Michael B. Jordan takes to the ring once again as Adonis Creed to face off with Jonathan Majors, playing his wronged friend from the past.
Boxing has always been good fodder for filmmakers. The sport plays to the strengths of the form, offering compelling characters, clear conflict, and visceral violence. None did it better than Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull and Rocky, the 1976 Best Picture winner directed by John G. Avildsen, but forever associated with its writer and star, Sylvester Stallone. They are both working-class stories about driven men overcoming long odds, but they have very different takes on what being a sports hero really means. For Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, the championship is an empty prize. For Rocky, the search for glory becomes less important than personal integrity.
In 2015, Ryan Coogler rebooted the Rocky story with Michael B. Jordan starring as Adonis “Donnie” Creed, the son of Stallone’s frenemy, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers). The Black Panther helmer is one of the greatest genre directors of our age, and his skills fit perfectly with the needs of the boxing picture. For Creed III, Jordan followed in the footsteps of Stallone by directing the film he’s starring in. And whaddaya know, the guy’s got chops!
The film begins in flashback, where a 15-year-old Donnie (played by Thaddeus J. Mixson) sneaks out of his mom’s house to go to a Golden Gloves boxing match with his buddy Damian “Dame” Anderson (Spence Moore II). Dame wins big, but while they’re on their way home, Donnie gets into an altercation in front of a package store. Dame pulls a gun to get his friend out of trouble, but he’s the one who gets busted when the cops show up.
Fifteen years later, Donnie is fighting to unify the heavyweight championship. He retires a champ and is settling in with his wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent), when he gets a visit from an old friend. Dame, now played by Jonathan Majors, is out of prison and wants to get back into the fight game. After all this time, he thinks he’s still got “a little gas left in the tank.” Donnie feels more than a little guilty that it was Dame who paid the price when he started the fight all those years ago, so he offers to help train him at his appropriately Greek-branded Delphi Gym.
Dame’s got a lot of aggression to work out, but he’s a ferocious fighter. Donnie, who is trying his hand as a manager, is trying to arrange a title bout for his protégé, Felix Chavez (José Benavidez Jr., an actual professional boxer.). When his would-be opponent is mysteriously assaulted at a party, Donnie recommends Chavez fight Dame instead. After all, it was great publicity when Apollo Creed gave Rocky a title fight. “Everybody loves an underdog.” But Donnie’s plan backfires, and you better believe that the two former friends are headed for a final showdown in the ring.
During his press junket for Creed, Jordan has talked a lot about how his anime obsession shaped the way he approached his first outing as director. You can see it in his bold compositions, particularly in the fight scenes. The first match plays out in sweeping Steadicam close-ups that are more Scorsese than Watanabe. But during the final showdown in Dodger Stadium, the fans melt away, and the two titans slug it out like gundams. Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau shoots the fights in a high frame rate, allowing Jordan and editor Tyler Nelson to speed up and slow down the action as needed.
Jordan’s performance is fearless. The key to the Rocky stories has always been just the right combination of strength and vulnerability. Jordan is not afraid to cry in an extended double close-up with Tessa Thompson or wear a frog onesie to a tea party with his hearing-impaired daughter. Majors is a perfect foil to Jordan, delivering a nuanced performance that, like Jordan in Black Panther, is not, strictly speaking, villainous. Creed III can go toe-to-toe with the heaviest hitters of boxing cinema.
If you give a bear a crap ton of cocaine, he’s going to ask for more. He is, after all, not just a bear on cocaine; he is Cocaine Bear.
Back in 1985, a drug smuggler named Andrew C. Thornton II found himself over East Tennessee in a failing Cessna. Trying to lighten the load, he ejected a few duffle bags’ worth of cocaine into the woods. When that didn’t work, he stuffed several Ferraris’ worth of product in his pockets and jumped out of the airplane. His parachute didn’t open, and the former-federal-narcotics-officer-turned-cocaine-cowboy went splat in suburban Knoxville.
As someone who grew up in rural Appalachia during the height of the Reagan era, I can attest that bundles of drugs regularly fell from the sky. Some poor randos got lucky and were able to buy a real house, not a trailer. Some less-lucky randos were brutally murdered by employees of the distribution network whose drugs had gone missing. In this case, a black bear found the fallen cocaine cache and ate it. Pablo Escobear, as the overstimulated ursine would come to be known, is the only known bear to die of a cocaine overdose — another Appalachia victim of the War on Drugs.
In retrospect, it’s kind of amazing that it took so long for someone to make Cocaine Bear. In the 1980s, lots of producers got their movies funded with little more than a catchy title and some eye-catching VHS art. The story writes itself. Bears are cute, but they can eat you whenever they want. Luckily, bears are lazy, and you’re more trouble than you’re worth. But a bear on cocaine, they’re edgy. They’re paranoid. They just want to party with you. Why are you holding out on them?
Director Elizabeth Banks sets the gonzo tone in the first scene, when Andrew Thornton (Matthew Rhys) experiences a high degree of job satisfaction by dipping into the bricks before he tosses them out of the airplane. At least he dies doing what he loves: cocaine.
