TUBI ORIGINAL: TMZ: No BS: Arianna Grande (2023)

I love that TMZ is getting paid by Tubi just for having its crew sit on a couch and talk about celebrities. This time, it’s Arianna Grande, who took her four-octave vocal range from Broadway to two Nickedolian series before becoming a huge music star with songs like “Thank U, Next” and “Bang Bang.” Today, she’s in movies like Wicked and is one of the biggest music artists of all time with estimated sales of over 90 million records.

Anyone shocked by her dating history should just listen to one of the songs I mentioned above, “Thank U, Next,” in which she sings “Thought I’d end up with Sean/ But he wasn’t a match/ Wrote some songs about Ricky/ Now I listen and laugh/ Even almost got married/ And for Pete, I’m so thankful/ Wish I could say “Thank you” to Malcolm/ ‘Cause he was an angel,” which references boyfriends Big Sean, Ricky Alvarez, Pete Davidson and Mac Miller.

Grande can’t even get on her TikTok without causing controversy. Just this weekend, she was online with a face mask, and fans started to post that she’s had plastic surgery and was changing her appearance. 

Anyways — I hate everyone at TMZ because I get the feeling they think they’re kingmakers. The way the staff sits around eating snacks while deciding if a celebrity’s marriage is on the rocks feels intentionally designed to make the viewer feel like they’re part of an in-crowd. I guess they should do a special Tubi episode about how Epstein wrote that “Harvey Levin, who runs TMZ, is a good friend.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Day of Reckoning (2025)

Directed by Shaun Silva (who also directed Jason Aldean’s video for “Try That In a Small Town”) and written by Travis J. Opgenorth, this stars Zack Roerig as lawman John Dorsey, who is about to lose not only his job but his wife to his deputy, Danny Raise (Britton Webb). Against his will, he teams with U.S. Marshall Butch Hayden (Billy Zane) to hold outlaw Emily Rusk (Cara Jade Myers) hostage. A battle of wills ensues as Emily turns the posse on themselves, but as her marauding husband Kyle (Scott Adkins!) and his gang get closer, Emily and John realize they will need each other to survive.

Hayden and Rusk have already had a shootout at a motel, and the body count is piling up. Hayden is even using Big Buck’s (Trace Adkins) biker gang as part of his militia. Beyond Adkins, the inclusion of Yelawolf and Struggle Jennings (grandson of Waylon Jennings) gives the film a distinct outlaw-country texture that complements the Southern Gothic vibe of the motel shootouts and biker militias.

Nearly a Western, this has all the twists and turns you’d expect and maybe a few you won’t. While the marketing pushes the action, the meat of the story is the Stockholm Syndrome-adjacent dynamic between Zack Roerig and Cara Jade Myers as the lines of morality blur because the hero is essentially a man who has already lost his dignity at home. By the time the gang closes in, the film shifts from a chase movie into a siege film, reminiscent of Assault on Precinct 13 or 3:10 to Yuma.

Scott Adkins is widely considered one of the best modern martial arts stars (the Boyka series, John Wick 4), so seeing him as a marauding husband is interesting. He has only one fight scene, which is strange and may not be the best use of him. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

Murder, She Wrote S3 E13: Crossed Up (1987)

Season 3, Episode 13: Crossed Up (February 1, 1987)

Even when Jessica is sick in bed, people still die, and she’s in the midst of it all.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?

William Windom and Tom Bosley are back as Dr. Seth and Sheriff Amos.

Michael Horton? Oh no. Grady is in this.

Colleen Camp plays Dody Rogers. She’s been in everything from Battle for the Planet of the Apes to ClueSliverDeath GamePolice Academy 2 and 4Smile, and so much more.

Tony Dow plays Gordon Rogers. He’s Beaver’s brother!

Stephanie Dunnam plays Leslie Cameron. She was in Silent Rage and Play Dead.

James Carroll Jordan plays Adam Rogers, Gisele Mackenzie is Mona, Sandy McPeak is Morgan Rogers, Henry Brandon is Abel Gorcey, James McIntire is Deputy Wells, and Yolanda Nava is a TV announcer.

