Pop Culture Happy Hour: "The Suicide Squad" and What's Making Us Happy

Margot Robbie, Daniela Melchior, Idris Elba, a shark-man voiced by Sylvester Stallone, and David Dastmalchian are most of the lineup of The Suicide Squad. (Warner Bros/DC Comics)

Wednesday was my birthday, and it was not the first time I’d spent part of my birthday talking about a James Gunn comic book movie on Pop Culture Happy Hour. In 2014, I reported to the now-long-since-demolished-and-replaced NPR headquarters to talk about the just-released Guardians of the Galaxy before heading off to dinner at Oyamel. This year, I skipped the studio — we all skipped the studio — but still joined a panel chaired by my A Degree Absolute! co-host Glen Weldon and allies Daisy Rosario and Ronald Young, Jr. to dissect (it’s a grisly movie) The Suicide Squad.

Glen and I two-handed its kinda-sorta precursor, the definite article-free Suicide Squad, in 2016. I also wrote a review of that film for NPR. God, what a rotten year that was.

The Ampersands of Time: "Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw," reviewed.

Bald Is Beautiul: Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham. (Universal)

Look, all of the Fast & Furious movies have stolen their best bits from better movies, but when the new double-ampersand sidebar flick Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw actually had its cyborg villain, Brixton Lorr (Idris Elba) get orders from an unseen superior to try to turn heroes Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) over to the Dark Side, I still managed to be surprised. My NPR review is here.

Miss Sogyny by Any Other Name: No Good Deed, reviewed.

No Good Deed stars Idris Elba & Taraji P. Henson are also credited producers, so they should know better.

The thrice-delayed, not-screened-for-critics thriller No Good Deed opened at No. 1 this weekend. Box Office Mojo reports its audience was 60 percent female and 59 percent over age 30. I'm an over-30 straight white dude, so WTF do I know, but to me the film -- which was written by a white woman and directed by a white guy -- felt incredibly insulting to its target audience of black women. In my Village Voice review, I tried to unpack the cynical, unkind assumptions it makes about the primary demographic paying to see it. Without making the piece as much of a drag to read as the movie was to watch.