The most popular American TV show is back, and as the first three (plus!) episodes of the new season of Reacher recently dropped on Prime Video, it’s worth discussing why this show – the modern James Bond – has been such a smash hit. The similarities with James Bond do …
The return of one of the greatest comic book TV series of all time is ready to shake up the world with Daredevil: Born Again. Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio return to their lead roles as Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk. I consider the original Netflix three seasons the best comic book …
Death to Smoochy came out in 2002 when I had three kids under three and was expecting my fourth. I was in the thick of parenting little kids, which meant I was at my most familiar with children’s television programming. Danny DeVito’s dark look at the seedy underbelly of that industry seemed …
Starting a new cinephile year is always exciting, even knowing that January is far from being a particularly memorable month. In fact, even today, the first month of the year is often dubbed “dump January” precisely because it consists of 31 days studios don’t consider appealing or important for their …
Netflix’s The Man with 1000 Kids tells the shocking story of Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a “serial sperm donor” who has admitted to donating sperm for 500-600 children – but some say the number is actually in the thousands. The three-episode mini-series follows a group of families raising a child in …
DC Comics has no shortage of quality animated material. This includes numerous direct-to-DVD films (the most recent being the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earth trilogy). While those have offered mixed results, one corner of DC that has remained popular is its animated television content. HBO Max’s shows, such as …
The typical Netflix action thriller and neo-western can fall into two distinct categories. The first involves straightforward generic and forgettable procedurals. Such films simply go through the motions of the genre, delivering stories and bland action sequences seen time and time again. The other involves something much darker, going against …
Carry-On is the latest thriller from Netflix and stars Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, and Jason Bateman. We’re well past the golden age of Die Hard knockoffs but the formula remains a very reliable one for making high-grade B-movies if you can assemble the right team to make it. Jaume Collet-Serra has …
Halina Reijn, the director behind 2022’s wildly entertaining Bodies Bodies Bodies, returns with Babygirl, an erotic drama starring Nicole Kidman. Kidman, now 57, has never shied away from taking on racy material, but her role as Romy, an aging CEO for a growing artificial intelligence company, is her most daring …
In 2019, author Holly Jackson released the YA fiction novel A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder to critical acclaim. It went on to win 2020’s British Book Awards Children’s Fiction Book Winner of the Year and, as with most award-winning novels, it was soon picked up for a television adaption. …
Among all streaming services, Apple TV+ is the one that comes closest to the motto “quality over quantity.” Compared to Netflix, Max, Disney+, or Prime Video, the “apple network” doesn’t produce as much content – ugh, hate that word – but the average quality of its films and series is …
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 …