As the real-life British politician John Stonehouse who, among other things, served as a spy for Czechoslovakia and faked his own death, Matthew Macfadyen is incredibly funny. He owns the role of the bumbling fool, a master at inducing laughs and sympathy at the same time. And with Stonehouse, he has endless material. The man […]
Murder mysteries don’t have to be full of twists to be worthwhile, but if you’re going the predictable route, you might as well make it an exciting one. Killer Heat, despite its name, feels cold and dragging. Gordon-Levitt’s Bali shoots for mysterious and debonair, like the detectives of noir past, but instead, he feels more […]
Like plenty of medical dramas, Daily Dose of Sunshine portrays the day-to-day dynamics of a hospital department, this time in the department of mental health in a country that has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Based on the webtoon from a former nurse, the series might have some laughs from the […]
After a whole pandemic, rising inflation, and a whole climate crisis the world hasn’t yet resolved, it can be hard to feel hope towards a new day. However, the third collaboration between director Oh Choong-hwan and screenwriter Park Hye-ryun feels like a reminder to keep hope despite life’s circumstances. Castaway Diva has the classic manic […]
x2The directorial debut of Australian twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou—more popularly known together as the YouTube creators RackaRacka—Talk to Me finds a surprisingly unique way of exploring themes that contemporary horror films have made commonplace. At its heart this is still a movie about one’s inability to come to terms with loss, but the […]
Based on the documentary short she helmed with actor Taylor Russell, Savannah Leaf’s Earth Mama is an intimate, unabashedly political, and decisively non-judgmental look at one mother’s determined attempts to regain custody of her two children. Gia (Tia Nomore) is struggling to work enough hours at her part-time photo studio job to pay for the […]
Mike Atlas is a former police detective now living on the streets as he reopens a supposedly solved murder case with a rookie prosecutor living in her mother’s shadow. As they dig deeper, they uncover a sinister conspiracy that reaches deep into the core of the police and justice system. The series is well-acted, with […]
There’s a scene early in the documentary when present-day Michael J. Fox, who famously suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, swaggers along a street and greets a fan, only to stumble at that very moment and have people surround him with concern. Instead of giving into their pity or pretending nothing happened, he cooly tells the fan, […]
Imagine if Showtime’s survival epic Yellowjackets was a comedy, and being stranded with your high school friends resulted not only in ethical and moral dilemmas but a lot of witty banter and major bonding as well. Then you’d have something like Class of ‘07, an apocalyptic series with the irreverent humor of many millennial shows […]
The plot of the Union feels insultingly childish. An undercover agency has to retrieve an important device before it falls into the “wrong” (i.e. non-Western) hands, and to achieve that, they absolutely must have Mike (Wahlberg) on their team. That nothing here seems plausible shouldn’t be the point–it’s an action movie anyway. But even the […]
There are a plethora of father-son road trips in film, but rarely portrayed on the path are fathers with their trans sons. That is because most queer stories often focus on the romance, and if not the romance, the coming out process. Runs in the Family does things differently – it’s the connection between trans […]
The mythology surrounding Sylvester Stallone: the action hero is so big and successful that many people, including myself, often forget about Sylvester Stallone: the prolific writer. He failed to bag roles as a young actor in the 1970s, so he whipped out a script (in a span of three days!) that became the iconic film […]
Much sweeter and much more bittersweet than one might expect, World’s Best does some deceptively clever things with its major themes of math and rap. Somehow, this pre-teen coming-of-age story finds a way to play with preconceived notions of equations always resulting in certain answers, and of modern hip hop being all about swagger and […]
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With an accounting mistake leading to being stranded in the desert, it’s hard to predict where VIVANT would lead us to. As corporate employee Yusuke tries to undo his supposed accounting error, he gets into a series of surprising events including having to negotiate with a terrorist, being accused of a bombing, and escaping to […]
Swiss filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe gave us the free-flowing fandom doc The People vs. George Lucas in 2010 and hasn’t stopped obsessing over his favorite filmmakers ever since. Can you blame him? Dedicating years of your life to research of the the weird Lynch-verse is a mammoth task, especially since the kernel of his new […]
In the multilingual Drops of God, French author Camille and Japanese sommelier Issei battle for a wine expert’s multi-billion-dollar inheritance. Camille may be the expert’s daughter, gifted with an incredible sense of smell and taste, but Issei is the so-called “spiritual son,” the protégé who filled in Camille’s shoes upon her abrupt departure from her […]
Will Trent is a crime procedural that tackles a new mystery every few episodes. It doesn’t differ from other detective shows in that way, but what makes Will Trent interesting is that the intrigue of each case never takes away from the intrigue of the personal lives of the lead characters. Will Trent, in particular, […]
There’s a remarkable harshness to every moment of I Have Electric Dreams, even if it doesn’t seem like much is happening. Beautiful textures in its cinematography and the dreamlike movement of its editing can’t mask the pain that protagonist Eva feels, as she drifts through the ruin of her own family in search of any […]
Stilted and awkward from the beginning, the first two episodes of Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale that were watched for this review promise a rough start for a series that just doesn’t have enough of its own personality. Characters and conflict are introduced in ham-fisted fashion, with this fantasy world never given enough shape to make […]
