America’s Most Wanted Trailers

And by America I pretty much just mean me! I want to watch these movies and shows because they look pretty interesting and/or fun. I’m all about sweetness, bright colors, and light, this Summer.

I’m looking for wholesome. I’m looking for people of color to do interesting things. I’m looking for some amount of novelty (but not too much). I’m looking for lovely and loving messages. Some of the darker stuff on this list isn’t released until August, which is when I start looking towards a more solemn Fall viewing list, in preparation for Halloween Month, of course.

But from May until then, “Don’t nobody bring me no bad news!” because Hot Girl Summer is out. Hot Movie Summer (all thirty minutes of it in the Midwest) is in!

Summertime (Whooo!!!)

Polite Society

Okay, this looks novel and deeply funny. I’ve never watched a Bollywood, martial arts movie, so I’m up for watching this. I will not be seeing this in any theaters though. This one is just for at-home viewing only. I’m here for Hindi Action Girls even though I have issues with watching dance routines breaking out in the middle of Action movies. This seems like the kind of movie where breaking into a dance simply makes sense though.

Queen Cleopatra

This actually turns out to be a kind of live-action documentary. It’s funny that this trailer showed up right after I read a mystery book that prominently featured the character, so I was somewhat informed about Cleopatra’s background before watching it. This is not a person that I’ve ever paid a whole lot of attention to really, so I don’t know much about her backstory, but this looks gorgeous, and hopefully, it will be informative and worth the watch.

I like that they cast a Black woman in this role although I kept hearing from historians that she was Greek and Iranian. I mean, that doesn’t rule out her being at least part Black nd here she looks like a woman of mixed ethnicity, but you know it’s just gonna bring out the racists and bigots who are sure to be mad about it, and while I do my best to ignore them (since their rantings have affected nothing in Popular entertainment), I’m still very tired of them.

Star Wars Visions Season 2

I have mixed feelings about the first season of this series. I liked maybe half of the animation in the first one. I hope that the ratio of good to bad cartoons is better this season, although the novelty has worn off. I hope it’s not all one style of animation. I like to see different types. I’m also hoping to see a lot more Old Republic-type stories, too. We got a little bit of that in the first season, but I hope to see more.

Ahsoka

I love to see Latinas in Sci-Fi and love seeing them get the full hero treatment. I’ve been a huge fan of Rosario Dawson since she starred in Men in Black twenty years ago. Ahsoka has been a favorite character of mine for a while and I’m always happy to see her whenever she makes a cameo (The Mandolorian) but here she’s got an entire series that’s all about her and I’m here for it. What kind of adventures is she having? Where has she been? I’m looking forward to finding out.

The Marvels

This looks really colorful and fun, and I’m looking forward to hunkering down in the theater with this movie, some popcorn, and an Icee! It definitely looks more appealing than the first movie, which I thought was okay, but not great. The addition of Kamala Khan is going to be great for the movie since I enjoyed the sensibilities of the series. I just liked how bubbly she was and the series felt happy in general.

I liked Kamala’s family a lot. I liked that they are from the Islamic faith and that they’re mostly onboard about Kamala’s superpowers. The Peter Parker days of keeping it all a secret mostly appear to be over. Nowadays the hero’s parents and friends all seem to know about their status as heroes, and that’s kind of refreshing since I was never into the idea of superheroes leading these kinds of double lives. Daredevil I can understand but a lot of others just seemed to be pointlessly having a secret. Also, I haven’t seen Monica since Wandavision and I really like her. I’m glad to see Photon, the original Captain Marvel, is making a comeback, and wonder what she’s been up to. I also like Brie Larson’s cocky little Carol Danvers who is so much like that in the comics. This is a character who has POWER, knows it, and carries herself like it, and I’m good with that.

Also, I love it when my favorite characters team up.

Secret Invasion

I have mixed feelings about this series. I was never a fan of the Secret Wars and Invasions series in the comic books so I have no particular urge to run to my TV to watch this. But it is novel in that it’s the first time I will get to watch Samuel L Jackson star in his own TV series. The action scenes look really cool and it’s got a lot of cameos, so that looks like fun. It does look like it might be confusing though and my fried-up brain doesn’t want to go near that. I don’t hate it but I’m not loving it either. We’ll see how I feel when we get close to the release date. I mean some shows seem okay but you just don’t know if you want to make that kind of long-term commitment. A two or even three-hour movie is a fling, but a six or eight-hour TV series is a love affair!

Autumn:

I’m really looking forward to at least a couple of these this August and September.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

I was feeling mixed about this when I first heard about it. I was wondering why it was being made, but I like this trailer, hope the movie lives up to it, and by August I’m probably going to be looking forward to some grim and dark movies for Fall anyway. The title sounds appropriately dreadful and it’s been a minute since I’ve watched some good Horror/History.

I will not be taking my niece and nephew to see this unless they specifically ask, because I think it looks too scary for them. On the other hand, my nephew did watch all of the Halloween movies, so we’ll see if I will be watching this in the theater alone.