The first people to discover what happened to the cocaine are prime slasher movie fodder: a pair of young European hikers in love. For Cocaine Bear, they’re just a yummy appetizer.
Also on the table are a pair of kids: the rebellious Dee Dee (Brooklynn Prince), who is skipping school to paint a waterfall, and Henry (Christian Convery), who is following her. Dee Dee’s mom Sari (Keri Russell) is trying to track down both of them, with the help of Ranger Liz (Margo Martindale) and zoologist Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson).
Meanwhile, Syd (Ray Liotta), who is on the hook for the missing marching powder, sends his enforcer Daveed (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and angsty son Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich) to retrieve the $14 million in assets before the Columbian cartels come calling. They have a violent run-in with a trio of delinquents and find one of the missing duffle bags at the same time as TBI detective Bob (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) and the cocaine-crazed bear.
Besides Cocaine Bear, who is an instant movie star, Bob is the film’s best character. He’s a police detective who’s getting too old for this stuff. He’s thinking about retirement and just bought a cute dog. But he’s been chasing Syd for years, and he’s got a hunch that this is his last chance to take him down. In a movie like this, he’s a dead man walking. Whitlock, a veteran of Spike Lee films and The Wire, understands the assignment and plays it to the hilt.
Everyone involved in Cocaine Bear seems to know exactly how serious to take it, which is, not very. As a classy appreciator of art, I should call CocaineBear a guilty pleasure, except I don’t feel very guilty about it. Cocaine, a wise man once said, is a hell of a drug.
It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the weekend when Cocaine Bear comes out to play! Based on the true story of a God-fearing Tennessee ursine led to drug-fueled damnation in Georgia by a forest cachet of yayo, this promises to be the most accurately named junt since Snakes On A Plane. Elizabeth Banks directs Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., and one completely wrecked bear.
Murder bear week continues with Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. To answer your first question, yes, this is a real movie. British schlockmiester Rhys Frake-Waterfield noticed that Winnie the Pooh passed into the public domain in 2022, and now he’s here to destroy and corrupt the only thing in your childhood that gave you comfort. Thanks a lot, dude.
In Bunker, a squad of soldiers is trapped underground with a malevolent presence in this atmospheric horror flick. Is it a bear? Probably not, but a guy can dream, can’t he?
Director M. Night Shyamalan returns with his latest psychological thriller, Knock at the Cabin. A young family on a mountain vacation is terrorized when a hulking figure appears at the door. Is it a bear? Kinda—it’s Dave Bautista, here to present the mother of all trolly problems.
If you’ve had enough of bears, Saturday night is the February edition of the Time Warp Drive-In, where you can watch two towering masterpieces of Blaxploitation cinema. Shaft was a huge hit in 1971 that won Isaac Hayes an Academy Award. That meant that in 1972, Shaft’s Big Score could afford to blow up a helicopter. Witness the power of Shaft.
Like stepping on an anthill,
Marvel’s antics in this romp will have you itching to leave your seat.
When, exactly, did the MCU jump the shark? For me, it was with Avengers: Age of Ultron. Things were fun and getting funner on Earth-616 until 2015, when Joss Whedon assembled Earth’s mightiest heroes to fight another army of faceless, disposable enemies.
There has been a lot of ups and downs in the approximately dozen lifetimes that have transpired since then, but the one thing we could take solace in was the comforting mediocrity of Marvel movies. The MCU had a low ceiling, but a high floor. They were never great — the demands of branding always weighed the stories down with extraneous fluff — but they were never as awful as the DC super-turds they were extruding over at Warner Brothers.
I’m sad to report that with Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, the floor has finally dropped out.
Let’s begin with the title. When presented with director Peyton Reed’s idea to call the third Ant-Man film “Quantumania,” who was the coward at Disney who failed to tag an exclamation point on it?
“Quantumania!” See how much better that is?
Second, let’s talk about The Wasp (Evangeline Lilly). She is not so much a character as she is an afterthought. Occasionally, you can catch writer Jeff Loveness remembering Hope van Dyne is in the movie. Lilly plays her with a resigned detachment I find relatable.
Third, is there something I’m missing about Paul Rudd? He brings to Ant-Man a weird kind of anti-charisma, in that everything he does seems repulsive and wrong. Did he get this job because he is so bland and flavorless no one finds him offensive? Is “tolerability” really all we ask of our movie stars?
Fourth, M.O.D.O.K. (Corey Stoll) Where to even begin? Sorry, Jack Kirby heads, but M.O.D.O.K. is just a goofy character design that’s impossible to take seriously outside his Silver Age comics context. Every moment he’s on screen is excruciating.
The only characters I really liked in this meandering multiverse were Hank Pym’s (Michael Douglas) uplifted ants. When they’re sucked into the quantum realm alongside the aging super-scientist and his screwup family, they spend their time dilation doing something useful, like developing a Kardashev Type II civilization, so they can ride to the rescue like diminutive Rohirrim.
