Entertainment
Forgotten, Unseen Coen Brothers Comedy Is Their Most Polarizing Effort
By Robert Scucci
| Published
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.
Entertainment
Sukhie’s Lipstick Trick Is Too Good
Do you have a holy-grail beauty product or trick? A few months back, Joanna shared five products she swears by, and it got us thinking about the tried-and-true favorites we’re devoted to: the nail polish we go back to over and over again; the world’s best-smelling sunscreen; that one little tip that totally changed the way we do our hair (for me, it was this post!). This week, after seeing Sukhie Patel’s gorgeous lipstick on Instagram, we asked her to share her secrets. And boy did she deliver…
Sukhie’s lipstick trick: “I apply a thin layer of Anastasia Lipstick in American Doll, blur the edges around my lip line with my pinkie, then add a layer of Weleda Skin Food, which keeps my lips moisturized all day.” How gorgeous is the effect?
The duo works for blush, too. “Next, on the back of my hand, I mix a tiny dollop of Skin Food with liquid lipstick, and dab it on my cheeks for a sheer, glossy blush that inherently compliments my lips,” says Sukhie. “Finally, I add a couple dots of plain Skin Food to the tops of my cheekbones as a highlighter — et voila.”
How about her runners up? “My magical mousse for curly hair gwôrls: Evo Whip It Good — I even buy travel bottles for work trips. Plus, skin scrubby mitts, the bulk bag of Epsom salts (16 oz tins in this economy?!), Clinique bottom lash mascara that gives a kitten flick at the corners of your lashes and doubles as an eyebrow gel; and using my electric toothbrush in the shower to combat sensory challenges.”
Thank you, Sukhie!
Do you have a favorite product or trick? In the past, we asked folks about their beauty uniforms. Now we want to know about your heroes: those few things you will love forever. More posts like this coming up soon. xo
P.S. Sukhie’s week of outfits, and the random $10 beauty product we swear by.
Entertainment
How to unblock Pornhub for free in Texas
TL;DR: Unblock Pornhub from Texas with a VPN. The best service for unblocking porn sites is ExpressVPN.
More than a third of U.S. states have introduced age verification laws for online adult content, including Texas. In response, Pornhub banned access for users in those locations. That means millions of users in Texas are now unable to access Pornhub.
There are complicated reasons for this restriction, but the workaround is simple. If you want to unblock porn sites like Pornhub for free from Texas, we have all the information you need.
How to unblock Pornhub for free in Texas
VPNs are useful tools that can hide your real IP address (digital location) and connect you to secure servers in other locations. This straightforward process bypasses geo-restrictions so you can access sites like Pornhub from anywhere in the world.
Unblock Pornhub by following these simple steps:
Mashable Trend Report
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Sign up for a VPN (like ExpressVPN)
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Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)
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Open up the app and connect to a server in a location that supports access to Pornhub
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Visit Pornhub
$139 only at ExpressVPN (with money-back guarantee)
The best VPNs for unblocking porn sites are not free, but most do offer free-trial peiods or money-back guarantees. By leveraging these offers, you can unblock porn sites like Pornhub without actually spending anything. This is obviously not a long-term solution, but it does give you the opportunity to temporarily retain access to Pornhub before recovering your investment.
If you want to retain permanent access to sites like Pornhub, you’ll need a subscription. Fortunately, the best VPN for bypassing content restrictions is on sale for a limited time.
What is the best VPN for Pornhub?
ExpressVPN is the top choice for unblocking porn sites like Pornhub, for a number of reasons:
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Servers in 105 countries
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Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more
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Strict no-logging policy so your data is always secure
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Fast streaming speeds free from throttling
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Up to eight simultaneous connections
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30-day money-back guarantee
A two-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $139 and includes an extra four months for free — 61% off for a limited time. This plan also includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee.
Unblock Pornhub for free in Texas with ExpressVPN.
