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Guess Who
This Layered-Up Star Is!

Published
February 7, 2026
4:00 PM PST

RFK Jr.
Epstein & I Looked For T-Rexs Together!!!

Published
February 7, 2026
4:28 PM PST

By Robert Scucci
| Published 15 seconds ago

It’s never fun when brilliant filmmakers like the Coen brothers swing for the fences and miss. In the case of 2017’s Suburbicon, the fences are of the white picket variety, and George Clooney handled co-writing and directorial duties. The result of this collaboration is two completely different films jammed into one, making for an interesting experiment in social satire that never quite feels satisfying.

Suburbicon was originally penned by the Coen brothers shortly after Blood Simple made its rounds in 1985. The project was conceived as a murder mystery set in an idyllic suburb, but it took on a completely different tone once George Clooney became involved. Clooney’s contributions to the script include a storyline about a Black family moving into an all white neighborhood in the 1950s, and dealing with the kind of racial fallout you’d expect when their new neighbors don’t take too kindly to their presence.

While both stories are solid in their own right and very well could have succeeded as separate films, Suburbicon ultimately misses the mark because they never fully converge. The result feels like two separate movies limping past the finish line instead of effectively getting their points across.

A Murder Mystery And A New Family On The Block

The primary story in Suburbicon centers on the Lodge family. Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) and his wife Rose (Julianne Moore) initially appear to be your typical American family. They project a happy marriage, and their son Nicky (Noah Jupe) is a picture-perfect child living in suburbia. Always present at the Lodge household is Rose’s identical twin sister, Margaret (Julianne Moore), who is romantically entangled with Gardner.

One night, hitmen Ira Sloan (Glenn Fleshler) and Louis (Alex Hassell) break into the Lodge residence, though their intent remains dubious at this point in the film. They chloroform the family to subdue them, but end up giving Rose, who is a paraplegic, a fatal dose, leaving Nicky without a mother. In the weeks and months that follow, Margaret begins dressing and acting like Rose, slowly infiltrating the Lodge family as if she had always been the matriarch.

The family is later brought into the police station to identify the men who destroyed their lives. Nicky is certain that the men who killed his mother are in the lineup. Gardner outright denies they are the same men, and Margaret follows suit. The entire situation doesn’t sit right with Nicky, and it is only a matter of time before the truth rears its ugly head.

Meanwhile, the Mayers family, who are Black, move into the Suburbicon subdivision and are met with immediate backlash. Nicky befriends Andy Mayers (Tony Espinosa), and the two get along just fine. Andy’s mother (Karimah Westbrook) and father (Leith Burke), however, are subjected to discrimination and cruelty from neighbors who want their community to remain all white. The racial tension ultimately boils over into a riot fueled by good old fashioned family racism, while the murder mystery at the Lodge residence continues to unfold with disastrous results.

Two Different Movies Trying To Be One

Both stories in Suburbicon work well on their own, but things get messy when they are forced together. The entire time I was watching the film, I kept waiting for both narratives to intersect in a meaningful way during the third act, and they technically do. However, that intersection feels forced through the film’s satire, resulting in a sloppy resolution. This is frustrating because the social commentary is all there, and the second and third acts could have been structured differently to tell a more cohesive story.

If the Coen brothers and George Clooney had wanted to fully commit to the satire and push Suburbicon into outright absurd territory, they could have pulled it off in the same way they did with O Brother, Where Art Thou? 

A white family suffers a fatal home invasion at the same time a Black family moves into the neighborhood, even though we know the culprits behind the invasion are clearly white. The community then leans into racism by inventing a correlation and letting their imaginations spiral. We get traces of that idea in Suburbicon, but for it to land properly, the murder mystery would need to take the back seat.

By the same token, in order to fully explore the murder mystery, the racial commentary would need to be scaled back. Suburbicon suffers, and ultimately fails, because it does not know which lane to stay in, and even worse, it does not know when or how those lanes should intersect to create a sharp, effective satire that effectively explores both sides of the coin it’s tossing into the air.

Suburbicon boasts all the Coen brothers flair we have come to know and love over the decades, but it plays more like a proof of concept than a fully realized film. It never feels completely fleshed out. Instead, it comes across like their script was thrown into a blender with George Clooney’s, splattered onto a storyboard, and then rushed into production once Clooney said “action.”

As of this writing, Suburbicon is streaming for free on Pluto TV.

Cardi B
Men Are Always Throwing Themselves at Me …
Robots Do Too!!!

Published
February 7, 2026
5:01 PM PST

Singer Brandi Carlile is opening up about why she — as an openly gay artist — decided to sing “America the Beautiful” at Super Bowl LX despite the country’s turbulent and divisive political times.

“I have my own moral code, my own moral imperative, that I have to answer to at the end of the day, as a wife and a mother, and I believe in my ability and responsibility to do this, and that’s why I’m here,” Carlile, 44, told Variety in an interview published on Saturday, February 7.

“And the throughline to being queer and being representative of a marginalized community and being put on the largest stage in America to acknowledge the fraught and tender hope that this country is based on, it’s something you don’t say no to,” she added. “You do it.”

The Grammy and Emmy award-winning singer-songwriter is set to perform “America the Beautiful” ahead of Super Bowl 60 between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots on Sunday, February 8, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

Carlile will perform as part of a jam-packed pre-game lineup, featuring Green Day and a rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” by Charlie Pluth, before Bad Bunny takes the 2026 Super Bowl Halftime stage.

While there’s sure to be plenty of drama on the field, Bad Bunny and the controversy surrounding his upcoming performance has been dominating headlines after conservatives, Republican politicians — including President Donald Trump — and pundits have chastised the NFL for choosing a Puerto Rican artist who performs in Spanish to headline.