Speaking of the Pym family, all this Quantumania(!) could have been avoided if Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) had told her granddaughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) what happened while she was trapped in the quantum realm for 30 years. Janet claims she didn’t tell her family about the exiled supervillain Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors) because she wanted to protect them. Not to second guess a super-scientist, but wouldn’t it have been logical to just tell them, “Hey, there’s this dangerous supervillain who is trapped in the quantum realm, so maybe don’t go poking around down there?” She wouldn’t have even had to broach the subject of her affair with Lord Krylar (Bill Murray, going big) or of her role in fomenting a minuscule rebellion against the forces of Kang’s tiny tyranny.
But the worst part of Quantumania is not the stupid characters or the Baskin-Robbins product placement. This movie looks bad. I saw it in 4K, and most of the time it was a dark, swirling CGI soup. The haphazard lighting and aggressive color grading conspire to make poor Majors look constantly sweaty. I thought the Marvel shark had been well and truly jumped, but it turns out the Fonz was just getting warmed up.
Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania Now playing Multiple locations
Antonio Banderas reprises his role in the Shrek franchise as the feline hero Puss in Boots.
DreamWorks has long been a force to be reckoned with in animation, with financially successful properties like Kung Fu Panda and Trolls. Shrek is DreamWorks’ most beloved franchise, and the company has been able to flawlessly continue the ogre’s legacy by creating spin-offs centered around his sidekick, Puss in Boots. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish has proven to be a sleeper hit, with $555 million in box office earnings and an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Film.
This story follows Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas), who has lived many lives as a fearless hero and, being that he is a cat, has had a few lives to spare. Inevitably, he takes a stunt too far and finds himself left with only one remaining life. With death always on his tail, he can no longer be the fearless cat he once was. Instead, he must live the life he has always feared: that of a domestic cat.
Exchanging boots for kitty mittens and unlimited toilet privileges for a shared litter box, Puss prepares for a quiet retirement. Then he hears about the Wishing Star, a magical object hidden somewhere in the Forbidden Forest that will make dreams real. It is not long before Puss straps on his cape and rapier and quests for the star. During his journey, though, he encounters other iconic fairy-tale characters, such as Goldilocks (Florence Pugh) with her Three Bears (Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone, and Samson Kayo), Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), and Jack Horner (John Mulaney), who are all out for the same prize. Diving back into his dangerous lifestyle, Puss has to team up and trust those around him to have any chance at another life. Jack simmers as the main antagonist, who is angry at the world for his lack of fame. Driven by this anger, he wants the Wishing Star to make him the most powerful and recognized creature in the world.
Even though Jack is evil, director Joel Crawford tunes the humor to make sure he’s not too scary. Many jokes throughout the film are geared toward adults, usually coming from Perrito (Harvey Guillén), whose dialogue is sometimes bleeped out for comedic effect.
Aside from the feelings this movie elicits, the screenplay is as entertaining and interesting as the characters themselves. The animation style has a hand-painted look, similar to some scenes from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The noticeable brush strokes and swirling color make the film feel like watching a painting in progress. The landscapes are especially pleasing to the eye.
While I have praised Puss In Boots: The Last Wish heavily, I do have one worry. The film ends with an overt suggestion that the future may yield another Shrek movie. DreamWorks, so far, has done a phenomenal job at upholding the Shrek legacy, but with so many sequels and remakes saturating the film industry, I would hate to see another classic franchise driven into the ground. If Shrek 5 is your plan, DreamWorks, maybe slow your roll just a tad.
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish Now playing Multiple locations
Director Kyle Edward Ball channels surrealist cinema as everyday objects take on sinister import.
Every 10 years since 1952, the British Film Institute and Sight and Sound magazine conduct a poll of the world’s most prominent film critics, asking to list their favorite films. For decades, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane topped the list as the greatest film ever made. Then in 2012, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo edged it out. Then in 2022, a funny thing happened. A movie that had never appeared on the list of 100 before debuted at No. 1: Chantal Akerman’s 1975 film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels.
Akerman didn’t live to see herself crowned as the greatest director in film history. She committed suicide in 2015. But if she had ever made a horror film, it would probably look like Skinamarink. In Akerman’s first film, 1973’s Hotel Monterey, she took her camera into every nook and cranny of a run-down flop house in then-decaying Manhattan, blurring the lines between the building and the people who lived there. For the first 20 or so minutes of Skinamarink, director Kyle Edward Ball does something similar with an average suburban house in what the opening credits tell us is 1995.
It’s the middle of the night, but 4-year-old Kevin (Lucas Paul) and 6-year-old Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault) are restless. Kevin is a sleepwalker, and Kaylee is trying to make sure her little brother doesn’t hurt himself on his nightly rambles, as he has done in the past. The night is full of subtle terrors. Is that daddy (Ross Paul) on the phone, talking about us to some stranger? Is mom (Jaime Hill) crying? Is there another presence in the home — maybe something less natural? Wasn’t there a door here before?