Entertainment
Perfect, Forgotten 80s Thriller Is Hitchcock Meets Mad Max
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Road thrillers always make for a great time because there is nothing more unnerving than barreling down the highway when you are either in danger yourself or trying to help somebody else who might be. 1981’s Road Games, an Australian thriller that plays like a strange middle ground between Mad Max and a Hitchcock-style serial killer story, has no shortage of tense moments. It shows just how badly the road can mess with your head after a long day’s work as a commercial trucker who just wants to grab a few hours of sleep between jobs. Perspectives grow hazy, lines begin to blur, and you are almost certain you have seen that green van and its driver doing something suspicious on multiple occasions, even if you cannot quite prove what they are up to.
A tense, white knuckle experience from start to finish, Road Games is a lean thriller built around an exceedingly simple plot. That simplicity should not lull you into a false sense of security, though, because not everything is what it seems, especially once the horizon darkens, the road goes quiet, and a radio news broadcast suggests you may be sharing the highway with somebody who is very, very dangerous.
A Road Best Left Untraveled
Road Games introduces us to trucker Patrick Quid (Stacy Keach) and his pet dingo, Boswell. Patrick makes a point of telling anyone who will listen that there is a difference between a man who drives a truck and a trucker, implying that he views his current line of work as something beneath him, even if it pays the bills for now. He travels alone with Boswell, often taking back-to-back jobs against his better judgment. There is nothing to suggest Patrick is unstable, but his dispatcher encourages him to push through sleep deprivation with caffeine pills so he can take on more work.
While sleeping in his truck outside a motel one night, Patrick notices a man driving a suspicious looking green van who checks in with a female hitchhiker. The next morning, Patrick sees the man leave alone after stopping at the dumpster and climbing into the van before heading back out onto the road.
Once he is driving again, Patrick encounters a recurring group of colorful characters. There is an elderly man hauling a boat, a face-masked motorcyclist who keeps popping up, a nagging woman named Frita (Marion Edward) and her visibly annoyed husband, and another woman standing roadside looking for a ride. Against his better judgment and company regulations, Patrick picks up Frita after her husband abandons her on the side of the road. During this stretch, he spots the green van again, this time catching its driver burying suspicious looking bags in the desert and carrying around a small cooler.
Frita becomes uneasy with Patrick’s calm attitude about the encounter, especially after hearing a radio report about a possible serial killer operating in the area. She eventually parts ways with him, but not before Patrick picks up the hitchhiker he passed earlier, known only as Hitch (Jamie Lee Curtis). The two hit it off almost immediately, and Hitch reveals herself to be Pamela Rushworth, the heiress of a wealthy US diplomat who wanted to go on an adventure of her own, suggesting that she may have been reported missing from her high-profile life. As Patrick continues his route with Pamela, the green van keeps resurfacing, prompting them to investigate its driver under the assumption that he is the killer mentioned in the news.
A Series Of Escalating Events
As sleep deprivation takes hold, Pat and Pamela get separated, and Pat finds himself unsure of who he can trust. Everywhere he turns, the green van seems to be there. He starts pushing his truck at reckless RPMs to make his delivery on time, becoming increasingly unhinged along the way. Pat is convinced he needs to track down the green van to stop anyone else from getting hurt, but things spiral further when Frita reports him to the authorities. She suggests that Pat himself might be the killer, and that the story about the green van is nothing more than a distraction.
As Pat unravels while searching for Pamela and the van, all while evading police and trying to finish his route, his sanity is put into question. Every possible pressure point is hit, and Pat is fully aware that he is starting to lose his grip. With law enforcement closing in, his hitchhiker companion missing, and the green van’s driver still at large, Pat is forced to pull himself together and see his increasingly bizarre job through before the road swallows him whole.
Road Games toys with the familiar tropes you see in films like the grossly underrated Black Dog. Hallucinations feel inevitable, and the job itself takes a back seat to the strange, inexplicable encounters that keep piling up. Stacy Keach’s straight faced performance as an expatriate American trucker tearing through the Australian outback with a pet dingo is half the fun. His deadpan presence grounds the film even as everything around him starts to feel unreliable.
If you want to find out whether Pat finally snaps or if the world around him is the real problem in Road Games, you can fire it up on Tubi, where it is currently streaming for free.
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Sukhie’s Lipstick Trick Is Too Good
