Reel Review

Reel Review features engaging conversations about film and television with interesting folks and USC experts from across disciplines (public policy, governance, theatre, and cinema) to look at visual storytelling, media literacy, diversity, and the public good.

Hosted by Erroll Southers, Reel Review reminds us that film and TV are powerful and passionate mediums that not only entertain, but reflect and comment on our society. Culture, policy, and politics affect our everyday lives, ideas about how we live, and how we live together. It also influences what we watch, as well as what we take away from those programs.

We want to be smarter about the images and stories we see, and how we can be better together.

Darkest Hour (dir. Joe Wright)

Dec 21, 2017

Gary Oldman is Winston Churchill in the new WWII film, Darkest Hour.

The first month of Churchill's historic time as Prime Minister, he faced a great decision; one that would lead either to war or to a negotiated peace with Hitler. The compressed timeline of the film drops the viewer in the midst of the "darkest hour"...

Mudbound (dir. Dee Rees)

Dec 18, 2017

Director Dee Rees' new film, Mudbound, follows two southern families before, during, and after World War II. One family is white, one black. Centering on the complex relationships between the two families, the film explores how different generations dealt with societal changes which inevitably followed the war. The...

Blade Runner 2049 (dir. by Denis Villeneuve)

Oct 30, 2017

Is Blade Runner 2049 the sequel we didn't know we needed? Set in a dystopian future Los Angeles, Ryan Gosling's K is a replicant who hunts down dis-loyal replicants: a Blade Runner. When a secret is uncovered, he sets out on a quest. The journey becomes one to not only find the secret but to answer some of the...

American Assassin (dir. Michael Cuesta)

Sep 21, 2017

Director Michael Cuesta brings the fictional hero of Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp novels to the big screen in the new film,American Assassin. The all-star cast includes Dylan O'Brien, Michael Keaton, and Taylor Kitsch as a threesome tied together through the specter of betrayal and revenge, set upon a backdrop...

The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu Miniseries)

Aug 30, 2017

Hulu has adapted The Handmaid's Tale, the classic novel by Margaret Atwood, into a 10 episode saga of life in the dystopia of Gilead. Gilead is a totalitarian society in what was formerly the United States, ruled by a twisted Protestant fundamentalism in its ‘return to traditional values'. As one of the few remaining...