Who is Ayanna Shon?

Ayanna Shon is from Birmingham, AL but now lives in Minneapolis, MN and is a multi-hyphenated content creator having worked in the music industry, in communications, as a celeb photographer as well as starting CBA Film Studio, a full-service production company focused on creating original content with a focus in green screen music video production. She also created a weekly beginner 101 photography training vlog that lends a unique and gritty feel to the world of vlogging by embracing the hip hop culture and urban scene with tremendous flair on her YouTube channel. This is her first full-length movie and she’s also made another Christmas film, Just in Time for the Holidays.

Nikki (Monique Johnson) is facing being thirty and not having a child. Her mother keeps giving her so much drama about it, so she decides to lie for some time before finally deciding to have a baby for real. The problem? All of the marijuana she smokes makes it impossible for her to get pregnant.

I’m not sure if smoking out can keep you from being with child, but the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stated, “Because of concerns regarding impaired neurodevelopment, as well as maternal and fetal exposure to the adverse effects of smoking, women who are pregnant or contemplating pregnancy should be encouraged to discontinue marijuana use.”

Shon told the Birmingham Times, “They key takeaway will be faith and manifestation. Also understanding and recognizing that you’re more than enough and to seek forgiveness.”

I don’t think the character Cayce is named for Edgar Cayce but if people started naming their children names like that, Blavatsky and Criswell, my life would be so much better. Please start doing that.

This movie also has Tray Chaney, Poot from The Wire in the cast. You may not recognize him with the wig and afro. He’s the hypnotist who tries to get Nikki to stop smoking.  Can you stop doing drugs by Christmas? If you have to host it and do all the cooking, shouldn’t you smoke even more?

You can watch this on Tubi.

Eve Carter (Leana Adams, who co-directed — with Kristina Arjona — and wrote this movie) is a middle-aged child star who has lost out on the comeback she wanted. As she hides at her sister Ashley’s (Ashlee Heath) house, she finds out that she’s sharing the place with Ace Strong (Tyler Buckingham), a stuntman who is healing from an accident and dogsitting Ashley’s dog Mickey. Eve decides that if she wants the house to herself, she has to get Ace back with his ex-girlfriend.

Back in 1987, Eve was in the movie within this movie, Christmas With the Jerks, playing Cookie Jerk, a little girl who helped her family find the true reason for the season. Maybe she never learned that lesson herself but it isn’t too late.

As for Ace, for being such a talented stuntman, he really got hurt getting dressed.

This isn’t the typical streaming holiday movie. The characters feel real and yes, we know how it’s going to all end up, but it does such a great job getting there. You come away wanting the leads to fall for each other instead of feeling cringy as the romantic moments happen.

Also, Mickey the dog is awesome.

You can watch this on Tubi.

At the height of sheer Q-Anon craziness — I think probably when a shaman in red, white and blue facepaint led an army of people into government buildings, and people defecated on the walls, maybe — people were grasping for straws and pearls and wondering, “How could this happen?”

I’m here to tell you that this has always been here.

In the 1980s, high school me was the same as old me. I was always in black, with long hair, and I only cared about music, movies and studying weird things. As such, I was brought into the Core Group, a team of teachers led by an occult expert cop who studied which students could be worshipping Satan. This group was led by my godmother.

The Satanic Panic wasn’t started by Michelle Remembers, but it felt like it was. The union of Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his psychiatric patient (and eventual wife, but we’ll get to that) Michelle Smith. In the mid-70s, while treating Michelle for depression due to a miscarriage, she confessed to him that she knew that something horrible had happened to her and could not recall what it was. Using hypnosis, Michelle was soon screaming for 25 minutes non-stop and speaking in the voice she had as a child. 14 months and 600 hours later, a conspiracy was found: Michelle’s mother and other citizens in Victoria were members of a worldwide Church of Satan.

At one point, Michelle was part of a ritual that lasted 81 days that Satan himself showed up for, and during that time, she was tortured, raped, witnessed others get killed and was covered with the blood of murdered babies until St. Michael the Archangel, Mary and Jesus appeared, healing all of her scars and blocking all of her memories of the years of Satanic desecration of her body and soul.

None of these stories were challenged, even a decade after, when Michelle and Laurel Rose Willson, who wrote Satan’s Underground about being a breeder for Satanists and having two of her children killed in snuff films, were on Oprah Winfrey and at no moment did Oprah challenge either of them, in 1989. The year, I was repeatedly questioned and challenged and told that I was giving my soul to Satan.

