men, permutations of “all possible outcomes”) who mobilize into something like a teeming human anthill. If you love you some Paul Rudd—an immensely likeable and prolific actor with more than 130 movie and TV credits, from franchise blockbusters to zany romcoms, relationship dramas and even spy flicks—well, you’ll certainly get a heaping helping of him here.   

And in this packed and stacked Ant-Man movie, some actual ants get their spotlight in a major way.

This supersized, noisy and sometimes chaotic superhero adventure won’t be for everyone—particularly those who like their movies smaller, quieter, a bit more subtle and with less blowout spectacle, and fewer ants. But for Marvel fans, it’s the latest mega-movie about a teeny character doing tremendous good, on a massive stage across space and time.

Small things lead to big things—in a Springsteen song, or in the MCU’s multiverse, anything is possible. Ant-Man is an everyman hero, movie manes never get mussed, and Paul Rudd can truly do everything, everywhere, all the time, all at once.

—Neil Pond

Feb 10 2023
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Books, DVDs, Television

The Entertainment Forecast

Feb. 10 – Feb. 16

Top picks for what to watch, read & more

Reece swaps lives, things heat up in Mexico & puppies have a super “bowl”

Reece Witherspoon (left) returns to TV in “Your Place of Mine.”

FRIDAY, Feb. 10
Your Place or Mine
Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher, Tig Notaro and Steve Zahn star in this romcom about a pair of best friends who “life swap” for a week, making some insightful discoveries about themselves and each other (Netflix).

Things get hot “At Midnight,” starring Monica Barbaro.

At Midnight
Romantic rom-com film is set in an exotic hotel in Mexico, where various characters (Diego Boneta, Monica Barbaro, Anders Holm, Whitney Cummings) all converge…and sparks fly at midnight (Paramount+).

SATURDAY, Feb. 11
The Girl Who Escaped: The Kara Robinson Story
Katie Douglas stars in this true-crime original about an abducted teen who survived and ultimately brought down a serial killer (8 p.m., Lifetime).

Crazy Rich Asians
Michelle Yeoh is getting raves (and much-deserved movie-awards attention) for her starring role in the sci-fi mind-bender comedy Everything, Everywhere, All the Time. But see the role which officially re-launched her mainstream acting career, in this charming 2018 romcom (7;30 p.m., truTV).

SUNDAY, Feb. 12
Puppy Bowl XIX
The “super” bowl of canine cuteness returns, with more ways to watch than ever. TV personalities—including Zak Bagins of Ghost Adventures, Alex Guarnaschelli (Supermarket Stakeout) and talent from the upcoming movie Shazam! Fury of the Gods—join bona fide sports commentators to give play-by-play and other insights to the bow-wow action on the mini-gridiron (2 p.m., Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, TBS, HBO Max and discovery+).

MONDAY, Feb. 13
Bob ♥︎ Abishola
Abishola (Folake Olowofooyeku) decides to postpone taking the Medical College Admission exam, to the surprise of Bob (Billy Gardell) and nearly everyone else (8:30 p.m., CBS).

TUESDAY, Feb. 14
Next Level Chef
Superstar chef Gordon Ramsey returns to host more challenges in his unique culinary gauntlet built as a three-story structure. Which chefs can rise to the top? (8 p.m., Fox).

Love Triangle: High Drama
Happy Valentine’s Day! Celebrate with any or all these romcoms, available today—Silver Linings Playbook, Bridget Jones’ Baby, I Think I Love My Wife and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (Starz app).

READ ALL ABOUT IT


This Valentine’s Day, turn to author Aileen Barrett’s Tinder Translator (Hardie Grant), a fun and frisky guide to navigating the choppy waters in the sea of love during our modern era of dating apps.

BRING IT HOME

The Fabelmans, director Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed, award-winning semi-autobiographical film—his most “personal” film yet—tells the touching story of how a young boy with a love of movies became one of the most successful filmmakers of all time (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment).

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 15
Wu-Tang: An America Saga
Youhoo, it’s you-know-Wu-who! Tune in tonight for the third and final season of the re-enacted drama series about the Staten Island hip hop group, which rose to become one of the most influential rap acts with members including Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, RZA and U-God (Hulu)

Full Swing
Tee up for this documentary that follows a diverse group of highly competitive pro golfers on and off the course during a grueling season on the PGA tour (Netflix).

THURSDAY, Feb. 16
Picard
The third final season of the Star Trek streaming spinoff (starring Patrick Stewart reprising his iconic role as the esteemed interstellar commander Jean-Luc Picard) drops today (Paramount+).

Double Cross
The Cross siblings continue their vigilante quest to stop child trafficking, taking their fight all the way to top of a corrupt syndicate, in season four of the drama series starring Ashley Williams and Jeff Logan (streaming on ALLBLK).

