'First Reformed' is a heady, haunting and challenging take on faith

Cinephiles known writer-director Paul Schrader for two things -- his occasionally brilliant often inconsistent career and his dogged fascination with matters of faith.

His best films -- Blue Collar, Hardcore, American Gigolo -- mostly came early in his career, after he struck gold with his iconic screenplay for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

In recent years, he's become largely the subject of ridicule, especially after the infamously trouble production of his Lindsay Lohan erotic thriller The Canyons.

Now, he's back with a film that dives headfirst into the themes he has explored before -- the damaged male psyche, loneliness, obsession, religion and despair -- but in a much more coherent and compelling vehicle than he has made in some time. In fact, many critics are hailing it as his signature masterpiece.

The audience I saw it with didn't seem to appreciate it at all. The snickered and chuckled at its earnestness and jarring shifts in tone. It is, by any measure, a challenging movie. It's a pretty quiet, slow-paced meditative movie -- with long static takes that force you to lean in and pay attention to the literate and nuanced dialogue.

After a year totally dominated by superhero and fantasy films, it feels like a total breath of fresh air to watch a film aimed squarely at adults that does not spoonfeed you and raises very provocative political ideas -- about climate change and the corruption of American churches -- without feeling even a little heavy handed, or, yes, preachy.

The movie is aided tremendously by Ethan Hawke's towering lead performance, in what might just be the best work of his career. His voice now a raspy gravel and his once boyish face weathered and looking stricken, he plays the pastor of a poorly attended church being bankrolled by a mega-ministry -- led by a very subtle Cedric the Entertainer.

After being summoned by a pregnant woman, played by Amanda Seyfried, to counsel her troubled husband, Hawke's character finds himself instead shaken by the man's plaintive, compelling question: Will God forgive us for destroying his creation?

The film then plunges into a complex and occasionally surreal journey which shows the Hawke character's spiritual crisis coinciding with his awakening as a would-be radical activist.

This is all handled in the least histrionic way possible, which adds to the movie's haunting power. Schrader has never been a filmmaker hailed for his subtlety, so it's shocking that he has laid out such a stark but sophisticated narrative, and yet this feels like the culmination of everything he's aimed to do before, and since he'd already lost such esteem in the industry, it has the revelatory vibe of someone who knew that had nothing to lose.

As decidedly uncommercial as this movie is -- and its ending will especially confound a lot of viewing seeking tidier resolution -- it really made me think a lot about the current moment where living in, where so many people feel that extremism of one form or another is the only righteous option. It's an unsettling subject, one that I can't get out of my mind several hours after seeing the film.

Who knows if First Reformed will remain in the conversation later in the year when awards talk begins, but it will certainly remain in my mind of the foreseeable future.

'Never Seen It' - Episode 37 - 'Blue Lagoon' leaves us feeling icky

Back in 1980 there was a movie that was a bigger hit than Caddyshack, The Shining, American Gigolo, Raging Bull, Ordinary People and The Blues Brothers -- and yet is largely unknown today. It was The Blue Lagoon, a would-be erotic drama about two young people having their sexual awakening while stranded on an idyllic island.

The movie starred a very young Brooke Shields at what may have been the height of her notoriety, and it is not inaccurate to say that the marketing campaign for the film largely depended on exploiting her sexuality. But is this film a nice little nuanced hidden gem, a dated piece of trash, or maybe something somewhere in the middle?

Listen to the latest episode of my 'Never Seen It' podcast (co-hosted with my wife, Elizabeth Rosado) below to find out more. Also, please subscribe, rate and review our podcast on iTunes.

'Solo' made me smile in spite of its imperfections

It's weird looking at the new Star Wars standalone film Solo as an underdog but I did. It's had to battle bad buzz -- largely inspired by its troubled production, which saw the firing of its original directors (replaced by Ron Howard) and reports of franchise fatigue.

I wanted to like this movie -- and I did -- despite the fact that it is far from a perfect blockbuster.

It is in so many ways a riskier proposition than the last standalone Star Wars movie, Rogue One, since its asking audience to accept (for the first time) new actors playing beloved franchise characters like Han Solo and Lando Calrissian.

But, that familiarity also aids the film tremendously because there's already a warmth and affection we feel for these heroes (including Chewbacca in fighting form) and that brand loyalty will help fans navigate some of the movie's bumpier passages.

It's definitely a movie that has grown on me the more that I think about it.

