I Love "I Love Boosters!"

I Am Curious (Yellow): Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, and Kiki Palmer are The Velvet Gang. (Jennifer Nguyen/NEON)

Walking out of Boots Riley’s sophomore feature I Love Boosters! a month ago, I wrote that the movie “features a device called a Situational Accelerator, and you’ll need one to keep up with this hilariously unhinged but incisive mashup of Brazil, Set It Off, and Norma Rae. (If you asked me again in five minutes I’d probably name three different movies). It’s a big step forward in ambition & execution from Sorry to Bother You, and the best stuff in it isn’t in the trailers. I can’t wait to spend the rest of the year arguing with you about it.”

I don’t think I improved upon that much in my Washington City Paper review, but it’s here.

And Now For Something Largely the Same: It's My Fifth Annual Village Voice Summer Movie Preview!

In olden times, Memorial Day weekend marked the start of what was known as the Summer Movie Season. It's an obsolete notion, now that would-be blockbuster releases are most heavily concentrated between mid-February (when Black Panther arrived this year) and the first weekend in May, and can come out basically any month of the year other than January. But as a kid who grew up planning my summers based on which hotly anticipated, frequently disappointing tentpole release came out when, I carry the torch for the idea that summertime is the season for escapist genre films that seek to overwhelm the senses.

My pal Alan Scherstuhl, the Village Voice's film editor, indulges me, assigning me each May to single out a dozen due before Labor Day that show promise. These features get shared among the whole New Times media ecosphere; sometimes even before they turn up in the Voice. No matter. Here's the list.