WHAT’S IT ABOUT

A Black advertising executive who has sold out his own community gets kidnapped by an underground group that “deprograms” people it believes have lost their way.

WHY IT’S GONE

Spike Lee put his name on this one as a presenter, David C. Johnson directed it, and Eriq La Salle carries it as Bruford, an ad man who sells products to Black customers with images that insult them. The film had a $2 million budget and earned about $735,000, so it came and went quickly. Some writers have pointed to it as an early cousin of Lee’s own Bamboozled, which came six years later and asked many of the same questions.

Universal put out a DVD back in 1999, one of the earliest years of the format, and nothing has followed. That disc is now over 25 years old, and there has never been a Blu-ray. A movie this sharp and this uncomfortable makes studios nervous. It doesn’t hand the audience an easy hero. It asks who gets to decide what “real” Blackness looks like, and whether the people doing the deciding are any better than the people they are judging. That is exactly the kind of story that needs to stay available, especially now that Lee’s later work on the same subject gets studied in classrooms. Instead, the film that came first is sitting on a disc most people can’t find.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Three short stories about race, power, and belief make up this HBO anthology, starting with a group of aliens who offer America a deal in exchange for its Black citizens.

WHY IT’S GONE

Before Tales from the Hood, there was Cosmic Slop. Reginald and Warrington Hudlin, the brothers behind House Party, built this anthology for HBO and named it after the Funkadelic song. Reginald directed the opening story, “Space Traders,” which adapts Derrick Bell’s famous tale about visitors from space who promise the country riches and amazing new technology if it hands over every Black person. Warrington directed the second story, and Kevin Rodney Sullivan closed things out with a couple who discover who their real enemy is on the edge of a revolution. Critics at the time compared it to The Twilight Zone, and it picked up CableACE awards.

So why can’t you buy it? After its premiere, HBO put it out on VHS and laserdisc, and that was the end of the line. No DVD. No Blu-ray. Nothing. The film is only 83 minutes long, so it doesn’t fit the usual movie shelf, and it doesn’t fit neatly into a TV season either. Shorts and TV movies get lost in the cracks all the time. That excuse doesn’t hold up, though, when HBO has the money and the library to do something with it. There’s also a hometown angle here: Warrington Hudlin was born in East St. Louis, right across the river from us. One of the boldest Black science fiction projects of the ’90s came from our own backyard, and the only way to see it is to dig up a tape.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Otis Williams tells the story of the Temptations, from street-corner harmonies in Detroit to Motown stardom, and the fame, drugs, and fights that broke the group apart again and again.

WHY IT’S GONE

NBC aired this miniseries over two nights in 1998, and it became one of the most loved music biopics of its time. Charles Malik Whitfield plays Otis Williams, with Leon as David Ruffin, D.B. Woodside as Melvin Franklin, Terron Brooks as Eddie Kendricks, and Christian Payton as Paul Williams. Jenifer Lewis, Obba Babatundé, and Vanessa Bell Calloway fill out the cast. Allan Arkush won the Emmy for directing, and it took home the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Television Movie or Mini-Series.

It has lived on through reruns, VHS, and DVD, but never Blu-ray. Even the old VHS left out scenes that aired on TV, including one showing David Ruffin out of control on drugs. The most recent DVD listing is a single-disc release from 2011. For something this popular, that is a thin history. The likely reason is the same one that haunts most music projects: the songs. Every Temptations hit in this story belongs to Motown’s catalog, and any new release could mean new paperwork and new payments. But this miniseries is a family tradition in a lot of Black homes. People quote it, sing along with it, and rewatch it every time it airs. It came out of Detroit’s musical history, one of the Midwest’s proudest stories, and it deserves better than a single disc and a VH1 rerun.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Buddy is a 2026 American horror-comedy film directed by Casper Kelly that follows a group of amnesiac children trapped inside a surreal, 1990s-style children’s television show who must escape their tyrannical, bloodthirsty orange unicorn host

