The List of the 819 New Academy Members Is Here!

LaKeith Stanfield

It's that time again. Every year The Academy puts in an effort to expand their voting base to include a lot of the best and brightest in the entertainment industry. This includes a goal of expanding diversity to include talents globally. With 819 new members, the list features an exciting new group that will help determine what next year's ceremony will look like. Along with the first time choice to let agents vote, check out the list of new faces, which continues to show how many interesting voices are out there, ready to make a difference. Who are some of your favorites? Feel free to leave them in the comments section.

Review: How "Knives Out" Reinvents the Whodunit is a Clear Success

Scene from Knives Out

The world of Agatha Christie is alive and well in director Rian Johnson's Knives Out. This murder mystery is an original story that pays tribute to the whodunit's of yesteryear while applying a glossy coat of 21st-century idealism over it. With the introduction of detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) out to solve the murder of Harlan Thrombley (Christopher Plummer), the story goes about the journey that makes for one of the most enjoyable films of 2019. On its surface, it's a familiar story where everyone's a suspect and the comedy thrives when people have their own grudges being yelled from across rooms in a form of defense. Their egos will never be put in check, however, so who will go so far as to reveal themselves in this mess? The answer is only part of the reason that this film succeeds as more than a Christie pastiche. It's the story of a modern society coming to terms with its own changing tides, and that elevates the film's relevance to something more than mystery fodder.

Review: "Uncut Gems" Bets Big with Exciting Results

Scene from Uncut Gems

It's safe to say that Howard "Bling" Ratner (Adam Sandler) hasn't done anything with his life. It may not seem that way because he is one of the most respected jewelry salesmen in New York, managing to have a personal connection to NBA star Kevin Garnett. He is capable of making a profit with simple negotiation tactics and high-risk betting. One would assume that Howard is a very lucky man, but over the course of co-directors, Josh and Benny Safdie's neurotic masterpiece Uncut Gems, his life begins to unwind as one bad deal leads to a downward spiral of choices that puts him further in debt with mobsters that want him dead. Still, with no actual skill except negotiation, how does he stand any chance of making it out alive? It's the type of radical survival skills that makes Sandler's performance so electric, serving as one of his best. For a man who doesn't have much to show for himself that he personally earned, it's a story of desperation that shows the problem with the American dream when all you want is to get rich.

Review: "Sorry to Bother You" is the Funniest and Smartest Head Trip of the Year

Scene from Sorry to Bother You

There is a scene in the second act that perfectly summarizes the experience of watching director Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You. In the scene, millionaire playboy Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) is seen snorting a line of cocaine that stretches to absurd length. It's a comedic moment, but it's also one that captures the film perfectly. To witness the magic of Riley's ribald anti-capitalist satire is to feel like you're high, about to experience the whirlwind of metaphors stuck in a distorted world view of a lower class man living in Oakland, CA. It keeps spinning faster and faster as Riley's band The Coup swirls a disorienting soundscape into this confection. If it doesn't make you wonder "What did I just see?" then you weren't paying attention. Even then, it's in the moments of "altered states" where the answers appear, in an abstract collage of contemporary society that looks real, but is warped and surreal. It's a beautiful creation that solidifies Lakeith Stanfield as one of the great young actors, and most of all proves that the world is insane, and it takes a person with a watchful eye like Riley to get it oh so right.