Tag: Peacock

Review: ‘Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy,’ starring Martin Estrada, Greg Kading, Morgan Fairchild, Katy Forrester, Deborah Wilker and David Feifel

May 4, 2025

by Carla Hay

Martin Estrada in “Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy” (Photo courtesy of Peacock)

“Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy”

Directed by Robert Palumbo

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy” features a predominantly white group of people (with one Hispanic person) discussing the life and death of actor Matthew Perry, who died of a ketamine overdose at his Los Angeles home on October 28, 2023, when he was 54 years old.

Culture Clash: Perry struggled for years with his addictions to drugs and alcohol; five people faced criminal charges for supplying the ketamine that led to his death. 

Culture Audience: “Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Perry and the comedy series “Friends,” but this flimsy documentary just rehashes widely available information and interviews too many people who have little or no personal experiences with Perry.

Morgan Fairchild in “Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy” (Photo courtesy of Peacock)

“Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy” is nothing but a cheaply made, tabloid-like documentary that doesn’t add anything meaningful to what’s already been reported. The only person interviewed who knew him is Morgan Fairchild, who was a guest star on “Friends.” All of the information in the documentary is rehashed and regurgitated. This documentary is the journalistic equivalent of ambulance-chasing to cash in on a health-related tragedy or crisis.

Directed by Robert Palumbo, “Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy” is only one hour long, but it’s still overly padded with widely available archival material and interviewees who repeat information that’s already well-known. Emmy-nominated actor Matthew Perry was best known for his role as sarcastic Chandler Bing in NBC’s 1994 to 2004 comedy series “Friends.” The documentary includes excerpts from the audio book of Perry reading from his 2022 memoir “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.” The “big terrible thing” in the title was his longtime battle with addiction, which he first went public about in the late 1990s.

Perry was born on August 19, 1969, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, but he spent most of his childhood living in Ottawa, Canada. Perry’s parents got divorced in 1970. His father John Bennett Perry is a now-retired actor/singer, who had supporting roles in several TV series and movies throughout the 1970s and 1990s. John Bennett Perry was also known for years for starring in Old Spice commercials. Matthew Perry’s mother Suzanne Marie Morrison (formerly known as Suzanne Marie Perry and Suzanne Marie Langford) used to be the press secretary for Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

After Suzanne and John got divorced, John moved to Los Angeles. Matthew would visit him there and said in his memoir that he has vivid memories of feeling lonely when he was a child going on plane trips as an unaccompanied minor when he had to go back and forth between the United States and Canada. At 15 years old, Matthew permanently moved to Los Angeles to live with his father and to pursue a career in acting.

His divorced parents got married to other people in 1981: Suzanne married TV journalist Keith Morrison, best known as one of the correspondents on NBC’s newsmagazine show “Dateline.” John married Debbie Boyle and had a daughter with her named Maria (nicknamed Mia), who was born in 1986. Mia is not discussed at all in the documentary. The documentary’s only acknowledgement that Matthew had a sibling is in a brief TV news interview clip that Mia, her mother and other family members did to talk about the Matthew Perry Foundation, which was established after his untimely death.

Matthew was a never-married bachelor with no children. From the 1990s to the 2010s, he had some high-profile romances with several actresss, including Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow, Yasmine Bleeth, Cameron Diaz and Lizzy Caplan. Most of these relationships each lasted for less than a year, but his relationship with Caplan lasted from 2006 to 2012.

On October 28, 2023, Matthew died of a ketamine overdose that caused him to drown while he was alone in a hot tub in his Los Angeles home. The documentary repeats information that has already gotten a lot of media coverage: Matthew had been injecting unprescribed ketamine (which is illegal in California) in the days leading up to his death.

In many interviews and in his memoir, Matthew said his alcoholism started when he was in his mid-teens. His addiction to painkiller pills began when he was prescribed this medication because of an injury that he got during a jet skiing accident while filming the 1997 movie “Fools Rush In.” He had numerous stints in hospitals and rehab centers for many years of his life.

In 2022, when Matthew was doing interviews to promote his memoir, he went public about using prescribed ketamine (which is legal in California) as therapy for his depression. Matthew described doing ketamine as like “being hit over the head with a happy shovel.” It’s mentioned in the documentary that in the final three days of his life, Matthew received 27 ketamine injections.

Ultimately, five people were arrested and charged with being responsible for Matthew getting the deadly dose of ketamine: Kenneth Iwamasa, who was Matthew’s personal assistant at the time; Erik Fleming, a “middle man” drug dealer; Dr. Mark Chavez; Dr. Salvadore Plasencia; and high-level drug dealer Jasveen Sangha, who has the nickname the Ketamine Queen because she was known to sell ketamine to rich and famous people, according to law enforcement’s announcements about the case.

In August 2024, Iwamasa, Chavez and Fleming took plea deals instead of going to trial. Iwamasa and Fleming each pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death. Chavez pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. At the time this documentary was premiered, Plasencia and Sangha pleaded not guilty and were awaiting trial. The documentary repeatedly shows disclaimer statements that all people charged in this case are innocent until guilt is proven or admitted in a court of law.

One of the people interviewed in the documentary is Martin Estrada, U.S. attorney for State of California Central District. Estrada says that when it comes to drug overdoses, it is now more likely than it was in previous centuries for people to be prosecuted for selling or supplying the drugs that caused an overdose. He adds, “The big takeaway from this case is that when people involved in reckless activity…cause the death of others, there needs to be accountability.”

The documentary also has an interview with Dr. David Feifel, a medical doctor who administers ketamine therapy, but this doctor never met Matthew. Dr. Feifel does not say anything insightful in the interview. The documentary has a tacky and unnecessary section where an unidentified woman, who’s a Dr. Feifel patient, is seen getting a ketamine injection and then talking about it. Medically speaking, it’s pointless to compare this woman’s experience with ketamine to Matthew’s ketamine overdose. There are too many variables, such as biological differences, and she received a legal dosage in a medical setting.

Fairchild, who had a recurring guest role as Chandler Bing’s mother Nora Tyler Bing on “Friends,” has nice things to say about Matthew. However, she was not close to him in the last years of his life. Therefore, whatever memories that she shares of him are outdated and can’t speak to what was going on in his life when he apparently became hooked on ketamine.

Matthew’s addictions were public during most of the years that he was on “Friends.” Fairchild comments on the brief time she worked with him while he was struggling with his addictions and recovery: “I tried to reach out a little bit and let him know I was here for him.” In other words, there was not much she could do for someone she only knew as a temporary work colleague.

It’s mentioned several times in the documentary that Matthew was very generous about helping other people who were also struggling with addiction issues. The documentary has clips from a social media video that Matthew’s actor friend Hank Azaria posted on October 29, 2023, the day after Matthew’s death. In the video, Azaria gives a heartfelt tribute and shares some fond memories of Matthew.

Other people interviewed in the documentary are retired Los Angeles Police Department detective Greg Kading; Deborah Wilkers, journalist for The Hollywood Reporter; Jennifer O’Neill, a former personal assistant to a celebrity (the documentary doesn’t say which celebrity); Anna David, author of “Party Girl,” her 2004 novel based partly on her life as a cocaine-addicted entertainment journalist; and Katy Forrester, a reporter for the U.S. edition of the British tabloid newspaper The Sun.

O’Neill says that people shouldn’t be so judgmental of Iwamasa because she knows from experience that personal assistants of celebrities are often afraid of getting fired if they don’t do what their bosses tell them to do. Although O’Neill has no direct knowledge of what type of work relationship that Iwamasa had with Matthew Perry, she speculates anyway. And no disrespect to “Party Girl” author David, but it’s pointless for this documentary to have an interview with her because she’s a novelist with no connection to Matthew Perry.

All you need to know about the low quality of this documentary is it doesn’t even have any journalists who’ve interviewed Matthew Perry. Instead, the closest thing you’ll get to a journalist’s story about a personal encounter with Matthew Perry is Forrester saying that she went to Perry’s house after the news broke that he died, and she thinks it was a media circus outside of the house. Forrester makes this comment with no self-awareness that she’s part of this media circus by working for a tabloid that sends reporters to a house of a celebrity who has recently died. This empty and soulless documentary is just more of this type of tabloid muckraking.

Peacock premiered “Matthew Perry: A Hollywood Tragedy” on February 25, 2025.

Review: ‘Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,’ starring Al B. Sure!, Gene Deal, Sara Rivers, Tim Patterson, Ariel Mitchell, Lisa Bloom and Mylah Morales

January 17, 2025

by Carla Hay

Al B. Sure! in “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” (Photo courtesy of Peacock)

“Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy”

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” features a predominantly black group of people (with some white people and one Asian person) talking about the rise and fall of disgraced mogul/entertainer Sean Combs.

Culture Clash: Several of the people who are interviewed claim that Combs abuses his fame and power to commit crimes that allegedly include assaults, various sex crimes, racketeering, attempted murder and murder.

Culture Audience: “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries about celebrities and can tolerate graphic details in sex scandals.

Sara Rivers in “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” (Photo courtesy of Peacock)

“Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” can be recommended to watch only for some of the revealing interviews and previously unreleased footage. However, the tabloid-ish format lowers the quality of this documentary, which needed more cohesive timeline editing. Depending on how much a viewer knows about disgraced mogul/entertainer Sean Combs’ previously reported scandals, “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” will either be shocking or substantiating when it comes to his very troubled life.

There is no director credited for “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” which is a production of AMPLE Entertainment, Blink Films and FGW Productions. The executive producers are Ari Mark, Phil Lott, Sumit David, Stephanie Frederic, Laura Jones and Justine Kershaw. There is a very good variety of people interviewed who have had contact with Combs in some way, including childhood friends, former employees, ex-colleagues, journalists and attorneys. However, the documentary isn’t comprehensive and leaves out or sidelines some details.

Through captions, “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” shows multiple statements from Combs’ attorneys denying all the accusations that have been made against Combs in the documentary and elsewhere. At the time this documentary was released, Combs was being held without bail in a New York City jail on federal charges of racketeering and sex trafficking, after being arrested in September 2024. He is also facing several civil lawsuits, most having to do with sex crimes—including accusations of raping women, men and children—with some of these alleged crimes going as far back as the 1990s. Many of the accusers say that Combs drugged them without their consent.

Combs (who was born in New York City on November 4, 1969) is known for being a mogul in entertainment, fashion and alcoholic beverages, as well as being a recording artist, music producer and occasional actor. Over the years, he has had several nicknames, including Puff Daddy, Puffy, P. Diddy, Diddy and Love. He has a long list of celebrity associates who have said they are his close friends, including Jay-Z, Ashton Kutcher and Mary J. Blige. Some of the artists whom Combs has mentored include Justin Bieber and Usher. As of this writing, these celebrities have not publicly commented on Combs’ legal problems that have landed him in jail.

Out of all the people interviewed in “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” R&B singer/producer Al B. Sure! makes the most explosive allegations, by claiming that Combs was involved in a conspiracy to murder Sure, who was hospitalized and in a coma in 2022 for renal failure and a liver transplant. Sure also claims that his ex-girlfriend Kim Porter (the mother of their son Quincy) was murdered and did not die of pneumonia (the official cause of her death) in 2018. According to Sure, Porter was murdered because she was about to go public about Combs abusing her and committing other crimes.

Sure (whose real name is Albert Joseph Brown III) was one of the first artists at Uptown Records, the company founded by Andre Harrell, who died of heart failure at age 59, in 2020. Combs started as an intern at Uptown in 1990, and he eventually became a high-ranking A&R executive at Uptown until he was fired in 1993. Not long after Combs was fired from Uptown, he launched Bad Boy Entertainment, which started as a record company and expanded into other business ventures.

Combs and Sure were connected not just for business reasons but also for personal reasons. According to Sure, he was in a committed relationship with Porter (a model who used to work as Uptown’s receptionist), and they were raising their son Quincy (born in 1991), when Combs aggressively moved in on Porter and convinced her to be Combs’ girlfriend. Combs and Porter then became an on-again/off-again couple from 1994 to 2007.

Combs adopted Quincy and had three biological kids with Porter: son Christian (born in 1998 and nicknamed King) and twin daughters Jessie and D’Lila Combs (born in 2006). In the documentary, Sure says that Quincy was never legally adopted by Combs. Combs has another son named Justin (born in 1993) from a relationship with stylist Misa Hylton.

Although “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” is the first time that Sure has spoken about his accusations in an on-camera interview, he does not provide any proof that Porter was murdered, nor does the documentary investigate further. The documentary also fails to give details or ask questions about what other health issues could have contributed to Sure’s hospitalization. If Sure thinks he was the victim of attempted murder, how did this alleged crime happen? Was he poisoned? If so, how? Don’t expect this documentary to answer those questions.

Sure says in the documentary that he can’t go into specifics for “legal reasons,” as he hints that he is in the midst of some legal issues regarding this accusation of attempted murder. He cryptically says that he has “a file” on the people he believes are behind the attempted murder, and he hints that Combs is the mastermind of this alleged conspiracy. Considering all the other violent crimes that Combs is accused of committing, this accusation is just one more to add to the mess of scandals that have disgraced Combs.

“Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy,” as the title suggests, goes all the way back to Combs’ childhood to try to make sense of how his life ended up this way. Childhood friends (who all worked with Combs in the 1990s), such as Tim Patterson, Lee Davis (also known as DJ EZ Lee) and Rich Parker give interviews and talk about how Combs stood out for being ambitious and fashionable, even if he was bullied for it. From an early age, Combs was very conscious of his image, which he always projected as being more privileged, more business savvy and more upwardly mobile than his peers. But as time went on, and Combs gained more money and power, these childhood friends admit this child who used to be bullied grew up to be a bully himself with a very nasty temper.

Of these childhood friends in the documentary, Patterson has the most interesting things to say because when he was a boy, he and his single mother lived for a while with Combs and his widowed mother Janice Combs in Mount Vernon, New York, when Patterson and his mother fell on hard times. In the documentary, Patterson shares some childhood photos of himself and Sean. Considering that Patterson says that he has not been in touch with Sean since 1999, Patterson’s perspective is not very helpful in commenting on Sean’s recent legal problems.

Sean’s father Melvin Combs was a drug dealer/police informant who was murdered (shot to death) at age 33, when Sean was 2 years old. The murder remains unsolved. The death of Sean’s father had a profound impact on Sean, according to people who knew him in his youth, who say that Sean tended to glamorize the gangster lifestyle. Patterson mentions in the documentary that when Sean was a teenager, Sean was involved in the same gang that was associated with Sean’s father Melvin.

Much later in the documentary, Patterson and Davis mention wild parties that Janice used to have at her house, where they as children were exposed to things (sex and drugs) that underage kids shouldn’t see or experience. Janice, who did not respond to requests to be interviewed for the documentary, remains a prominent figure in Sean’s life. Sean has a younger sister named Keisha, who is never mentioned in the documentary.