I was a white kid from a small town, and in no way have I ever dealt with racism, sexism, transism or any isms in any other way again. This experience, however, showed me a small, tiny glimpse into what it’s like to know you’re right and everyone is sure you’re wrong based on no facts at all.

By the 80s, Pazder was an occult expert, consulting in the McMartin preschool trial and appearing on a 20/20 segment called “The Devil Worshippers” that stoked the flames of the Satanic Panic. That report claimed that movies like The Godsend, The Incubus, Amityville II: The Possession, Exorcist II: The Heretic, The Exorcist, The Omen and Omen 2 allowed people to visualize and be inspired by the devil. This aired in prime time on ABC, a major cable network. They also refer to The Satanic Witch as a book filled with evil rites. And then, of course, heavy metal. As Anton LaVey was in his era of not speaking to the media, this also has footage taken from Satanis.

As part of the Cult Crime Impact Network, Pazder got into business working with police groups and consulting on Satanic ritual abuse, while lawyers used his book while doing cases, and social workers used Michelle Remembers as their training manual.

According to NPR host Ari Shapiro, “One reason these fictions were so appealing was that they gave people a sense of purpose. They had a mission – to defend the innocent.”

This is what’s happening today. It’s why trans people are grooming children, why Democrats are eating babies, and why elections are being seen as conspiracies. Because the truth — the idea that things happen randomly for no reason — is less frightening than Satanism or Q-Anon.

Man, did I digress?

In Satan Wants You, filmmakers Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams explore the history of Michelle Remembers and what most people don’t know, such as how Pazder and Smith left their families to be together and how the book was debunked. It would be one thing if their sessions led to a book and some press, but it would be another if they kicked off an entire movement.

The directors have stated: ““This is the first time that Michelle’s sister, Larry’s ex-wife, and Larry’s daughter have gone on the record to tell their side of this story. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to combine all these stories together to reveal the true origins of the Satanic Panic and show how they connect to the Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracies of today.”

This movie must be seen, even if we’ve entered a time when feelings matter more than facts. But did facts ever matter?

This film also found an anonymous source sending Michelle’s actual tapes, which have never been heard until now.

I don’t discount that she went through some trauma. Yet, how many lives were destroyed along the way?

The sad fact is that no one has learned anything. That same refrain of “protecting the children” exists today. And yes, that’s a noble endeavor. But as someone who grew up in a town of 7,500 people that had more than one Catholic priest abusing children in the last fifteen years of my life, Often, the abuser is someone the abuser has known and trusts.

Just like a worldwide Satanic network — paging Maury Terry and The Family, a book that lost a court case to the Process Church over false claims — and a public ritual lasting 81 days seems complicated to swallow, so do all the claims of the far right today.

Back when I was a kid getting grilled over my slasher movie magazines and love of Danzig, I figured, “Well, someday soon, all of these close-minded people will die off, and we can get past racism, and we can learn how to be more open-minded together.” But now, everyone is close-minded. No one seemingly wants to learn. And this movie is a great teaching tool — it’s a must-see, an intense documentary worthy of rewatching — because it happened before, and yes, it’s going on all over again. The message may have shifted, but it’s still the message.

And it’s still wrong.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Director Miriam Bavly also made the movies The App That Stole Christmas and The Microchip that Ruined Halloween. Now, a drone has saved the holiday.

This movie stars Miguel A. Núñez Jr. Yes, the same person who was Spider in Return of the Living Dead, a voodoo priest in Scooby-Doo, Demon in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, Leon in Dangerously Close, Dee Jay in Street Fighter and Gramps in The App That Stole Christmas. Yes, he’s gone from space with the Leprechaun to being involved with drones.

I’ll be really honest. This movie overwhelmed me, not just when I realized that Spider was in this, but when big parts of this movie were people sitting in rooms just talking as well as an extended sequence of people getting bags of candy and champagne in a sauna and then going to some kind of holiday party? Were their elves? Did I see that? And is that Miss Juicy from Little Women: Atlanta?

This movie does prove to me that black people watch Twin Peaks because at one point someone passes out and wakes up in the Black Lodge…I mean the Pink Room, a place outside of our world where a small person explains everything.