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

If you grew up Gen X or millennial, you heard a “kill Barney” joke at some point. Somebody on the playground probably twisted that “I Love You” song into something foul, and everybody fell out laughing. That purple dinosaur claimed he came straight out of kids’ imaginations, yet a whole lot of folks couldn’t stand him from day one. That kind of hate is strange, and Hollywood peeped it. Death to Smoochy took a swing at it back in 2002 and only connected halfway. Buddy grabs that same energy and drags it somewhere way darker. Director Casper Kelly, who co-wrote the script with Jamie King, flips the whole joke on its head. What if all them haters were right? What if the mascot wasn’t some dude sweating in a costume, but something that ain’t human at all? And what if, the whole time folks were cracking jokes about killing him, he was the one killing kids who stepped out of line? Here’s a rundown on Buddy the Unicorn, a bright orange dude that’s got a heart on his chest and a smile that should make you nervous. He’s voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, and Sergey Zhuravsky is in the costume. The big news is Key’s performance: he switches from a silly kinda character to a scaring the socks off you type of behavior in no time. Buddy ain’t well-known like a character called Barney. He’s a character who’s quite close to something known as creepypasta; an old story everybody seems to have heard about once or twice. That’s because the series called “It’s Buddy!” is yet to be produced. There’s a realm settled beyond our dimension called Buddy’s realm. It’s good, but the no-camera thing doesn’t do good things for Buddy. Every episode ends, the credits roll, and the next episode picks up the action exactly from the same point. The kids on the show don’t even realize they’re trapped. They’re like a frog chilling in a pot while the water slowly boils. Then Josh (Luke Speakman) says no to a dance party, a bit lifted straight from the Barney playbook, and Buddy snaps. Once the blood dries, Buddy hides the mess and slips in a new castmate, Hannah (Madison Skyy Polan), to keep everybody distracted. But something feels off, and Freddy (Delaney Quinn) and Wade (Caleb “CJ” Williams) start questioning everything around them. Quinn is the backbone of this movie without any doubt. She takes it on herself to simply support the movie to the end like a true hero. Freddy is not just a wimp waiting for someone to show up and rescue her. Instead, she is observant enough to notice the little things around her and curious enough to ask questions that make everyone think about them. Thanks to Quinn, we can believe in Freddy’s attributes very well. On the other hand, in the “real” world, there is Grace (Cristin Milioti) who is struggling with her sleep. She strongly believes that she has a daughter nobody knows about, while her husband Ben (Topher Grace) thinks she is going mad. Milioti really puts a lot of emotion into playing the role. Nevertheless, there comes a time when she sees Buddy on her TV screen. The smartest move Kelly makes is not splitting time evenly between the two worlds. We only touch reality for a minute, so you ain’t stuck sweating the rules. His second-smartest move is refusing to just swap a dinosaur for a unicorn and call it a day. Buddy’s house has talking furniture that feels borrowed from Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Freddy’s backpack, Strappy (Patton Oswalt), plays like a jumpy, English-only version of Dora’s Backpack. There are sly nods to Hee Haw, Blue’s Clues, and more. Put together, the show feels like an old VHS tape that got recorded over with better-remembered kids’ shows. That’s top-tier world-building, and it turns your stomach in the best way. The creepiest stretch don’t even belong to Buddy. It belongs to George (Clint Howard) and his old marionette pal Willie, voiced by Michael Shannon. George was a kid from an earlier version of the show who never found the exit and just grew up out there in the woods. Those two scenes stuck in my head way longer than any of Buddy’s corn-syrup rampages. Learning that Buddy is a danger to grown folks too adds another nasty little twist. Now here’s what I have a problem with, Kelly creates this amazing world and then does nothing with it. This is the same guy who did Too Many Cooks, where a running joke runs until it becomes bizarrely funny to watch. What works with that format can’t really carry a full-length feature. Man, those therapist scenes take forever! The psychic stuff gets boring, and the time travel gets all jumbled up. Plus, this movie never explains where Buddy came from and why he is like this. It’s like going to a restaurant that spends all its money on lights, music, and decoration and rushes you through the food. But when Buddy works, it really hits! There are parts that made me laugh out loud, and the movie goes places where no horror movie would ever go, including eliminating people you already thought were safe. Also, for the Midwest people like me, this movie was filmed in Cleveland which gives it some credibility. If you expected a normal horror movie, well then this is your warning: you are going to be dissatisfied. But if you don’t mind seeing something weird, I assure you, the whole experience will be cool.

