Dan Fogelman’s political thriller returns for a second season, reimagining itself as a post-apocalyptic drama more akin to The Last Of Us. It’s a season full of twists that even the most avid TV watcher won’t expect, as the writers continue to take risks that mostly pay off. In season …
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die takes the worst nightmares of the current moment and turns them into comedy, but the kind of comedy where if you didn’t laugh you’d cry. This is done in the lighthearted comic blockbuster style best described as a mash-up where 1990s French horror-comedy Delicatessen …
Filipino genre filmmaker Pedring Lopez world premiered his first English-language film, the neo-noir thriller Shadow Transit, at last year’s QCinema International Film Festival. An independent co-production between the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Canada, Shadow Transit centers on a chance encounter between a grieving singer-photographer and a drifting DJ, resulting in …
It is a cultural quirk of Indian cinema that they will show the most gruesome torture and murders in glorious close-up while simultaneously subtitling the language used during these scenes as “Dang!” and “You idiot!” If we are in a hard-R/18 environment, capable of being shown a man suspended off …
Most people in the West probably never saw A Step Into the Past, a one-season Hong Kong TV show from 2001 about a modern scientist who ends up back in the Qin dynasty. Therefore the major draw of Back to the Past, which finishes the plotlines of that TV show, …
Whenever I see the names of Matt Damon (The Martian) and Ben Affleck (Argo) together on a poster, my attention is captured by a nostalgia that goes back to their earliest successes. The dynamic between the two is one of the most solid pillars of contemporary cinema, and the prospect …
A mishmash of moods held together by preposterous musical numbers is part of the appeal of most Indian cinema, but Telugu-language The RajaSaab holds together worse than most. There are three movies inside The RajaSaab struggling to get out: a haunted-house horror thriller, a paean to the grandmothers who raised …
Writing about James Cameron (Titanic) is always an exercise in managing expectations. It’s a precarious balance between recognizing his technical genius and the hope, sometimes frustrated, that the narrative can keep up with the visual evolution. When Avatar: The Way of Water hit theaters thirteen years after the original production, …
We seem to have entered a season in which video adaptations can no longer be written off as trash before we even watch them. One of the most lauded adaptations has been Amazon’s Fallout, coming back for season 2. Even though I have still not played the game (despite having “New …
The year was 2003, one of the most formative years of my life as someone trying to discover their own taste in movies. The Matrix Reloaded overwhelmed the cinema zeitgeist for months. Michael Bay arguably made one of his best action films, Bad Boys II, before throwing himself into the …
Jalmari Helander’s blood-soaked Sisu was a true hidden gem. A Finnish answer John Wick or Rambo, the title is a fitting one: it comes from a Finnish concept with no exact English translation, yet roughly means a unique kind of resilience that allows one to overcome the most extreme of …
Director Stephen Shimek recently sat down with us to discuss Murder at the Embassy, his new film that’s out now in theaters and on demand. It’s a murder mystery set in 1930s Cairo starring Mischa Barton along with Mido Hamada and Richard Dillane. It’s the second installment in the Miranda …
Gotham is still reeling from Joker’s attack on the city last year. Crime hasn’t gotten any better, even with Batman swinging around, and the city is like a fire looking for a match. And the Riddler is set to be that match. Backed by the Servants of Freedom, a paramilitary …
Travel back to 1930s Cairo in this exclusive interview with Mido Hamada, who discusses his role as the skeptical Head of Security Mamoud in the new murder mystery film Murder at the Embassy with Mischa Barton. It’s the second installment in the Miranda Green series and is a delightfully fun …
I confess my expectations for a new entry in this saga were modest before Predator: Badlands, despite Dan Trachtenberg (Prey) returning. While Prey excelled at simplifying the formula and returning to basics, the ambition to completely shift the franchise’s point of view — transforming the antagonist into the protagonist — …
Made in 1982, restored and remastered by ABS-CBN Film Restoration Project in 2016, and released by Kani Releasing on Blu-ray in 2022, Lino Brocka’s Cain and Abel now plays on The Criterion Channel as part of the streaming service’s retrospective on the acclaimed Filipino director. A two-fisted riff on the …
There is a fascinating new trend in cinema gathering steam: action movies with hardly any dialogue. Finland’s Sisu from 2022 shows Nazis being slaughtered without saying much about it, while America’s No One Will Save You from 2023 has a young woman fighting off an alien attack. And now Detroit …
The new Disney+ series Marvel Zombies builds on a single episode from season one of What If…?, What If…Zombies?, which first imagined a world where Earth’s Mightiest Heroes had become its greatest threat. Directed by Bryan Andrews and written by Zeb Wells, the four-episode miniseries introduces a new group of …
Rainn Wilson’s comedy chops are what he is most well-known for, but he has a much wider range than just playing for laughs. In his latest film, Code 3, from director Christopher Leone, Wilson shows that range well. This dramedy, which examines a day in the life of a paramedic, offers us …
There’s no doubt that manga is becoming one of the most popular art forms in the world. Initially, manga became famous in certain parts of Asia due to its storytelling and brilliant illustrations. Soon, it started to gain popularity in Western countries. The rise of Manga made filmmakers realize that …