A great example of frank, emotionally honest filmmaking with three totally vulnerable lead performances, Passages takes a subject that can so easily be reduced into clichés—infidelity—and approaches it with a genuine sense of melancholy. It can still be frustrating to watch fully developed adults refuse to communicate more clearly about their feelings, but director and […]
With its first episode, The Changeling might feel less scary and more romantic and historical than how a horror fantasy would seem like. The series shifts in and out of flashbacks, sometimes even having a flashback within a flashback, with dreamlike sequences that makes it take a while to figure out when and where the […]
True crime documentaries have had a bit of a sensationalist streak in recent years, but thankfully, Never Let Him Go never stoops to that level. It knows, respects, and empathizes with Scott Johnson and his family, who, for 30 years have relentlessly sought answers as to how and why, exactly, Scott died the way he […]
After a healing workshop leads her best friend to sell her belongings and move to a remote island, Nisan becomes suspicious a cult is indoctrinating outcasts. But when she’s diagnosed with cancer and dark memories haunt her dreams, she seeks the island to find hope and happiness. Nisan’s suspicions struggle against her desire to face […]
Daisy Jones & The Six is riddled with rock and roll clichés—sex, drugs, and alcohol abound—but the series has enough strengths to save it from sheer banality, the most prominent of which is the music. The original songs, performed by the actors themselves, are genuinely good. They’re true to the times and recall the likes […]
The atmosphere communicated within the title Hurricane Season comes off incredibly clearly on screen: this is a film that just feels humid and full of foreboding for a coming storm, with people feeling all manner of guilt while secluded in their own homes. Cinematographer María Secco’s gorgeous colors and brown tones fill the 4:3 aspect […]
With a long and chaotic 30 years in the industry, it’s hard to encapsulate Robbie Williams’ whole musical career in a documentary. There are plenty of songs to tackle, plenty of scandals to explain, and Netflix tries to portray it all through its latest four part docuseries. Given its lengthy subject matter, it’s impossible to […]
With games creating whole virtual worlds, with stunning landscapes, powers, and storylines, it’s easy to escape into the fictional simulations, to the point of being addicted. Good Night World reimagines this idea in the present as a family drama, where video game addict Tachiro Arima struggles to relate with his family because of his addiction. […]
You could take away a lot of parts in Reptile, and it would still make sense. It’s the kind of film that leans on sound and style to justify overlong takes and teeth-grittingly predictable scenes. But all is forgiven when del Toro, who also co-writes and co-produces the film, appears on screen. He has a […]
It seems unfair to call Neeyat India’s (and Amazon Prime’s) answer to the Knives Out series of films, but it often feels that way. It’s a murder mystery that sides with the poor and satirizes the rich, and it mostly takes place in a grand manor that forces its colorful cast of characters to interact […]
x1Renowned choreographer Benjamin Millepied brings an 1875 opera leaping into the 21st century with this modern retelling — through dance and drama — of Carmen. The plot is reimagined along the US border and recenters the titular character (Melissa Barrera), a newly orphaned refugee from Mexico making her way to her godmother (a fabulous Rossy […]
Initially, The Change’s premise might seem as eccentric as its kooky characters, but this comedy series set in ancient woods makes a compelling case for itself over six short episodes. When Linda (writer Bridget Christie) is diagnosed as menopausal, it triggers a flash of clarity: she’s tired of being reduced to “wife” and “mother.” Depressed […]
Besides the futuristic tech that pops in and out, there’s not a lot about The Kitchen that signals it as a sci-fi film. Neglected housing projects and violent raids have become too common to count as dystopian, so it often feels like The Kitchen could’ve gone without labeling itself as part of the genre (the […]
There are a striking number of similarities between Priscilla and director Sofia Coppola’s earlier offering, Marie Antoinette: both revolve around 14-year-old girls hand-picked to be partners to more powerful men in long-unconsummated relationships, and both girls are emotionally cut adrift and forced to live in gilded cages. But where Coppola’s Barbie-pink historical biopic is punkily […]
With the worldwide pandemic, there were less and less opportunities for a potential meet-cute when everyone was encouraged to stay home. At the Moment finds those rare moments where love was still able to bloom. It plays with so many of the familiar cheesy romantic tropes, but always with a twist, never playing the tropes […]
If there are parts to Rookie’s story that seem too easily resolved—for the sake of making this more of a feel-good movie—these shortcuts still serve a genuinely romantic central relationship that develops in the most organic way possible. Besides the school’s stifling conservatism, there’s nothing that really stands in the way of Ace and Jana’s […]
This sociologically revealing documentary follows the attempts of the largely “snow-white” staff of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk art museum to refresh the institution’s collection, just 4% of which was by women artists at the time of filming. The museum also featured exactly zero works by artists of color — another embarrassing truth that the Stedelijk’s staff, headed […]
While primarily a showcase of endoscopic footage of various surgeries in different hospitals throughout Paris—which should already be enough to either make you queasy or inspire introspection into the fragility of our lives—this singular, experimental documentary places all this bloodshed in the context of the mundanity of the medical profession. Much of the film is […]
Compared to recently released age-gap romances The Idea of You and A Family Affair, Lonely Planet feels more mature. Liam Hemsworth’s Owen is a capable financier without any manchild tendencies, and his attraction to Laura Dern’s Katherine has nothing to do, at least explicitly, with age. They like each other simply because they do. They […]
In Love All Over Again has many of the romance tropes fans of the genre would enjoy. The star-crossed lovers, the gay best friend, the absent-minded but well-meaning parent, and the classic romance drama jobs are present in the series. However, unlike other series, the show literally starts off with a bang. The main couple […]
