In yet another example of Tubi teaching me about culture, this is a documentary about Nipsey Hussle, a rapper who went from making mixtapes to becoming a major celebrity in the genre and the owner of the Marathon Clothing store and All Money In label.

Unlike many rappers, Hussle wanted to invest in and provide opportunities in his hometown of Crenshaw and beyond. While speaking frankly about his past with gangs, he denounced guns in the material he created and sought to inspire others.

That was until March 31, 2019, when he was shot at least 10 times in the parking lot of his store and then kicked in the head. Why did Eric Holder do it? Supposedly, the two men fought over a rumor that Holder had cooperated with law enforcement.

Hussle was well-known enough that President Obama said, “While most folks look at the Crenshaw neighborhood where he grew up and see only gangs, bullets, and despair, Nipsey saw potential.”

His 25.5 mile-long funeral parade inspired the gangs of Los Angeles to have a cease-fire, as a cross-section of gangs marched together at a memorial for Hussle.

The main emotion I gathered from this was sadness. It’s a shame that someone who wanted to unite people is gone.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and written by Carol Morley, this stars Maisie Williams and Florence Pugh in early roles as Lydia Lamont and Abbie Mortimer, classmates at a British girl school in the late 60s. Lydia is fixated on Abbie, who is already pregnant by one boy and attempts to abort it by making love to another, Lydia’s brother Kenneth (Joe Cole).

While in detention together, Abbie has a fainting spell, goes into convulsions and dies while Lydia watches. Soon, these fainting spells spread through the school, and even one young teacher has one. No one will investigate the reasons until a mass spell at an assembly closes the school. Abbie is expelled,d and soon, her mother (Maxine Peake) learns that her daughter and son are having an incestuous romance. Well, they’re only half-brother and sister, as the reasons why the mother is agoraphobic are revealed: Abbie is the child of rape.

Running through the night, the mother finally leaves the house, only to watch her daughter nearly die as she falls from a tree into a lake. It takes that to bring her back to reality, to show emotion.

According to Lancet Psychiatry, this movie is “a remarkably accurate adaption of an authentic paper, published in 1973 in the newly formed Psychological Medicine, describing an epidemic of fainting in a north London girls’ school.” That would be Hilda’s Girls’ School in Blackburn, England, in 1965.

I love how author Simon Wessley described the movie: “In the end, the film leaves no room for ambiguity that the phenomena described must reflect powerful psychological and social forces, but considerable ambiguity as to why these events unfolded as they did.”

This has echoes of Picnic at Hanging Rock, If… and The Crucible, yet it is very much its own movie. It’s filled with ideas, and I hope Morley makes something else this intense.

You can watch this on Tubi.

If you listened to the first season of Serial, you already know everything there is to know about this case, but Tubi is counting on you to watch this anyway. And if you haven’t, it’s the tale of Adnan Syed, who spent 22 years in prison for a murder he claims he didn’t commit and how he may return to prison yet again.

Despite his conviction for the murder of Hae Min Lee, Syed claimed that there were inconsistencies in the case — Serial really explained these — and that’s led to this case getting so much publicity.

This month, Adnan Syed will appear in court for a hearing on his motion for a reduced sentence. He was freed in 2022 due to issues with the evidence. However, in 2024, the Maryland Supreme Court upheld an appellate court’s ruling to reinstate the conviction. This story is not over; this documentary is just one of the many you can watch to learn more about it. I’ve heard it plays a little fast with the truth, so as always, watch several of these and form your own theory.

I mean, you can get the story on Dateline, 48 Hours, 20/20 and all of those other shows that play in this house all through the day and night.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Mike Sheppard (Jibre Hordges) is a brilliant college student with a bright future ahead of him, but he’s also running out of money. That’s why he serves as an escort for rich black women who use an app to hire him, a fact that upsets his new girlfriend, Gia (Liyah Chante Thompson). However, when he starts to serve Veronica King (Latarsha Rose), he learns that he never has to have sex with her. Instead, she makes him a room in her house, provides for his health care app and introduces him to famous doctors like Greg (Joseph Curtis Callender). Seems reasonable, right?

Well, it is until she starts treating him like her missing son, wanting to read him to sleep and watch him all night.

If you loved Lifetime movies but wanted them to have even wilder twists, may I recommend you start watching Tubi?

Directed by Bobby Yan and written by Briana Cole (who has written the Tubi Originals Toxic Harmony, Played and Betrayed and The Marriage Pass), this totally leads you to think that you’re about to see a rich and powerful black woman get her groove back by taking advantage of a young black man with so much more to offer than sex. But no, it goes off to such a weird and wild place that I can’t help but sit back and smile. Well done, as always, Tubi Originals. You never seem to let me down.

