Kimberly Reyes

I was a 16-year-old student at the Bronx High School of Science, scribbling Concrete Blonde lyrics at my desk...

A few weeks back, when New York City announced the minuscule number of black students admitted to its elite specialized high schools, the report generated the usual dialogues around how the system is broken and what, if anything, can be done to fix it. There is no doubt that the numbers are abysmal: Only 12 black students scored high enough on the citywide test to win a seat at my alma mater, Bronx Science, and just seven to Stuyvesant. While I’m concerned for the black students continually l...

Kimberly Reyes chases a demon in space between universes.

I became familiar with British filmmaker Steve McQueen’s work last year while writing a thesis on his 2008 film Hunger, based on the 1981 Irish hunger strike. Hunger is a devastating film no matter how much or how little Irish history you bring to it: the excruciating loss of life makes the viewing experience wrenchingly universal. As my thesis progressed, I trusted McQueen enough to watch his hugely successful and critically acclaimed 2013 film 12 Years a Slave. As a Black American, I’d prev...

Let’s be honest, the most memorable scenes in the first two Thor films belonged to (Tom Hiddleston’s) Loki. That’s because Thor, as written, was still finding his way around his Norse godship, and the love story between his character and Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster was always awkward at best, and tiresome at worst (and Thor: The Dark World is pretty much the worst)...

Duran Duran are back!

All articles written for EW

Taylor Alison Swift has fulfilled just about every dream a songwriter could have on her bucket list. From sold-out stadium tours and her name in the Guinness World Records to winning Grammy, Academy of Country Music, Billboard, Teen Choice, American Music and MTV Music Awards, she is one of the most celebrated artists of all time. Following in the footsteps of other revered songstresses who have gone behind the camera to direct movies, like Barbra Streisand (the first woman director to win a Golden Globe for her 1984 film Yentl) and Madonna, Swift may be about to conquer film.

Reviewed by Kimberly Reyes
I always resist and then ultimately succumb to the latest in antebellum narratives. As I explored in my last review, I’m particularly interested in the merging of post-colonial histories. So when I heard that Neil Jordan had written a novel about the relationship between the runaway Black American slave Tony Small and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, an Irish soldier then fighting on the side of the British during the American Revolution, I felt obliged to engage.

While many of the biggest horror films of the past century were made in America, the horror film genre was not actually born in the United States. French director Georges Melies' 1896 short The House of the Devil is often credited as the first ‘horror’ movie. By the 1920s, Germany's expressionist movement (a rejection of Germany’s bourgeois culture) inspired the highly stylistic and influential films The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu, which heavily influenced American cinema.

George Floyd was the latest in a long line of Black Americans killed by white police officers in the United States. The horrifying video of his killing sparked worldwide protests in the middle of a pandemic with uneven mortality rates that are exposing existing inequalities. While many people around the world champion this new, impromptu, international coalition based around a racial justice reckoning, the overwhelming majority of posts I’ve seen in response to the Black Lives Matter protests...

My Brother Is ‘Essential’

I have one brother, Alex — a tall, broad black man who is a train operator for New York City’s M.T.A. The world is finally realizing that he’s “essential.” While Alex’s uniform may protect him from extrajudicial profiling, it also endangers him, requiring him to be exposed to the coronavirus. He’s always had to be tough, but since living with his girlfriend, he’s changed. Alex now tells my parents and me that he loves us. Out loud. I remember this change in...

While most of my friends chose to head-bang to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Guns N’ Roses on the hour-long train ride to high school, my yellow Sports Walkman usually played something a little slower and more somber. From the Geto Boys to The Sisters of Mercy...

Dirty Dancing had it all: star-crossed love, familial drama, sweaty, pretty people dancing, and a wildly popular soundtrack—all set against the backdrop of the serene Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. The film was based on screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein's own childhood, and the premise was simple: in the summer of 1963, do-gooder Frances "Baby" Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is vacationing with her superficial family...

Nichelle Nichols, the beloved actress who played the role of Lieutenant Uhura, the communications officer on the TV series Star Trek, and six of its spinoff films, died on Saturday in Silver City, N.M. She was 89 years old.