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster

This looks like an interesting take on the Frankenstein’s Monster movies of my youth. It’s not every day we get to see Black girl mad scientists. I don’t know that I’m enthusiastic to watch this, but I’m putting it here because it’s just different enough from the other Horror movies that it bears mentioning. You can see that the lead character is reading a copy of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. I read that book when I was somewhere near that character’s age and I was unimpressed, although I did like the Kenneth Branagh version from the 90s.

True Detective Night Country

I’ve been a True Detective fan since the first season, (with season 2 being the weakest of the three) even though I don’t normally make Detective series a regular part of my viewing habits. Most of the time it’s because I don’t care for the sometimes obnoxious personalities involved, although the series Psych is an exception to that. I don’t think you can get any more opposite of the Psych style of TV series than True Detective though. It looks very dark (literally in this case) and gritty, and about as close to Horror as a show can get without actually being classified as Horror. I’m also partial to shows and series set in snowy environments (I blame the excellence of 1982s The Thing remake for my rather odd taste.)

The novelty is this will be my first time watching Jodie Foster star in her own series. The last time she was in a TV series was when she was a child in the 70s. I’ve been a big fan of hers since we were both kids and I wasn’t supposed to be up late watching her movies. I’m not “jazzed” about it, mostly because this doesn’t seem like the type of show one gets jazzed about, but I am looking forward to it. I don’t know who her co-tar is so I had to look her up. She is a boxer who is an Indigenous Rights activist and has won some award nominations for her acting debut in Catch the Fair One, which I have not seen (and not likely to see since I am not in the headspace to watch it right now. But it looks great and yall should check it out). I kinda like her already because of her “fuck around and find out” facial expression.

So far, there’s no release date for this, but I’m expecting it to show up in the middle of high Summer.

The Penguin

This series is not set to be released this year but I’m looking forward to it anyway. Apparently, that is indeed Colin Farrell, who I just don’t see in this character, no matter how many times I’m told that’s him. He is completely unrecognizable! (Although I think they’re doing the most on his makeup.) I did like the last Batman movie but I had a couple of misgivings about the villain. I liked the aesthetics and some of the messaging. I also liked the hyperrealistic gritty Gotham that was presented in the movie. This trailer sort of reminds me of a classic mob movie like The Godfather or The Untouchables, something that should be starring Robert DeNiro or Joe Pesci.

The Continental

This is a series a lot of people are eagerly anticipating. The world of John Wick is just a very intriguing sort of place and I’m interested to find out how it works, how it got that way, and how deep all of this goes. One of my friends pointed out to me that she couldn’t get into it because there is no law enforcement in this world, even though it looks very much like ours. I think I pointed out to her that there are quite a number of things that are NOT in the Wick-verse, (like McDonald’s and Soda) and that I liked it because it had some unique worldbuilding, which, in the best instances, is like getting a glimpse into an alternate universe where the police simply never evolved. These other organizations (the Assassins Guilds and the High Table) are the ones that keep order apparently.

Unfortunately, the addition of the racist and anti-Semitic Mel Gibson greatly reduces my enthusiasm for this series. I’m not boycotting the series or anything. I’m just saying that my enjoyment of it will be severely impacted by his presence, which I find deeply distasteful, and I really wish the creators had chosen another actor. I realize he’s got to work somewhere. I just wish he was starring in something I didn’t particularly care about, so I’m going to wait to see how much of him is in it before I commit to watching it.

Next up: Movies (and TV) I had no intention of watching but will probably end up looking at on some idle Saturday afternoon.

My Top Fancasts of Storm for the MCU X-Men

We all know that sooner or later the X-Men will be joining the MCU, since they’ve been teasing it across several television series and movies for the past year, with the most recent tease occurring in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where Professor X from an alternate universe, shows up as the leader of one of Marvel’s covert Superteams, The Illuminati. It has been recently announced that Hugh Jackman will reprise his role as Logan/Wolverine for the MCU production of the next Deadpool film. It’s unknown if he will continue to play Wolverine for any other films.

I don’t know that Patrick Stewart is going to reprise his role (or even if he will still be acting by the time the studios get around to production, but it would make sense for him to do it and also for the mutants to come from another universe). Fans however are losing it about who they are going to cast as one of the X-Men’s greatest mutants, Storm, the Kenyan – born weather goddess who was married to T’Challa’s Black Panther. There has been a lot of wishing and speculation as to who will obtain one of the hottest roles in the MCU.

I have my own ideas about who I’d love to see in this role, and I wanted to go beyond the handful of Black actresses that white fans only know from social media. Okay, there are two kinds of famous Black actors in the US. There are the A-List famous like Viola Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, and Will Smith, that a lot of white people know because their repertoire crosses a very broad audience, and then there are the top Black actors known pretty much only in Black households, like CCH Pounder, Harold Perrineau, Bokeem Woodbine, and before she starred in Nope, Keke Palmer.