Although there have been stories that Sean grew up in poverty, the reality is that he was closer to middle class, since his mother (who worked as a model and a teacher assistant) could afford to send him to private Catholic schools for his pre-college education. Sean attended Howard University, where he studied business, but he dropped out in his second year at Howard to pursue a career in the music industry. Ron Lawrence, one of his former Howard classmates who worked with Sean as a producer, is interviewed in the documentary but doesn’t say much beyond how he’s still processing how far Sean has fallen from grace.

The Notorious B.I.G., the rapper also known as Biggie Smalls, was Bad Boy’s first superstar artist. The documentary briefly mentions unproven gossip that Sean could have had something to do with the 1997 unsolved drive-by-shooting murder of the Notorious B.I.G. (real name: Christopher Wallace), who reportedly wanted to leave Bad Boy Records. Sean’s former bodyguard Gene Deal hints that he believes this theory to be true. The documentary also repeats longtime speculation that in the East Coast/West Coast hip-hop feud of the 1990s, Sean might have had something to do with the death of West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur, whose 1996 drive-by-shooting murder remains unsolved.

“Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” jumps back and forth in Sean’s personal timeline history, which makes the documentary’s narrative a little bit messy and confusing to people unfamiliar with his past. The documentary would have been better served to have a timeline that was more chronological. “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” also over-relies on “fade to black” transitions between scenes that give the tone of contrived suspenseful drama that is common in reality show editing.

There’s a significant amount of time spent discussing Sean’s 1991 scandal of nine people (ranging in ages from 17 to 28) dying in a stampede at an AIDS fundraiser basketball game that he promoted at the City College of New York gymnasium. The documentary includes archival footage of this tragedy. Sean was blamed because the event was oversold. He later settled out of court with the families of the dead victims. Two of these family members are interviewed in the documentary: Jason Swain (whose 20-year-old brother Dirk died) says his family received $40,000 in the settlement. Sonny Williams (whose 20-year-old sister Sonya died) says that his family received $50,000 in the settlement.

However, the documentary barely mentions or ignores the 1999 scandals where Sean was accused of directly committing assault. In May 1999, Steve Stoute (who was the manager of rapper Nas at the time) went public about Sean and two associates beating up Stoute in his office because Sean didn’t like how Sean looked as a featured artist in Nas’ “Hate Me Now” music video. Stoute sued Combs, and the case was settled for a reported $500,000 paid to Stoute. Combs pleaded guilty to harassment and was sentenced to one day of anger management. None of that information is in the documentary.

A quick mention is made about the December 1999 violent fight that got Sean into even worse trouble. Sean, his then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez and Bad Boy Records rapper Shyne were arrested after Sean got into an argument at Club New York in New York City, guns were fired during the argument, and three bystanders were injured. Charges were never filed against Lopez. However, Shyne (birth name: Jamal Barrow) and Sean went on trial in 2001 for various weapons-related crimes for this incident. Sean was acquitted of all the charges, while Shyne was found guilty of eight of the 10 charges and served almost nine years in prison.

The avalanche of sexual abuse allegations against Sean began with a lawsuit filed against him in November 2023 by Cassie Ventura, who was his on-again/off-again girlfriend from 2007 to 2018. Ventura (who went by the one-name stage moniker Cassie) was also signed to Bad Boy Records. Her lawsuit—which accused him of sexual abuse, sex trafficking and other physical abuse—was settled one day after it was filed, but it didn’t stop more lawsuits with similar allegations from pouring in against Sean.

“Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” goes over many of the same details that have already been widely reported about several of these lawsuits. The documentary also includes the March 2016 security video footage from the InterContinental Hotel in Los Angeles that CNN televised in May 2024. In this leaked footage, which matched an incident described in Ventura’s lawsuit, Sean can be seen kicking and dragging Ventura in a hotel hallway when she tried to leave by elevator.

After this footage was exposed, Sean made a statement in a now-deleted Instagram video, where he claimed “full responsibility” for what he did in that assault video and said that he was “fucked up” and was “at rock bottom” in his life when he attacked Ventura. He also said he went into therapy and rehab, but didn’t go into further details about when and for how long. It’s unknown if he ever made an apology to Ventura, but he said in the video: “I’m not asking for forgiveness.”

Mylah Morales, a makeup artist who worked with Sean and Ventura, is one of the people interviewed in the documentary. Morales says she witnessed seeing Ventura’s assault injuries from a separate incident after Ventura and Sean were alone in a hotel room together, but Morales doesn’t say she actually saw or heard Sean causing the injuries. Morales also admits she was too afraid to do anything about it at the time because she didn’t have proof and thought that she wouldn’t be believed.

Gene Deal, who was Sean’s bodyguard from 1991 to 2005, says he went public years ago about Sean’s violence behind the scenes, but nothing was really done about it until Ventura’s lawsuit opened up the floodgates. Deal says he quit working for Sean not because of the awful things he knew was going on but because Deal didn’t like that Janice Combs was treating Deal like her personal assistant. Not surprisingly, Deal also says that several unnamed people helped commit and/or cover up the alleged crimes. Deal doesn’t let himself off the hook because he says he was one of the enablers who witnessed a lot of things that he could have reported to law enforcement but did not.

A woman, who is interviewed in the shadows and only identified as Ashley, says that she was repeatedly raped by Sean but doesn’t say what year this alleged crime happened. She claims she filed a police report, which the documentary filmmakers say was withheld from them when they requested a copy of the report. Unfortunately, the documentary does not name the police department responsible for allegedly withholding this information.

Another anonymous “in the shadows” interview is with a man identified only as a former Bad Boy employee, who says that Sean sexually harassed him on the job, by showing him gay male porn. Sean allegedly told this man that gay sex is a rite of passage and what men have to do to get ahead in the music industry. The unidentified man (whose voice is disguised in the interview) also hints that he was sexually assaulted (at the very least groped) by Sean, but he didn’t want to go into more details.

Also coming forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Sean is Sara Rivers, one of the former members of Da Band from executive producer Sean Combs’ “Making the Band 2” reality series, which aired from 2002 to 2004 on MTV. In the documentary, Rivers breaks down in tears when she talks about how Sean put his hands on her in inappropriate places. She says it’s the first time she’s revealed this information in an interview. In “Making the Band 2,” Sean notoriously made the band members do outrageous “challenges” to get his approval and to stay on the show, such as walk from Manhattan to Brooklyn and back to Manhattan (an eight-hour trek by foot) to get him cheesecake.

Rivers claims to have witnessed Sean making verbal threats to members of Da Band in separate incidents. He allegedly said to one member: “You make me so mad, I could eat your flesh.” To another member he allegedly said, “I could give a crackhead $20 to smack the shit out of you.” Rivers does not name the members who received these alleged threats.

The lawsuits and criminal charges against Sean have a slew of many disturbing allegations that have been reported elsewhere and don’t need to be repeated in this review. However, the documentary includes interviews with attorneys Ariel Mitchell and Lisa Bloom, who have separate law practices, and have several clients who are plaintiffs in these lawsuits, some of which are detailed in the documentary. Mitchell compares Sean to the demonic Lucifer, while Bloom says Sean is a “monster.”

Also interviewed are journalists Kim Osorio, Jasmine Simpkins and Sharon Carpenter, who was an on-air host from 2013 to 2015 at Revolt, the TV network that Sean founded in 2013. Sean stepped down from Revolt in 2023, after he was accused by more people of sex crimes. In the documentary, these journalists just repeat things that are already common knowledge to people who follow news about these scandals. Mel Love, a former Uptown Records executive, is interviewed but doesn’t have anything new or interesting to add.

One of the most telling parts of the documentary in showing how victims are often blamed is when Parker wonders aloud if Ventura did anything to make Sean angry in that 2016 video where Sean viciously assaulted a helpless Ventura, who did not fight back in the video. An unidentified documentarian not seen on screen then asks Parker if it matters if Ventura did anything to require that assault, and it suddenly dawns on Parker that he’s victim blaming. He lowers his head slightly in shame and admits that Ventura did not deserve the assault, regardless if she argued with Sean or not.

And therein lies much of the point that the documentary makes over and over: Too often, people who are rich and famous are automatically exalted as “better” than most people, even when there is evidence that some wealthy celebrities have a history of violence and committing abuse. One of the people interviewed in the documentary is Dr. Carolyn West, an expert in trauma from domestic abuse and from sex trafficking. In one of the documentary’s best statements, she says that even though abusers often come from abusive backgrounds, it shouldn’t excuse their crimes and shouldn’t prevent victims from coming forward to seek justice: “Regardless of what trauma you have, you have to hold people accountable.”

Peacock premiered “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy” on January 14, 2025.

February 12, 2025 UPDATE: Sean Combs has filed a defamation lawsuit against NBCUniversal, the parent company of Peacock, because of “Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy.” The lawsuit, which is seeking at least $100 million in damages, claims that the documentary maliciously and recklessly included accusations that Combs is a serial muderer and has sexually abused underage girls, which are accusations that Combs denies in the lawsuit.

February 14, 2025 UPDATE: A woman identified under the alias Jane Doe has dropped her rape lawsuit against Jay-Z and Combs. In the civil lawsuit, the woman claimed both of them raped her on the same night in the same room in 2000, when she was 13 years old. Jay-Z has denied this ever happened, and his denial did not mention Combs, who also denies the accusation.

Review: ‘Gary’ (2024), starring Dion Mial, Todd Bridges, Shannon Price, Sue Coleman, Willie Coleman, Victor Perillo and Anna Gray

August 28, 2024

by Carla Hay

Dion Mial in “Gary” (Photo courtesy of Peacock/Raw TV Ltd.)

“Gary” (2024)

Directed by Robin Dashwood

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Gary” features a group of white and African American people discussing the life and career of actor Gary Coleman, who died of complications from a head injury in 2010, at the age of 42.

Culture Clash: Coleman rose to massive fame as the star of the sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes,” but his life was plagued by health problems and turmoil in his personal relationships.

Culture Audience: “Gary” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of “Diff’rent Strokes” and are interested in watching documentaries about former child stars.

Shannon Price in “Gary” (Photo courtesy of Peacock/Raw TV Ltd.)

There seems to be a never-ending fascination with stories about former child stars who have tragic outcomes in their lives. “Gary” chronicles one of these stories. This watchable documentary about Gary Coleman doesn’t reveal anything new but it exposes how he had questionable judgment in choosing so-called “close friends” who gained financially from him. The movie needed more investigation about crime allegations. The only people who will be surprised by anything in this documentary are those who are unaware of all the previous media coverage about Coleman’s personal problems and his 2010 death at the age of 42.

The cause of Coleman’s death was a head injury, which happened in his home in Santaquin, Utah. He was taken off life support after being in a coma for two days at a hospital in Provo, Utah. A medical examiner’s report and a police investigation ruled that the cause of Coleman’s death was accidental. His ex-wife Shannon Price, who was still living with Coleman after their divorce, has maintained her story that Coleman’s injury was caused by him falling down the stairs in their home. She says that she was in another room at the time that he fell down the stairs.

Directed by Robin Dashwood, “Gary” has a major advantage that other news reports and documentaries about Coleman don’t have: The “Gary” documentary features interviews with just about everyone who was very close to Coleman in his life, including rare interviews with his parents Willie Coleman and Sue Coleman, who were estranged from Gary for years because of accusations that they stole money from him when they were managing his earnings. Price is also interviewed, as well as some of Gary’s friends and former colleagues. The documentary also has audio and video clips of archival interviews that Gary did.

Dion Mial, a former Michael Jackson impersonator, is the friend who gets the most screen time in the documentary. Mial met Gary when Gary was 10, and Mial was 14. Their friendship lasted for the rest of their lives, even after Gary moved on to a new set of friends when he relocated from California to Utah in the mid-2000s. In the documentary, Mial talks very fondly of Gary and shows how he has kept a lot of Gary’s personal possessions in storage in his garage.

Gary’s former agent Victor Perillo, who represented Gary from 1975 to 1987, is interviewed in the documentary. Perillo, like many others who knew Gary as a child, describe him as unusually mature and funny for his young age. Gary got his first significant break as an actor by starring in a Harris Bank commercial in 1977. It led to guest appearances on sitcoms such as “The Jeffersons” and “Good Times.” And then came his breakthrough starring role on the TV comedy series “Diff’rent Strokes,” which was on the air from 1978 to 1986.

Diff’rent Strokes,” which was created by Jeff Harris and Bernie Kukoff, was about two orphaned brothers in New York City—Arnold Jackson (played by Gary Coleman) and Willis Jackson (played by Todd Bridges)—who are adopted by wealthy businessman Phillip Drummond (played by Conrad Bain), who employed the Jackson brothers’ widowed mother as a housekeeper for many years. The mother of Arnold and Willis had asked on her deathbed for Phillip to adopt her sons. Phillip is a widower whose daughter Kimberly (played by Dana Plato) is raised with Arnold and Willis. (Plato died of a drug overdose in 1999, at the age of 34. Bain died in 2013, at age 89.)

“Diff’rent Strokes” was groundbreaking for being the first primetime American TV series about an interracial adoptive family. (The Jackson brothers were African American, and the Conrads were white.) “Diff’rent Strokes” co-star Bridges and “Diff’rent Strokes” casting director Eve Brandstein, who are interviewed separately in the “Gary” documentary, say that “Diff’rent Strokes” got some complaints and hate mail from white viewers and black viewers who didn’t like seeing this type of interracial family on TV. Coincidentally, Gary (who was born in 1968, in Zion, Illinois) was adopted in real life, but he was not raised with any siblings.

Bridges, who says that Gary was a like a younger brother to him, comments on the accusation that Phillip Drummond was a “white savior” character: “It wasn’t that it was a white savior there. It was just a man trying to save two kids from ending up being on the streets. No matter what the hate mail was on both sides, we knew what we were doing was right. The thing that our show proved was that love conquers all.”

“Diff’rent Strokes” made Gary a huge star around the world. His catch phrase from the show (which he would deliver with a playful pout) was “Whatchu talkin’ about?” It was a line that Gary would come to hate in his adult years because people who met him always expected him to say that line, like a talking puppet.

Gary’s persona of being a “grown man in a little boy’s body” resulted from his kidney disease and medical treatment that stunted his growth (he was only 4’8″ as an adult) and made him have puffy cheeks. His mother Sue explains that Gary was born with a rare kidney disease and had a kidney transplant at the age of 5. The surgery didn’t stop his exuberance and energy level, says Sue: “Two weeks after the surgery, he was standing on his head.”

The immunosuppressant medication that Gary was given after the kidney transplant caused him to have the size of a child throughout his entire life. Gary would have painful dialysis treatments that also affected him. He also lived without any kidneys for the last 25 years of his life. Even with these health issues, Perillo remembers Gary being intensely focused on his work. Perillo says that as a child, Gary would watch episodes of “Diff’rent Strokes” and take notes.