The operative word for Skinamarink is “creepy.” Ball has a YouTube channel where he dramatizes people’s nightmares, and since “writing down dreams and visions from transcendental meditation” is pretty much David Lynch’s MO, that’s a pretty good pedigree for a horror director. Shot on a reported budget of $15,000 (although I will wager that figure doesn’t include the final sound mixing, which is exceptional), Ball’s Kubrickian insistence that you look at every square inch of the frame makes a virtue out of poverty. He keeps his camera low, shooting up to give the film the point of view of a kindergartner. Everyday objects take on sinister import. The staircase bannister looms like a colonnade. He borrows disorienting techniques from the earliest example of surrealist cinema, Un Chien Andalou. Is that heavy breathing, or just a burst of static from the television tuned to a blank channel? Is that a figure in the darkness, or just an illusion made of swirling film grain? Ball assiduously avoids faces, showing his kiddy protagonists only by their sock feet and spilled crayons. When he finally does show a face, you’ll wish he hadn’t.
Skinamarink is not going to be for everyone. Ball’s hypnotic pacing will grate on some smartphone-blasted attention spans. But like another recent lo-fi horror masterpiece, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, that’s kind of the point. Skinamarink is not a rubber mask, jump-scare fest. It’s made to tap into something primal — call it “object permanence horror.” It’s that fleeting memory of how your toys were strewn across the floor of your room the day your parents told you they were getting a divorce. It’s that little voice in your head telling you to do bad things, and the fear that this time, you’ll listen to it.
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey make for uneasy post-apocalyptic companions as Joel and Ellie.
Post-apocalyptic stories hit different these days. It’s not that the Covid-19 pandemic was a civilization ender — the real-life virus’ current worldwide death toll is 6.7 million people, while, to pick one example from post-apocalyptic lit, the Captain Trips virus from Stephen King’s The Stand is 99 percent fatal. It’s that now, we have a much better appreciation of what kind of disruptions that even a “normal” pandemic can create. And, of course, the fear of infection inherent in the zombie genre is much more relatable.
The Last Of Us was released for Playstation 3 in June 2013, right at the height of the last zombie craze and three years into the run of The Walking Dead. It was an immediate hit and is now considered a classic for its cinematic, character-based storytelling, and a Psycho-like protagonist switcheroo, as the character you play initially, Sarah, dies on the first day of the zombie outbreak.
In the HBO adaptation of The Last of Us, Sarah is played by Nico Parker, who charms instantly. It’s her father Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) birthday, and she wants to do something nice for her hardworking single parent. But Sarah’s little jaunt into the city to get Joel’s watch repaired is cut short by a jittery shopkeeper who, it turns out, pays a lot more attention to the news than she does. Her bus ride home becomes a less comic version of Shaun of the Dead, where the background action belies the encroaching chaos, but not everyone understands what it means yet. By the time showrunner Craig Mazin stages his own version of the famous one-shot car escape from Children of Men, the problem is obvious: A mutated fungus that takes over the brains of humans and hijacks their bodies to spread via bite is spreading rapidly.
Then, the story jumps ahead 20 years. Joel is grimly holding on in a radically changed world. What’s left of Boston is a Quarantine Zone run by the Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA), which also seems to be all that’s left of the American government. The deeply traumatized population bristles after two decades of military rule, and a group calling itself the Fireflies wages a furtive rebellion to restore some semblance of democracy. Joel and his partner Tess (Anna Torv) are planning on busting out of the QZ to find his brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) who might be in a Firefly settlement in Wyoming. But their plans are complicated by the arrival of Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenager who wanders in from the contaminated wasteland with a big secret: She was bitten by an Infected, but resisted the fungus. The Fireflies want to get her to a group of surviving scientists, who they think can use her to create an antifungal vaccine.
Mazin, who won two Emmys for his excellent Chernobyl series, and Neil Druckmann, who wrote the source material, have an unerring eye, and often more importantly, an ear for the creepy. Pascal, freed from the helmet of The Mandalorian, is perfect as the taciturn Joel, while Ramsey, last seen as the fierce Lady Mormont on Game of Thrones, deftly hints at the depths behind Ellie’s eyes. The Last of Us is the rare video game adaptation that actually works on its own terms. Even if you’re as burned out on zombies as I am, it’s worth a look.
Just before M3GAN kills her first human, the annoying neighbor Celia (Lori Dungey) asks, “What are you?”
M3GAN pauses. “I’ve been asking myself that same question,” she says, before blasting Celia in the face with a pressure washer.
Technically speaking, M3GAN is the first Model 3 Generative ANdroid, created by Gemma (Allison Williams), a roboticist working for the toy company Funki. Gemma is under pressure to update Funki’s Furby-like flagship toy, but M3GAN is her passion project — not so much a talking doll as a fully realized android companion for a middle-schooler, what Douglas Adams would call “your plastic pal who’s fun to be with.”
When her niece Cady (Violet McGraw) is orphaned in a car crash, Gemma, an unapologetic career woman, is forced to take a crash course in single parenting. Ever the technologist, she sees the situation as an opportunity to test out her invention. After a late-night crunch session, she introduces Cady to M3GAN. They bond immediately, thanks to M3GAN’s reactive learning software protocols.