That being said, it does feel a bit like the work of too many cooks. Ron Howard, for all his competency, has never been director known for putting a distinct stylistic stamp on his films. The original directors -- Phil Lord and Christopher Miller -- who are best known for their comedy chops undoubtedly lent a hand to the film's genuine laughs, which are more plentiful than they were in the more dour Rogue One. But the film feels like a series of vignettes, instead of a single coherent story.

Some of these sequences work incredibly well -- especially in the back half of the film when the story starts to hit more of a consistent rhythm and the performances also start to feel more assured. Both Alden Ehrenreich and Donald Glover graduate from impersonation to solid new interpretations of their iconic characters, and many of the supporting players are great, although a few are dispatched with way too early for my liking.

The movie also does an admirable job of advancing the new Star Wars ethos of diversity and gender parity. Although I wish Emilia Clarke's character had more dimension, she is undeniably badass. The same goes for perhaps the most original creation of the movie -- a saucy droid named L3 -- who serves as Lando's co-pilot and possibly paramour.

Still, the movie feels hamstrung by its desire to fan service. It's color palette can be oppressively grim. And while I appreciate the movie's attempt to recreate the more lived-in world of the original trilogy, I did miss the gorgeous world building that was very present in The Last Jedi.

I am sure a lot of other fans will have more quibbles -- but I am not going to begrudge a Star Wars film for narrative inconsistencies and occasionally hokeyness. This is a fun, frivolous heist movie that doesn't really shed knew light on the character of Han Solo (he is already the sarcastic, cocky ace pilot we know and love from the beginning. It hits its themes with a pretty heavy hand but it's consistently funny and fast paced enough to keep me from dwelling on its imperfections.

I have no idea if it will satisfy the increasingly fickle faithful, but I'm definitely going to be rooting for it.

'Predator 2' and the promise of even more 'Predators'

Last night, for the first time, I watched the much-derided, but also somewhat widely-defended sequel to the 1987 action movie classic Predator, 1990's Predator 2.

I actually really enjoyed the movie despite it's frequently laughable eccentricities and occasional narrative incoherence. The action is deliriously over-the-top, Danny Glover makes for a very amusing, unconventional action hero lead, and the finale takes great pains to establish something akin to a Predator 'universe' which is something the Arnold Schwarzenegger original never bothered to do.

And that 'universe' is coming soon to a theater near year in Shane Black's upcoming reboot The Predator.

I must say, I am surprised that these movies have enough story and momentum to sustain several iterations, even though commerce dictates it must be so.

Even the more cerebral Alien films feel as though they've painted themselves into a narrative corner with nothing new to say. These movies have long ago abandoned any kind of high-brow intentions to become high-concept horror films, where the slasher is a monster instead of a pervert with a knife.

The trailer for the new film looks entertaining enough, but it also appears to be adding literally nothing the series' mythology. The predator will show up, hunt, kick some ass. skin some people and will likely eventually be brought down by our hero or heroes.

The formula worked the first time in 1987 because the effects and execution were relatively fresh and gritty.

And say what you will about the sequel, it did try to do something new, transferring the alien from the jungle to a stylized, crime-ridden version of '1997' Los Angeles.

That film seems to be trying to echo Robocop's brand of muscular cynicism but is at times too silly to fully land its punches, although its violence is so relentless and amped up that I spent too much time being shocked by the film to be ashamed of it.

I purposefully skipped the mash-up 'vs.' films. They seemed little more than exercises in mind-numbing butchery, with uninteresting human characters there simply to be fodder for slaughter. I remember 2010's Predators being just ok -- a great trailer for a mediocre movie -- that was truly more of the same: band of grunts getting picked off one by one until a showdown between man and beast.

Still, I have faith in Shane Black. He not only acted in the original film, he made his name scripting some of the best '80s-era blockbusters like the first Lethal Weapon. And, with Iron Man 3, he proved capable of shaking up 'franchises' that have started to become hopelessly stale.

I am waiting on the reviews before I commit to seeing his Predator, but my hope is that the film uses modern special effects and hopefully a refreshing storytelling approach to make it more than just another hunter vs. hunted movie.

'Handmaid's Tale' film a prime example of how hard adaptations are

Like a lot of fans of the Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood's best-seller The Handmaid's Tale (although it's weird to describe yourself as a 'fan' of something so relentlessly bleak and upsetting) I was surprised to learn that there had previously been a 1990 big screen version of the dystopian book about a society where women are systematically sexually abused and brainwashed.