(Despite claims from many conservatives, Bad Bunny, real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is an American as Puerto Rico is an American territory.)

“You may not know this, but I’m doing the Super Bowl halftime show,” Bad Bunny told the audience while hosting Saturday Night Live in October 2025, addressing the controversy head-on. “I’m very happy and I think everyone is very happy about it! Even Fox News…”

He added, “Really, I’m very excited to be doing the Super Bowl and I know people all around the world who love my music are also happy.”

Bad Bunny then spoke in Spanish, before again addressing the audience and viewers in English.

“If you didn’t understand now what I just said, you have four months to learn!”

While speaking to Variety, Carlile also addressed the divisiveness surrounding the upcoming Super Bowl.

“It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be,” Carlile told the publication of how controversial the halftime show has become. “It looks exactly like America! It looks exactly like the United States. It looks like the layers on the field, and it looks like the people that are watching the sport. And that’s how it should be, with a lot of demographics represented, and a lot of enthusiastic people excited to celebrate a huge game on a unifying day.”

Related: Brandi Carlile and Wife Catherine Shepherd Shut Down Divorce Rumors

Brandi Carlile and her wife, Catherine Shepherd, first struck up a relationship over the phone — but it wasn’t long before they hit it off in person as well. The Grammy winner and the U.K. native met in 2009 while Shepherd was working for Paul McCartney, coordinating his charity work. Carlile and her future wife spoke […]

She continued, “And I think that the folks that put together the entertainment portion of the Super Bowl this year just did a bang-up job. It’s really good. Bad Bunny’s incredible — an incredible spirit and performer. It’s gonna be a fabulous halftime show.”

The award-winning singer also spoke to how important it was for her to perform a song penned by Katharine Lee Bates, who is believed to have been gay.

“You know, I feel called to a long line of contemplative and struggling people. I feel motivated by the fact that she was very likely gay, and a woman relying on her intellect in a time when that was difficult for women to do so, and living with a partner who was doing the same thing,” she explained. “And still choosing — even in that total oppression; even not being able to be married; even not being able to say that she was gay, or to be elevated to the heights that she probably deserved to be elevated to in politics — and, during those times, to still love America and to still believe that it could get to a place of goodness.”

She added, “I won’t say greatness, because that feels a little, you know, patriarchal. But goodness. And I believe the same thing. And I have a sliver of the struggle ahead of and behind me that she was facing in her day. So, you know, this is an interesting song. And it’s an interesting decision that I’m making. I definitely don’t want to be seen as a neoliberal or as someone who’s glossing over the problems that we have in this country. I want to be seen as one of the people that’s helping.”

The Beast in Me, Netflix‘s twisted mystery thriller, is back on streaming charts three months after the entire season dropped. Data from FlixPatrol shows renewed interest in the Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys miniseries, which took over the platform when it premiered in November 2025. The mystery thriller peaked at number one and stayed on the streamer’s top ten chart for five weeks before permanently dropping off. Three months later, it has found a sizable fanbase in countries like the U.S., Ukraine, and Serbia. The Beast in Me entered the global top ten chart for three consecutive days in the last week before being dethroned by shows like Animal Kingdom and the new season of Bridgerton.

In The Beast in Me, Danes and Rhys star as Aggie Wiggs and Nile Jarvis, two people from different worlds with something in common. Wiggs is a writer dealing with a personal crisis, while Jarvis is an ultrawealthy investor caught up in a major public relations crisis. Since his first wife went missing, everyone has suspected him of the murder, even though there is no evidence. Aggie offers to write a book about his life to rehabilitate his image and, in the process, her own. Danes and Rhys were lauded as the perfect duo, elevating the show with their acting skills. Danes, who has mastered the art of playing sensitive characters since Homeland captured the claustrophobic suspicion her character goes through with incredible precision.

Collider’s Therese Lacson was impressed by Rhys’ performance, so much so that she singled him out in her review. “Rhys deserves flowers for his performance; Nile is so threatening at times that it makes your blood curdle. Even if there’s no proof that this man killed his wife, there’s something deeply unnerving about him. Whether it’s a scene of him staring quietly into Aggie’s eyes at lunch or him voraciously eating a rotisserie chicken (the scene makes Denethor’s tomato-eating scene in The Two Towers look tame) with his hands, he’s a man who screams predator,” she wrote in her review of The Beast in Me Season 1.

Matthew Rhys Has a New Show You Don’t Want to Miss

Rhys is known for playing eccentric characters. In his next role, he moves across the pond to Apple TV, where he leads Widow’s Bay. The show’s official description perfectly explains:

“Widow’s Bay is a quaint island town 40 miles off the coast of New England. But something lurks beneath the surface. Mayor Tom Loftis (Rhys) is desperate to revive his struggling community. There’s no Wi-Fi, spotty cellular reception, and he must contend with superstitious locals who believe their island is cursed. He wants these people to respect him. They don’t. They think he is soft and cowardly. And he is. But Loftis is determined to build a better future for his teenage son and turn the island into a tourist destination. Miraculously, he succeeds: tourists are finally coming. Unfortunately, the locals were right. After decades of calm, the old stories that seemed too ludicrous to be true start happening again. Widow’s Bay blends genuine horror with character-driven comedy.”

The Beast in Me is streaming on Netflix; Widow’s Bay premieres on Apple TV on April 29.

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Release Date

2025 – 2025-00-00

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Network

Netflix

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Skater Madeline Schizas
Sorry I Didn’t Write My Reflection, Professor …
My Country Needed Me!!!

Published
February 7, 2026
5:34 PM PST

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