What happens?

Jessica has hurt her back putting in new windows, so she’s stuck in bed. Dr. Seth says that she needs at least a week more bed rest and gives her a Life Alert bracelet in case she falls and can’t get up. So she’s stuck with Grady making every tuna fish recipe he knows, and if you’ve seen the horrible women Grady has dated on this show, you know that he loves the smell of tuna.

She picks up the phone to call someone and overhears a voice hiring someone to kill an old man. She begs Grady to go tell the news to Sheriff Amos, and he runs out on his bike, nearly getting run over, which makes me sad because I’d love to watch Grady get run down, have the van back up and then roll over his fecund corpse again.

Anyway, everyone acts like J.B. is an idiot, not someone who has already solved two seasons’ worth of murders. Amos just wanted to eat at Mona’s Diner, which means that, from what I’ve seen so far on this show, a small town like Cabot Cove has at least five diners, so nearly one diner per hundred people who live there. No wonder the tourist trade is so important.

The murder Jessica was trying to stop happens, and it’s lumber industrialist Jedediah Rogers, who has three boys — Adam, Gordon and Morgan — who are all about to get rich. Except, well, his journal and will are missing. He also has a granddaughter, Leslie, whom Grady bones up over. She tells him that her grandfather was changing the will to give her all the money and that she has his journal.

Meanwhile, Jessica is solving the case from her Serta. Abel Gorcey, the man who would be the killer, died hours before the actual murder. Amos ends up interrogating everyone while wearing a tape recorder so he can play it for Jessica, who suddenly hears an allergic Gordon on TV and realizes — that’s the killer.

Then this goes all giallo, and a masked killer breaks into J.B.’s place to knife her. Lucky for her, Seth gave her the bracelet, and she called the fire trucks just in time to save her life.

Who did it?

Dody is working with Gordon.

Who made it?

This was directed by the last episode’s bad guy, David Hemings, and written by Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle, who created the TV shows Cobra and The Pretender.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

No, she’s too busy being in pain and under the covers.

Was it any good?

Yes! It’s Rear Window, but still fun.

Any trivia?

The lightning bolt during the storm is the same one that the U.S.S. Minnow sailed past in the opening of Gilligan’s Island. They flipped the shot, so you don’t recognize it.

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: Do you ever get the feeling that you’ve overlooked something obvious? That you’ve done something wrong?

Dr. Seth Hazlitt: Yeah. Every time I vote for Amos.

What’s next?

Jessica tells the story of her new novel about a college student accused of killing his music professor, who plagiarized his compositions.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Match (2025)

Match is directed by Danishka Esterhazy, who remade Slumber Party Massacre. It’s all about Paola (Humberly González), whose first date with a man she met online takes place inside a terrifying house and involves a way-too-long tea with his mother, ending with her knocked out and tied up. What’s next?

Lucille (Diane Simpson) lives in a suburban home that’s really a prison for multiple people, including her deformed son Henry, whom Paolo thinks she’s been talking to the entire time. Instead, she’s been chatting with Lucille, who is looking for the perfect woman to mate with her beloved boy.

All along, Paola’s sister, Maria (Shaeane Jimenez), has been telling her there are so many red flags. When her sister doesn’t return in time to see their father before his surgery, she starts to worry. That brings her to the same house of horrors, where another date.

The reveal that Lucille has been catfishing as her son Henry adds a layer of psychological voyeurism. It’s not just a kidnapping; it’s a mother’s twisted attempt at curating a bloodline. Diane Simpson’s performance as Lucille is genuinely unsettling, oscillating between a doting mother and a predatory architect of a human breeding program.

Written by Al and Jon Kaplan (Zombeavers, Lowlifes), this has two scenes that are guaranteed to blow your mind. In one, Lucille explains sex to Henry while jerking off her son and another where Paolo stops Henry from assaulting her by, well, snapping a mousetrap on his meat. I’ve never seen that before!