One of the things I love about a well-made horror film is how it plays with the information imbalance between the audience and the characters. We all know that we bought a ticket to a killer robot movie, but Gemma doesn’t know she’s inventing a killer robot. When she boasts that M3GAN is programmed to prevent Cady from all harm physical and emotional, then teaches the robot what death is, then offhandedly remarks that she didn’t have time to install the parental controls, we know what’s coming next.
But it is M3GAN’s question — “What am I?” — that shows M3GAN is smarter than a killer doll movie from the makers of Annabelle has any right to be. Screenwriter Akela Cooper crafts a dilemma for her monster that is straight out of Isaac Asimov. Gemma thinks of her creation only as a robot, but to Cady, she’s a real girl — a best friend to sing along to pop songs with, a friend who is also an excellent therapist. At one point, a tech says M3GAN is not sentient because her speech is just a “curated word salad” designed to create the illusion of meaning in the listener. But when Gemma’s boss David (Ronny Chieng) asks for “a list of things I can say to the board to make me sound intelligent,” no one questions his personhood. And after all, M3GAN’s belief that she can take better care of Cady is not delusional, since Gemma objectively sucks as a caregiver. It’s just that M3GAN’s vision of parental responsibility comes with a high body count.
Director Gerard Johnstone and producers James Wan and Jason Blum perform a tonal tightrope walk worthy of John Carpenter. They admit the premise is a little silly with a few sly winks at the audience; then they reel you in. Allison Williams is pitch-perfect, pivoting from likable to cold on a dime, as the scene requires. The character of M3GAN is constructed with puppetry, Jenna Davis’ delightfully unhinged voice work, and an inspired physical performance by 12-year-old dancer Amie Donald.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go work on my “M3GAN was right!” memes.
… And we’re back for 2023! Now that you’re over your New Year’s Eve hangover, we’ve got plenty of great stuff on Memphis’ big screens to distract you from the work you must perform now that the holidays are over.
If your post-holiday blues are leading you to a dark place, we recommend M3GAN. Nepo baby Allison Williams stars as a roboticist named Gemma who unexpectedly has to raise her orphaned niece Cady (Violet McGraw). Her big labor saving idea to create a robotic best friend for Cady who will protect her from all harm, both physical and emotional. What could possibly go wrong?
If Terminator Babies doesn’t scratch your itch for total reality escape, now is the time to catch Avatar: The Way of Water in 3D IMAX. James Cameron’s long-gestating sequel is actually pretty good, and you’ve got to see it in a theater to get the full effect.
Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt lead an all star cast in Damien Chazelle’s decadent tribute to Old Hollywood, Babylon. Did you know they did cocaine in the silent era? Because they absolutely did.
British actress Naomi Ackie tackles a hell of a difficult role in the Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody. How do you play someone with a very distinctive look and a once-in-a-generation voice?
Black Lodge is spending the new year plumbing its collection for classics. On Sunday, that means David Cronenberg’s 1996 masterpiece Crash. Adopted from the J.G. Ballard novel about people who sexually fetishize automobile accidents, this slow-burn erotic thriller boasts one of Holly Hunter’s greatest (and strangest) performances.
January Tuesdays at Black Lodge are dedicated to Alfred Hitchcock, and the next one features what may be my personal favorite Hitch: 1951’s Strangers on a Train. Robert Walker was fresh out of being hospitalized for mental illness at the Menninger Clinic when he was cast as the film’s villain, and died under mysterious circumstances shortly after the premiere. Watch as the best “murderous, yet charming psychopath” in film history reels in his mark.
Thursday, Crosstown Theater screens a very different kind of classic. Werner Herzog is best known today for doing compelling, personal documentaries and guest shots on The Mandalorian. But before he was famous for his world-weary voice, he directed a string of intense films in the 1970s, many starring his frenemy Klaus Kinski. In Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Kinski stars as a Spanish conquistador who leads his band of soldiers and camp followers on a suicide mission into the Amazon jungle. In this trailer, watch for the scene where Kinski intimidates a horse. I’m betting that was an improv.
And just like that, it’s another year gone. With the snap of a finger, 12 months have flashed by and, gulp, is it the end of December already? Every year since 2020, we’ve wondered if maybe, just maybe, this upcoming year will be the one where we all shake off the doldrums of a post-Covid reality, rush out to the street en masse, and burst into glorious song and dance. Maybe not quite so much exuberance, but things are certainly ramping up. A completed Tom Lee Park is on the horizon, our local music scene is going strong, Memphis sports are gearing up for championship runs, and mayoral hopefuls are quietly slipping the gloves off. If that’s enough to get you giddy with anticipation, well, you’ve earned it. Prepare to take off the handbrake, and read on for our predictions for 2023.
(Top) Tom Lee Park (Photo: Memphis River Parks Partnership)
Breaking News
Tom Lee Park
Maybe the most anticipated opening of 2023 is the renovated, completely re-imagined Tom Lee Park.