Then I saw it -- and now I understand why it didn't have a lot of staying power.

It boasts two major actors -- Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall -- which should be intriguing. I actually think Duvall is fine in the movie as "The Commander," he is a closer approximation of what I pictured in Atwood's book than Joseph Fiennes. Dunaway is another story, this is around the point in her career where she always seemed campy, which is a shame since she was such a dynamite actress in her prime.

But there are many other, huge problems with this version -- which I tried to watch as objectively as I could -- while knowing that Elizabeth Moss's Emmy winning TV series has cast as a large and iconic shadow over this material.

First off, if makes the colossal error of jettisoning the main character's inner monologue which helped ground the book and later the TV version. Instead, the movie is weirdly detached and matter-of-fact, portraying its horrors with no context or emotion.

Speaking of no emotion, the lead performance of the late Natasha Richardson sadly misses the mark. She doesn't have the most expressive face and her line readings are stuck in neutral. Apparently, the role was originally going to be Sigourney Weaver's -- which would have been interesting since her career has largely been defined by playing strong women -- so it would be subversive to show her being stripped of her independence.

But instead we feel nothing for Richardson or her plight. The film does hew fairly closely to the book's narrative -- at least until the last act. But while it hits the same story beats, it strangely seems to be selling itself as eroticism instead of the terror that it is supposed to evoke. The tonally wrong nature of the project is self-evident in the 1990 poster, which makes it seem like soft core porn.

Of course, Atwood's book, which is both complex and wide-ranging would be difficult to adapt into a feature length film at any time. It's premise is so bold that it can be over-the-top if not handled very creatively and intelligently. The makers of the Hulu series have managed to do just that -- with an end result that is harrowing but which feels very vital to the current political and cultural climate.

Apart from trying to take advantage of the popularity of a best-seller, it's not entirely clear what the intentions were of the filmmakers behind the 1990 film version. It looks fairly cheap (my wife presumed it was a television movie when she saw me watching it) and it's Cliff Notes-style handling of more nuanced ideas in the book are infuriating.

But I absorbed it all as both a cautionary tale and a shining example of how great written work can go wrong when it is transferred to the cinematic medium.

Lando spin-off! Obi-Wan prequel! 'Star Wars' news to die for

Solo hasn't even hit theaters and yet the momentum behind Donald Glover and his purportedly scene-stealing turn as a younger Lando Calrissian has already inspired its very own spin-off. As a longtime fanboy of the Calrissian character, this is thrilling news -- as as a champion of seeing more diversity in leading roles in blockbusters -- this is also very welcome news.

It comes on the heels of Glover's breakout hit, politically-charged song "This Is America." Needless to say, he's having a moment right now.

Of course, this resurgence of interest in Calrissian has me really hopeful that Billy Dee Williams will finally get his due and appear in the final installment of the Rey-Finn-Poe trilogy, which should be concluding sometime next year.

Williams, who is 81 now, has long made his eagerness to play the character again known, and his lack of inclusion in both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were terrible omissions. Both movies had roles that could have gone to Williams (parts eventually filled by Lupita Nyong'o and Benicio Del Toro) and the claim of director Rian Johnson that he 'wanted' to include Lando only has added insult to injury.

Lando was always a character that was ripe for more exploration, and while I'm excited to see how Glover develops the character (which one of the Solo writers has now deemed pansexual) -- I also think it'd be interesting to see what Williams does with him now.

If nothing else, I fully expect this spin-off to provide a cinematic realization of the Battle of Taanab!

Meanwhile, there was even more exciting news! A long rumored 'Adventures of Obi-Wan'-type prequel appears to be definitely happening.

That film -- which hopefully/ideally will star Ewan McGregor again as the aging jedi -- will serve as a bridge between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. There are a number of reasons why this is very intriguing.

All of the elements that gave a nod to A New Hope were the strongest elements of Revenge of the Sith. While I am a not a fan of the prequel trilogy at all -- I do think McGregor consistently did some of the best acting in them, even if the material frequently let him down. He's obviously a very good actor and seems willing and ready to reprise the role, if for no other reason, it'll give him an opportunity to play the part liberated from George Lucas' control.

McGregor famously chafed at Lucas' dispassionate style of filmmaking and since this new film is supposedly being helmed by Stephen Daldry (which is a weird choice), so it should have a very different feel and tone than the three films he'd appeared in previously.