What motivates Lucille to create this twisted breeding program for her son? How does Paola’s sister, Maria, react when she discovers the truth about what happened to her? What consequences will Paola face after her harrowing experience in Lucille’s home? So many questions. Don’t pass this one up just because it’s a low-budget Tubi original. There’s something good here.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Adopted 2 (2025)

Remember how wild Adopted was? I mean, it ended up with ten-year-old Dylan (Jayden Aguirre) facing a literal firing squad of cops. I’m so excited that Chris Stokes is back with a sequel, because that movie earned one.

Dylan starts the movie inside a mental health facility. But he soon escapes and finds his way inside the home of another family, a place where he can be so sweet until the time when he loses it, yet again, and threatens everyone’s life.

Directed by Chris Stokes and written by Marques Houston, who returns as Detective Dante Miller, this finds the Andrews family — Ava (Princess Love Norwood), Caleb (Don Benjamin) and Mason (Preston Best) — repeating the pattern of Dylan: at first, he’s so full of love. By the end, he’s shotgunning blasting your favorite aunt. They’re just getting over the loss of a son, and now, they’ve let a total wildman into their home.

While many sequels try to reinvent the wheel, Chris Stokes and Marques Houston know exactly what their audience wants: high-stakes melodrama and a child who embodies true evil. Aguirre plays Dylan with a terrifying on/off switch. One moment, he’s the healing balm for a mother’s broken heart; the next, he’s a tactical mastermind wielding a shotgun with the efficiency of a seasoned action star.

Look, this is almost the same movie as the first, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t watch the third.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Takeout (2025)

Director and writer Jem Garrard has made R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead, the Invasive movies and Slay for Tubi. All of these movies are in the upper tier of originals made for the streamer, so when I see their names above the credits, I know I’m about to watch something unique.

Nova (N’kone Mametja) is the anchor of a scuzzy, fluorescent-lit diner that seems to be held together by grease and broken dreams. It’s the kind of 2 A.M. haunt where the coffee is burnt, and the hope is non-existent. The tension ramps up when Nova becomes convinced that the silent, unassuming man at Table 5 isn’t just a late-night regular. He’s the serial killer currently dominating the local news cycles.

The evidence is mounting: a suspicious car, a body-shaped bundle in the backseat, and a demeanor that screams predator. But Garrard pivots from a standard slasher into something much more cynical. Once Nova’s co-workers catch wind of the massive bounty on the killer’s head, the diner transforms into a pressure cooker. To these wage slaves, the man at table 5 isn’t a threat to be feared; he’s a winning lottery ticket wrapped in a blood-stained jacket.

Shot in South Africa, this feels like it could be anywhere in America, a lonely place where no one cares about anyone. There’s no future, and that lack of future could end a lot sooner than anyone believes. I really enjoyed the downtrodden nature of this, as well as the constant twists.

You can almost smell the stale cigarettes and floor cleaner. Garrard balances this grim reality with a relentless series of twists that force the audience to constantly re-evaluate who the real villain is: the man with the dead body, or the “normal” people willing to do anything to escape their poverty. As with their other films, Garrard has made something special here.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Get Off My Lawn (2025)

Directed by Amara Cash and written by Arland Digirolamo and Alana Wexler, Get Off My Lawn starts with Jackie (Camila Banus) and Jason (Tahj Mowry) getting a too good to be true deal on the house of their dreams. That’s until they meet Alec Todd (Jonah Hwang), the next-door neighbor who believes their home should be his.

That’s because his grandfather had promised it to him. However, his father, Denny (Max E. Williams), wanted it sold, so Alec convinces his mother, Denny (Max E. Williams), to sell to the young couple, hoping to get them to move quickly. Every single thing they do enrages him, from moving Gramps ‘ rules of the house off the mantle to getting rid of the backyard memorial to him. 

While Alec’s best friend Ethan (Tyler Lofton) and girlfriend Ray (Kayla Maisonet) are normal teenagers, he’s stuck in the 1950s and seems as prim and proper as anyone could be. He repeats, many times, that “rules must be followed or there will be consequences.” That seems to mean using his friends to prank the married couple out of their new home. One wonders how he keeps his girlfriend, or if the villain even cares.