There are a lot of whiteboarding scenes in this movie where people stand around and whiteboard out ideas that are obviously stock art digitally placed onto a white screen because none of the things in these images say anything. This is very similar to anyone who whiteboards things, often these people want to show off what they know instead of working with you.

The drone saves the world but how? Does it kill people like the ones our last three Presidents have used? Why can’t I just forget that the world is on fire and the fact that my blood pressure is way up and just watch a dumb Christmas movie? I woke up last night and kept testing myself last night, over and over for more than 90 minutes, getting readings high and readings normal and not sure what to believe while the mania of anxiety took over my entire life.

Where are the elves when I need them?

Anyways, this movie feels like the kind of stage play that they used to advertise on late night TV with actors I had never seen as a kid outside of bit parts on 227 and Amen. I mean that as the highest of compliments. There are moments that made me laugh even if so much of it just barraged me into a coma of Christmas.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Chris Stokes and Marques Houston are the kings of Tubi movies, proving month after month that they know exactly what viewers are looking for, making movies about marriages gone wrong and lives destroyed in the process, including The Stepmother, Vicious Affair, Picture Me Dead, The Assistant and I Hate You to Death.

Now, they’re telling the story of Burt Harris (Oshea Russell), a former college basketball player who is now known as the attractive guy who delivers water to various businesses in a shopping plaza. His wife Kate (Lyrica Anderson) works for a pharmaceutical company that is close to figuring out cancer and also makes ED meds. Their daughter Tiffany (Skylar Dominique) is a high school basketball player good enough to play pro, just like her father before his knee injury.

However, this busy life doesn’t leave much time for love and Burt keeps feeling like his needs aren’t important. When he meets Bella (Zonnique) — he runs into her, literally, with his car — at her sister Melissa’s (Blac Chyna) restaurant he feels an instant connection. He tries to stay away but as Chris Rock said, “A man is only as faithful as his options.”

After flirting about The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, all of Kate’s putting off Burt finally gets to him. He starts visiting her at Dirty Dan’s Sushi, where she gets a job and she keeps making him coffee, even making a Fresh Prince mug for him. He should have left that cup at her house and maybe not visited that night. But she’s pretty much blameless in this. She had no idea that he had a wife and they broke up when she found out. When Kate visits, she probably shouldn’t have talked about how bad her marriage is and she wouldn’t have been — spoiler warning — killed. But that’s what brings Kurt and Kate back together, the fact that he would do so much for her.

There are some moments that don’t add up in this like Burt meeting his old friends to talk about one of their marriages or when he throws out that he knows a cop who is the boss of the two detectives investigating the disappearance of Bella.

There’s also the scene where Tiffany is leaving for the prom and Burt gets mental about it. He’s trying to act like he’s joking to the poor guy but it comes off at best that he’s an overprotective dad and at worst jealous and that he’s in love with his child way more than as a dad. This is never followed up on and feels out of character.

The end shows that this couple will be looking for cops the rest of their lives of they can keep getting away with it. They have gotten closer, somehow, in spite of the infidelity and killing. Is that the message in this? Or are we waiting for the sequel?

You can watch this on Tubi.

You can watch this on Tubi.

In the video store that is Tubi, you will find shelves that you did not know existed. Way in the back of the store, hidden from most, past the holiday section are movies like this, strange films that seemingly have five minutes of plot and endless scenes of people just talking about nothing that has anything to do with the movie. Anyone can make a movie today and get it online. Should they? I mean, I watch these, so they’re for someone. They’re for me.

Go Nagai created Cutie Honey, Devilman, Mazinger Z, the first erotic manga with Harenchi Gakuen, Getter Robo and Violence Jack. At one point, he was drawing and writing five weekly manga publications at the same time.

He also created the characters and did the designs for this movie, Lion-Girl, which is directed and written by Kurando Mitsutake (Maniac Driver).

Meteors hit the Earth and one out of every thousand people survived. Only Japan wasn’t sunk — an inversion of Submersion of Japan and the parody The World Sinks Except Japan — and as war rages endlessly, the meteors transform humans into demonic hybrids known as Anoroc that kill humans, all while a new Bushido code emerges and samurais rule the lawless lands.

There is a hero and that is Botan (Tori Griffith). Her parents died from being transformed into Anorocs on the day of her birth and she was raised by her Uncle Ken (Damian Toofeek Raven) to defend the weak. She’s also Lion-Girl, the rebel who Shogun Fujinaga (Tomuki Kimura) wants to destroy.