OUR RATING – A BAD BARNEY-ISH 6.5

What’s It About

Rather than hunting down external criminals like in the first film, Clay must take on the very shadow organization that trained and created him. Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons) approaches Clay and reveals that the rogue Beekeepers are eliminating anyone standing in their way of total institutional control, leaving Clay as the only one capable of stopping them. Clay faces off against a dangerous new operative (Pom Klementieff) while navigating high-stakes political corruption, tracking the conspiracy from hidden safehouses to the highest corridors of power.

What’s It About

Tom Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, a brazen billionaire industrialist whose reckless drilling operation in Greenland causes an immense iceberg to break off and threaten the world. As the environmental catastrophe unfolds, Digger embarks on a frantic, chaotic mission to spin the narrative and prove he is humanity’s savior rather than the cause of its destruction.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

Give Alejandro G. Iñárritu this much: the man does not do small. The director behind “Birdman” and “The Revenant” linked up with Tom Cruise, who also produced, and together they built what might be the priciest art-house movie ever made. Warner Bros. puts the cost around $125 to $135 million, but industry reports say the real number may have climbed past $180 million. Either way, that’s a whole lot of money for a movie this loud, this proud, and this much of a mess. Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an oil billionaire who wants every last drop of black gold out of the ground and doesn’t care what that costs the planet. His company’s drilling in Greenland cracks off an ice shelf the size of Philadelphia, and now that giant slab is drifting toward Europe, dragging tidal waves and hundreds of thousands of lives along with it. Impact is three days away. The rest of the movie is Digger trying to talk, spin, and shout his way out of the disaster he made. Five people share the writing credit: Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, and Sabina Berman on the screenplay, plus Jez Butterworth on the story. When that many cooks crowd one kitchen, the food usually comes out confused. Here, it comes out burnt. So, we gotta talk about Cruise hiding under this old guy makeup. There’s this bald cap, white hair all over him, and a suit that makes his tummy all big. He sounds like he has a thick Texan accent, wearing cheap cowboy outfits and screaming on his Bluetooth throughout the movie. He puts so much effort in his role, like a guy who hasn’t eaten for three days and just got his steak. No one can say it was a half-hearted effort, but that’s not enough. Digger is like Les Grossman from “Tropic Thunder,” Ross Perot, and some cheap cartoon character. Iñárritu shoots almost everything from way down low, so every character looks puffed up, goofy, and a little dangerous. John Goodman squeezes the most out of that trick as President Compson, stretching his face into long, bug-eyed stares that look like Foghorn Leghorn crossed with Droopy Dog. Compson and Digger go way back, trading favors for decades until both of them reached the top of a very dirty ladder. The president is also dying of what he politely calls “ass cancer,” and as the world turns on America, he starts believing he’s a prophet sent either to save everybody or wipe everybody out. In his head, those two jobs sit real close together. So the president’s whole cabinet rolls up to Digger’s mansion, figures out there’s nothing