I often state that I don’t have a least favorite genre. I enjoy all kinds of filmmaking and storytelling styles, but that doesn’t mean I have the same knowledge and experience with every genre. Westerns, for example, perhaps due to the lower number of annual new releases, aren’t films one …
Though no one has ever said so explicitly, The Mallorca Files was clearly designed to remind the British of the benefits of a close relationship with Europe. The show is filmed in a Spain where everyone speaks fluent English, with one British and one German lead actor, and a supporting …
Doug Liman is known for kickstarting the Jason Bourne franchise with The Bourne Identity, but perhaps even more for what’s often considered one of the best action films of its decade, Edge of Tomorrow. Unfortunately, since that 2014 release, the filmmaker has been inconsistent with his work, producing reasonably satisfying …
Not since 1999’s The Blair Witch Project has a horror campaign been quite as effective as the one Neon have instigated for Oswald Perkins’ horror Longlegs. The campaign that tore the internet apart at the turn of the millennium was based on the idea that the titular Blair Witch was …
In 2022, audiences were introduced to the world of the X trilogy with X and its prequel Pearl, both of which were produced and filmed at a record time and managed to come out in the same year. Only two years later, the working relationship between A24, director Ti West, …
It’s been apparent to the discerning student of world cinema for a little while now that Indian movies are about to burst into the Western mainstream. (Modesty be damned, I mentioned this on my personal blog at the end of last year.) The ground-breaking Oscar for RRR was the beginning …
Ripley is the latest adaptation of Talented Mr. Ripley, this time starring Andrew Scott in the lead role; as Tom Ripley, a man who is introduced to Dickie Greenleaf’s leisurely lifestyle and quickly gets under his skin and eventually kills him – taking over his identity in a bid to become Greenleaf. It’s a queer …
It’s a tale as old as art – male characters do stuff, and female characters react to male characters doing stuff – but it’s rarely taken to such an extreme as in The Bikeriders. Kathy (Jodie Comer, more on whom later) quite literally narrates the story of the Chicago biker …
At the 2023 AFI Film Festival, I saw Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders and fell in love with it. After the festival, Searchlight sold the film to Focus Features, and it is in theaters as of June 21st. Heading into the movie a second time, I wondered if it would ignite …
I have been a fan of The Boys since the jump. I love the way that it skewers Hollywood. I love the way that it skewers performative wokeness. I love the way that it skewers right-wing fanaticism. And, yeah, the voyeur in me loves the over-the-top violence and sexual content. …
Limited series are becoming a new favorite medium for streaming. They last between six and eight hours and feel like an extended film. Such length allows the story to carry a deep emotional complexity. This complexity has attracted prominent actors to this limited series format. Netflix has championed this medium …
Any description of The Shameless could make it sound like the most exploitative trash, so it’s stunning to realize that despite the grim setting, the exceptionally troubled characters, and the hopelessness of their situation, that it isn’t. This is a testament to the skill of writer-director (and Bulgarian-American) Konstantin Bojanov, …
In Hit Man, Richard Linklater’s latest film, the beloved director teams up with his star Glen Powell to write a script loosely based on a stranger-than-fiction news feature by legendary Texas Monthly reporter Skip Hollandsworth. It should be stressed that the real story, while remarkably gripping, does not go quite …
In an unprecedented move, the Cannes Film Festival jury awarded the Best Actress prize this year to the four actresses of Emilia Pérez – Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Karla Sofía Gascón and Adriana Paz. This is almost as startling as French writer-director Jacques Audiard making a primarily Spanish-language musical about …
The sun-soaked seediness of LA is immediately apparent in Sugar, Mark Protosevich’s neo-noir crime drama. Sugar follows Colin Farrell’s eponymous private detective hired for one case, which quickly spirals into a wider network of rich girls gone wrong, drugs, questionable law enforcement, polaroids, self-destruction, and other such Hollywood crime and its visual signifiers. John Sugar: A Golden-Hearted Detective …
This past Sunday, the latest episode of Tracker with Justin Hartley as the “rewardist” Colter Shaw aired on CBS. Titled Into the Wild and written by Elwood Reid and directed by Larry Teng, this episode took Colter all the way across the country to Idaho. (See you later, Aurora.) Into the Wild with Tracker This episode was interesting in a …
It doesn’t take much to convince cinephiles like me to visit the film theater. In fact, it’s more the opposite: it takes very strong reasons to keep me away. My personal methodology of trying to watch movies without any prior knowledge remains extremely strict, so for Boy Kills World, the presence of Bill Skarsgård (It) was more than enough to spark interest in a basic …
It’s been six or seven years (not that we’re counting) since White Collar was on the air on Netflix and ten years since the show finished airing on the USA Network. As of April 1st, the show is back in the streamer’s library. Starring Matt Bomer as debonair former criminal Neal Caffrey and Tim DeKay as …
Tracker, the CBS procedural led by Justin Hartley as the rewardist Colter Shaw with a particular set of skills, is back with another episode that just aired. In episode nine, we’re not in Camden anymore. As predicted last week, this episode of Tracker takes us to Aurora. But Colter Shaw and his Airstream …
Dusk for a Hitman is inspired by the true story of Donald Lavoie, a notorious mob hitman turned informant. It’s a crime drama with a ton of edge. Starring Éric Bruneau, Benoît Gouin, Rose-Marie Perreault, Sylvain Marcel, Simon Landry-Desy, and Joakim Robillard, the film is a tale of loyalty and survival in the dangerous Montreal underworld. Director and …