Friends and former colleagues also describe Gary as having a big interest in writing fiction stories, especially about outer space. It was an interest he had from a young age and stayed with him for his entire life. The documentary never explains or mentions why Gary didn’t pursue success as a fiction writer when his career as an actor was on a decline.

Gary’s physical appearance made him famous, but it also prevented him from getting the types of roles he wanted to play, such as action heroes or villains. When he reached his teen years on “Diff’rent Strokes,” the show was still having him do storylines where he had to act like a pre-teen child. Gary openly expressed his frustration at not being able to have his Arnold Jackson character mature as Gary was doing in real life.

But as Gary got older, his ego problems got bigger. Gary became extremely difficult and demanding after becoming famous, according to former “Diff’rent Strokes” hair stylist Joan Stafford-Chaney. She puts it bluntly when talking about Gary’s change in attitude after he became a major star: “He went from being cute to ugly. He picked up all the ugliness from his dad.” Stafford-Chaney says, “Nobody wanted Willie on set because he created havoc.” She describes Willie as a bully who used Gary and Gary’s fame to make outrageous demands.

The documentary has conflicting accounts of how much Gary was pushed into doing work that put his health in jeopardy. Willie Coleman and Perillo both say that Gary was never over-worked. Perillo says that he turned down lucrative offers for Gary because Gary was undergoing dialysis. By contrast, Bridges says he saw many instances where Gary was dangerously pushed to the brink of extreme exhaustion by the people handling his business affairs.

Speaking of Gary’s business affairs, the documentary gives well-known and public details about the legal disputes between Gary and his parents, who still claim they did nothing deliberately wrong in mismanaging his money. In 1987, Gary fired his parents and his entire business team and hired Mial to be his manager. Mial says that Gary also cut himself off from almost all of the showbiz friends that Gary had at the time. The documentary doesn’t mention Gary’s failed and short-lived attempt at becoming a rapper when he and Mial teamed up as a musical duo for a 1987 single called “The Outlaw and the Indian,” which was released on 12″ vinyl and was a big flop.

In 1989, Gary sued his parents and his former business manager Anita DeThomas (who died in 2006) and accused them of stealing money from him. It’s estimated that Gary made about $18 million at the height of his fame, but he didn’t receive the vast majority of the money, which went mostly to people who worked for him, including his parents. The outcome of this lawsuit is mentioned in the documentary. Gary’s parents don’t have much to say about this lawsuit but seem to blame Mial for influencing Gary to turn against his parents. Willie is vehement that he and Sue had Gary’s best interests at heart, and he claims it was other people in Gary’s management team who were the unscrupulous ones.

In the documentary, Mial says Mial was the who was always looking out for Gary’s best interests. Mial claims Gary’s parents not only knew about the embezzlement but he says that Gary’s parents were also willing participants. Mial admits he was inexperienced at the time he became Gary’s manager, but he says that he was one of the few people whom Gary could trust. Years later, Mial stopped being Gary’s manager, but they remained close friends.

Gary is not presented as a saintly victim. He had a nasty temper and could act like an egotistical tyrant, according to what several people say in the documentary. There are also clips of Gary being difficult during interviews when he is asked questions that he doesn’t like. He had a love/hate relationship with his fame as an actor. According to Mial, Gary wanted to quit the entertainment business after “Diff’rent Strokes” ended. And yet, Gary never really permanently left showbiz, even when Gary complained and said he wanted to quit.

The documentary also doesn’t shy away from examples of Gary having a violent side to him. Price (who was married to Gary from 2007 to 2008) and other people in the documentary admit that she and Gary were physically abusive to each other during their relationship. She downplays this violence by describing it as something that can be expected when couples argue. Gary and Price were both arrested in 2009 for domestic violence against each other. The documentary includes photos of their arrest mug shots.

Former “Diff’rent Strokes” hair stylist Stafford-Chaney says Gary once rudely told her that he wanted to slap her, and she stood up for herself and told him she would hit him back in self-defense. Stafford-Chaney says that although Gary found fame and fortune in comedy, “He wasn’t happy.” Mial hints that Gary had a tendency to indulge in self-pity: “He constantly referred to himself as ‘God’s punching bag.'” Mial said at the lowest points of Gary’s life, Gary had suicidal thoughts and depression. However, the documentary also points out that a lot of Gary’s misery came from his own terrible actions and his own bad choices.

As expected, the documentary has a section about Gary’s 1998 arrest in California, for assaulting a fan named Tracy Fields. She asked for his autograph, he refused her request, and when she commented on his “has-been” status, he punched her in the eye. Gary was working as a security guard at the time but was off-duty when the assault happened. Gary pleaded no contest and received a 90-day suspended jail sentence. He was also ordered to pay Fields’ $1,665 hospital bill and to take anger management classes. The late 1990s was also a rough period for Gary financially: In 1999, he filed for bankruptcy.

Price is presented in the documentary as the biggest villain in Gary’s life, because several of his friends and associates believe that she is a greedy gold digger who hasn’t been honest about what caused Gary’s head injury that led to his death. Price met Gary in 2005, when she was an extra on the Utah set of his movie “Church Ball,” released in 2006. She says that Gary immediately flirted with her and asked for her phone number. On their first date, she says she was flattered because he brought her takeout food from Olive Garden, a low-priced Italian restaurant. Soon after making “Church Ball” and getting involved with Price (who was in her late teens at the time), Gary moved permanently to Utah, where he lived with Price.

In the documentary, Price tries to portray herself as someone who was desperate for love because her mother died when she was a child. But several of Gary’s friends and associates say that Price’s main interest in Gary was money that she could get from him. Randy Rester, who was Gary’s Utah attorney, describes the relationship between Gary and Price as “tumultuous” with raging fights and tearful reconciliations. Rester also says that he is sad that Gary never followed through on talking about get a restraining order against Price.

Price explains why she agreed to be interviewed for this documentary: “This is probably the last that I can actually speak truth because I’ve had a lot to absorb over the years.” Price makes a telling comment when she says, “The thing I liked most about Gary was he treated me like a queen.” Nowhere in the documentary does she say that she loved Gary. She also defends her decision to take a selfie photo of herself and Gary while he was in a coma and dying in a hospital bed. This photo ended up being published by a tabloid. Mial says with disgust that Price probably sold the photo to this tabloid.

Brandi Buys, a friend of Gary’s in Utah, says that Gary once commented to her about Price: “All she wants is money.” Shiela Erickson Rolls, Gary’s Utah-based theatrical agent, says that Price was intensely interested in getting Gary to work as much as possible. “The only thing that mattered to Gary was Shannon,” Erickson Rolls adds. The documentary includes footage of Gary and Price arguing about his work and money in an unaired pilot episode of a reality show that the couple wanted to star in together.

Also interviewed in the documentary is Anna Gray, who says she and Gary dated for seven years, beginning in the late 1990s, when he lived in California. Gray says she moved in with Gary about two weeks after meeting him. According to her documentary interview, she and Gary never sexually consummated their non-monogamous relationship because he was self-conscious about some physical issues. Gray says she had planned to move to Utah to be with Gary until she found out that he had fallen in love with Price.

Gray describes the tension she felt the first time she met Price. Gray says she never trusted Price and thinks Gary died under suspicious circumstances. Darren Nord is another person interviewed in the documentary who is identified as Gary’s “friend” who doesn’t like Price, although it’s not mentioned how he met Gary and how long they were friends. Also interviewed is California-based attorney Drew Ryce.

Mial and other friends of Gary say there was “too much blood” at the scene for Gary to have fallen down the stairs. However, the documentary fails to follow up on those suspicions by investigating further. Did the “Gary” documentary filmmakers make any attempt to interview the medical examiner or any of the first responders who were at the injury scene? Were there any measurements taken of the stairs to prove or disprove the theory that a fall down those stairs couldn’t cause the head injury that Gary had? Those questions were never answered in the documentary.

Another flaw in the documentary is some of the timeline editing, which seems a bit jumbled and could have been told in a more cohesive way. Suspicions and online gossip about Price are rushed into the last 15 minutes of the documentary. She still denies having anything to do with causing Gary’s head injury. Price also defends her decision not to follow the 911 operator’s advice to try to stop Gary’s bleeding because Price says she was in shock at the time and wanted to wait until medical professionals arrived.

“Gary” is a letdown as a documentary when it just repeats speculation and innuendo about Gary’s death possibly not being accidental, without revealing any new or helpful information. There is also no information about whether or not Gary wanted or sought out professional help for his mental health issues. However, the documentary’s interviews are compelling to watch, even when some of the people who are interviewed seem to be less than honest and have no self-awareness of how dodgy they look. It’s too bad that Gary Coleman couldn’t be a better judge of character of the people he chose to be close to him.

Viewers watching this documentary will notice how many people in Gary’s life accuse each other of taking advantage of him or not looking out for his best interests. It’s a sad commentary on what type of life he had that the people who claim to be closest to him also have a lot of bitter in-fighting about who really cared about him or not. Some of the “friends” whom Gary let into his life seem more impressed with knowing Gary as a “celebrity” than knowing Gary as a person. The “Gary” documentary can be seen as a cautionary tale that fame isn’t as wonderful as it appears to be, especially when fame robs that person of having healthy and happy relationships.

Peacock will premiere “Gary” on August 29, 2024.

Review: ‘TikTok Star Murders,’ starring Rachel Britt, Julia Stuntz, Kelsey Christensen, Cameron Jackson, Joni E. Johnston, Andrea Marks and Aleida Wahn

July 8, 2024

by Carla Hay

Rachel Britt in “TikTok Star Murders” (Photo courtesy of Peacock)

“TikTok Star Murders”

Culture Representation: The documentary film “TikTok Star Murders” features an Asian and white group of people discussing the case of former TikTok personality Ali Abulaban (who used the screen name JinnKid), who has been convicted of the 2021 murders of his wife Ana Abulaban and her friend Rayburn Barron.

Culture Clash: Ali Abulaban, an admitted cocaine addict, grew increasingly jealous, controlling and abusive of Ana, and he murdered her and Barron shortly after she separated from him and moved into another home.  

Culture Audience: “TikTok Star Murders” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries, but this documentary fails at telling a well-rounded and well-researched story.

Louis “Louie” Marinari in “TikTok Star Murders” (Photo courtesy of Peacock)

“TikTok Star Murders” has a tabloid-like focus on the most sensationalistic aspects of this notorious case and leaves out many important facts. This documentary mostly ignores Rayburn Barron, the other victim in this double homicide. Almost nothing is told about Barron in the documentary, except that he was a friend of Ana Abulaban, and they were both murdered in the same apartment in San Diego on October 21, 2021.

Ana’s estranged husband Ali Abulaban (who was born in 1992) confessed to the murders but claimed Ana (who was 28 when she died) provoked him into killing her and 29-year-old Barron. Ana and Barron were both murdered by gun violence in the apartment where Ana had moved after separating from Ali. Despite Ali’s claims that this was a manslaughter “crime of passion,” he was convicted in 2024 of two counts of first-degree murder. “TikTok Star Murders” was released before Ali received his prison sentence.

There is no director listed for this documentary, but George Plamondon is credited as the executive producer/showrunner of “TikTok Star Murders.” Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is an executive producer through his production company G-Unit Films & Television. “TikTok Star Murders” is very formulaic in how it’s formatted, from the ominous music to the re-enactments that are shown in slow-motion to increase the drama. The documentary claims to be about putting the focus on the victims, but Ana is the only murder victim in this double homicide who gets extensive commentary in this movie. Barron is mentioned only as an afterthought.

“TikTok Star Murders” tells a tragic tale that is unfortunately common in situations where domestic abuse turns into murder. Ali Abulaban (who used the screen name JinnKid) was born in New York City, and he was a rising star in social media, mainly because of his comedy skits and celebrity impersonations. Ali was obsessed with the 1983 film “Scarface,” starring Al Pacino as cocaine kingpin Tony Montana, so Ali’s impressions were mostly of Tony Montana. TikTok was the social media platform where Ali was the most popular.

Like many social media personalities, Ali was also an aspiring actor who wanted to break into movies and television. He also had a troubled past. Ali joined the U.S. Air Force in 2013. He was stationed in Okinawa, Japan, where several U.S. military bases are located. Ana and her parents, who are originally from the Philippines, were also living in Okinawa because her father was in the military. This military location is how Ali and Ani met and began dating each other.

Ali’s military career was ruined in 2015, when he was dishonorably discharged for assaulting a friend of Ana’s. The “TikTok Star Murders” documentary should have given further details about this early warning sign of Ali’s violence, but this documentary has no interest in investigative journalism. The only “exclusives” this shoddily made documentary has to offer are some previously unreleased home videos and text messages of Ali being verbally abusive to Ana.

The documentary retells facts that are already known: After Ali was ousted in disgrace from the U.S. Air Force in 2015, he moved back home with his family in Bristow, Virginia. It was during this time that he started making social media videos that would go viral. He eventually was able to make enough money from social media for it to be a full-time job for him.

While Ali was in Bristow after his military discharge, Ana had moved back with her family to the Philippines when she found out that she was pregnant. Ali and Ana’s daughter Amira was born in the Philippines in 2016. The decision was made for Ana and Amira to move to the U.S. when they could get visas, which happened when Amira was still an infant. Ali and Ana got married and settled in Bristow. For many years, they presented a public image of being a happy couple in love.

Many of Ana’s female friends who grew up on the same Okinawa military base were now living in San Diego. After visiting them in San Diego, Ana fell in love with the city’s lifestyle and convinced Ali to move to San Diego, where they lived in an apartment building. According to people interviewed in the documentary, Ali agreed to this relocation mainly because San Diego’s proximity to Los Angeles would make it easier for him to get jobs in Hollywood movies and TV shows, compared to if he had stayed in Virginia. Ali never got hired for any work in the Hollywood entertainment industry. He was stuck doing social media videos.

This documentary gives very few details about Ali’s family. The only family member of Ali’s who is interviewed in this documentary is Louis “Louie” Mariani, who says he is Ali’s cousin. Mariani is vague about the family and will only say that Ali’s parents are Middle Eastern and conservative religious Muslims. Mariani describes Ali as a non-religious free spirit who didn’t follow a lot of expected traditions because Ali wanted to pursue a creative profession in the arts.

Mariani comments, “I really feel like Ali was meant to be a star.” Mariani also says the obvious about this murder tragedy: “I feel like this whole situation has turned my whole life upside down, as well as turned our whole family’s life upside down.” The problem is that Mariani doesn’t give any details about how the family reacted when they found out that Ali was abusing Ana. He also doesn’t offer any information to explain if Ali came from an abusive home or not, since many abusers have abusive childhoods.

The only clue that this documentary offers about Ali’s family is a video clip of Ana calling Ali’s mother during an argument when Ali was insulting Ana mercilessly in their San Diego apartment. Ali, who was obsessed with recording many things in his life, actually recorded this video. By then, the marriage had fallen apart, and Ana was telling Ali that she was going to leave him because he was abusive to her and she didn’t love him anymore.