they can do to stop the ice, and starts building a digital firewall to erase any proof they caused it. “The people know the facts. The story is yet to be told,” Digger says. That’s the sharpest line in the film, and it shows up early. Nothing after it cuts as deep. The cover-up doesn’t hold. Everything builds toward a long, wild scene where Digger stands before Europe’s leaders in a giant assembly hall, and every single one of them wants his head. The scientist Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) already went up there and told the truth: they knew the methane was headed for a breaking point. Ahmed plays the only person in this movie with a working conscience, and the film barely gives him room to breathe. Real talk, I see this pattern too often. The character holding the truth gets the least space to hold it. After that, Digger takes the mic. The camera of Emmanuel Lubezki glides through the hall as if it is one continuous shot while Cruise screams at the top of his voice at the hypocritical politicians, who, while enjoying the luxury that oil brings, do not think about the price tag. It’s like Colonel Jessep in “A Few Good Men” after having drunk an entire bottle of whiskey and lied his whole life. Is this lame? Quite a bit. Is it funny to observe? For about ten minutes. This is that section in the movie when it finally starts going places. Even though you feel it is heading right to the sun. And that should have been the ending. Instead, we get another thirty minutes, and that’s where the movie’s big trick fully takes over. There’s a performance-inside-a-performance game running through this whole film, and I won’t spoil it. I’ll just say it’s clever and a mistake at the same time. By the end, it knocks the story sideways, and the movie just sits there admiring how smart it thinks it is. The supporting cast is stacked and mostly wasted. Michael Stuhlbarg plays a spineless vice president. Sandra Hüller plays Emma, Digger’s half-sister, who runs an environmental branch of the business that exists mostly for good press. Jesse Plemons drifts around as a mystery man named Kenny. Robert John Burke plays a general who loves God and guns, in that order. Emma D’Arcy plays a worn-down assistant, and Burn Gorman pops up too. Everybody matches Cruise and Goodman’s big, shouty energy, and after a while it all blends into one long noise. Hüller is one of the best actors working today, and this movie hands her almost nothing to do. As satire, “Digger” isn’t a scalpel. It’s a sledgehammer. B-2 bombers drop payloads with “SUCK IT NATURE” painted on the side. Digger’s ancient cat is so clearly a puppet that it turns into its own joke. In one cabinet meeting, somebody says something nasty and the president scolds, “Please, there are women present.” Everybody looks around, realizes there are zero women in the room, and cracks up. That’s the level we’re working with. The craft is real, and I won’t pretend otherwise. Lubezki paints this world in sickly greens, browns, chalky whites, and grays, so everything feels tired and used up. The production design pops. The movie looks incredible. But just looking awesome ain’t gonna help ya. “Digger” speaks of capitalism and climate change while hiding in the chaos of its cartoons. It’s too lightweight to challenge anyone and too loud to be funny. The experience of “Digger” felt like having a long dinner with a self-obsessed person. Iñárritu’s “Bardo” is strange too, but it at least has some life in it. “Digger” attacked the fools and has become one. Not just missed the point, but got itself into a hole and can now only enjoy staying inside.