I love my mom’s house and want her to stay in it as long as she can. So I get how it feels to lose a home that you love so much. That said, I would not go as murder-crazy as Alec, but man, he’s a great character. Alec’s behavior quickly shifts from creepy to dangerous. He leaves a dead rat on their doorstep and claims his grandfather is buried in their yard. He grows increasingly insane as the film progresses, and without him, this movie would fall flat.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: TMZ No BS: Viral Superstars (2024)

Justin Bieber was in a talent contest and posted a series of clips from a local competition in Stratford, Ontario. Scooter Braun actually clicked on one by accident while looking for a different singer. The viral aspect worked because it felt intimate, like you were discovering a talented younger brother before the industry polished him up.

Viral videos have changed the world of celebrities, and hey, here’s TMZ to tell us more.

This TMZ show goes into Danielle Bregoli (Bad Babie), who was on The Dr. Phil Show, as well as Doja Cat, who dressed as a cow and danced to a novelty song called “Mooo!,” which was the definition of a calculated viral moment. She made it in a day as a joke, but the absurdist humor of stuffing fries in her nose while dressed as a cow proved she understood internet culture better than most PR firms. It turned her from an underground rapper into a household name.

Kate Upton doing the dougie at a Clippers game took her from a model to a big name. Like Bieber, The Weeknd is a Canadian music star who rose to prominence online and went on to have the biggest-selling single ever. To be fair, he took a much darker, more mysterious route. In 2010, he uploaded tracks to YouTube under the name The Weeknd, without any photos of himself. The anonymity created a massive underground buzz that forced the mainstream to pay attention. and Rebecca Black, who sang “Friday,” in which I learned the words “partying, partying.”

In the Classic Hollywood era, studios like MGM or Warner Bros. literally owned their stars. They picked their clothes, their dates, and their names. Today, the audience acts as the studio. We vote for stars with likes and shares. The watercooler moment is dead because everyone has a different watercooler, whether that’s TikTok, YouTube or Twitch. We no longer wait for a scout to find talent. We wait for the algorithm to serve it to us.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E10: Ursa Minor (1985)

Will I ever get over the fact that Theodore Gershuny, who directed and wrote this episode, was married to Mary Woronov? Am I really that jealous of a person? Yes.

Based on a story by John Sladek, a former tech writer who was also the author of The New Apocrypha: A Guide to Strange Science and Occult Beliefs, in which he examined the supernatural from a materialist lens, this is the story of Susie (Jamie Ohar), who gets a stuffed bear from her parents (Marilyn Jones and Timothy Carhart). But is it just a teddy bear, or is it something more?

But did her parents even buy it? Neither of them remembers, and soon, bear marks are all over the house and anything that goes wrong is blamed on the bear. Basically: Kids are insane people who live in your house who are ready to kill you at any time. That’s what I learned from this. That and the fact that evil can be inside very small things, and perhaps you should just leave it alone unless you want to end up holding your child as a big bear breaks its way through a door.

The parents spend half the episode debating the logic of the bear’s existence. That’s because in Sladek’s world, the bear isn’t necessarily a demon; it’s a physical object that is simply wrong. The horror isn’t spiritual. It’s a failure of the physical world to behave in the way we want it to.

Plus, the bear acts as a surrogate for Susie’s own burgeoning agency and perhaps her resentment. More than her blaming the bear and trying to get away with it, she’s also in a psychodrama with her parents, as they are actually terrified of the idea that their daughter might be the one marking the house. The bear is just the medium for the chaos kids naturally bring into a sanitized adult world.

B & S About Movies podcast Episode 127: Bigfoot

A whole bunch of Bigfoot this week: Night of the DemonThe Werewolf and the Yeti, The GeekBigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper, Manbeast! and Bigfoot, UFOs and Jesus. You will believe.

You can listen to the show on Spotify.

The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Podcasts, Podchaser and Google Podcasts

Important links:

Theme song: Strip Search by Neal Gardner.

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