In the video, Ana tells Ali’s mother that Ali is high on cocaine again. Ali’s mother can be heard on the phone saying that Ana should leave Ali. Ali’s mother also says that Ana and Amira can come live with her. Ali can be heard cursing and shouting that Ana is just trying to humiliate him. Ana eventually confided to friends that Ali was physically abusing her, but she often downplayed or hid how long this abuse had been going on.

Ali’s cocaine addiction is mentioned many times in the documentary, although the documentary never bothers to say or find out when Ali began abusing cocaine. However, Mariani and some of Ana’s friends mention that Ali became obvious about his cocaine abuse when he started to become a social media star. The documentary has no information about whether or not Ali or anyone else in his life tried to get him professional rehab/recovery treatment for his addiction.

According to the stories told in this documentary, Ali liked to have a big plastic bag of cocaine with him. He would take out the bag (even in public places where strangers could see him) and snort cocaine from it. On a few occasions (as seen in the documentary), Ali snorted cocaine on camera during his livestreams. Many people in his audience gave encouraging comments when he snorted cocaine on camera because it fit his Tony Montana wannabe persona.

One of this documentary’s biggest failings is that it has no information about Ana’s family. This huge void of information becomes even more noticeable as her friends talk about all the indications they saw that Ana was being abused. When did Ana’s family find out that Ali was abusing Ana? What did Ana’s family do to try to help Ana? The documentary never bothers to answer those questions.

Even if no one in Ana’s family wanted to be interviewed, information about what her family did or didn’t do to help her is what a responsible documentary would have included if it really wanted to tell the whole story of this domestic violence victim who was murdered. Instead, the only people speaking for Ana’s perspective are three of her friends: Rachel Britt, Julia Stuntz and someone identified only as Kayla, who says she knew Ana since they were teenagers in Okinawa.

Ana’s friends describe Ana as someone who blossomed from being an awkward and nerdy teenager into a stunningly beautiful woman who looked like she could be a model. Ana had a positive, kind and upbeat personality. She was a devoted and loving mother to Amira. After Ana moved to San Diego, her friends say that Ana got more into the physical fitness lifestyle.

However, in hindsight, Ana was very skilled at hiding a lot of her unhappiness and the physical abuse that she got from Ali. Her friends say that the biggest red flags that Ali was an abuser was how controlling, jealous and possessive he would be about Ana. Ali usually got very angry if Ana received more attention than he did, if she spent time with another man (even though she was a faithful wife, by all accounts), or if another man complimented Ana on her beauty. Ali often wrongfully accused Ana of cheating on him, even though Ali was the one in the marriage who eventually cheated, according to Ana’s friends.

As seen in videos shown in the documentary, toward the end of the marriage, Ali was openly calling Ana a “bitch” and a “whore” in his social media posts. He presented a narrative that Ana was an ungrateful immigrant who used him so that she could move to the United States and get resident alien status by marrying him. Ali’s misogynistic rants were “liked” by many people in his audience. And when Ana went public on TikTok that she was leaving her abusive marriage, Ali flew into a rage.

“TikTok Star Murders” only identifies people from Ali’s and Ana’s personal lives by their first names only, even though the full names of Britt, Stuntz and Mariani aren’t a secret because they testified in Ali’s trial and/or they’ve given other interviews to media outlets that reported their first and last names. Therefore, it seems unnecessary and fake for the documentary to try to make it look like they’re protecting these people’s privacy.

The only interviewee whose identity is completely hidden in the documentary is a young man using the alias Lucifer, who says he was Ali’s TikTok moderator. Lucifer is interviewed in the shadows to hide what his face looks like. His voice also sounds like it could have have been altered to protect his privacy. Lucifer says that he wants to be anonymous because he keeps his TikTok life separate from his real life. The only other person who speaks for Ali is a woman identified only as Rain, who has nothing insightful to say because she admits she only interacted with Ali as an “online friend” and never met him in person.

Also interviewed in the documentary are some journalists and people in law enforcement. Andrea Marks covered the case as a writer/reporter for Rolling Stone. Kelsey Christensen (a reporter for KSWB-TV, the Fox affiliate in San Diego) interviewed Ali in jail not long after he was arrested for the murders in 2021. Also interviewed in the documentary are former San Diego police officer Cameron Jackson; clinical/forensic psychologist and private investigator Dr. Joni E. Johnston, who was not involved in this case; and attorney Aleida Wahn, who does not represent Ali or anyone from the victims’ families and who did not work on this case.

Johnston mostly talks about domestic abuse and what to do in seeing warning signs and how to seek help. Ana’s friends also make impactful comments about not being bystanders to abuse. Britt says, “I want people not to be silent. Your truth is who you are … We need to be the change we want for the world.”

“TikTok Star Murders” competently serves as a cautionary tale about domestic abuse escalating into murder. The documentary also points out that what is presented as “truth” on social media can often be deliberately false or misleading of what’s happening in real life. None of this is surprising news, and this documentary just lazily regurgitates other people’s reporting on this case.

The documentary is incomplete and sloppy in too many areas, particularly when it comes to omitting a lot of relevant details. It’s mentioned in the documentary that media coverage of this case hardly ever mentions murder victim Barron, but the documentary does the same thing by ignoring Barron’s life story. Viewers will have a lot of questions about him that this documentary never answers.

How incomplete and sloppy in this documentary? “TikTok Star Murders” also doesn’t mention that Ana was married to someone else before she married Ali. Her first husband Shawn Torres was also in the U.S. military and knew Ali when they were stationed in Okinawa. Torres testified for the prosecution in Ali’s trial. That information isn’t in this documentary either. Ultimately, “TikTok Star Murders” doesn’t do anything to distinguish itself from the cheap, quickly made true crime documentaries that are churned out in a tacky manner and are the equivalent of ambulance chasers.

Peacock premiered “TikTok Star Murders” on June 25, 2024.

2023 Golden Globe Awards: ‘The Banshees of Inisherin,’ ‘Abbott Elementary’ are the top winners

January 10, 2023

Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

Tyler James Williams, Chris Perfetti, Quinta Brunson, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Lisa Ann Walter in “Abbott Elementary” (Photo by Prashant Gupta/ABC)

With three awards each, the Searchlight Pictures comedy/drama “The Banshees of Inisherin” and the ABC comedy series “Abbott Elementary” were the top winners at the 80th annual Golden Globe Awards, which were presented at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on January 10, 2023. NBC had the U.S. telecast of the show, which was livestreamed on Peacock. Jerrod Carmichael was the host of the ceremony. The Golden Globe Awards are voted for and presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

“The Banshees of Inisherin,” a movie about fractured friendship between two men in 1923 Ireland, won the awards for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy; Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (for Colin Farrell); and Best Screenplay (for Martin McDonagh). “Abbott Elementary,” a series about an underfunded elementary school in Philadelphia, won the Golden Globes for Best Comedy Series; Best Actress in a TV Series – Musical or Comedy (for Quinta Brunson); and Best Supporting Actor – Television (for Tyler James Williams).

Other multiple winners, with two awards each, were Universal Pictures’ “The Fabelmans” (Best Motion Picture – Drama; Best Director, for Steven Spielberg); A24’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, for Michelle Yeoh; Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture, for Ke Huy Quan); and HBO’s “The White Lotus (Best Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television; Best Performance by an Actress in Supporting Role, Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television, for Jennifer Coolidge).

Eddie Murphy received the Cecil B. DeMille Award, a lifetime achievement prize. Ryan Murphy received the Carol Burnett Award, given to a pioneering person in television.

Presenters at the show were Jennifer Hudson, Coolidge, Jenna Ortega, Niecy Nash-Betts, Ana de Armas, Claire Danes, Letitia Wright, Billy Porter, Glen Powell, Jay Ellis, Henry Golding, Sean Penn, Hilary Swank, Colman Domingo, Nicole Byer, Ana Gasteyer, Cole Hauser, Mo Brings Plenty, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Tracy Morgan, Regina Hall, Natasha Lyonne, Salma Hayek, Harvey Guillén and Quentin Tarantino.

The 2023 Golden Globe Awards telecast was produced by Dick Clark Productions and Jesse Collins Entertainment in association with the HFPA. Jesse Collins and Dionne Harmon served as executive producers.

Here is the complete list of winners and nominations for the 2023 Golden Globe Awards:

*=winner

MOVIES

Best Motion Picture – Drama

  • “Avatar: The Way of Water” (20th Century Studios) 
  • “Elvis” (Warner Bros.) 
  • “The Fabelmans” (Universal Pictures)*
  • “Tár” (Focus Features) 
  • “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount Pictures)

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

  • “Babylon” (Paramount Pictures) 
  • “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Searchlight Pictures)*
  • “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24) 
  • “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” (Netflix) 
  • “Triangle of Sadness” (Neon) 

Best Director, Motion Picture

  • James Cameron (“Avatar: The Way of Water”) 
  • Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) 
  • Baz Luhrmann (“Elvis”) 
  • Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) 
  • Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”)*

Best Screenplay

  • “Tár” (Focus Features) — Todd Field 
  • “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24) — Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert 
  • “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Searchlight Pictures) — Martin McDonagh*
  • “Women Talking” (MGM/United Artists Releasing) — Sarah Polley 
  • “The Fabelmans” (Universal Pictures) — Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama

  • Austin Butler (“Elvis”)*
  • Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”) 
  • Hugh Jackman (“The Son”)
  • Bill Nighy (“Living”) 
  • Jeremy Pope (“The Inspection”) 

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama

  • Cate Blanchett (“Tár”)*
  • Olivia Colman (“Empire of Light”) 
  • Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) 
  • Ana de Armas (“Blonde”) 
  • Michelle Williams (“The Fabelmans”)  

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

  • Lesley Manville (“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”) 
  • Margot Robbie (“Babylon”) 
  • Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Menu”) 
  • Emma Thompson (“Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”) 
  • Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”)*

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

  • Diego Calva (“Babylon”) 
  • Daniel Craig (“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”)
  • Adam Driver (“White Noise”) 
  • Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”)* 
  • Ralph Fiennes (“The Menu”) 

Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture

  • Brendan Gleeson (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) 
  • Barry Keoghan (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) 
  • Brad Pitt (“Babylon”)
  • Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”)* 
  • Eddie Redmayne (“The Good Nurse”)

Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture

  • Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”)* 
  • Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) 
  • Jamie Lee Curtis (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) 
  • Dolly De Leon (“Triangle of Sadness”)
  • Carey Mulligan (“She Said”)

Best Original Score

  • “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Searchlight Pictures) — Carter Burwell
  • “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” (Netflix) — Alexandre Desplat 
  • “Women Talking” (MGM/United Artists Releasing) — Hildur Guðnadóttir 
  • “Babylon” (Paramount Pictures) — Justin Hurwitz*
  • “The Fabelmans” (Universal Pictures) — John Williams  

Best Non-English Language Picture

  • “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Germany) 
  • “Argentina, 1985” (Argentina)*
  • “Close” (Belgium) 
  • “Decision to Leave” (South Korea) 
  • “RRR” (India) 

Best Original Song

  • “Carolina” from “Where the Crawdads Sing” (Sony Pictures) — Taylor Swift 
  • “Ciao Papa” from “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” (Netflix) — Alexandre Desplat, Roeban Katz, Guillermo del Toro 
  • “Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount Pictures) — Lady Gaga, BloodPop, Benjamin Rice
  • “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (Marvel Studios) — Tems, Ludwig Göransson, Rihanna, Ryan Coogler 
  • “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR” (Variance Films) — Kala Bhairava, M. M. Keeravani, Rahul Sipligunj*

Best Animated Motion Picture

  • “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” (Netflix)*
  • “Inu-Oh” (GKIDS) 
  • “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” (A24) 
  • “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” (DreamWorks Animation) 
  • “Turning Red” (Pixar) 

TELEVISION

Best Television Series, Drama

  • “Better Call Saul” (AMC) 
  • “The Crown” (Netflix) 
  • “House of the Dragon” (HBO)* 
  • “Ozark” (Netflix) 
  • “Severance” (Apple TV+) 

Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy

  • “Abbott Elementary” (ABC)*
  • “The Bear” (FX)
  • “Hacks” (HBO Max)
  • “Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu) 
  • “Wednesday” (Netflix) 

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama

  • Jeff Bridges (“The Old Man”) 
  • Kevin Costner (“Yellowstone”)*
  • Diego Luna (“Andor”)
  • Bob Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul”)
  • Adam Scott (“Severance”)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama

  • Emma D’Arcy (“House of the Dragon”) 
  • Laura Linney (“Ozark”) 
  • Imelda Staunton (“The Crown”)
  • Hilary Swank (“Alaska Daily”)
  • Zendaya (“Euphoria”)*

Best Actress in a TV Series – Musical or Comedy

  • Quinta Brunson (“Abbott Elementary”)*
  • Kaley Cuoco (“The Flight Attendant”) 
  • Selena Gomez (“Only Murders in the Building”) 
  • Jenna Ortega (“Wednesday”) 
  • Jean Smart (“Hacks”) 

Best Actor in a TV Series – Musical or Comedy

  • Donald Glover (“Atlanta”) 
  • Bill Hader (“Barry”) 
  • Steve Martin (“Only Murders in the Building”) 
  • Martin Short (“Only Murders in the Building”) 
  • Jeremy Allen White (“The Bear”)*

Best Supporting Actor – Television

  • John Lithgow (“The Old Man”) 
  • Jonathan Pryce (“The Crown”) 
  • John Turturro (“Severance”) 
  • Tyler James Williams (“Abbott Elementary”)*
  • Henry Winkler (“Barry”)

Best Supporting Actress – Television

  • Elizabeth Debicki (“The Crown”) 
  • Hannah Einbinder (“Hacks”) 
  • Julia Garner (“Ozark”)*
  • Janelle James (“Abbott Elementary”) 
  • Sheryl Lee Ralph (“Abbott Elementary”) 

Best Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

  • “Black Bird” (Apple TV+) 
  • “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” (Netflix) 
  • “The Dropout” (Hulu) 
  • “Pam & Tommy” (Hulu) 
  • “The White Lotus” (HBO)*

Best Performance by an Actor, Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

  • Taron Egerton (“Black Bird”) 
  • Colin Firth (“The Staircase”) 
  • Andrew Garfield (“Under the Banner of Heaven”) 
  • Evan Peters (“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”)*
  • Sebastian Stan (“Pam & Tommy”) 

Best Performance by an Actress, Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

  • Jessica Chastain (“George and Tammy”) 
  • Julia Garner (“Inventing Anna”) 
  • Lily James (“Pam & Tommy”) 
  • Julia Roberts (“Gaslit”) 
  • Amanda Seyfried (“The Dropout”)*

Best Performance by an Actress in Supporting Role, Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

  • Jennifer Coolidge (“The White Lotus”)*
  • Claire Danes (“Fleishman Is in Trouble”) 
  • Daisy Edgar-Jones (“Under the Banner of Heaven”) 
  • Niecy Nash-Betts (“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”) 
  • Aubrey Plaza (“The White Lotus”) 

Best Performance by an Actor in Supporting Role, Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

  • F. Murray Abraham (“The White Lotus”) 
  • Domhnall Gleeson (“The Patient”) 
  • Paul Walter Hauser (“Black Bird”)*
  • Richard Jenkins (“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”) 
  • Seth Rogen (“Pam & Tommy”) 

2023 Golden Globe nominations: ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ is the top nominee

December 12, 2022

Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

For the 80th annual Golden Globe Awards, Searchlight Pictures’ dark comedy film “The Banshees of Inisherin” is the leading contender, with eight nominations. In the TV categories, the ABC comedy series “Abbott Elementary” is the top nominee, with five nominations. The ceremony will take place at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on January 10, 2023, airing live from 5-8 p.m. PT/8-11 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock. Jerrod Carmichael will host the show. The nominees were announced by actresses Selenis Leyva and Mayan Lopez on December 12, 2022.