OUR RATING – AN UNDUG 2

What’s It About

A militia of unidentified hostiles coordinates a sudden and violent coup against the U.S. government. Trapped and targeted, the President is forced into survival mode behind the wheel of the heavily armored presidential limousine, code-named The Beast. With a wounded Secret Service agent named Agent Taft (played by Joel Kinnaman) bleeding out in the back seat, the President unlocks the vehicle’s highly classified, hidden offensive capabilities—including built-in miniguns and weaponry. He must ram through hostile forces, manage his own vehicle-turned-superweapon, rescue his injured agent, reunite with the First Lady, and save the country

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

NAACP Image Award “Outstanding Documentary” An illuminating, heartfelt tribute to screen icon Juanita Moore. This biopic celebrates her career, showing why she earned that status and letting audiences see the radiance that made her a star.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

Walk down Hollywood Boulevard, and you’ll step over stars set into the sidewalk of your favorite celebrity, including cartoon characters. Juanita Moore earned an Oscar nomination for playing Annie Johnson in “Imitation of Life.” Director Kirk E. Kelleykahn’s documentary, “A Star Without a Star: The Untold Juanita Moore Story,” asks a simple question. Why was one of Hollywood’s most groundbreaking Black actresses missing from its most famous sidewalk? Kelleykahn is Moore’s grandson, and he spent nearly two decades making this film to keep her legacy alive. It follows the push by her family and supporters to pressure the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce into giving her a star after her death. That fight is the engine of the movie. It played in limited theaters in November 2022, but most of us, me included, caught it when it hit digital and streaming on July 4, 2025. The film doesn’t have the shine of a big-budget documentary, but it makes up for that with heart, and you can feel the love in every scene. Kelleykahn and writers Celeste Bedford Walker and J.W. Nutting first explain how the stars get awarded. Then they dive into Moore’s life. We watch her dance at Harlem’s Cotton Club and perform in Paris, walking the same path Josephine Baker walked before her. Old footage and interviews fill in the details, and those early years open a bigger conversation about Jim Crow and discrimination in Hollywood. The interviews are the best part. Sidney Poitier explains what it was like to come up in Hollywood during the same years as Moore. The two shared the screen in “Band of Angels” and “Something of Value.” Poitier admits he was just happy to be working, even though the business was packed with unfair rules. Moore speaks for herself, too. She says she was tired of carrying trays as a waitress, but that was the only job anyone would give her. One of her customers was a young Marlon Brando, who told her to keep sharpening her craft. In Paris, she felt like she truly belonged, free from the prejudice back home. Still, she returned and made “soundies,” early music videos, with Louis Armstrong and the Mills Brothers. This is where I question everything. What did Hollywood actually let Black actors do? Well, according to the film, not much. Black performers were cast as servants or “native girls,” and many didn’t even get a credit. Treated like furniture in the background instead of like people. In her biggest role, Moore was listed seventh in the credits, below her white co-stars, and of course, she wasn’t invited to the premiere. Yet she based Annie on her own sister and filled the role with warmth and dignity. She turned a part that could have been scenery into the heart of the movie. The filmmakers tied McCarthyism to segregation. Other documentaries stop at the hunt for communists. This one shows how that same fear was used to shut down films with a social message and to keep Hollywood divided. Moore felt it up close, because her first speaking part, in “Pinky,” was labeled Communist propaganda. After World War II, she had joined the Actors Lab, an integrated group that trained new actors. Connecting those dots gives the film some of its most thought-provoking moments. When Hollywood switched to Blaxploitation movies like “Uptight” and “The Mack” in the 70’s, Moore still found work. But the documentary suggests her most rewarding work happened on stage, where performers pushed to the margins could play fuller, more complicated characters. She toured London in “A Raisin in the Sun” and starred in adaptations of James Baldwin’s “Amen Corner.” With the Cambridge Players, led by Edmund Cambridge, she helped bring more honest pictures of Black life to theater audiences. The film also shares tender stories from the set of “Imitation of Life,” especially about Moore’s friendship with Lana Turner. Turner was going through her own struggles, and Moore stood by her. Both women were nervous about their parts. Moore’s fear was personal, since nobody had ever trusted her with a role this big. The producers first wanted bigger names, like Ethel Waters or Pearl Bailey, but producer Ross Hunter fought for Moore. The scenes between Moore and her on-screen daughter, played by Susan Kohner, still hit hard today. The film does stumble at the finish line. It has several good places to stop, yet it never seems sure when to end. That’s a small flaw. The film still shows Hollywood’s Golden Age from a different angle and gives us a less dreamy picture of Old Hollywood. Moore died on January 1, 2014, at age 99, and by then Hollywood had mostly overlooked her contributions. The campaign this film follows, and helped spark, had finally worked. On October 18, 2024, she received the 2,793rd star in the Motion Pictures category. And even if Black people make up about 5% of that famous sidewalk, this is proof that It’s never too late for recognition, and now anyone walking past her star can stop and learn about one of Hollywood’s most resilient trailblazers. Juanita Moore was a true star, and now more people will see it. “A Star Without a Star” isn’t perfect, but its heart and its powerful subject confirm the racist side Hollywood continues to try and silence. True film history cannot be told without the stories of Black performers in America.

OUR RATING – A LOST LEGEND 8

What’s It About

Batman lies broken at the hands of the villainous mastermind Bane. With Bruce Wayne paralyzed from the waist down and unable to continue as Batman, a new successor must be chosen to defend Gotham City. Jean-Paul Valley, the man also known as Azrael, must take up the mantle of the Batman. But will his more violent methods be enough to stop Bane?

What’s It About

Red and Silver are officially a couple and parents raising a family together. Their household includes an unpredictable mix of three children: an adventurous teenage son named Glider, a creative independent teenage daughter, and a young baby hatchling. Red tries very hard to connect with his kids, but his over-involvement often leads to awkward, cringe-filled, and funny situations.