“Superheroes invite metaphors for discrimination by their very nature. People fear what they don’t understand; this is especially true when the “what” happens to be a giant green monster or a Norse god, but what Jessica Jones and Luke Cage lack in enormity or mythology they make up for with power. In “AKA Crush Syndrome,” … Continue reading
“Watching the cast of Brooklyn Nine-Nine come together either in the pursuit of shenanigans or the performance of their jobs is standard routine for the series. In Season Three, we’ve seen whole precinct skive off work in the midst of Holt and Jake’s annual prank war (“Halloween III”), and unite over Captain Dozerman’s passing (“The … Continue reading
“Here’s a conundrum for your average building-vaulting, wall-punching superhero: How do you stop a dude who can monopolize your will from turning you into his own personal arm candy, or enslaving entire families to act as his beaming servants? In “AKA Ladies Night,” Jessica Jones did the bare minimum necessary to establish our leading lady’s … Continue reading
“Documentarian Leah Wolchok’sVery Semi-Serious is a semi-okay movie. It isn’t good. But it isn’t bad. It also, amazingly, isn’t just simply “there.” The film has perspective and an idea of what it wants to say. It’s also quite entertaining for the first hour. But in painting her “partially thorough portrait of The New Yorkercartoonists,” Wolchok … Continue reading
“Occasionally, fate and movie release schedules collude with one another to drop a fresh title on audiences at exactly the right moment. That’s more or less the case with Mediterranea, the feature debut of short filmmaker Jonas Carpignano: Check his picture against the United States’ dialogue on immigration, and you may feel the unnerving sense … Continue reading
“There’s an alternate timeline in which Creed is a superfluous waste of nostalgia. In that universe, Warner Bros. gave the reins to a filmmaker other than Ryan Coogler, the young Oakland-born director who stunned viewers in 2013 with Fruitvale Station, a bio-drama about the death of Oscar Grant. Maybe Coogler is the last person anyone … Continue reading
“When Pixar first arrived with 1995’s Toy Story, they fell into a steady release routine and reliably output a movie every one to three years. 2006 began the eight-year streak in which the animation giant dropped a new title every summer, all the way up to 2013’s Monsters University, which came out amid peak Pixar … Continue reading
“Good news for Amanda Fisher: Ruby is her new best friend. That only seems fair, doesn’t it? Ash has already gained two new best friends himself. Why should Amanda be left out of the fun? Now she has someone to pal around with in pursuit of her perp, though Ruby’s intentions sound a lot less … Continue reading
“Marvel’s television brand has come a long way since the 2013 premiere of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.That show was the company’s coltish first step into the widening TV world—an awkward, gangly attempt at bringing their operatic, costumed rumpuses onto a smaller screen with a larger creative space. Over time, the series has shaped itself into a … Continue reading
“If The Bastard Executioner’s cardinal season can be summed up with a single word, that word is “rushed.” From the show’s premiere to its finale, “Blood and Quiescence/Crau a Chwsg,” every narrative thread, every plot point, every character arc has felt unjustly compressed, like so many square pegs being stuffed into round holes. This, in … Continue reading
“For Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s last couple of episodes, Jake and Amy have had the luxury of acting like a couple without needing to prove their couple bona fides. They’re an item, period. It’s true that “Halloween III” put a teensie bump in their road, but Jake’s paranoia over Amy’s allegiance in his prank campaign with Holt … Continue reading
“What do you really know about Ash? That’s the fundamental question of Ash vs. Evil Dead’s latest episode, “Books From Beyond,” which a handcuffed Amanda Fisher poses to a gun-toting Kelly in a decidedly lopsided conversation about Ash’s dubious morality. Sure, we all know that he’s the hero, here, but Fisher is yet to be … Continue reading
“Patricia Riggen’s The 33 ends appropriately with a seaside reunion between its cast’s real-life counterparts: The cadre of Chilean miners who lived buried beneath a mountain for 69 days in the 2010 Copiapó mining calamity. One by one, Riggen introduces her audience to these men in a beautifully lit scene that pays homage to the … Continue reading
“Quentin Tarantino isn’t a stranger to controversy. He’s been courting it for the lion’s share of his career: He has a penchant for violence that borders on fetishism, and his scripts boast an inexcusably stomach-churning amount of racial epithets. Even in the beginning of his career, with Reservoir Dogs he chapped the asses of cinephiles … Continue reading
“If you’ve never hunkered down in your den, hot cocoa in hand, ready to wait out the gusting winds and extensive precipitation that come packaged in a nor’easter, then count yourself lucky. A nor’easter storm is no joke, even if you’re at home with all the necessary accoutrements to get through its duration in one … Continue reading
“Rick Alverson’s Entertainment is best described as a case of willfully false advertising. “Entertainment,” to Alverson, is an invocation of abject human misery rather than a promise of amusement and delight. His film offers neither pleasure nor diversion—instead, it spiritually brutalizes its viewers with a portrait of one comedian’s professional struggles on a road trip … Continue reading
“Like many sitcoms, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s chief traits are the relationships between its characters. Whether it’s Boyle’s unfaltering loyalty to Jake, Jake’s odd couple professional bond with Holt, Holt’s mentor-mentee rapport with Amy, or Amy’s socially imbalanced encounters with everybody in the office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine best thrives when the writing creates a space where these characters … Continue reading
“After last week’s high-octane masterclass in zombie butt-kicking, Ash vs. Evil Dead has decided to slow down the pace a bit with its second episode. But don’t mistake “Bait” as a sign of post-pilot slumping: the show remains top notch even as it takes a necessary detour on the road to sending the Deadites back … Continue reading
“For a writer best known for penning large scale stories, Travis Beacham’s enthusiasm for small stakes comes as something of a surprise. 2010’s Clash of the Titans, which Beacham wrote an early draft for, threw the balance of power among Greek gods into turmoil; more notably, 2013’s Pacific Rim, which Beacham co-wrote with Guillermo del Toro, put the very survival of humanity … Continue reading
“If you’re the type of person who avoids setting foot in a forest, you’ll probably feel validated byThe Hallow, the debut from Irish filmmaker Corin Hardy. This is a horror film that treats the natural world as a source of mortal danger. Here there be monsters, yet Hardy’s macabre aesthetic lends even an undisturbed bosk … Continue reading
A Constant Visual Feast 