Candice Frederick

Type “queer horror films” into a search engine and you’ll get a bevy of articles poring over every gesture, sentence of dialogue and subtext in movie history, from “Psycho” to “The Babadook.” While queer characters have, in the last two decades, begun to move to the center in films like “Spiral” and “The Retreat,” they’re still too often merely implicit, made to seem like the other, or simply killed off.
But in the director Leigh Janiak’s “Fear Street” movies, a Netflix trilogy inspired by th...

It’s been a while since death has been a central character on a series. 16 years ago, “Six Feet Under” gave us its iconic series finale. And now, creator-writer Samantha Strauss’ pitch dark comedy “The End” aims to capture some of the same messiness and beauty of mortality surrounding one family in Australia. Trouble is, it doesn’t always come together as meaningfully as it should.
The premise is certainly interesting enough, though, amplified by a standout cast to boot. Frances O’Connor play...

It's still charming, but some issues rise to the top
Perhaps the most fascinating thing Never Have I Ever, created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, has done is explore a teenage Indian American girl simultaneously wanting to belong and wanting to be her own person. It's obviously a conflicting journey indicative of many modern adolescent experiences, especially for young people of color, which makes it so resonant. But there's always been something a little awkward about the way this series h...

It used to be that horror was considered a genre explicitly and unapologetically for nerds who live for things that go bump in the night — the freaks who get off on jump scares or the low-key scaredy-cats who push themselves to the edge. But with the popularization of horror in recent years has come a shift toward making it as accessible for everyone as possible. Meaning, even if you’re not exactly into horror, maybe you’ll like it with gnarly humor at the forefront. That’s where The CW’s new...

One of the many things “Superstore” gave us is proof that frontline workers make endlessly compelling, yet woefully disregarded, characters to explore on screen — particularly during a pandemic. So, it’s nice to see another show try to pick up the baton left behind by the dearly departed NBC sitcom and highlight the lives of hospitality workers at a beautiful Hawaiian resort where the rich and unbothered go to escape real-world problems and those, much like the resort staff, who are most impa...

By her own estimate, Taylour Paige has about 48 voices inside her, at the ready for any situation.
“I got an auntie voice, my educated, white-school voice, my high school,” she begins on a video call from Bulgaria, where she’s shooting “The Toxic Avenger.” Before she continues, one of those voices stops to clarify her statement. “When I say ‘white-educated,’ I’m not saying that being white is educated. I’m saying I went to a very white college. I was around a lot of white people, so that was ...

The series champions four Black female documentarians pointing their cameras at narratives ranging from youth advocacy and maternity to Black genius and gaming
Queen Latifah may be one of the most quietly underrated artists we have, a performer who’s mastered both the big and small screens and climbed her way up the hip-hop ranks during a time when the music genre was governed by men. She’s still going strong today as the star and producer of the CBS iteration of The Equalizer.
If that wasn’t...

"The One and Only Dick Gregory" spends much of its latter runtime examining Gregory’s decision to leave comedy behind to devote his efforts to human rights
These days it’s rare to find a respected celebrity that doesn’t use their platform to speak out on issues like reproductive justice, transphobia, or racism. In fact, it’s practically expected of them. But back in comedian Dick Gregory’s day, amid Jim Crow America, there were strict lines drawn between performers and politics that, if cross...

Belafonte as well as archivists and historians help chronicle and contextualize the lasting significance of this event
To hear the American school system tell it, Black Americans have very little notable history to study or celebrate outside of slavery and its abolition. As a result, many of us have taken every opportunity to disprove that myth every day. And yet, we are still discovering new facts and events that were either swept under the rug or forgotten. Like the time Harry Belafonte hos...

REVIEW: While there are times when A Choice of Weapons seems at odds with itself, it also accentuates the challenge of telling the story of a figure through your eyes and admiration for him
There’s a tiny detail in Gordon Parks’ gorgeous—and heavily repurposed—photo of a woman and her niece standing below a neon “Colored Entrance” sign at a theater in elegant dresses that is rarely mentioned. The strap on Joanne Thornton Wilson’s slip is dangling off her shoulder and exposed beneath her short...

The thing about female rage, a phrase used ubiquitously today when women’s needs and emotions are pushed to the forefront of pop culture and cinematic conversations, is that it kind of always needs a motivation or else you run the risk of it falling entirely flat. That’s the main problem with “Physical,” creator and showrunner Annie Weisman’s strident new Apple TV+ dramedy about a housewife and mom (Rose Byrne) grappling with eating and body dysmorphic disorders who decides to become an aerob...

REVIEW: 'As of Yet' is a breezy, slice-of-life film about today’s state of being that, even despite its dull approach, manages to strike a nerve
A film about a young Black woman struggling to navigate the throes of the pandemic can elicit a lot of anxious reactions. Does it follow how she’s coping with the disproportionate number of Black and brown people suffering from COVID-19? Is she sick? Or is it that she’s on the frontlines of the whole other pandemic, white supremacy, which compelled c...

Ghosts and other visceral phantoms have long been a staple of the horror genre (Ju-On, The Sixth Sense, and House on Haunted Hill immediately spring to mind). But it’s nice to know that there is still room to reimagine and revitalize the subgenre today, tackling themes from #MeToo to film censorship and more.
This year’s offerings so far have taken audiences from a 1970s London hospital to a decrepit theme park in Pennsylvania whose specters have an entirely natural presence. How do you ward ...

There’s a beating heart within every frame of “In the Heights,” the film adaptation of Quiara Alegría Hudes and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning musical directed by Jon M. Chu.
It comes from the joy of young romance in Washington Heights — between bodega owner Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) and aspiring stylist Vanessa (Melissa Barrera), as well as dispatch worker Benny (Corey Hawkins) and Stanford student Nina (Leslie Grace). It’s seen in the spirited song and dance sequences that leap from the doo...

A filmmaker unearths the sorrow of Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street,” site of the country’s single worst incident of racial violence.