The Golden Globe Awards are voted for and presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). Produced by Dick Clark Productions and Jesse Collins Entertainment in association with the HFPA, the Golden Globe Awards are viewed in more than 210 territories worldwide. Helen Hoehne is president of the HFPA. Jesse Collins and Dionne Harmon will serve as executive producers.

From a Golden Globe Awards press release:

“Four new television category awards were introduced earlier this year and will be awarded for the first time at the 2023 Golden Globe Awards ceremony … The new categories include Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Musical, Comedy or Drama Television Series; Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical, Comedy or Drama Television Series; Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television; and Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television. The four new awards will replace the former awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television and Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television.”

Here is the complete list of nominations for the 2023 Golden Globe Awards:

MOVIES

Best Motion Picture, Drama

  • “Avatar: The Way of Water” (20th Century Studios) 
  • “Elvis” (Warner Bros.) 
  • “The Fabelmans” (Universal Pictures) 
  • “Tár” (Focus Features) 
  • “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount Pictures)

Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy

  • “Babylon” (Paramount Pictures) 
  • “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Searchlight Pictures) 
  • “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24) 
  • “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” (Netflix) 
  • “Triangle of Sadness” (Neon) 

Best Director – Motion Picture

  • James Cameron (“Avatar: The Way of Water”) 
  • Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) 
  • Baz Luhrmann (“Elvis”) 
  • Martin McDonagh (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) 
  • Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”)

Best Screenplay – Motion Picture

  • “Tár” (Focus Features) — Todd Field 
  • “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24) — Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert 
  • “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Searchlight Pictures) — Martin McDonagh 
  • “Women Talking” (MGM/United Artists Releasing) — Sarah Polley 
  • “The Fabelmans” (Universal Pictures) — Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama

  • Austin Butler (“Elvis”) 
  • Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”) 
  • Hugh Jackman (“The Son”)
  • Bill Nighy (“Living”) 
  • Jeremy Pope (“The Inspection”) 

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama

  • Cate Blanchett (“Tár”) 
  • Olivia Colman (“Empire of Light”) 
  • Viola Davis (“The Woman King”) 
  • Ana de Armas (“Blonde”) 
  • Michelle Williams (“The Fabelmans”)  

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

  • Lesley Manville (“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”) 
  • Margot Robbie (“Babylon”) 
  • Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Menu”) 
  • Emma Thompson (“Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”) 
  • Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) 

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

  • Diego Calva (“Babylon”) 
  • Daniel Craig (“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”)
  • Adam Driver (“White Noise”) 
  • Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) 
  • Ralph Fiennes (“The Menu”) 

Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture

  • Brendan Gleeson (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) 
  • Barry Keoghan (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) 
  • Brad Pitt (“Babylon”)
  • Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) 
  • Eddie Redmayne (“The Good Nurse”)

Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture

  • Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) 
  • Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”) 
  • Jamie Lee Curtis (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) 
  • Dolly De Leon (“Triangle of Sadness”)
  • Carey Mulligan (“She Said”)

Best Original Score – Motion Picture

  • “The Banshees of Inisherin” (Searchlight Pictures) — Carter Burwell
  • “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” (Netflix) — Alexandre Desplat 
  • “Women Talking” (MGM/United Artists Releasing) — Hildur Guðnadóttir 
  • “Babylon” (Paramount Pictures) — Justin Hurwitz 
  • “The Fabelmans” (Universal Pictures) — John Williams  

Best Non-English Language Picture

  • “All Quiet on the Western Front” (Germany) 
  • “Argentina, 1985” (Argentina) 
  • “Close” (Belgium) 
  • “Decision to Leave” (South Korea) 
  • “RRR” (India) 

Best Original Song – Motion Picture

  • “Carolina” from “Where the Crawdads Sing” (Sony Pictures) — Taylor Swift 
  • “Ciao Papa” from “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” (Netflix) — Alexandre Desplat, Roeban Katz, Guillermo del Toro 
  • “Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick” (Paramount Pictures) — Lady Gaga, BloodPop, Benjamin Rice
  • “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (Marvel Studios) — Tems, Ludwig Göransson, Rihanna, Ryan Coogler 
  • “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR” (Variance Films) — Kala Bhairava, M. M. Keeravani, Rahul Sipligunj 

Best Animated Motion Picture

  • “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” (Netflix) 
  • “Inu-Oh” (GKIDS) 
  • “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” (A24) 
  • “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” (DreamWorks Animation) 
  • “Turning Red” (Pixar) 

TELEVISION

Best Television Series – Drama

  • “Better Call Saul” (AMC) 
  • “The Crown” (Netflix) 
  • “House of the Dragon” (HBO) 
  • “Ozark” (Netflix) 
  • “Severance” (Apple TV+) 

Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy

  • “Abbott Elementary” (ABC) 
  • “The Bear” (FX)
  • “Hacks” (HBO Max)
  • “Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu) 
  • “Wednesday” (Netflix) 

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama

  • Jeff Bridges (“The Old Man”) 
  • Kevin Costner (“Yellowstone”)
  • Diego Luna (“Andor”)
  • Bob Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul”)
  • Adam Scott (“Severance”)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama

  • Emma D’Arcy (“House of the Dragon”) 
  • Laura Linney (“Ozark”) 
  • Imelda Staunton (“The Crown”)
  • Hilary Swank (“Alaska Daily”)
  • Zendaya (“Euphoria”)

Best Actress in a TV Series – Musical or Comedy

  • Quinta Brunson (“Abbott Elementary”) 
  • Kaley Cuoco (“The Flight Attendant”) 
  • Selena Gomez (“Only Murders in the Building”) 
  • Jenna Ortega (“Wednesday”) 
  • Jean Smart (“Hacks”) 

Best Actor in a TV Series – Musical or Comedy

  • Donald Glover (“Atlanta”) 
  • Bill Hader (“Barry”) 
  • Steve Martin (“Only Murders in the Building”) 
  • Martin Short (“Only Murders in the Building”) 
  • Jeremy Allen White (“The Bear”) 

Best Supporting Actor – Television

  • John Lithgow (“The Old Man”) 
  • Jonathan Pryce (“The Crown”) 
  • John Turturro (“Severance”) 
  • Tyler James Williams (“Abbott Elementary”) 
  • Henry Winkler (“Barry”)

Best Supporting Actress – Television

  • Elizabeth Debicki (“The Crown”) 
  • Hannah Einbinder (“Hacks”) 
  • Julia Garner (“Ozark”) 
  • Janelle James (“Abbott Elementary”) 
  • Sheryl Lee Ralph (“Abbott Elementary”) 

Best Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

  • “Black Bird” (Apple TV+) 
  • “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” (Netflix) 
  • “The Dropout” (Hulu) 
  • “Pam & Tommy” (Hulu) 
  • “The White Lotus” (HBO) 

Best Performance by an Actor, Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

  • Taron Egerton (“Black Bird”) 
  • Colin Firth (“The Staircase”) 
  • Andrew Garfield (“Under the Banner of Heaven”) 
  • Evan Peters (“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”) 
  • Sebastian Stan (“Pam & Tommy”) 

Best Performance by an Actress, Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

  • Jessica Chastain (“George and Tammy”) 
  • Julia Garner (“Inventing Anna”) 
  • Lily James (“Pam & Tommy”) 
  • Julia Roberts (“Gaslit”) 
  • Amanda Seyfried (“The Dropout”) 

Best Performance by an Actress in Supporting Role, Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

  • Jennifer Coolidge (“The White Lotus”) 
  • Claire Danes (“Fleishman Is in Trouble”) 
  • Daisy Edgar-Jones (“Under the Banner of Heaven”) 
  • Niecy Nash-Betts (“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”) 
  • Aubrey Plaza (“The White Lotus”) 

Best Performance by an Actor in Supporting Role, Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television

  • F. Murray Abraham (“The White Lotus”) 
  • Domhnall Gleeson (“The Patient”) 
  • Paul Walter Hauser (“Black Bird”) 
  • Richard Jenkins (“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”) 
  • Seth Rogen (“Pam & Tommy”) 

2022 Primetime Emmy Awards: ‘The White Lotus,’ ‘Ted Lasso,’ ‘Succession’ are the top winners

September 12, 2022

by Carla Hay

“The White Lotus” team members Sydney Sweeney, Natasha Rothwell, Mike White, Connie Britton, Jennifer Coolidge and Alexandra Daddario at the 74th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards held at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on September 12, 2022. (Photo by Evans Vestal Ward/NBC)

With five prizes, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, HBO’s anthology series “The White Lotus” was the top winner at the 74th annual Primetime Emmy Awards, which were presented at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on September 12, 2022. Following close behind in Emmy wins were Apple TV+’s comedy series “Ted Lasso” (four Emmys, including Outstanding Comedy Series) and HBO’s “Succession,” which won three Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series. Kenan Thompson hosted the ceremony, which NBC televised live in the United States. Peacock livestreamed the ceremony. The show is presented by the Television Academy, which votes for the nominees and the winners.

In addition to winning Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, “The White Lotus” creator/executive producer Mike White got Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series Or Movie and Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Two co-stars of “The White Lotus” also won Emmy Awards: Murray Bartlett (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie) and Jennifer Coolidge (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie). White, Bartlett and Coolidge are all first-time Emmy winners.

Other first-time Emmy winners at this ceremony included Sheryl Lee Ralph of ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” (Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series); Quinta Brunson of “Abbott Elementary” (Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series); Matthew McFadyen of “Succession” (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series); Amanda Seyfried of Hulu’s “The Dropout” (Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie); Michael Keaton of Hulu’s “Dopesick” (Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie); Lee Jung-jae of Netflix’s “Squid Game” (Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series); Lizzo of Prime Video’s Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls” (Outstanding Competition Program); and Jerrod Carmichael of HBO’s “Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel” (Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special).

Some of the repeat Emmy category winners included Zendaya of HBO’s “Euphoria” (Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series) and Julia Garner of Netflix’s “Ozark” (Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series), who each won in 2020. Those who repeated their Emmy wins from 2021 included Jean Smart of HBO Max’s “Hacks” (Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series); John Oliver of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” (Outstanding Variety Talk Series); and “Ted Lasso” stars Jason Sudeikis (Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series) and Brett Goldstein (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series).

The Governors Award (a non-competitive category) went to the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media “in recognition of their efforts to promote gender balance and foster inclusion throughout the entertainment industry,” according to a press release from the Television Academy. The institute’s founder Geena Davis and president/CEO Madeline Di Nonno accepted the award.

Presenters at the show included Oprah Winfrey, Mariska Hargitay, Christopher Meloni, Angela Bassett, Ariana DeBose, Rosario Dawson, Diego Luna, Natalie Zea, Mindy Kaling, B. J. Novak, Emmy host Thompson, Bowen Yang, Lee Jung-jae, Jung Ho-yeon, Kerry Washington, Gael García Bernal, Sarah Paulson, Shonda Rhimes, Sofia Vergara, “Hacks” Emmy winner Smart, Hannah Einbinder, Selma Blair, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Selena Gomez, Pete Davidson, Juliette Lewis, RuPaul Charles, Ayo Edebiri, Jeremy Allen White, Taron Egerton, Paul Walter Hauser, Molly Shannon, Vanessa Bayer, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Regina Hall, Markella Kavenagh, Ismaël Cruz Córdova, Kelly Clarkson and Will Arnett. John Legend performed during the In Memoriam segment. Sam Jay was the on-air announcer, and Zedd was the event DJ.

Done+Dusted and Hudlin Entertainment produced the ceremony. Ian Stewart, Reginald Hudlin, Byron Phillips and Jane Mun were exevcutive producers. Done + Dusted’s Hamish Hamilton was the show’s director. 