Also, at 47, McGregor can play an older wiser Obi-Wan, who Alec Guinness captured so hauntingly in A New Hope. There are still so many fascinating questions about that character's backstory:  How did he come to be known as Ben Kenobi? Why did he earn a reputation as being a weird old hermit. Clearly, he has a reputation because Luke Skywalker has heard of him before even met -- that's intriguing.

Both of these projects have the potential to be incredible wish fulfillment for the fans but also an opportunity to do something totally new in terms of the series' form -- for instance, Donald Glover has already suggested that his Lando film could be a kind of space-based Catch Me If You Can, which could be brilliant. And the Obi-Wan film could be something more akin to a western.

I'm not among the detractors of The Last Jedi -- I actually enjoy it more every time I think about it -- but for those who are anxious about where Disney is steering the Star Wars ship, these two spin-offs should be a welcome surprise.

'Never Seen It' - Episode 36 - 'Valerian' is a very extra movie

Director Luc Besson's big budget sci-fi film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets may have flopped when it hit theaters last year, but it still made a handful of critics' top 10 lists, which made me and my wife Elizabeth Rosado curious.

We're both fans of Besson's The Fifth Element, and the this film seems to borrow many of that quirky cult film's aesthetic. But does this movie work on its own terms?

We explore this question and more in the latest episode of our work-in-progress movie podcast Never Seen It (you can find all our previous episodes here).

Check out this episode on iTunes or by clicking on the YouTube link below to hear what she and I think about this one.

Ready for their close-up: My favorite movies directed by actors

Last night I watched actor Sean Penn's first feature film as a director, the flawed -- but earnest and frequently interesting drama The Indian Runner. Since then, Penn has staked out a reputation for being a fairly solid filmmaker -- with at least one genuinely great film (in my opinion) under his belt -- 2001's The Pledge with Jack Nicholson.

Looking at this movie got me thinking about actors who go on to become genuine auteurs. It can be a very hit or miss proposition. For instance, Robert De Niro is one of our greatest living actors, but I found his 2006 movie The Good Shepherd to be a bit of a bore.

On the other hand, while I find Jon Favreau to be more or less serviceable as an actor (his one good performance for me is in Swingers) he's proved to be a very good blockbuster filmmaker as evidenced by Elf, Iron Man, and a way better than I anticipated adaptation of The Jungle Book.

I'm excluding filmmakers who sometimes dabble in on-screen acting -- so no Woody Allen or Spike Lee here -- I don't really consider them 'actors' in the traditional sense. I'm thinking of people who will most likely always be known for their acting first, but who have made phenomenal films.

Here are some standouts off the top of my head.

Unforgiven (1992) 
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Clearly, Eastwood is one of the most accomplished actor-directors of all time. He's won a couple Academy Awards, and he has remained viable for several decades. He's made quite a few movies I really admire, but this brooding western meditation on the nature of violence may always be remembered as his greatest directorial achievement. It's just a perfectly constructed film, with top to bottom excellent performances as a terrific clarity of purpose.

Ordinary People (1980) 
Directed by Robert Redford
It's now cinephile orthodoxy that this tearjerker robbed Martin Scorsese's masterpiece Raging Bull of a much-deserved Best Picture and Director Academy Award, which isn't wrong, but that overlooks how effective and moving this movie about an upper-crust family coming apart at the seems is. It's a daringly sensitive story that simply wouldn't get made today. Redford gets extraordinary performances out of his cast, and would prove he was no one-hit wonder with Quiz Show years later.

Dick Tracy (1990) 
Directed by Warren Beatty
With Beatty's it's hard to choose. His massive labor of love -- Reds -- is the most respected one. His charming Heaven Can Wait was arguably the best received. And Bullworth is a terrific little diversion. But, the most enjoyable, fully realized of his films may be his note perfect adaptation of the Dick Tracy comic strip into a visually splendid, hilarious treat. A childhood favorite of mine that just keeps getting better with age.

Tropic Thunder (2008)
Directed by Ben Stiller
Stiller honed his formidable skills as a comedy director with his underrated single season Fox sketch show in the '90s and he is very at home with knowing satire of Hollywood hubris. An over-the-top, outrageous film which manages to use blackface and mock films centered around the handicapped, and still emerges triumphant. The cast is stacked with home run hitters, from Robert Downey, Jr. to a wack-a-doo Tom Cruise made up to look like a balding, overweight agent from hell.

