Oh So Geeky

photo by Neil Krug Very few stars in Hollywood shine so brightly. After a handful of roles under his belt, Chadwick Boseman accomplished more in his massive skyrocket to fame than many are ever able to. It's only fitting that Esquire once declared , "Chadwick is telling America's greatest stories." But how these stories were told is just as illuminating and important as Chadwick being the chosen one to tell them.

History's made up of pioneers who have transformed the world as we know it. Too many remain overlooked, forgotten to time and standards or traditions that now seem archaic today. And, movies often a way to shine a light on those whose stories are recognized by their peers and admirers. Engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla, who continuously mounts a resurgence in film and television, finally gets the biopic treatment, but it's difficult to discern if it isn't as garbled as his own legacy. Outside of his own inventions, the Serbian-American scientist Tesla (Ethan Hawke) is perhaps most recognized for his feud against his former boss and American inventor Thomas Edison (Kyle MacLachlan). Here, the film loosely explores Tesla's life from the 1893 World’s Fair and onwards, marking the differences in their career and their war on electrical currents - Tesla's alternating current sytem vs Edison's direct current electric power. Director Michael Almereyda doesn't ge...

When it comes to Taylor Swift, her most devoted Swifties always expect something to pop up around the corner. Known as the queen of meticulously dropping hints of what’s to come, she always manages to keep fans on the edge of their seat. With her seventh album Lover  dropping less than a year ago, and a massive pandemic sweeping the world, very few could’ve expected to hear new music after a cancelled summer tour. The next era of her music felt like an eternity away, but only Swift could drop her eighth studio record out of nowhere and blast more of our expectations out of the water. 

Hollywood too often tells a familiar history of World War II. War stories are mostly reserved for heroic tales of the men behind some of the world’s greatest combat missions to defeat Adolf Hitler and establish support for the Allies. Rarely exploring the expansive experiences of women and minorities at the time, a few films are turning the tide of how cinema recollects history. In the similar vein of Lone Scherfig’s Their Finest or Mike Newell’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society , Summerland makes for a refreshing escape of self-discovery and fantasy during one of the world’s darkest periods. Set in the English coastal countryside of Kent, academic researcher Alice Lamb (Gemma Arterton) becomes the guardian of a refuge child Frank (Lucas Bond) whose parents are fighting in the war. Despite the nearby town treating her as the “beast on the beach” for her unladylike behavior, Lamb and Frank develop an unlikely connection that helps unveil a lost romance with a form...