The massive, $61 million project is expected to completely transform Memphis’ riverfront, drawing visitors — locals and tourists alike — to see it. Gone will be the flat, wide-open plain of grass between the Mississippi River and Riverside Drive. It will be replaced with low hills, native plants, lookouts, bathrooms, sports and recreation areas, play equipment, concessions, and more. When the project was announced back in 2019, the new design was described as “a blend of landscaping and architecture meant to mimic and restore some of the 30-acre river park’s natural ecology and better connect the city to the river.”
The anticipation of the park’s opening comes with both excited expectation and some anxiety. The new park design is expected to better connect the park with the rest of Downtown Memphis, to the delight of city leaders. All of those tourists will come at the delight of Downtown business owners.
However, the new design will bring growing pains for Memphis in May. The organization has already predicted a much smaller festival in the park and, maybe, higher prices for festival-goers to pay for the higher fees for using the park.
Memphis River Parks Partnership officials said in September that the project was halfway complete. The park has to at least be ready enough to host Memphis in May in a few short months. Officials said a grand opening of the park will be held after May’s events.
The park’s opening was one major reason travel magazine Condé NastTraveler named Memphis one of the top places to visit in 2023, one of only two places in the U.S. — Toby Sells
Memphis Sports & Events Center (Photo: Frank Murtaugh)
Memphis Sports & Events Center
Expect to (probably) see the inside of the brand-new and newly opened Memphis Sports & Events Center (MSEC) in 2023. The $60 million facility was built in 18 months and will be the centerpiece of the new sports tourism hook for Liberty Park (or the Mid-South Fairgrounds if you’re old-timey).
At 227,000 square feet, the MSEC has a footprint the size of four football fields. Each of two wings features eight basketball courts that can convert into as many as 32 volleyball courts. The north wing includes stadium seating to accommodate 3,500 spectators, along with four VIP suites and boxes for media and recruiters.
The center is a gamble by city leaders that it will attract new visitors to Memphis via youth sports travel teams for indoor sports like basketball, volleyball, and more. Funding for the center, though, is expected to come from tax revenues generated from a zone around the facility, presumably enough to pay for itself. — TS
Moth Moth Moth (Photo: Moth Moth Moth)
Outlawing Drag
The state of Tennessee saw numerous controversies regarding drag shows in 2022. In September, what was advertised as a “family-friendly” drag show at the Museum of Science and History (MoSH) was canceled after a group of Proud Boys showed up to the event armed. The Jackson Pride drag show was limited to participants aged 18 and older after weeks of battling between event organizers and lawmakers in Jackson, Tennessee.
Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin) recently filed legislation for the 113th Tennessee General Assembly that could potentially make drag performances in Tennessee a crime. This legislation would define drag shows as “adult cabaret” and would prohibit these performances in public places.
The bill also goes on to make performing in “adult cabaret performance” on public property or “in a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult” a Class A misdemeanor. Repeat offenders face a Class E felony.
Local LGBTQ+ activists in Memphis such as Moth Moth Moth (Mothie for short) have voiced their concerns over social media and are actively working to raise awareness and fight back.
“This is a slippery slope that aims to force drag artists into our homes and LGBTQIA+ people out of public sight,” said Mothie in a Facebook post. “How can you fight this? Call your reps. And scream at them.”
It might be a while before this sticks, as the legislature does not reconvene until January. If passed, the law would take effect in July 2023. — Kailynn Johnson
Jim Strickland (Photo: City of Memphis)
On the Political Horizon
Much of the New Year will be devoted to the selection of a new mayor and city council by Memphis voters. The quadrennial process, which actually got under way in the late months of 2022, will formally conclude on Thursday, October 5, 2023. Long before the resolution of that contest, however, the actual first election of the year, a special election for the state House District 86 seat, will have already occurred. The primary date for the special election, which was called to decide a successor to the late Barbara Cooper, who died in October, is January 24th, with the general election scheduled for March 14th.
A referendum on the November 8th ballot allowing for a third term for the Memphis mayor and members of the city council was rejected by the city’s voters, thereby foreclosing on a possible re-election bid by Mayor Jim Strickland and ensuring that a new face would be at the helm of city government, come October 5th. The reality of an open seat also made it likely that the mayoral field would swell to include numerous challengers, several of whom had announced in late fall and early winter, with more expected after the turn of the year.
The first gauge of true candidate viability will come on or around January 15th, when end-of-the-year financial disclosures will be required of the mayoral hopefuls, with information on their campaign war chests to be made publicly available. Several of the so-far announced candidates — notably Sheriff Floyd Bonner, former County Commissioner and NAACP head Van Turner, and president/CEO of the Downtown Memphis Commission Paul Young — are thought to have good fundraising prospects, with the potential to scare off rivals. Race is unlikely to be a factor, since all the actual or rumored candidates to date have been African Americans — a development consistent with the city’s demographic profile. Gender could be important, however, especially if either school board chair Michelle McKissack or state House Democratic leader Karen Camper stay in the race and get up a good head of steam. A few long-odds candidates, already in or thinking about it, include former TV judge Joe Brown and former County Commissioner Justin Ford.