The Ides of March (2011)
Directed by George Clooney
A very underrated political drama with a fantastic cast led by Ryan Gosling. Clooney cleverly casts himself in what turns out to be the villain role and keeps the stage-inspired film from feeling too staid and placid. Clooney has had a hit-and-miss record as a filmmaker, and Good Night and Good Luck certainly earned more acclaim, but I think this is his most interesting film to date.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Directed by Charles Laughton
The legendary character actor Charles Laughton (Spartacus, The Hunchback of Notre Dame) famously only directed one film -- and it's this bonafide classic. Robert Mitchum is all menace as a psychotic faux preacher who aims to go on a killing spree to get his hands on some stolen money. It's a deeply creepy and atmospheric film, ahead of its time by miles. It's a shame it flopped upon its initial release because it would been fascinating to see more Laughton movies.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
Directed by Marlon Brando
This epic western was an extremely troubled, contentious production, which pretty much marked the end of Brando's career as a superstar for almost a decade. He gave one of his last truly committed performances in this deeply autobiographical (and sneakily complex) film about a loner (Brando) clashing with his former father figure (played by Karl Malden in a rare bad guy role). It has gained in stature since its initial release, and suggests that Brando had real skill behind the camera as well as in front of it.

The Paper (1994)
Directed by Ron Howard
Although he's far better known now for his directing, in fairness, Ron Howard was a legit actor first -- mostly known for his television work on The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days. He's made a lot of very likable comedies (Parenthood, Night Shift) and some more blockbuster fare like the upcoming Solo, but my favorite film of his might be this great day-in-the-life of a New York City tabloid starring a firing-on-all-cylinders Michael Keaton.

Misery (1990)
Directed by Rob Reiner
Although his recent output has been rough, early on in his directing career All In the Family star Rob Reiner had a string of terrific films under his belt. The best, and the biggest outlier, is his nail biting adaptation of Stephen King's Misery. The film is both hilarious and harrowing, and Reiner gets career best performances from James Caan and Kathy Bates in the two leading roles.

The Apostle (1997)
Directed by Robert Duvall
As much as I enjoy Jack Nicholson's mugging in As Good As It Gets, the Best Actor winner that year should have been Duvall in his galvanic performance as a rabble rousing preacher who flees a domestic crisis to set up shop in a racially polarized community. He is electric and so is this unique and eccentric film. This is a great example of an actor directed themselves to one of their best performances.

'Cobra Kai' is a case study in how reboots should be done

When Cobra Kai, the YouTube reboot of the hit '80s Karate Kid saga was first announced a lot of critics were understandably incredulous. After the crowd-pleasing, hit 1984 original and its two sequels (not to mention a 2010 reboot with Jaden Smith) it seemed as if the creative juice was long gone from this series.

Every indication was that this would be yet another tired retread of an '80s staple, and even worse, a slightly smug parody that would embarrass its aging stars Ralph Macchio and William Zabka.

But against the odds, after viewing the first two episodes, I can safely say the series is excellent. It provides a great platform to show off Zabka's genuine acting chops. It's genuinely funny and jarringly realistic and to my mind, it provides a real blueprint for how these kinds of decades-after-the-fact reboots can actually be effective.

The most direct comparison I can think of is Creed, which came along long after it seemed as though the Rocky series had no place else to go creatively. That film succeeds on several levels, but one of the things I like about it best is that it handles the previous Rocky entries as realistically as possible and then grapples with the real world implications of what those events could have transpired.

In other words Apollo Creed's death in Rocky IV plays a tangible and compelling role in who Michael B. Jordan's titular character becomes.

Cobra Kai, in a weird way, has a similar structure. In this case, the first episode mostly drills down on the fallout from the fateful finale of the original Karate Kid film. For the uninitiated, nerdy hero Daniel LaRusso (played then and now by Macchio) triumphs over his arch nemesis Johnny Lawrence (Zabka). For fans of that film, it's a great heroic moment, but we come to learn that for Johnny that incident marked a bit of downward spiral into heavy drinking and inconsistent labor.

Meanwhile, LaRusso has matured into a bit of a local celebrity -- a smarmy car salesman who capitalizes on his notoriety as a karate hero to make appearances in cheesy ads. It helps that Macchio has not aged particularly well, he no longer has his boyish cuteness, so his performance comes across as believably insincere.