Here is the complete list of nominees and winners for the 2022 Primetime Emmy Awards:

*=winner

Outstanding Drama Series

  • “Better Call Saul” (AMC)   
  • “Euphoria” (HBO)   
  • “Ozark” (Netflix)   
  • “Severance” (Apple TV+)   
  • “Squid Game” (Netflix)   
  • “Stranger Things” (Netflix)   
  • “Succession” (HBO)*   
  • “Yellowjackets” (Showtime)  

Outstanding Comedy Series

  • “Abbott Elementary” (ABC)   
  • “Barry” (HBO)
  • “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (HBO)   
  • “Hacks” (HBO)   
  • “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Prime Video)
  • “Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu)
  • “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV+)*
  • “What We Do in the Shadows” (FX)   

Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series

  • “Dopesick” (Hulu)   
  • “The Dropout” (Hulu)   
  • “Inventing Anna” (Netflix)   
  • “Pam and Tommy” (Hulu)   
  • “The White Lotus” (HBO)*

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series

  • Jason Bateman (“Ozark”)  
  • Brian Cox (“Succession”)  
  • Lee Jung-jae (“Squid Game”)*   
  • Bob Odenkirk (“Better Call Saul”)  
  • Adam Scott (“Severance”)  
  • Jeremy Strong (“Succession”)  

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series

  • Jodie Comer (“Killing Eve”)   
  • Laura Linney (“Ozark”)  
  • Melanie Lynskey (“Yellowjackets”)  
  • Sandra Oh (“Killing Eve”)  
  • Reese Witherspoon (“The Morning Show”)   
  • Zendaya (“Euphoria”)*

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series

  • Donald Glover (“Atlanta”)   
  • Bill Hader (“Barry”)  
  • Nicholas Hoult (“The Great”)
  • Steve Martin (“Only Murders in the Building”)   
  • Martin Short (“Only Murders in the Building”)  
  • Jason Sudeikis (“Ted Lasso”)*

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series

  • Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”)  
  • Quinta Brunson (“Abbott Elementary”)  
  • Kaley Cuoco (“The Flight Attendant”)  
  • Elle Fanning (“The Great”)  
  • Issa Rae (“Insecure”)  
  • Jean Smart (“Hacks”)*  

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

  • Colin Firth (“The Staircase”)  
  • Andrew Garfield (“Under the Banner of Heaven”)  
  • Oscar Isaac (“Scenes From a Marriage”)  
  • Michael Keaton (“Dopesick”)*
  • Himesh Patel (“Station Eleven”)  
  • Sebastian Stan (“Pam and Tommy”)   

Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

  • Toni Collette (“The Staircase”)  
  • Julia Garner (“Inventing Anna”)  
  • Lily James (“Pam and Tommy”)  
  • Sarah Paulson (“Impeachment: American Crime Story”)
  • Margaret Qualley (“Maid”)  
  • Amanda Seyfried (“The Dropout”)*

Outstanding Variety Talk Series

  • “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” (Comedy Central)  
  • “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” (ABC)  
  • “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” (HBO)* 
  • “Late Night With Seth Meyers” (NBC)  
  • “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” (CBS)  

Outstanding Competition Program

  • “The Amazing Race” (CBS)  
  • “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls” (Prime Video)*  
  • “Nailed It!” (Netflix)  
  • “RuPaul’s Drag Race” (VH1)  
  • “Top Chef” (Bravo)  
  • “The Voice” (NBC)  

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

  • Patricia Arquette (“Severance”)
  • Julia Garner (“Ozark”)*
  • Jung Ho-yeon (“Squid Game”)
  • Christina Ricci (“Yellowjackets”)
  • Rhea Seehorn (“Better Call Saul”)
  • J. Smith-Cameron (“Succession”)
  • Sarah Snook (“Succession”)
  • Sydney Sweeney (“Euphoria”)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series

  • Nicholas Braun (“Succession”)
  • Billy Crudup (“The Morning Show”)
  • Kieran Culkin (“Succession”)
  • Park Hae-soo (“Squid Game”)
  • Matthew Macfadyen (“Succession”)*
  • John Turturro (“Severance”)
  • Christopher Walken (“Severance”)
  • Oh Yeong-su (“Squid Game”)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series

  • Alex Borstein (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”)
  • Hannah Einbinder (“Hacks”)
  • Janelle James (“Abbott Elementary”)
  • Kate McKinnon (“Saturday Night Live”)
  • Sarah Niles (“Ted Lasso”)
  • Sheryl Lee Ralph (“Abbott Elementary”)*
  • Juno Temple (“Ted Lasso”)
  • Hannah Waddingham (“Ted Lasso”)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series

  • Anthony Carrigan (“Barry”)
  • Brett Goldstein (“Ted Lasso”)*
  • Toheeb Jimoh (“Ted Lasso”)
  • Nick Mohammed (“Ted Lasso”)
  • Tony Shalhoub (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”)
  • Tyler James Williams (“Abbott Elementary”)
  • Henry Winkler (“Barry”)
  • Bowen Yang (“Saturday Night Live”)

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie

  • Connie Britton (“The White Lotus”)
  • Jennifer Coolidge (“The White Lotus”)*
  • Alexandra Daddario (“The White Lotus”)
  • Kaitlyn Dever (“Dopesick”)
  • Natasha Rothwell (“The White Lotus”)
  • Sydney Sweeney (“The White Lotus”)
  • Mare Winningham (“Dopesick”)

Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or Movie

  • Murray Bartlett (“The White Lotus”)*
  • Jake Lacy (“The White Lotus”)
  • Will Poulter (“Dopesick”)
  • Seth Rogen (“Pam & Tommy”)
  • Peter Sarsgaard (“Dopesick”)
  • Michael Stuhlbarg (“Dopesick”)
  • Steve Zahn (“The White Lotus”)

Outstanding Variety Sketch Series

  • “A Black Lady Sketch Show” (HBO)
  • “Saturday Night Live” (NBC)*

Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series

  • “Atlanta” (FX), directed by Hiro Murai
  • “Barry” (HBO) directed by Bill Hader
  • “Hacks” (HBO Max), directed by Lucia Aniello
  • “The Ms. Pat Show” (BET+), directed by Mary Lou Belli
  • “Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu), directed by Cherien Dabis
  • “Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu), directed by Jamie Babbit
  • “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV+), directed by MJ Delaney*

Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series

  • “Ozark” (Netflix), directed by Jason Bateman
  • “Severance” (Apple TV+), directed by Ben Stiller
  • “Squid Game” (Netflix), directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk*
  • “Succession” (HBO), directed by Mark Mylod
  • “Succession” (HBO), directed by Cathy Yan
  • “Succession” (HBO), directed by Lorene Scafaria
  • “Yellowjackets” (Showtime), directed by Karyn Kusama

Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

  • “Dopesick” (Hulu), directed by Danny Strong
  • “The Dropout” (Hulu), directed by Michael Showalter
  • “The Dropout” (Hulu), directed by Francesca Gregorini
  • “Maid” (Netflix), directed by John Wells
  • “Station Eleven” (HBO Max), directed by Hiro Murai
  • “The White Lotus” (HBO Max), directed by Mike White*

Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series

  • “Abbott Elementary” (ABC), written by Quinta Brunson*
  • “Barry (HBO), written by Duffy Boudreau
  • “Barry (HBO), written by Alec Berg and Bill Hader
  • “Hacks” (HBO Max), written by Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky
  • “Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu) written by Steve Martin and John Hoffman
  • “Ted Lasso” (Apple TV+), written by Jane Becker
  • “What We Do in the Shadows” (FX), written by Sarah Naftalis
  • “What We Do in the Shadows” (FX), written by Stefani Robinson

Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series

  • “Better Call Saul” (AMC), written by Thomas Schnauz
  • “Ozark” (Netflix), written by Chris Mundy
  • “Severance” (Apple TV+), written by Dan Erickson
  • “Squid Game” (Netflix), written by Hwang Dong-hyuk
  • “Succession” (HBO), written by Jesse Armstrong*
  • “Yellowjackets” (Showtime) written by Jonathan Lisco, Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson
  • “Yellowjackets” (Showtime) written by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson

Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series or Anthology Series or Movie

  • “Dopesick” (Hulu), written by Danny Strong
  • “The Dropout” (Hulu), written by Elizabeth Meriwether
  • “Impeachment: American Crime Story” (FX), written byb Sarah Burgess
  • “Maid” (Netflix), written by Molly Smith Metzler
  • “Station Eleven” (HBO Max), written by Patrick Somerville
  • “The White Lotus” (HBO), written by Mike White*

Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special

  • “Ali Wong: Don Wong” (Netflix), written by Ali Wong
  • “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah Presents: Jordan Klepper Fingers the Globe – Hungary for Democracy” (Comedy Central), written by Ian Berger, Devin Delliquanti, Jennifer Flanz, Jordan Klepper, Zhubin Parang and Scott Sherman
  • “Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel” (HBO), written by Jerrod Carmichael*
  • “Nicole Byer: BBW (Big Beautiful Weirdo)” (Netflix ), written by Nicole Byer
  • “Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special” (Netflix), written by Norm Macdonald

Review: ‘The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,’ starring Rosa Parks, LisaGay Hamilton, Carolyn Williamson Green, Lonnie McCauley, Jeanne Theoharis, Georgette Norman and Keisha Nicole Blain

June 20, 2022

by Carla Hay

Rosa Parks at the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March in “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” (Photo courtesy of Getty Images/Peacock)

“The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks”

Directed by Yoruba Richen and Johanna Hamilton

Culture Representation: The documentary film “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” features a nearly all-African American group (with one white person) of historians, activists, family members and associates discussing the life and legacy of civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

Culture Clash: Even though she was world-famous, Parks refused to profit from her fame, as she was sometimes disrespected within the civil rights movement because of her gender and her age. 

Culture Audience: “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” will appeal primarily to people who want to see a comprehensive documentary about an important public figure in the U.S. civil rights movement.

Rosa Parks at the 1968 Poor People’s March on Washington in “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” (Photo courtesy of Getty Images/Peacock)

“The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” follows a conventional documentary format, but it’s still a well-made biography that should be informative for people who know very little about civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Directed by Yoruba Richen and Johanna Hamilton, “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” is based on author Jeanne Theoharis’ 2013 biography of the same title. Thoharis is one of the people interviewed in the movie. In the documentary, portions of Parks’ letters and memoir are read as narration by actress LisaGay Hamilton. “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” had its world premiere at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.

Unless someone is a Rosa Parks expert, people who watch “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” will find out something new about Parks that they didn’t already know. Parks is most famous for an act that is widely credited with sparking the racial civil rights movement in the United States: On December 1, 1955, when she was 42 years old, Parks refused to give up her bus seat for a white man on a bus in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, and she was arrested for it.

This arrest happened during a shameful time in U.S. history when white supremacist racial segregation was legal. If white people and non-white people were gathered in the same space, such as on a bus, a white person could legally demand to make the non-white person move. During this Jim Crow racial segregation era, anyone who wasn’t white had to sit in designated seats in the back of the bus and could sometimes sit in the middle section of a bus, as long as white people allowed them to sit there. Parks’ act of standing up for herself and refusing to give in to a racist law inspired the U.S. civil rights movement to grow and move forward.

“The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” tells Parks’ life story in mostly chronological order. However, the movie (which announces a pivotal year in big and bold letters that take up the entire screen) occasionally jumps around the timeline when it goes more in-depth about a certain landmark event in the civil rights movement, to put an emphasis on how this event related to Parks’ life. (Parks died in 2005, at the age of 92.) “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” has the expected mix of archival footage and new interviews that were done exclusively for the documentary.

Parks had a soft-spoken and unassuming way about her that endeared her to a lot of people. However, one of the myths that this documentary aims to dispel is that Parks’ humble image should not be mistaken for Parks being a passive people-pleaser. “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” makes it clear that she was all about disrupting anything to do with white supremacist racism. And far from being a pacifist, she believed that people of color needed to physically defend themselves and fight back if necessary.

The movie also explains how Parks had to come to terms with and overcome her own racism. Because of violent bullying that she experienced by white people in her youth, she spent much of her youth fearing and hating white people. It wasn’t until she got involved in the civil rights movement, when she saw how many white allies were willing to fight for the same causes, that Parks changed her views and came to understand that not all white people were “the enemy.”

Parks was born as Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. Her early views on race relations were influenced by racism she experienced and hearing about the horrible treatment that her biracial maternal grandfather received throughout his life, when he wasn’t completely accepted by white people or black people. Her maternal grandfather Sylvester, who could pass for white, was the son of a white plantation owner named John Edwards and an enslaved African American woman who worked in the plantation owner’s house.

Both of Sylvester’s parents died when he was very young, so he was sent to live with African American relatives. Carolyn Williamson Green, a cousin of Parks, comments in the documentary on Sylvester: “He looked white, but he wasn’t afraid of white people.” Williamson Green adds that because Sylvester was often harassed for being biracial, he passed on to his family a strong sense of not putting up with bad treatment from anyone. He kept a gun with him at all times and taught his family how to defend themselves.

Sylvester married a woman named Rose, and they both helped raise their grandchildren Rosa (the future Rosa Parks) and Sylvester (Rosa’s younger brother, named after his grandfather) when the kids’ parents split up. The elder Sylvester was the father of the children’s mother Leona (a teacher), who was married to a carpenter named James McCauley. By all accounts, Rosa was very protective of her younger brother Sylvester, although their relationship at times became strained later when they were adults.

In an era when African American kids weren’t expected to complete an education past sixth grade, Rosa’s mother Leona insisted that Rosa continue her education at a private school called Ms. White’s, which was an all-girls school for African Americans. The documentary mentions that this school had a tremendous impact on Rosa, because it further taught her not to think of herself as inferior or set limits for herself because of her race. She graduated from high school during a time when most African Americans could not.

Georgette Norman, former director of the Rosa Parks Museum, says that Rosa knew from an early age that the racist Jim Crow laws (which were especially prevalent in the South) could only be changed when the oppressed fought back: “Rosa got the idea [of] ‘I want to change that what makes me have to need to be protected.’ White supremacy was the threat.”

Rosa met her future husband Raymond in 1931. By all accounts, he was the first political activist she ever met. And she wasn’t very attracted to him at first because he was a light-skinned black man who could pass for white. Rosa thought that the man she would marry would have much darker skin.

However, Raymond won over Rosa with his intelligence, compassion and willingness to treat her like an equal. The couple married in 1932 and had no children. After she became world-famous, people in the documentary say that Raymond didn’t mind being overshadowed by Rosa whenever they would go out in public together. It was through Raymond that Rosa got involved with the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the earliest national groups to spur the U.S. civil rights movement.

Rosa became a secretary for the NAACP’s Montgomery chapter by accident, when the regular secretary didn’t show up for the chapter’s election day, so Rosa was voted into the position instead. The documentary mentions that this secretary position was a catalyst that inspired Rosa to become a more outspoken activist. Along with other members of the NAACP, including NAACP Montgomery chapter chairman E.D. Nixon (one of Rosa’s early civil rights mentors), she helped fight for justice in many cases where African Americans were unjustly treated.

These cases included the Scottsboro Boys case where nine African American teenagers and young men were falsely accused of raping by two white women in 1931 in Scottsboro, Alabama; Recy Taylor, a sharecropper’s wife who was gang raped by white men in 1944 in Abbeville, Alabama; and the brutal murder a Emmett Till, a 15-year-old boy who was viciously tortured, lynched and slaughtered after being accused of whistling at a white woman in Drew, Mississippi. One of the NAACP’s victories was helping in the defense of Joan Little, who was found not guilty of murder in the 1974 death of a white prison guard whom Little said she killed in self-defense when he tried to rape her.

In the case of rape survivor Taylor, whom Rosa had to interview for NAACP evidence testimony, Rosa was personally invested, because Rosa was also a victim of a sex crime. In a letter that Rosa wrote and is read in the documentary, she describes how she was nearly raped by a white man, who only stopped after Rosa told him that he would have to kill her if he was going to rape her. In other words, she warned him that she was prepared to fight to her death if he was going to try to violate her.

As historian Robin D.G. Kelley tells it: “One of the biggest myths in the Black Freedom movement is that non-violence is a default position. That’s not true. It’s the other way around. And Rosa Parks grew up in a movement culture where armed self-defense was simply taken for granted.”

Rev. James Watson, a former Detroit city council member, adds this comment: “Mother Parks supported self-defense. She couldn’t have been a supporter of the Republic of New Afrika had she not been. To her, there was no conflict in supporting Imari Obadele [Republic of New Africa president], Robert F. Williams and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom she loved. She saw that as the same line of freedom fighting. She was holistic in her approach to the right of all people to be free.”

Rosa was also heavily involved in the movement of getting more black citizens registered to vote and acting on their right to vote. It wasn’t easy, when voter suppression based on race was not only blatant but also legal. Many people believe that legal voter suppression that targets mostly people of color still exists today. Rosa also led several NAACP Youth Council groups. Doris Crenshaw, Elaine Huffman and Rosalyn O. King—three interviewees in the documentary who were part of these youth groups—have nothing but praise for Rosa.