In Nashville, the Republican legislative supermajority, somewhat further entrenched after redistricting, remains in charge, and two bills that are aimed at the state’s LGBTQ+ community have already been filed, and, with administration acquiescence if not outright support, will doubtless go to the head of the class. One would prohibit gender-affirmation surgery on behalf of transgender youth; another would place serious restrictions on public drag shows. Legislation to update the revenue sources undergirding the IMPROVE transportation act sponsored by former Governor Bill Haslam in 2017 is considered urgently necessary, especially in anticipation of the forthcoming needs of Ford’s BlueOval project at the West Tennessee megasite. Governor Bill Lee has made it clear, however, that further increases in the state’s gasoline tax are off the table.
Meanwhile, the version of the Shelby County Commission elected in August is Democratic-controlled (nine Democrats vs. four Republicans) and conspicuously more liberal (in every sense of the word) than the GOP establishment in the state Capitol. In a meeting just before Christmas, the commissioners put together a wish list of financial favors it wants from the state that may have hard going with the parsimonious Lee and his legislative leadership.
The commissioners’ list includes millions for Regional One Health (long known as The Med and, now as then, regarded as financially ailing) and more millions for new schools, a new jail, sewer expansion, mental health, and broadband improvements. All in all, the requests add up to $1.2 billion.
For some decades now, tension has developed between spokespersons for Shelby County and the state political establishment (regardless of political-party issues). Especially in view of the state’s apparently ever-mounting efforts to limit local options, the coming session should underscore these further. — Jackson Baker
Artina McCain (Photo: Courtesy Artina McCain)
Rock On: Live Music in 2023
With in-person performances roaring back to life over the past year, there are plenty of concerts to look forward to in 2023, though the various viral hazards still at large may still yet cause cancellations. For starters, of course, New Year’s Eve shows are just around the corner, including Blind Mississippi Morris and band at Blues City Cafe, Louder Than Bombs at B-Side, the Memphis Funk-N-Horns at Neil’s Music Room, and a double header of Formerly Known As and Twin Soul at Lafayette’s Music Room. With Jerry Lee Lewis’ recent death, many will likely flock to Hernando’s Hide-a-Way as they ring in 2023 with Jason D. Williams, who carries the Jerry Lee torch in his own inimitable way.
As January rolls on, local venues are bringing the entertainment without a pause. Lafayette’s general manager Julien Salley Jr. says, “It’s pretty exciting to see our ticketed shows return to full speed after what Covid did to us. Beyond a heavy schedule of the best local artists in Memphis, we also have incoming: Geoff Tate of Queensrÿche, Samantha Fish, Tab Benoit, Marc Broussard, Adelitas Way, Smile Empty Soul, and a ton of other exciting acts.”
Meanwhile, even more exquisite concerts will grace Memphis concert halls. The Germantown Performing Arts Center (GPAC) already has the likes of Tommy Emmanuel, Stacey Kent, and The Milk Carton Kids in January; Neko Case, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Pilobolus, and Samara Joy in February; and Step Afrika!, Marie-Stéphane Bernard, and Anthony Wilson in March.
Crosstown Arts will host more classical concerts than ever in the new year, including the Mahogany Chamber Music Series, three shows curated by Artina McCain that spotlight Black and other underrepresented composers and performers. There’s also the intriguingly titled “Mozart and Electric Guitar Concerto” by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Iris Collective’s “Spacetime.” But it’s the jazz curation that should win Crosstown medals, as they begin with guitarist Jimmy Bruno, then go deep in March when Crosstown’s “jazz month” will include another guitar giant, Peter Bernstein, as well as Marc Ribot, The Bad Plus, Deepstaria Enigmatica, singer Morgan James, and James Sexton’s The Otis Mission.
Of course, the rock world choogles on, so keep checking the offerings at Hernando’s, Growlers, Hi Tone, Bar DKDC, Young Avenue Deli, Railgarten, the Cove, Lamplighter Lounge, and B-Side. If you’re thinking big, Graceland Live will keep bringing the national touring acts — like Cinderella’s Tom Keifer and Mr. “Pretty Little Poison,” Warren Zeiders, in February. The Orpheum and Halloran theaters have even more on deck, from the Black Love Live soul concert to Don Bryant and the Bo-Keys, not to mention Mark Edgar Stuart’s ongoing songwriter series, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros., the McCrary Sisters in February, and a smashing lineup of Buddy Guy, Patti Labelle, Van Duren, and John Mellencamp in the months to follow. — Alex Greene
Timothée Chalamet returns in Dune: Part Two.
Future Film
There was much kvetching about the future of the theater business in 2022, as box office returns ranged from extraordinary (Top Gun: Maverick made $1.5 billion) to job-killing (Disney’s $100 million loss on Strange World cost CEO Bob Chapek his career). But 2023’s release calendar looks a little more stacked, money-wise, than 2022’s pandemic-ravaged offerings. January starts strong with M3GAN, a creepy doll robot horror movie, and a reboot of the ’90s hip-hop classic House Party. February has Soderbergh sprinkling stripper fairy dust with Magic Mike’s Last Dance, the year’s first Marvel movie Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and a true story whose name says it all, Cocaine Bear.