The show does a remarkable job of making Zabka -- who was a pretty atrocious and unlikable thug in the original film -- into a pretty sympathetic figure, and while the film has some fun with the fact that both its leads are has beens, it's not interested in making cheap jokes.

Instead, the show (which also makes great use of footage from the 1984 film for flashbacks) is actually a meditation on lost youth and those little moments that make seem inconsequential on paper but can alter your entire adolescence if they impact you to right/wrong way.

I wish more reboots took this kind of care and consideration with their material. So many attempts to update long dormant franchises try to do it in the laziest way possible -- either by making it 'darker' or by re-creating every beat from the original note for note. Neither approach works for me.

To be a truly successful, standalone and original project in your own right you need to do what HBO's Westworld has done masterfully to my mind. They took the essence of the 1973 film that inspired it -- the key elements of its premise -- but then built on them and added far more sophisticated and ambitious story elements than the movie could have ever taken on.

The original Karate Kid couldn't be bothered to give its villain to much back story or resolution either, but on this show there is an opportunity to make these archetypes actual people, and that will make everything that happens in the movies retroactively more interesting.

I have no idea how sustainable this series will be, but for now, it's proved a lot of doubters wrong and it's a lot more entertaining than it could have been because its creators clearly not only have affection for this material but feel like they have something new to say about it, which seems like a simple concept, but it's alluded a lot of producers of re-imagined reboots over the years.

Obviously, I still think we re-make, re-boot and re-visit too much these days, but if it has to happen for commerce reasons, creative reasons should be as close a second as possible.

Binge-watching 'Blade': Why this series warrants a re-boot

Last night, I had the unique pleasure of revisiting the original 1998 comic book movie hit Blade, which I saw in theaters when it first came out and its 2002 follow-up, directed by recent Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), and which I've never seen.

Both movies are a lot of fun -- they're also a great showcase for Wesley Snipes in his action hero prime -- but my biggest takeaway was that this is a cinematic universe that deserves to be revisited.

This very well may happen. The character has a pretty solid fanbase and name recognition, thanks in large part to the Snipes films. Black Panther proved there is a huge market for black superhero movies (and yes, I believe Blade qualifies as a super hero) and most importantly, at least in these first two films (I've skipped the third, which is supposed to be laughably bad) are bursting with ideas that could be deepened in a new, different kind of Blade film.

The first two Snipes films are fun, fast-paced and action-packed. They're not great in terms of storytelling or character development. The first film does a great job of establishing the character (although Snipes never quite fully commits to playing Blade as an emotionless killing machine and his offbeat humorous takes feel oddly out of place) and the world of Blade.

He's half-human, half-vampire (a 'daywalker') who hunts evil vampires who apparently roam the earth largely undetected. There are some who apparently are relatively benevolent, who are in a kind of underground truce with humans and then there are rebels, represented by a wonderfully campy Stephen Dorff, who think its beneath them to treat regular people as anything more than cattle.

So far, so good. Sure the effects can be wince inducing at times, but it's an entertaining, occasionally creepy ride. I liked the idea of 'familiars' (sort of vampire fanboys who seek to curry favor with actual bloodsuckers by doing their bidding) and the idea that there is this fractious community of vampires was fascinating to me.

Snipes definitely makes a great Blade -- he really sells the fight choreography (because he is apparently actually well-trained in martial arts) and he just looks awesome in the role. That being said I could see a more emotive actor like Mahershala Ali working wonders with it.

In the two Blade films I saw, the character is never afforded much of a personal life save for his intense friendship with his fellow surly vampire hunter Whistler (played with great aplomb by Kris Kristofferson).

In Blade II, clearly the budget is bigger and the visual template is more ambitious thanks to the distinct sensibility of Del Toro. The film never quite feels like his though, it's definitely an action film of its era (dicey CGI and all). I think its action scenes are probably a notch about the original but it's more of a series of set pieces than an actual story.

Like I said earlier, by most accounts Blade: Trinity was a step in the wrong direction it seems as though this series is stuck in perpetual limbo. I know Snipes has long believed that he could still step into his iconic black ensemble and resurrect the character, and maybe he could -- especially if they try to do something akin what filmmakers did with Hugh Jackman/Wolverine in Logan.

Either way, I want more Blade!

From KKK to Kanye: When pop culture does actual harm

A couple weeks ago I engaged in a nostalgic conversation with some co-workers about the classic 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die.

