More critics prizes: St Louis, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Denver, and Houston

Here's five more groups of prizes from critics groups that have announced in the past handful of days. Chloe Zhao continues her total sweep of Best Director prizes for Nomadland, an achievement we haven't seen in quite some time. Generally there's one award where someone steamrolls but it's usually in one of the acting categories. Promising Young Woman, Trial of the Chicago 7, Soul, First Cow, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom also do well in this week's regional critics haul...

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Review: One Night in Miami

by Matt St Clair

Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami is a wonderful departure from the traditional biopic formula. Instead of focusing on key events from the lives of the famous, One Night in Miami  gives us a fictionalized, night-long conversation four iconic men might have been having at that exact moment in history. The titular night is February 25th, 1964, just after Cassius Clay’s boxing match with Sonny Liston and just before the famous athlete changed his name to Muhammad Ali.   

Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), musician Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and former NFL player Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) gather together in a motel room to discuss the weight they carry as celebrities to help create social change through the Civil Rights Movement. Thanks to the lead actors, along with genius writing by Kemp Powers who adapted his own  play for the screen, we’re able to get a glimpse of the real people behind the iconic personas...

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'Promising News in Miami'

by Nathaniel R

Good news for those still stuck at home, which is most of us. Both the provocative Carey Mulligan vehicle Promising Young Woman and the thoughtful Tom Hanks western News of the World are arriving On Demand starting Friday, January 15th (a week from tomorrow!). Coincidentally that's also Regina King's birthday and the day her directorial debut, One Night in Miami, begins streaming on Amazon Prime. It's like Regina is giving us a gift for her birthday. Generous!

So circle that date on your calendar. You'll be able to have a delicious Best Picture hopeful triple feature weekend. Your mileage will of course vary on whether each of these three are worthy of a "Best" stamp but at the very least they're all interesting and handsomely made movies and as a triple feature they offer a ton of variety in tone and theme and acting styles.

Which are you most eager to see? 

Showbiz History: An epic Oscar battle + Brad Pitt

6 random things that happened on this day, December 18th, in showbiz history

1941 Thirteen year-old Shirley Temple, her contract bought out from Twentieth Century Fox after two 1940 flops, attempts her first "comeback" (though she'd only been gone from screens for a single year) with MGM in a film called Kathleen about a poor little rich girl. It also flopped. A few more hits were in her future but the writing was on the wall (she'd retire, for good, from movies by the age of 21)...

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Showbiz History: Mutiny on the Bounty, 8 Mile, and our oldest living Oscar winner

7 random things that happened on this day, November 8th, in showbiz history

1847 Bram Stoker born on this day in Ireland. His 1897 Dracula will go on to become a legendary epistolary novel and of course a beloved batshit crazy movie that we wrote about twice recently

1935 Mutiny on the Bounty premieres in NYC. It becomes the #1 box office hit of 1935 and holds two Oscar records...

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