In March, star Michael B. Jordan takes to the ring as director of Creed III. Memphian Henry Gayden returns as writer for the sequel Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Keanu Reeves kicks all kinds of ass in John Wick: Chapter 4, and Chris Pine leads an attempt to translate Dungeons & Dragons to the big screen with Honor Among Thieves. April dawns with The Super Mario Brothers Movie, featuring the other, lesser Chris — Pratt — as the Italian plumber, for some reason. Chris McKay helms Renfield, starring Nicolas Cage as freakin’ Dracula and Nicholas Hoult as the vampire’s thrall. Later, a new crew takes on the Deadites in Evil Dead Rise, and the beloved Judy Blume novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret finally gets an adaptation.
The big guns come out in May, when James Gunn takes his final bow as a Marvel director with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and Fast X brings all the family back together to drive fast some more. In June, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse will test if Marvel can keep its Spider-streak alive. The next week, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will no doubt supply me with fodder for an entertaining pan. June 16th, everyone who’s anyone (Swinton! Cranston! Hanks! Goldblum!) will be in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, while walking PR crisis Ezra Miller tanks The Flash. The month ends with Harrison Ford’s swan song as the world’s favorite archeologist in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
In July, Tom Cruise hopes to repeat 2022’s box office triumph with Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One. July 21st brings the strangest pairing of any weekend, with Christopher Nolan’s biopic of the man who invented the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer, and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. For the record, I’m up for both. August slows down with a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flick, Disney’s long-delayed Haunted Mansion, and Blue Beetle. In a September with The Equalizer 2, The Nun 2, and The Expendables 4, the only potential bright spot is the latest installment of Branagh’s Agatha Christie kick, A Haunting in Venice. Kraven The Hunter leads October, and Saw X rounds out Halloween weekend. Return to Arrakis on November 3rd with Dune: Part Two (if you thought the first one was a snoozer, this is where all the good stuff happens). Was anyone asking for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes? At least DreamWorks’ windfall from Trolls 3 will help pad Justin Timberlake’s retirement account. Currently scheduled for December is Timothée Chalamet in Wonka, a remake of The Color Purple, and a currently untitled Ghostbusters sequel, before the year squishes to a close with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. — Chris McCoy
Penny Hardaway (Photo: Larry Kuzniewski)
2023 Tip-off: Memphis Sports
It’s the Sweet 16 or bust for Coach Penny Hardaway and his Memphis Tigers basketball team. This is especially the case for the nine(!) seniors that make up virtually the entire rotation for the fifth-year coach. New arrival Kendric Davis — a transfer from SMU — could pull off the rare feat of winning his league’s Player of the Year honors two years in a row for different teams. If Davis stays healthy and continues to excel, and supporting veterans like DeAndre Williams and Alex Lomax make the right kind of impact, reaching the NCAA tournament’s second weekend for the first time since (gulp) 2009 is within reach.
Three questions will follow the Memphis Grizzlies into 2023. Can Ja Morant win the MVP award (would be a franchise first)? Yes. Can the Griz win the freakin’ NBA championship? Yes. The third question is the most problematic: Can the Memphis Grizzlies ever play at full strength? The team has climbed to the top of the Western Conference standings without playing a solitary game featuring Morant, Jaren Jackson Jr., and Desmond Bane all in uniform. Should the team be able to unleash their big-three on the rest of the NBA for a sustained stretch — preferably into May and June — there may be a large parade this summer on Beale Street.
The Memphis Redbirds will take the field for their 25th season in a refurbished AutoZone Park, a brand-new playing surface complemented by a brand-new video board. And the St. Louis Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate may feature two of the top prospects in all of minor-league baseball. Slugger Jordan Walker — a third-baseman and outfielder — could make the club’s big-league roster out of spring training despite his tender age (20). Shortstop Masyn Winn is another elite young talent, with an arm that makes many pitchers blush. The Redbirds are looking to make their first playoff appearance since joining the International League in 2022. — Frank Murtaugh
Memphis 901 FC are coming off their best-ever season after making it to the USL Eastern Conference semifinals. With titans in defense, midfield, and attack, coach Ben Pirmann unlocked the full potential of this squad, who were a penalty kick away from the conference finals. Pirmann will unfortunately no longer lead the team next season, having accepted an offer from USL rival Charleston Battery FC. Next year it’s Scotsman Stephen Glass, who has previous coaching experience in America with MLS side Atlanta United and its USL affiliate Atlanta United 2. And crucially, the organization has gone to great lengths to retain key players. Rather than building from scratch, star striker Phillip Goodrum (21 goals last season), midfielders Aaron Molloy and Laurent Kissiedou, defender Graham Smith, and captain Leston Paul, among others, will all return. Memphis came close to reaching the conference finals. For the following year, taking that next step is a distinct possibility. — Samuel X. Cicci
