DMX broke through in the late ’90s with hits like Ruff Ryders’ Anthem, and It’s Dark & Hell Is Hot and had one of the most recognizable voices in hip hop. In this TMZ on Tubi doc, Harvey Levin, Charles Latibeaudiere and Towanda Robinson discuss the impact of his music and persona on pop culture and how his death in 2023 continues to impact fans.
“All I know is pain, all I feel is rain
How can I maintain with that shit on my brain?”
So much of DMS’s raps are in my brain years after he said them. He was a conflicted person, someone who couldn’t escape drugs but who would help people. There’s a great story in this about him helping clean at a restaurant long after he became a big star.
DMX’s life was a series of intense highs and lows, a struggle he wore on his sleeve. He rose from a brutal upbringing in a New York that felt like a war zone at the time, enduring hardships that Harvey Levin describes as beyond words.
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Telephone is a 27‑minute short film written, directed, and produced by Eric Red in 1986, in which an emotionally distraught and suicidal woman (Laurie Latham, whose voice is in Reservoir Dogs) dials random numbers, hoping to connect with someone. She ends up reaching a man (Bud Cort, RIP, star of Harold and Maude), telling him that she plans to kill herself in a minute unless he can talk her out of it.
He doesn’t know her. He’s never met her. But suddenly, he has sixty seconds to save a life. The film captures a grueling, intimate power dynamic: while he hangs upside down in inversion boots trying to relax, he is forced into a psychological chess match where the stakes are literal life and death.
Eric Red, a Pittsburgh native, used this short as a calling card for his visceral, high-concept style. You can see the seeds of his later work here—the same DNA that made The Hitcher and Near Dark cult classics. Red has a gift for taking a simple, claustrophobic premise and ratcheting up the tension until it’s unbearable. He would go on to direct Cohen and Tate, Body Parts and Bad Moon, as well as write one of my favorite American giallo films — and one of the first DVDs I ever got — Blue Steel.
Filmed on location in Hollywood in 16 mm, the short is visually striking. The images of the woman’s apartment bathed in neon, and the hazy skyline behind her, are gorgeous. They evoke a mood similar to the famous scenes in Tokyo Decadence, which is impressive considering Telephone predates it by nearly a decade.
For younger viewers, Telephone serves as a time capsule. This was an era before caller ID or “star 69.” When the phone rang, you had no idea who was on the other end. It could be a friend, a telemarketer or—as in this film—a total stranger inviting you into their darkest moment. Red captures the terrifying intimacy of the old rotary phone system. As Latham’s character notes, the connection they share in that half-hour is “more intimate than if we’d fucked.”
The film deals with suicide in a way that feels raw and unpolished. In the mid-80s, these conversations happened in the shadows, and Red brings that isolation to the forefront. Despite the setup, the film’s closing remains a genuine surprise. While some critics argue it could be tighter, the deliberate tempo allows the audience to feel the same exhaustion and emotional depletion as the characters. You really start to feel for Cort’s character. Maybe it’s because as film nerds, we inherently love Cort and want him to succeed.
You can watch this on the director’s YouTube page.
TMZ is always there, ready for celebrities to screw up and then have the video for their site and TV show. In this special, they’re taking that content all over again to re-embarass people and make even more money.
Starting with Michael Richards at The Laugh Factory, this goes through the what and why of some of Hollywood’s wildest moments that were captured on video. Remember Jay-Z, Beyonce and her sister Solange fighting in an elevator? Or a German Shepherd in distress while filming a scene for A Dog’s Purpose?
Then we have Justin Bieber pissing in a bucket, getting upset about not getting a model helicopter and all the things he did when he was being a teenager. Reese Witherspoon is getting busted for a DUI. Britney Spears getting bumped by a basketball player.
This, like all the Tubi TMZ specials, is just people sitting on a couch and talking down on the very people who they get paid to be the parasites of.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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