Feb 03 2023
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Books, DVDs, Television

The Entertainment Forecast

Feb. 3 – Feb. 9

Top picks for what to watch, read and hear!

A salty tale, Peyton Manning gets a TV show & Pierce Brosnan breaks out

All times Eastern.

FRIDAY, Feb. 3
Dear Edward
Connie Britton (above left) and Taylor Schilling star in this new life-affirming drama series, based on the acclaimed novel about a young boy who somehow survives an airplane crash that kills everyone else aboard, including his parents (Apple TV+).

True Spirit
Ship ahoy! A young woman sets out to do what was thought to be impossible—become the youngest person to sail solo, nonstop and around the world. The true-story saga stars Teagan Croft (right), Cliff Curtis and Anna Paquin (Netflix).

NOW HEAR THIS


Get hip with Now That’s What I Call Music! Vol. 85 (Sony), the latest multi-artist collection including hits from Taylor Swift, Elton John & Britney Spears, Lizzo, Selena Gomez, Nicki Minaj and more. And wow: There have been 84 other CD like this since 1998! 

SATURDAY, Feb. 4
Shark Tank
Artisan charcuterie boards, car fragrances and specialty lighting for night sports are pitched to the investors (9 p.m., ABC).

SUNDAY, Feb. 5
The 65th Annual Grammy Awards
Trevor Noah returns to host this annual ceremony honoring the best music of the year, in all formats and genres, live from Los Angeles (8 p.m., CBS).

Murf the Smurf
New true-crime docuseries (produced by Ron Howard and Ryan Grazer) is based on Jack Roland Murphy, a surfing dude, musician, author and artist…who was involved in the biggest jewel heist in American history and later convicted of murder (MGM+).

MONDAY, Feb. 6
History’s Greatest of All Time with Peyton Manning
The NFL “GOAT” hosts this eight-episode countdown series spotlighting some of the top achievements in various categories, including industry and business, sports, sweet treats and daredevil stunt performers (10 p.m., History Channel).

The Good Doctor
More doc drama! Shaun (Freddie Highmore) invites Aaron (Richard Schiff) to stay with him while exterminators work at Aaron’s house and Lea (Paige Spara) realizes both men have a lot more in common than she realized. Meanwhile, Dr. Morgan Reznick (Fiona Gubelmann) wrestles with a big decision about her career and her personal life (10:01 p.m., ABC).

TUESDAY, Feb. 7
History’s Greatest Heists with Pierce Brosnan
The former James Bond actor slips back into superspy mode to host this series about the most daring, elaborate real-life heists in history, including the notorious Lufthansa theft in New York, depicted in Goodfellas (10 p.m., History Channel).

Body Cam: On the Scene
What’s it like when police officers go on a high-speed chase, and their body cameras record it all? Or when a pursuit ends in a shoot-out? Or a reckless driver endangers everyone on the highway? Find out in tonight’s episode of this docu-series following real cops in real situations that can take turns toward deadly in a split second (Investigation Discovery).

Gina Rodriguez stars in the new comedy series “Not Dead Yet.”

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 8
Not Dead Yet
A broke and newly single woman (Gina Rodriguez) works to restart her life and her career with the only job she can find—writing obituaries—while getting some guidance from an unlikely source (8:30 p.m., ABC).

BRING IT HOME

A newly enhanced home-entertainment release of the 2001 gritty police drama Training Day (Warner Bros. Discovery) reminds us why it got Denzel Washington an Oscar, and his co-star Ethan Hawke a Supporting Role nomination. Bonus content includes commentary by director Antoine Fuqua, alternative endings and deleted scenes.

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 8
Bill Russell: Legend
Two-part documentary takes you inside the life and remarkable career of the hoops legend Bill Russell, who led every one of the basketball teams on which he played to championships—receiving a Gold Medal at the 1956 Olympic Games—and becoming the first Black head coach in NBA history (Netflix).

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Animal House and Blues Brothers director Jon Landis provides the foreword for The Annotated Abbott and Costello (McFarland), a comprehensive chronicle of the iconic comedy duo’s movies throughout the 1940s and ‘50s. Did you know: They performed their most famous routine, “Who’s on First?” in two films, One Night in the Tropics and Naughty Nineties? And they “met” monsters—Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, the Mummy—in a series of Abbott and Costello Meet… movies.   

Penn Badgley plays Joe Goldberg in “You.”

THURSDAY, Feb. 9
You
It’s a new year and a new country in season four, but the dangerously obsessive Joe (Penn Badgley) just can’t find anywhere he can outrun his past (Netflix).

2.9

Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence
Documentary series explores the shocking true incidents at the New York university where a father of one of the student’s fathers psychologically conditioned and later sexually exploited and abused a group of young women (Hulu).

