The SunBreak

Following his indie debut, Ryan Coogler was launched into a string of astronomically successful films built on longstanding intellectual property: Marvel’s Black Panther and the Rocky franchise’s Adonis Creed. That the up-and-coming Oakland-based director was able to play in these existing worlds and make films that were both commercially viable and artistically satisfying is a rare feat. With Sinners, it feels like he’s working with a blank check to tell a wholly original story. Here, he again teams-up with his perpetual leading man to answer a question the world’s long been pondering: are two Michael B. Jordans better than one?

Two formerly close friends, Rickey (Michael Angarano) and Glenn (Michael Cera) embark on a road trip after the former pops in for a visit to the latter. Rickey seems lost in grief after his father’s passing the year before and Glenn has gone off the deep end, swallowed up by fear of his impending role as a father. Rickey manages to get Glenn to head to Sacramento to supposedly carry out his late father’s last wishes, but has more than just scattering remains in mind. Along the way, they find their friendship again but also seem to create a sort of co-dependence that exacerbates their self-centered midlife crises.

After embedding audiences with fictional photojournalists covering a Civil War yet to come, director Alex Garland has teamed up with that film’s battle coordinator (himself a Navy SEAL veteran) Ray Mendoza to bring viewers into the heart of a 2006 surveillance mission gone sideways in Ramadi, Iraq. Constructed from the memories of the soldiers themselves, it’s an inarguably impressive feat of technical filmmaking, immersively told, and unfolding in nerve-rattlingly real-time.

DROP is the latest thriller from longtime partners Christopher Landon and Blumhouse Productions, the creatives behind the Happy Death Day and Paranormal Activity franchises. Much like their previous films, DROP doesn’t take itself too seriously—something that likely saves this film in the end.

The record-breaking game of Sleepy Floyd of the Golden State Warriors against the Los Angeles Lakers on May 10, 1987, Freaky Tales. The film tells the story of a mysterious green power that swept through Oakland in the ‘80s.

Stay in a shopping mall for a whole week without getting kicked out by security? Sounds like an initiation rite for a fraternity pledge, but in 2003 it became an all-consuming immersive project for eight artists in Providence, Rhode Island, that stretched on beyond the initial prank for four years.

We’ve all been there; we can watch countless humans die in films without batting an eye, but the moment a dog dies, the tears start streaming. Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Friend offers a fresh take on the classic dog movie, where instead of a human grappling with the death of a dog, we see a dog facing the loss of his human.

In his latest action thriller, A Working Man, Jason Statham portrays Levon Cade, an ex-Royal Marines commando who leads a relatively unassuming life as a construction foreman in Illinois.