Botan and Ken are asked to deliver Herbert (Matt Standley) and Mayumi (Shelby Lee Parks) to a safe area where Ogi Agan (Stefanie Estes) will protect them. Joined by the cybernetic Marion (Joey Iwanaga), they battle Anorocs under the command of Kaisei Kishi (Derek Mears, who has played Swamp Thing, Jason and a Predator).

I have to confess that I totally loved this movie. I realize that it’s a mess and the CGI is goofy but it feels like reading a whole bunch of manga all at once while you’re on drugs, which I think was the idea, and it just hammers you with ideas, fights, blood, nudity — male, female and trans — and even some moments of humor that made me laugh out loud, such as when Lion-Girl stops the exposition and says, “We’ll get into that some other time.” There are also some definite mentions of the pandemic and Trump, which this was made during.

If they made another of these, I’ll definitely watch it. It’s long but I split it across a few days and ended up looking forward to each section even if the story makes less sense, but sometimes, you just go with it when you have a heroine with a gold lion mask going all scanner — they literally call the battles scanning and reference Buckaroo Banzai’s “Wherever you go, there you are — instead of being hypercritical. Don’t let yourself get in the way of a good time.

The Cleopatra blu ray of this movie has a director’s commentary, an introduction by Go Nagai, a making of and footage from the premiere. You also get an image gallery and a trailer. Get it now from MVD.

Delight Scottsdale (Kendra Rainey-King, who also wrote this movie; she’s written more than fifty books as well as another movie, Knee Deep) lost her mother while she was being born and has gone through foster homes into a life on her own, struggling every step of the way, seeking a family of her own. 

Nearly all of Rainey-King’s books seemingly have a plus sized girl overcoming the odds and becoming a confident big queen by the end. It’s right there in the intro to all of her novels — including The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice which is read by one of the characters in the film, which is wild because it’s product placement for an author’s book in the middle of said author’s auteur project and I have never seen a thing like this in my life — like the sales copy for this story, which says, “Delight isn’t your normal plus size girl. She is a shy girl from Texas who came to college with a dollar and a dream, until she meets the best man possible, Ashton, who opens all of the right doors for her, and her legs.”

Damn, girl.

More than just booty call on Christmas — I mean, do it, Santa is resetting the list — Delight is in love with Ashton (Draper Wynston) who ends up being an African King whose mother doesn’t want anything to do with the new American in his life.

Somehow, it seems simple, but this movie is two hours and twenty-five minutes long, complete with call and response squads of SSBBW dancers, some wearing gold masks. It’s like Crash in that this has a huge cast and intertwining tales and man, it was a movie I couldn’t stop watching even when I paused it and realized there were ninety minutes remaining when I was certain that there couldn’t be anything else.

This movie is very uplifting and also filled with love scenes with songs playing in them with titles like “Cum Here” by Honey Banks, “Picture Yo Body” by 3 Piece, “Roll Me Up” by Fat Pimp and “Touch It” by DSVN. Judging by the credits, this has a cast of thousands in it.

Obviously, I’m ready for everything else that director Lakisha Avery Stewart and Kendra Rainey-King make. This is not a Christmas movie other than one scene, but it was a gift to me.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed by Erskine Forde and written by Eliza Hayes Maher (Deadly DILF) and Tiffany Yarde, this is the story of Caribbean cousins Fabienne Larke (Mishael Morgan) and Mirlande Holder (Andrea Lewis) who have decided to start a clothing company together. Fabienne is also a lawyer for a company that is trying to break a strike led by Zayn (Daniel Malik), a fiery union leader. What she doesn’t know is that she was only picked for this role because she’s a woman of color with a mother who was a factory worker. Can the cousins start their business and make it work when they are so unalike now — Fabienne being shy and devoted to work and Mirlande being live on social all the time and floating through her existence — or will things fail?

A lot of this movie is expected but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t entertaining. Actually, the fighting between the cousins felt authentic. I also liked that the movie didn’t go down the everyday route of having Fabienne and Zayn fall in love. There are some good messages about family, sticking with what you believe in and giving to others, as the cousins eventually create a company that gives clothing to young people who can’t afford interview clothes. Another fun Tubi movie!

You can watch this on Tubi.