You can watch this on Tubi.

I have been trying to do a month of Jess Franco movies — here’s the Letterboxd list — and I hit a wall at 184 out of 200 movies. That’s because several of the films on the list are impossible to find. They are:

• The Ticklers
• Claire
• Las Tribulaciones de un Buda Bizco
• Las chuponas
• Lola 2000
• The Tree from Spain
• Las Playas Vacias
• Oro Espanol
• El Destierro del Cid
• Estampas Guipuzcoanas Número 2: Pío Baroja
• A Man, Eight Girls
• El Misterio del Castillo Rojo
• El Huesped de la Niebla
• Voces de Muerte
• Girl With the Red Lips
• Sida, la Pesta del Siglo XX
• In Pursuit of Barbara
• El Abuela, la Condesa y Escarlata la Traviesa
• Blind Target
• Montes de Venus
• Lascivia

I realize so many of these are lost films, but if you have them, reach out to bandsaboutmovies@gmail.com

Then I was thinking, what else can I watch? I remembered this amazing list from Gregory Joseph on Letterboxd: Movies Jean Rollin and Jess Franco Might Like If They Were Still Alive. This seems like a great way to finish out the month.

Directed, written and produced by Josephine Decker, Butter On the Latch is the story of Sarah (Sarah Small) and Isolde (Isolde Chae-Lawrence), who meet up at a Balkan music camp in the woods of California days after Isolde calls Sarah and tells her that she is lost in a house that she can’t escape from. Once they reconnect, they drift, as they are both attracted to another person, Steph (Charlie Hewson).

Shot by a three-person crew — Decker, cinematographer Ashley Connor and sound recorder M. Parker Kozak — this takes one of the songs about dragons wrapping themselves in the hair of women and burning the forest and transforms it into the paranoia one feels when they lose a friend who perhaps has become too close when someone comes between you. How close do you have to be to a friend before they become more than one when the stories you tell one another become not tales but foreplay? Was it Isolde on the other side of the phone? Or is it Sarah hearing from herself?

Beyond having attractive women who are pretty open about their carnal encounters, this has chanting songs that feel like they’re getting you high, a woman losing her mind and moments where the film seems to blur out, obscuring what we’re watching. I can only imagine that Jess Franco would have been into every moment of that, even if this was way too chaste for him. But what wasn’t?

I know nothing about Young Thug, but in this Tubi Original, produced by Law & Crime, I learned that his real name is Jeffery Lamar Williams and because of his lyrics, he’s been accused of leading a street gang, all thanks to his lyrics.

According to Law & Crime, “In 2022, Young Thug was arrested on a sprawling racketeering indictment spearheaded by Fulton County DA Fani Willis, which many have since criticized as a legal overreach. Young Thug took a guilty plea in October but was released on probation, wrapping up the longest-running trial in Georgia’s history made even more controversial by the prosecution’s use of the defendant’s lyrics and music videos as evidence against him.”

One of the standout aspects of the documentary was the interview with defense attorney Keith Adams, who provided detailed insights into the trial. Ultimately, the rapper pled guilty to charges related to gang involvement, drug offenses, and gun possession, despite discrepancies between the timelines of when he created his music and when he faced accusations.

Young Thug’s original two-decade RICO sentence was commuted to time served, followed by fifteen years of probation. As of now, he has been released from custody after serving five years of his sentence.

The documentary raises thought-provoking questions about the relationship between wealth, fame and the law. Even if you’re rich and famous, you can be above the law. Or the law can be above you.

You can watch this on Tubi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jye9dIrxLt4

Will there be a psychic — Beatrice (Roma Maffia) — who was part of the original events that cursed this necklace? Will the children be in supernatural danger? Will it be set in the 60s and have some of that Conjuring feel? Will there be a seance? Will there be a mid-credits tease of a sequel? How many possession movies do I watch a year?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Of course. At least six hundred and sixty-five.

Director Juan Pablo Arias Munoz and writer John Ducey give you what you want from a movie like this, but this is very much a grandma who knows you like Ed and Lorraine Warren movies,s. Hence, she bought you the new one without knowing it has nothing to do with them. That said, this is a Warner Bros. movie, and in another time and place, perhaps pre-pandemic, this would be a January theater movie, orphaned in a time when no one goes out to the movies, but then again, no one at all goes to the movies these days.

A tip to men: Don’t give your estranged wife murder jewelry.

You can watch this on Tubi.