What many people might not know is that Rosa was not the first person the NAACP considered backing after being arrested for not giving up a bus seat for a white person. As has been reported elsewhere and repeated in the documentary, a 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin, who was a member of a Rosa Parks-led NAACP youth group, was arrested for not sitting at the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 5, 1955.

At first, the NAACP seemed to be willing to give major public support in Colvin’s defense. Ultimately, the NAACP declined to put its clout behind Colvin’s case. African American historian Keisha Nicole Blaine explains in the documentary: “At the age of 15, they did not think she would make a good witness, that she would not be reliable. Some people described her as being a bit rebellious and feisty. And Claudette Colvin was a dark-skinned black girl. There was colorism.”

Rosa fit the profile of what the NAACP needed as a symbol for the civil rights movement: She was a middle-aged, married woman who was well-respected in her community and looked non-threatening. It made her arrest look even more like racist bullying. She was already well-informed about peaceful ways to protest and to be an activist. And she was also an insider at the NAACP. Williamson Green adds, “Her quietness was her strength.”

Rosa was arrested during other civil rights protests, but her 1955 arrest for not giving up her bus seat was what catapulted her into the international spotlight. The arrest inspired the widespread bus boycotts in Alabama and other parts of the U.S. where racial segregation was still legal and enforced. The NAACP helped with planning and scheduling carpools that African Americans could take instead of public transportation that had racist segregation.

The boycotts spread to other racially segregated businesses and were instrumental in the progress on legislation that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law that made it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. These successful boycotts are an example of how oppressors often don’t change their ways until they get hurt financially. Rosa and Raymond eventually settled in the Detroit area in the mid-1960s.

The documentary rightfully points out that even with all of Rosa’s accomplishments in the civil rights movement, Rosa and other women experienced prejudice within the movement. At civil rights protests and rallies in the 1950s and 1960s, women were rarely allowed to give speeches. And if they did get to say anything resembling a speech, their speech time was very limited, while the men were allowed to give long speeches.

Over the years, Rosa received many accolades, awards and honorary university degrees for her civil rights activism. For example, the U.S. Congress named her as “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement.” She became a close ally of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, who were both murdered at 39 years old. (King died in 1968, while Malcolm X died in 1965.) However, the documentary mentions multiple times that Rosa (whose day jobs were mostly being a housecleaner or a secretary/administrative assistant) never tried to get rich from her fame. She turned down many lucrative offers and gifts.

In fact, Rosa and her husband Raymond sometimes lived in poverty. Theoharis says in the documentary that in 1959, the couple’s tax return reported a combined income of only $700. In addition, Rosa often lived for years in obscurity after becoming a civil rights activist. For example, after a “where are they now” type of article was published about Rosa and reported that she was living in poverty, donations poured in from around the world to help her and Raymond with their financial problems.

Rosa’s niece Rhea McCauley says that Rosa had the type of personality where Rosa wouldn’t complain about personal problems, and she would to be too proud to ask for financial help: “Auntie Rosa never discussed financial hardships. You would not know she was hungry, for instance. You wouldn’t know that she couldn’t pay this bill.”

Raymond was a barber as his main money-making profession. Vonzie Whitlow, who used to be Raymond’s barber apprentice, is one of the people interviewed in the documentary. It’s an example of how the documentary goes a little bit off-topic, but this off-topic subject takes up such a small amount of time that it’s not a major flaw.

As mentioned in the documentary, Rosa didn’t get her first paying full-time job in politics until 1965, when she became a secretary for John Conyers Jr., a U.S. Representative from Michigan. She held the job until 1988. Conyers died in 2019. The documentary has an archival TV news interview of Conyers that was conducted when Rosa and Conyers worked together. In the interview, Conyers says he was in awe of Rosa and looked up to her, even though he was her boss. And it wasn’t until 1992 that she published a memoir: “Rosa Parks: My Story,” which she wrote with Jim Haskins.

But even the great Rosa Parks was not immune to ageism. Years after Rosa and Raymond settled in the Detroit area, civil rights activist Joe Madison worked with Rosa in the NAACP’s Detroit chapter. He tells a story in the documentary about how he and Rosa wanted to be running mates for the chapter’s open leadership positions, but several members thought that Rosa was too old for the job. Madison and Rosa didn’t win in their campaign, but Madison says it was a huge honor for Rosa to be his running mate.

Other people interviewed in the documentary include Rosa’s great-nephew Lonnie McCauley; activists Bree Newsome, Dan Aldridge, Ericka Huggins, Barbara Smith, Bryan Stevenson, Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Dorothy Aldridge and Patrisse Cullors; historians Francis Gourrier and Mary Frances Berry; journalists Herb Boyd and Tiffany Cross; and Ed Vaughn, founder of Vaughn’s Bookstore, an African American-oriented bookstore in Detroit where Rosa and Raymond Parks were frequent customers.

Rosa had a life of triumphs and tragedies. The documentary mentions how cancer claimed the lives of her husband Raymond, her brother Sylvester and her mother Leona—all within a two-year period. Raymond died in August 1977, Sylvester passed away in November 1977, and Leona died in December 1979. Rosa also survived a brutal home invasion assault and robbery in 1994. The attacker was convicted of the crime.

An example of how Rosa had periods of obscurity is shown in the documentary’s opening scene, which features Rosa in a 1980 episode of “To Tell the Truth,” a game show where three people claim to be the same person, and celebrity contestants have to guess which one out of the three is telling the truth about their identity. In this episode, the contestants were entertainers Nipsey Russell, Tiiu Leek, Kitty Carlisle and Gordon Jump. Three women, including the real Rosa Parks, claimed to be Rosa Parks.

Leek and Carlisle incorrectly guessed someone else was Rosa, while Jump made the correct guess. Russell abstained from voting because he says he already knew who Rosa was since they were both involved in the civil rights movement. The fact that half of the contestants didn’t know who Rosa was is an example of how many people didn’t really recognize her.

Unfortunately, they’re not unusual, since there are probably millions of people in America who have never heard of Rosa Parks—or if they’ve heard of her, they’re not quite sure what her claim to fame is. Keep in mind that most people in America can’t even name the politicians who represent their state in the U.S. Senate. However ignorant or knowledgeable people are about the civil rights movement in the U.S., the documentary “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” is a worthy history lesson for anyone who wants to learn more about this impassioned activist who made a positive impact on the lives of countless people.

UPDATE: Peacock will premiere “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” on October 19, 2022.

Review: ‘Firestarter’ (2022), starring Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Sydney Lemmon, Kurtwood Smith, John Beasley, Michael Greyeyes and Gloria Reuben

May 12, 2022

by Carla Hay

Zac Efron and Ryan Kiera Armstrong in “Firestarter” (Photo by Ken Woroner/Universal Pictures)

“Firestarter” (2022)

Directed by Keith Thomas

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in Lewiston, New York, the horror film “Firestarter” features a cast of predominantly white characters (with some African Americans, Latinos and one Native American) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A psychic father goes on the run with his 11-year-daughter, who has the deadly ability to start fires through her mind power, and they are fugitives of the U.S. government and law enforcement. 

Culture Audience: “Firestarter” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Zac Efron and the Stephen King novel on which the movie is based, but the movie is another failed attempt to do justice to the book.

Michael Greyeyes in “Firestarter” (Photo by Ken Woroner/Universal Pictures)

The 1984 and 2022 versions of “Firestarter” are both awful horror movies for different reasons. The 2022 version has better acting than the 1984 version, but the screenplay is worse. It’s a dull, incoherent mess with the last 15 minutes as the most heinous. The 2022 edition of “Firestarter” is from the horror-oriented Blumhouse Productions, which has a “hit and miss” track record, when it comes to putting out quality films. The same can be said of any movie adapted from a Stephen King novel or short story. “Firestarter” is based on King’s 1980 novel of the same name.

Directed by Keith Thomas and written by Scott Teems, the 2022 version of “Firestarter” should get a little credit for not being a copycat of the 1984 version. But that’s not saying much when the 2022 version is a tedious remake that takes too long to get to the “fugitives on the run” aspect of the story that was shown right away in the 1984 version of “Firestarter.” The first two-thirds of the 2002 movie are bogged down with a lot of repetitive scenes that don’t effectively further the story and in fact stall it on very monotonous levels. And the ending of the 2022 “Firestarter” movie is drastically different than the ending of both the book and the 1984 movie.

And even worse: The title character in the 2022 version of “Firestarter” goes from being a compassionate child to being a ruthless killer during a certain part of the movie. It’s a huge change in personality that looks very phony and hard to believe. People watching “Firestarter” already know that this girl has the ability to kill people with her fire-starting powers. But when she starts killing for reasons that aren’t really justified (and one of her murders is particularly shocking and despicable), it’s going to be a problem for a lot of audience members to see an 11-year-old child depicted in a way that doesn’t stay true to the book or the 1984 movie.

In both movies, a father named Andy McGee and his pre-teen daughter Charlene “Charlie” McGee are being hunted by the U.S. government because they both have unusual abilities as the result of a top-secret experiments that the father underwent when he was a college student. The research was being conducted in a lab by a mysterious government agency called The Shop, which administered a psychedelic drug called Lot 6 to the research participants, who were usually young people desperate for money. Andy met his future wife Vicky (the mother of Charlie) during these experiments.

As a result of these experiments, Andy developed psychic abilities where he could exert control over other people’s minds. Vicky also developed psychic abilities too, but not to the extent that she had mind control powers. Meanwhile, Charlie’s psychic powers came with the ability to start fires with her mind. She’s most likely to start fires when she’s angry or afraid.

Both movies also have a scene where Charlie gets angry at her mother and accidentally sets her mother’s hands on fire. And both movies show that when Charlie starts to get worked up, the temperature rises considerably wherever she’s at, and people start to sweat as a result. Charlie has to be trained to control her fire-starting abilities, but any training she gets isn’t enough. Meanwhile, Andy’s psychic abilities put a strain on his mind, which has internal hemorrhaging every time he uses his abilities, resulting in blood coming out of his eyes.

Back when Syfy was called the Sci-Fi Channel, it had a 2002 miniseries called “Firestarter 2: Rekindled,” which was about Charlie as an adult. This low-quality sequel series is not essential viewing along with any “Firestarter” movie. In fact, it’s not essential viewing for anyone who likes good entertainment.

In the 1984 “Firestarter” movie, Vicky is already dead, but she is seen in flashbacks. In the 1984 version of “Firestarter” (directed by Mark L. Lester and written by Stanley Mann), the McGee family was played by Drew Barrymore as Charlie, David Keith as Andy, and Heather Locklear as Vicky. It’s a very sloppily edited film with terrible dialogue and campy theatrics, including over-acting by Keith and co-stars such as Martin Sheen and George C. Scott.

In the 2022 “Firestarter” movie, a lot of screen time (about half of the movie) is taken up showing Andy (played by Zac Efron) and Vicky (played by Sydney Lemmon) raising 11-year-old Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) in Lewiston, New York. (The movie was actually filmed in the Canadian city of Hamilton, Ontario.) Both parents have very different opinions on how to handle Charlie’s fire-starting abilities. Vicky strongly believes that they should train Charlie to control these abilities. Andy disagrees.

“We have to protect her,” Andy tells Vicky, who replies: “Training is protecting.” There’s cause for concern, because Charlie has told them that, after a three-year hiatus, her “bad thing” has started to come back. “Something feels weird. My body.” And she says it’s not puberty.

The experiments that Andy and Vicky underwent in collage are breezed through in an opening-credits montage that shows quick flashbacks and voiceovers. These experiments were led by Dr. Joseph Wanless (played by Kurtwood Smith), who is seen later in the movie in a scene that doesn’t have very good placement in the story. The U.S. government has been looking for people who underwent these experiments to possibly use their superpowers as weapons of mass destruction.

The first half of the 2022 version of “Firestarter” has a lot of monotonous scenes of Andy, Vicky and Charlie at home, work or school. Andy’s backstory is briefly explained in the experiments montage, where he tells Dr. Wanless in an interview that he was orphaned at the age of 7 years old because his parents died in a car accident. When Andy is asked if he’s ever had an authentic psychic experience, he reveals that he had a premonition about this fatal car accident a week before it happened. The movie doesn’t bother to reveal anything about Vicky’s family background.

Andy works as a life coach/therapist, where he puts people through hypnosis/mind control to solve whatever personal problem they want to be solved There’s an unnecessary scene that shows Andy doing just that in a session with a client named Darla Gurney (played by Hannan Younis), who wants to quit smoking. Apparently, Andy and Vicky never thought about Andy controlling Charlie’s mind to brainwash her into not starting fires. Maybe Charlie is immune to this kind of mind control, but the movie never says so either way.

The 2022 version of “Firestarter” also spends considerable time showing Charlie in school, which is something that the 1984 “Firestarter” movie didn’t waste time showing. Charlie (who is a quiet and introverted student) is harassed in school by a bully named Gavin (played by Gavin Maciver-Wright), who picks on Charlie because he thinks she and her family are weird. For example, Gavin taunts Charlie because her parents won’t let her use the Internet.

Charlie’s teacher Ms. Gardner (played by Tina Jung) gently suggests to Charlie that Charlie can use the Internet at school to help her with her homework, but Charlie says that her mother has told her that using computers for extended periods of time can cause health problems. Later at home, Charlie pleads with her mother to get Internet access in their home.

Vicky is firm with her response: “That stuff rots your brains. We can’t afford it right now.” Charlie later finds out the real reason why her parents don’t want to have Internet access or computers: They think it will make the U.S. government easier to track them and spy on them.

In a scene that takes place in a school gym, the kids are playing dodgeball, and Gavin cruelly throws the ball at the back of Charlie’s head. The throw is hard enough to definitely hurt Charlie, who runs away and hides in a school restroom. Gavin calls Charlie a “loser” and sneers, “Yeah, run away, you freak!”

Ms. Gardner is the teacher on duty, so she follows Charlie in the restroom and is shocked to see the restroom filled with smoke. And as soon as she walks in, Ms. Gardner sees a closed restroom stall have its door blown wide open, as if an explosion was set off in the stall. The teacher sees Charlie come out of the stall, so Charlie gets in trouble for the damage.

The police are called to investigate. Charlie’s parents try to smooth things over and insist that Charlie did not set off an explosive device, but they can’t say the real reason why the restroom stall exploded. When the parents are at home, Andy has this to say about this explosive incident: “Our cover’s been blown.” Andy knows it’s only a matter of time before The Shop finds out about Charlie.

And he’s right. The McGee family gets on the radar of an official from The Shop named Captain June Hollister (played by Gloria Reuben), who sets a plan in motion to capture Andy and Charlie. She contacts an embittered war veteran named Rainbird (played by Michael Greyeyes) to enlist him as a hired mercenary. His mission is to find Andy and Charlie and bring them in for research. Captain Hollister insists that unlike previous mercenary jobs that Rainbird has done for the U.S. government, this quarry (Charlie and Andy) must be brought back alive.

