Candice Frederick

Rebecca Addelman has more proven that she can take on chaotic crime dramedies as a writer behind the excellent “Dead to Me.” But when it comes to “Guilty Party,” the new Paramount+ series she created starring Kate Beckinsale, she has totally fumbled the ball.
It’s not just that “Guilty Party” is bad (though it is). It’s entirely unfocused and Addelman and her writing team don’t seem to know what exactly they want the show to be. It starts off intriguing enough with a flawed protagonist named ...

Spoilers for Lamb ahead.
Several long months ago, Noomi Rapace couldn’t even fathom sitting on a Zoom session in New York City, chatting with someone about her experience working on the idiosyncratic new film, Lamb. That’s because she had sunk so deeply into her role as Maria—one half of a melancholy, flannel-wearing couple living on an outlying farm in Iceland whose life irrevocably changes with the birth of a human-lamb hybrid—that the actress was no longer detectable, even to those who kno...

The CBS series gives time to the people who need it most
You've got to appreciate this current phase of Queen Latifah's career where she is quite literally coasting on a procedural crime drama and quietly defying gender, body, and age standards that have historically been applied to action heroes. Initially, the idea that there would be a gender-bent version of a character that had already been race-bent in a tired 2014 film with Denzel Washington was exasperating. But by the end of the first...

Truth be told, there is no real reason for another iteration of the “Child’s Play” universe after a slew of films that range widely in quality from entertaining to ridiculous, dating back to the original 1988 offering. But USA and Syfy’s new series, “Chucky,” is actually pretty solid.
Much of that is because Don Mancini, the co-writer and mastermind behind the original “Child’s Play,” is the creator and showrunner of the new series. He also wrote and directed a few episodes, which is obvious ...

It is just days before the Tony Awards would celebrate Broadway’s eagerly anticipated return after going dark for 17 months, and Annaleigh Ashford, who earned the coveted award in 2015 for her performance in You Can’t Take It With You, is giddy with appreciation when we hop on a Zoom call together. That’s partly because the live ceremony, which aired on September 26, marked an IRL reunion with some of her thespian friends. It’s also because, even throughout the hellscape that was 2020 (and st...

It’s always fascinating to encounter someone like Lily Rabe, whose love for the horror genre has, in part, led to her nine-season tenure on American Horror Story, but readily admits that in actuality, even the slightest things freak her out. “Gosh, I’m up all night, I can’t sleep because of all the things I’m worrying about and scared of,” the actress says on a Zoom call from Los Angeles. “So, it’s definitely a love-hate relationship.” While seemingly a contradiction, it reflects a woman who ...

Watching a talking cat and a teenage girl navigate the wacky ramifications of spells that make unpalatable lima beans disappear or stop the school bully from spreading lies might not seem like a fun Friday night for those growing up in the TikTok era. But in 1996, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch was appointment viewing for 17 million households.
Starring Melissa Joan Hart, fresh off her star-making turn as the title character on Nickelodeon’s Clarissa Explains It All, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch ha...

It should be mentioned up top that a series about a young and poor white mother who turns to housekeeping to provide a life for her and her small child is an awkward choice when there are myriad young female domestic workers of color, some without legal citizenship documents, whose urgent stories often go untold. But as far as Netflix’s new series, “Maid,” goes, that’s apparently neither here nor there.
To be fair, the Stephanie Land memoir upon which “Maid” is based, “Maid: Hard Work, Low Pa...

In the last month, Netflix has premiered two very different series primarily set on academic campuses that feature women in leadership positions historically filled by white men: the third season of “Sex Education” and “The Chair.”
Yes, it is encouraging to see small-screen narratives reflect the professional and interior lives of women, especially women of color, who’ve risen through a system against all odds. But the challenges women face in those posts makes you wonder whether this type of...

OPINION: 'Fanmi' showcases the love that exists in complicated families, especially between a mother and her daughter
They say the relationship between a mother and daughter is one of the most complex there is. And Fanmi, from writer-director Carmine Pierre-Dufour and co-director Sandrine Brodeur-Desrosiers, portrays that so sensitively even within its taut 14-minute frame.
The intimate French/Haitian Creole drama, as expected given the film’s length, doesn’t give you a whole lot of backstory...

It’s been three years since “Scandal,” when the allure of live tweeting series on a weekly basis was at its peak for Black Twitter. Since then, many other soapy, watch-after-you’ve-put-the-kids-to-sleep dramas, like Netflix’s “Firefly Lane” and “Sex/Life,” have popped up on streaming platforms, threatening to dismantle the online group viewing experience in favor of binge watching. But Fox’s new melodrama, “Our Kind of People,” from Karen Gist and Lee Daniels, seems to be trying very hard to ...

OPINION: Five decades after these events of a massively reported rebellion and yet "Attica" manages to make it as shocking and visceral as if they just happened
It’s been 50 years since the Attica Prison Uprising in New York became the largest — and bloodiest — prison rebellion in U.S. history. A myriad of people were injured and 39 people died, including 29 inmates. And throughout writer-director Stanley Nelson’s detailed new documentary, simply titled Attica, there is a singular sentiment r...

It’s nice to see that cinema, particularly independent cinema, has continued to give us messy characters who hold up mirrors to the equally multidimensional and sometimes hypocritical nature that is humanity in real form. Some of the best films this year have already given us stories about friends at odds, improper relationships, and a media industry falling on its own sword.
From biographical documentaries on flawed musicians and iconic actors to horror tales of the unfairly institutionalize...

OPINION: While an arguably earnest horror attempt in some ways, "White Devil" is still unfulfilling.
While on one hand it’s terrific that we have finally reached the stage in cinematic history where it seems like everyone — from filmmakers and critics to the general audience — wants to contribute something to the Black horror conversation, that enthusiasm hasn’t translated to compelling work. Such is the case with writers-directors Mariama Diallo and Benjamin Dickinson’s trite short film, Whi...

There is no question though, that Warwick was and is an essential icon
There was a point in time just this year when Dionne Warwick was poised to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. At 80-years-young, she even kickstarted her Twitter account again where she instantly appealed to millennials a fraction of her age with her now iconic tweets, like this one: “The Weeknd is next. Why? It’s not even spelled correctly?”
What she was essentially saying by reigniting her own celebrity and r...