I'm a diehard Bond film (with all the caveats that come along with it) and that Roger Moore film was probably the one that made me fall in love with the character as a child. I didn't pick up on the messy racial politics of the movie when I saw it as a kid. It was just escapist fun, and while I can now acknowledge that the film has plenty of dated, even offensive elements -- I still love it.

I understand that in the grand scheme of things this movie didn't contribute much that would be construed as constructive when it comes to our collective racial dialogue (although, it did break ground as the first, and for many years the only, 007 to feature an African-American leading lady). But with all that being said, it's caricatures aren't cruel and don't have tremendous staying power.

Clearly, if the film were re-made today it would need a serious overhaul, but I can appreciate it for it was, with a full understanding of the context in which it was made.

There are other films, however, that I can't excuse as being historically naive, because there clearly is an insidious, destructive intent behind them.

For instance, for me, Gone with the Wind and the 1915 KKK propaganda film The Birth of a Nation are unforgivable, regardless of their artistic merits, because both movies were hugely influential, shaping decades of American thought and codifying a kind of historical revisionism which led to real-world oppression and murder.

Gone with the Wind shamelessly romanticized the pre-Civil War south, casting slaveowners as benevolent victims. This 1939 film is the most financially successful film of all time if adjusted for inflation -- if you could afford to buy a ticket when this movie came out, you saw it. And what it's done and has continued to do is perpetuate the idea that the South was fighting for a noble, even righteous cause, and that they essentially got a raw deal from the North.

The Birth of a Nation was even more overtly destructive. It was a recruiting tool for the Klan, but also a polemic whose purpose was to completely eviscerate the Reconstruction era, which was the last sustained effort to afford black Americans equal rights in this country until the 1960s. Not only was the film a success, it was endorsed by the sitting president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, an avowed bigot. It helped swell the ranks of the Klan and ushered in the Jim Crow era.

We still see whitewashing and the romanticization of problematic figures and periods to this day. And the further we are removed from the historical facts, that more dangerous this kind of bright, shiny object-style of revisionism can be.

For instance, millions of people flocked to the P.T. Barnum biopic The Greatest Showman last year without the foggiest idea that the real life man was a vicious racist and abuser of animals. Of course no single work of art can cover every inch of ground. But it's simply wildly irresponsible to not even allude to or address a person's character flaws.

Which leads me to Kanye West.

Kanye West's descent into whatever decks exist below the Sunken Place of course hits harder because I have been such a longtime fan of his music, and less so a defender of him as a human being.

He began to lose me when he said women get abortions to extort wealthy men, when he claimed Bill Cosby was innocent and when he started selling concert garb with the Confederate flag emblazoned on it. Then, he declared his support for the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump, a man who has defended white supremacists, endorsed police brutality and torture, and who spent years insisting that the first black president was not an American or smart enough to gain entry to an Ivy League school without any proof whatsoever.

Sure, a lot of people don't pay attention to what Kanye says and does, but unfortunately a lot of people do. And whether or not he is an unwitting stooge or a conniving performance artist has now become beside the point. He is actively being wielded as a racially polarizing cudgel by the likes of Donald Trump and now, unspeakably, Alex Jones.

There is no turning back from this. Right-wingers searching for a justification for not having to answer for the ills of slavery can now quote Kanye West. Conservatives looking to pin violence in black inner city neighborhoods on Barack Obama can now quote Kanye West. And they are.

This is not a benevolent, in-the-moment kind of cultural insensitivity that you might grimace and push past in an old film or TV show. We know better now, or at least we should, and if all of the social movements of recent years should have taught us anything, it's that if we don't know something, we ought to ask somebody.

The lack of true intellectual curiosity, the indulgence and placating that has greeted this recent gambit speaks volumes -- I guess -- of how highly his artistry is regarded, but also how permissive the moment we're currently living in is.

Kanye has suggested that part of the reason he "loves" Trump is that Trump made him feel like "he" could be president. Perhaps he has no idea how profound a tell that was. It's the same Joker-ish, "watch the world burn" philosophy -- or cynicism -- that has infected so many Americans.

It's this notion that nothing matters anymore and nothing is to be truly trusted. But then there's facts and the lives of everyday people, who don't have the luxury of believing whatever is convenient until the next news cycle.

We may not truly know just how regressive the past few days have been for black culture, or American culture, period. But I do know that I won't laugh about it later, not even a little bit.