So yeah, I got thoughts about who should play one of my all-time favorite X-Men, who is also one of the most badass and powerful mutants. I automatically eliminated any actress I thought was too light-skinned for the role. Storm was born in Kenya, and her actress needs to not just be a “reflection” of her birth country, but an opportunity for a dark-skinned actress who might not be considered for other kinds of roles. White fans don’t give a shit about that. All they want is someone they know, and they think is pretty, which is why they keep suggesting people like Zoe Kravitz and, once again, Halle Berry.

I know it’s easy to make suggestions for who to play Storm, but it’s sometimes easier to picture them in the role if you see them moving and speaking, so I’ve also listed a few of their acting credits so you can check them out.

Here are my top choices for who I’d like to see play Storm in an upcoming movie.

Yetide Badaki

Yetide is my top pick for Storm because she already has experience playing a goddess in American Gods on Starz, and she is absolutely gorgeous. In fact when I first saw her my first thought was, “That’s Storm!” I can’t imagine her rocking a mohawk, but I’m certain she can pull that off with the same grace as the character Bilquis.

Keke Palmer

Keke is definitely what used to be known in the Black community as Black Famous. If you’re a child of the 90s then you should be familiar with her work as an actor and singer on different shows on the Disney channel. I remember her rendition of Reflection from Disneymania. She is now all-around famous as Emerald Haywood in Jordan Peele’s Nope released just this Summer. So she’s funny, she’s got those fierce action hero vibes, and I can imagine her with a mohawk.

Dewanda Wise

Dewanda has the kind of ethereal beauty that befits a goddess. We saw in Jurassic World Dominion that she can carry an action scene, and she seems poised for that breakout role that so many actors dream about, as she has appeared in a lot of big-name productions (The Good Wife, Special Victims Unit, Boardwalk Empire) without really taking off. Storm would be perfect for establishing her as an actress to be reckoned with.

Moses Ingram

The easiest place to see Yale graduate Moses Ingram’s regal bearing is in Disney’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series. She showed such strong character, command, and gravity, in her role as a kind of reluctant villain, that it took me a minute to get past the character, but I eventually fell in love with this actress a little. Like James Earl Jones, she has a classical acting style, but she is definitely giving off some Angela Bassett vibes, (the Black community had long thought that Angela would at some point be chosen to play Storm, but we got Ramonda instead). But I will accept Moses in the role. The other places she can be seen are in Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, and in the Summer Action film, Ambulance.

Ana Diop

Ana Diop is currently playing the alien Starfire in the HBO series Titans, which is a very fire goddess-like character, so she’d be perfect to play a weather goddess, too. Diop is a Senegalese actress and model, with classic African features and bearing, and yeah, if the MCU decided to go in that direction, I’m pretty sure she could rock a mohawk, too. She is currently starring in a Netflix horror movie titled Nanny.

Kiki Layne

Kiki Layne is still a relatively new actress with one of the few credits in which I’ve seen her was 2018’s If Beale Street Could Talk by Barry Jenkins, where she showed her softer side, and she showed her action prowess in Netflix’s The Old Guard, alongside Charlize Theron. This is another actress that is bubbling just under the radar, right on the cusp of big time stardom, and playing Storm would make her a household name. She has the beauty and poise to pull it off, and if Disney is in talks to choose a new Storm, I’d be fine with her in the role.

Dominique Jackson

Now stick with me here. I know that casting a transgender actress in the role is risky and daring because a lot of people would totally lose their shit, but if absolutely anyone can pull off playing a goddess it is the tall, imposing, and elegant Dominique Jackson. When I was watching her character Elektra Abundance on the FX series Pose, I thought to myself, she would be incredible as Storm, and I would love to see it. It would also be groundbreaking to have a transgender actress in the MCU.

Runners-Up

Michaela Coel – Was one of my top picks to play Storm, but has already taken a role in Wakanda Forever as one of the Dora Milaje.

Aja Naomi King – She is a lot of people’s first choice, but I wasn’t feeling it. She’s alright and nothing to be upset about. I just had other ideas. A lot of people like her though.

Janelle Monet – I like Janelle and she has proven to be a competent actress who brings gravity and elegance to all her roles, but I just can’t imagine her as Storm. She comes across as much too young to me, but she is a fan favorite for the role. I don’t object to her playing Storm, I just can’t see it.

Also, there are other fan favorites like:

Gina Torres

Naomie Harris

For the record:

I liked Halle Berry as Storm just okay, but she was given nothing to do, and she wasn’t shown as being nearly as powerful as we know her to be from the comic books. I don’t object to Halle’s acting abilities but she wasn’t really Storm material. I thought she was simply too light-weight to play her.

I disliked Alexandra Shipp immensely. I thought she was a mistake the moment I saw her and have no idea how she got chosen for a role she was too young and ill-equipped to perform let alone who hired her. She simply wasn’t up to par for this character. We need an actress who can play larger than life, who can play a god. Storm, like Wanda, is one of the top-tier most powerful superheroes in the MCU and I never got that vibe from Shipp.