Jan 27 2023
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DVDs, Pop Culture, Television

The Entertainment Forecast

Jan. 27 – Feb. 4

Top picks to watch & more!

Buffy’s back, Jason Segel’s a shrink & Ryan Seacrest’s scary nanny tale

Sarah Michelle Gellar returns to TV in ‘Wolf Pack.’

All times Eastern.

FRIDAY, Jan. 27
Wolf Pack
Buffy’s back! Kinda. A teenage boy and girl find their lives changed forever when a raging California wildfire awakens a terrifying supernatural creature. The new series stars Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Sarah Michelle Gellar, plus Rodrigo Santoro, Armani Jackson and Bella Shepard (Paramount+).

You People
Jonah Hill, David Duchovny, Nia Long, Rhea Pearlman, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Eddie Murphy and Elliott Gould star in this new comedy flick about culture clashes and intergenerational differences between a new couple and their families (Netflix).

Shrinking
A grieving therapist (Jason Segel) starts to break the rules when he tells his clients exactly what he’s thinking, making tumultuous changes in their lives as well as his own. With Harrison Ford and Jessica Williams (Apple TV+).

SATURDAY, Jan. 28
Frozen Planet II
Brrrrrrrrr! Venture into some of the Earth’s coldest, most remote places in this sequel series to the original, more than a decade ago, to observe (and learn from) the amazing species that live and thrive there. Narrated, of course, by David Attenborough, the “voice” of BBC nature docs…who else? (8 p.m., BBC America and AMC+).

NOW HEAR THIS

The sweet, soulful, socially conscious sound of one of America’s most celebrated singer-songwriters travels through time in Marvin Gaye’s Greatest Hits Live in 1976 (Mercury). The remastered release, available on vinyl and CD and originally recorded in Amsterdam, features more than 20 tracks, including performance of “What’s Going On,” “Save the Children,” “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” and “It Takes Two.”

The iconic poet of a generation is now 81, but his music is still going strong in Bob Dylan’s Fragments (Sony). The five-disc collection from the acclaimed Dylan Bootleg Series features songs-in-progress and other tracks that were eventually recorded for his mid-career masterpiece, Time Out of Mind, including “Make You Feel My Love.”  

SUNDAY, Jan. 29
Fire Country
Is it getting hot in here? Or is it just this new drama series, starring Seal Team’s Max Thierot as a hunky young ex-con seeking redemption (and early release) by joining a prison firefighting program in Northern California? (10 p.m., CBS).

MONDAY, Jan. 30
Watchful Eye
Ryan Seacrest is one of the producers of this new series about a young woman (Mariel Molino) who takes a job as a nanny for an affluent family, soon discovering that everyone in the building has dark secrets and ulterior motives (9 p.m., Freeform)

Bake It Till You Make It
Contestants enter their cakes in one of the biggest events on the competitive-cooking calendar, Atlanta’s Ultimate Sugar Show (9 p.m., Food Network).

TUESDAY, Jan. 31
Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the World
Everything stars somewhere, and this insightful four-part documentary series recounts the origins of the bold and revolutionary musical format that became a cultural phenomenon, featuring interviews with rap icons Chuck D, Ice-T, Run DMC, will.i.am, Cypress Hill and many more (check listings, PBS).

Pamela: A Love Story
New documentary humanizes Pamela Anderson, above, who became one entertainment world’s most famous blonde bombshells—the actress, model and Baywatch star whose marriage to rock drummer Tommy Lee didn’t last…but their stolen sex tape sure did (Netflix).  

BRING IT HOME

They’re young, they’re in love and they eat people. The acclaimed Bones And All (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment) is a road movie, a love story and a tale of two young outcasts (Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell) on the move for their next meal, served extremely rare. Who’s hungry?

THURSDAY, Feb. 2
The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder
Second season of the dramatic/comedy series about the Black experience begins tonight, with Gabrielle Union, Chance the Rapper, Leslie Odom Jr., Anthony Anderson, Holly Robinson Peete, Maury Povich and more (Disney +)

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
The hit movie comes to streaming tonight, starring Angela Bassett, left, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, and emotional flashback scenes with the late Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman (Disney+).

18 ½
New Watergate-themed real-life dramedy—a companion of sorts to the limited series Gaslit—follows a young woman (Willa Fitzgerald) in the Nixon White House who tries to leak the president’s notoriously incriminating tape to a reporter. With Bruce Campbell as Nixon, plus Richard Kind, Jon Cryer and John Magaro (5:11 p.m., Starz).

The Reading
New thriller produced by Lee Daniels stars Mo’Nique Hicks as a recent widow who stirs up an evil spirit with her book about her family’s loss (BET+).

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