The movie hints that Rainbird has been mistreated by the government, so Captain Hollister tries to appeal to him, by saying that his mistreatment came from “the old guard … I’m the new [guard].” Rainbird also drops a big hint about his own personal experiences with government experiments: “Before they tested their poison on pretty young co-eds, they had to use the lab rats.”

The Rainbird character was also in the “Firestarter” book, but he was not the main pursuer in the 1984 “Firestarter” movie. Instead, 1984’s “Firestarter” had a bunch of nameless government agents (all men, usually in business suits) in physical pursuit of Andy and Charlie, while Rainbird (played by Scott) makes his move much later in the story. In the 2022 “Firestarter” movie, it looks completely unrealistic that Rainbird is the lone person (without any real backup) looking for Andy and Charlie. If Andy and Charlie are so important to The Shop, there should be teams of trained professionals who go out looking for these two people with dangerous psychic abilities.

At any rate, Rainbird breaks into the McGee home, which results in Andy and Charlie escaping and going on the run without Vicky, whose fate is shown in this home invasion scene. Both “Firestarter” movies have a scene of Andy and Charlie temporarily hiding at a rural farm home. In the 2022 version of “Firestarter,” this hideout scenario happens when fugitives Andy and Charlie get a truck ride from a stranger named Irv Manders (played by John Beasley), who ends up inviting Andy and Charlie into his farm home for a temporary place to stay.

Not all of Charlie’s victims are human. After Charlie and Andy go on the run, there’s a scene where Charlie sees a stray cat and tries to pet it, but the cat scratches her out of fear. This unlucky feline then gets scorched to death.

When Charlie and Andy bury the cat and pray over this makeshift grave, Andy seems more concerned about the cat than the fact that Vicky is no longer with them. Vicky seems almost like an afterthought in this prayer scene, when Charlie says offhandedly toward the end of the prayer: “And bless mommy too,” as a reminder to Andy that they shouldn’t just be praying about the dead cat.

One of the most unrealistic aspects of the 2022 version of “Firestarter” is that when people get burned by Charlie’s fire, they almost never scream out in pain. It’s an odd choice to not have this type of screaming in a horror movie. There are also unrealistic scenes where Charlie should be burned by all the flames or overcome by all the smoke in a blazing room, but she’s not.

Most of Charlie’s freakout fire blazes don’t happen until the last third of the movie, but hardly anything in this boring sludge of a story is scary. The acting in the 1984 “Firestarter” movie was very over-the-top, and it was bad in a “train wreck” type of way. In comparison, the acting in the 2022 “Firestarter” movie is a little more professional and polished, but much of it is too restrained and often downright lackluster, especially from Efron, who is never convincing as a grieving husband.

Charlie goes from being a meek child who’s scared of her fire-starting powers for most of the movie to a sudden transformation into a rampaging, cold-blooded serial killer. It’s a jarring and extreme change that makes Charlie look like she’s got a personality disorder too. The ending of the 2022 version of “Firestarter” is what really makes it irredeemable, because it’s just mindless mayhem that tries to overcompensate for the lack of scares in most of this disjointed, bland and misguided movie.

Universal Pictures will release “Firestarter” in U.S. cinemas and on Peacock on May 13, 2022.

Review: ‘Halloween Kills,’ starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Thomas Mann and Anthony Michael Hall

October 16, 2021

by Carla Hay

Judy Greer, Jamie Lee Curtis and Andi Matichak in in “Halloween Kills” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

“Halloween Kills”

Directed by David Gordon Green

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2018, in the fictional Haddonfield, Illinois, the horror flick “Halloween Kills” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Serial killer Michael Myers is on the loose again and will murder anyone who gets in his way.

Culture Audience: “Halloween Kills” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching horror movies that care more about creating bloody murder scenes than creating any suspense or an interesting story.

Michael Myers (also known as The Shape, pictured at left) in “Halloween Kills” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

“Halloween Kills” is an apt description for what this boring slog of a horror movie does to further destroy the already damaged “Halloween” franchise. It also commits the unforgivable sin of confining “Halloween” icon Laurie Strode to a hospital for most of the movie. Horror movie aficionados will find nothing scary about this cynical cesspool of lazy filmmaking, because “Halloween Kills” is just a series of gory murders thrown into an incoherent and flimsy plot.

The 2018 “Halloween” movie indicated that Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode character (the most famous survivor of mask-wearing serial killer Michael Myers) would return to the franchise as an active hero doing battle against Michael Myers, who is also known as The Shape. The movie also introduced Laurie’s estranged daughter Karen (played by Judy Greer) and Karen’s daughter Allyson (played by Andi Matichak) into the mix, to make this hunt for Michael Myers a multi-generational family mission. At the end of the movie, Laurie and Karen had begun to mend their relationship, with Allyson being somewhat of a bridge between the two.

In “Halloween Kills,” which picks up right after the 2018 “Halloween” movie ended, any expectation that Laurie, Karen and Allyson would join forces is shattered. The three women spend most of the movie apart from each other. And when they are together, they often bicker with each other about who should or shouldn’t go after Michael Myers, who has returned to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, to wreak more havoc on Halloween night. (“Halloween Kills” was actually filmed in North Carolina.) Meanwhile, men dominate in the planning of vigilante mob actions that play out in “Halloween Kills” in the most ludicrous ways.

David Gordon Green directed 2018’s “Halloween” and “Halloween Kills,” and he co-wrote both movies with Danny McBride. Jeff Fradley was the third co-writer of 2018’s “Halloween,” while Scott Teems was the third co-writer of “Halloween Kills.” It’s difficult to know if replacing Fradley with Teems is the reason why the quality of the “Halloween Kills” screenplay took a noticeable descent into moronic hell. The 2018 “Halloween” movie is by no means a classic horror flick, but it’s an exceedingly better film than the dreck of “Halloween Kills.” The director is chiefly responsible for how a movie turns out, so it’s disappointing that Green chose to coast off of the success of his “Halloween” movie and churn out such a formulaic and unimaginative dud with “Halloween Kills.”

Simply put: “Halloween Kills” wallows in the worst stereotypes of awful horror flicks. Characters go into a house alone to try and confront the extremely dangerous killer on the loose. When opportunities come to capture or kill the murderer once and for all, characters stand around talking to (or screaming at) the mute psycho killer Michael Myers, as if they think striking up a one-way conversation with him will suddenly turn him to a reasonable, law-abiding citizen. (In “Halloween Kills,” Michael Myers is portrayed by three actors: James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle in the 2018 scenes and Airon Armstrong in the 1978 scenes.)

And even though this serial killer is murdering people all over town, police officers and ambulances are mysteriously absent for most of the mayhem because almost all the imbecile characters in this movie usually don’t call 911. The nonsensical explanation in the movie is that the vigilante citizens think they can take Michael Myers on their own. Many of them think the Haddonfield police are incompetent. But that still doesn’t explain why the police aren’t showing up in force anyway.

And worst of all for a horror movie: There’s almost no suspense and nothing is truly terrifying. Gruesome? Yes. Scary? No. It’s very easy to predict who will die and who will survive in this movie. There’s also the predictable ending scene of someone who might or might not be dead. (It’s the most obvious way for a horror movie to set up a sequel.) The murders are done in such a monotonously routine way, it would be understandable for viewers to think that Michael Myers is sleepwalking. There is absolutely nothing creatively done in this movie when it comes to the plot, dialogue or action sequences.

“Halloween Kills” also squanders a compelling idea of reuniting many of the characters who survived the Michael Myers massacre that took place in the original 1978 “Halloween” movie. Several characters are introduced as having a meaningful connection to “Halloween” lore, but “Halloween Kills” won’t let viewers get to know these characters in a meaningful way. There are flashbacks in “Halloween Kills” that are ultimately a waste of time.

In one such flashback, which takes place in 1978 during Michael Myers’ first massacre in Haddonfield, viewers see a rookie cop in his 20s named Hawkins (played by Thomas Mann) and his older, more experienced partner Pete McCabe (played by Jim Cummings) on the scene. They are among the first cops to respond to this emergency. It’s enough to say that McCabe doesn’t make it out alive, but Hawkins does. In 2018, Hawkins (played by Will Patton) is still a Haddonfield cop, and he’s been wounded in this latest Michael Myers massacre.

Laurie is also wounded, because Michael stabbed her in the abdomen, as shown in 2018’s “Halloween.” She’s first seen in “Halloween Kills” bleeding profusely and in agony in the back of a truck with Karen and Allyson, as the truck speeds to the nearest hospital. It’s at this hospital that Laurie will stay for most of her screen time in “Halloween Kills.” She’s sidelined into being either being unconscious or, when she wakes up, being a cranky grandmother who thinks she knows best when it comes to who should go after Michael Myers.

And what a coincidence: A wounded Hawkins ends up being in the same hospital room as Laurie. There’s an almost laughable backstory put in “Halloween Kills” that Laurie and Hawkins had a flirtation with each other back in 1978. And so, in the midst of all the madness and mayhem with this latest Michael Myers killing spree, Laurie and Hawkins make goo-goo eyes at each other in their hospital beds, as they reminisce about their “could’ve been” near-miss romance. It’s an example of how off-the-rails this movie is in keeping Laurie mostly out of the action.

Besides Laurie and Hawkins, these are the other Haddonfield survivors from the original 1978 massacre who become targets of Michael Myers in the 2018 massacre:

  • Tommy Doyle (played by Anthony Michael Hall): In 1978, Laurie was babysitting Tommy and his sister on the Halloween night when Michael Myers went on his deadly rampage. Tommy’s sister became one of Michael Myers’ murder victims.
  • Lindsey Wallace (played by Kyle Richards): She was also a kid in 1978, and her babysitter was murdered by Michael Myers that night.
  • Marion Chambers (played by Nancy Stephens): She was the nurse of the late Dr. Loomis (played by Donald Pleasance), the psychiatrist who was treating Michael Myers when Michael escaped from the psychiatric institution on that fateful Halloween in 1978. (Stephens reprises her role that she had in 1978’s “Halloween” movie.)
  • Lonnie Elam (played by Robert Longstreet): When he was 9 or 10 years old, he had a near-miss encounter with Michael Myers on a sidewalk on Halloween night 1978. (Tristian Eggerling portrays Lonnie as a child in a flashback scene.)

“Halloween Kills” also has some other characters who encounter Michael Myers on Halloween night in 2018. Lonnie’s son Cameron Elam (played by Dylan Arnold) happens to be Allyson’s boyfriend. Cameron is also the person who finds a wounded Hawkins on the street. It’s one of the few times that someone in this movie has the common sense to call 911 for help. But that’s not what happens later in the movie when Lonnie, Cameron and Allyson foolishly decide to hunt down Michael Myers on their own.

Married couple Marcus (played by Michael Smallwood) and Vanessa (played by Carmela McNeal), who are dressed in Halloween costumes as a doctor and a nurse, meet Tommy at a local bar and quickly befriend him after he gets up on stage and talks about being a Michael Myers survivor. And there’s a gay couple named Big John (played by Scott MacArthur) and Little John (played by Michael McDonald), who work together in real estate. Big John and Little John happen to live in the house that Michael Myers used to live in before Michael was sent to a psychiatric institution in 1963 for killing his 17-year-old sister Judith when he was 6 years old. What are the odds that Michael will go back to his childhood home when Big John and Little John are there?

Michael Myers was supposed to be in his 20s in 1978, which means that he’s getting too old to have the type of superhuman strength that he has in these “Halloween” movies. He’s also been “killed” in several ways in various “Halloween” movies, but he still keeps coming back. All of that is explained in “Halloween Kills” when Laurie gives an absurdly bad monologue about how she’s come to the conclusion that Michael Myers is not human and he feeds off of people’s fear of him.

The “mob justice” aspect of “Halloween Kills” is idiotic and badly mishandled. Expect to see Tommy shout, “Evil dies tonight!” multiple times, as it becomes a rallying cry for the vigilante crowd. Just by coincidence, two psychiatric patients have escaped that night from a psychiatric institution that held Michael Myers. It’s a plot contrivance that’s set up for a silly “mistaken identity” subplot.

Even though the people of Haddonfield should know by now what Michael Myers’ height and general physical build should be (his body type hasn’t changed since 1978), the crazed vigilantes go after one of these escapees who’s considerably shorter and stockier than Michael Myers. Apparently, for this mob, any old psychiatric hospital escapee will do.

Karen is the only one with an iota of common sense to notice that this escapee doesn’t have Michael Myers’ physical characteristics. As the practical-minded Karen, Greer gives the best performance of this movie’s cast members. However, that’s not saying much because everyone’s acting in “Halloween Kills” is mediocre overall.

Oddly, there’s a lone elderly cop in uniform who gets swept up in the vigilante mob. His allegiances are never really clear. One minute, he seems to want to try to stop the mob madness. The next minute, he seems to be going along with the crowd. He doesn’t ask for backup from his fellow police officers. The only thing that’s clear is that he’s a terrible cop who should be fired and can kiss that pension goodbye.

There are many plot holes in “Halloween” that the filmmakers want to cover up with some cringeworthy dialogue and bloody action sequences. “Halloween Kills” has so much arguing and melodrama in a hospital, viewers will be wondering: “Is this a horror movie or a soap opera?” At one point, Laurie rips out her medical tubes and injects herself in the rear end with a painkiller. If you waited your whole life to see Laurie Strode give herself a butt injection, then “Halloween Kills” is the movie for you.

During one of her hospital rants, Laurie says to Karen about why Michael Myers is still on the loose and what Laurie wants to do about it: “The system failed … Let him come for me! Let him take my head as I take his! … You and Allyson shouldn’t have to keep running because of the darkness I created.”

But wait a minute, Laurie. “Halloween Kills” doesn’t want you to take all the credit for Michael Myers going on a rampage. Hawkins thinks Michael Myers is on this killing spree because of Hawkins. He makes a guilt-ridden confession that doesn’t make any sense at all for why Hawkins would be the reason for Michael Myers’ serial killings. There’s a badly written flashback scene involving a cover-up that wouldn’t be plausible in the real world because of autopsy reports and how bullet trajectories would be investigated.

It’s not as if viewers should expect a terrible horror movie like “Halloween Kills” to be realistic. But the movie just doesn’t offer a horrifying mystery, engaging new characters, or even twist-filled “hunt for the killer” chase scenes. It’s all so predictable, hollow and generic. “Halloween Kills” puts too much emphasis on a mindless and forgettable mob of people while sidelining Laurie Strode, the most memorable and iconic hero of the “Halloween” franchise. That’s the real injustice in “Halloween Kills.”

Universal Pictures released “Halloween Kills” in U.S. cinemas and on Peacock on October 15, 2021.

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