When Apple announced their appearance on the streaming market, there was palpable excitement amongst media fans. Allowing filmmakers and creatives to play with big budgets to create vibrant, energetic stories nearly totally liberated from network executives was a concept unfamiliar within the media zeitgeist. That excitement soon deflated after AppleTV+ …
Pierce Brosnan became an action icon when he portrayed the most iconic secret agent, James Bond. Throughout his four films with the franchise, he appeared in some of the most popular films of the recent era, including Goldeneye. Lately, Brosnan has engaged in action flicks as an experienced agent who …
To watch The Quick and the Dead is to embrace in pure pulp from one of Hollywood’s greatest pulp veterans, Sam Raimi – switching gears for the Western with an all-star cast. Sharon Stone, young Leonardo DiCaprio, it’s a black comedy that benefits entirely from director of photography, Dante Spinotti, …
Content Warning: This is a review of the movie Baby John, and it includes disturbing topics, including discussion of rape, torture, and violence against women and children. No matter where you are in the world, police propaganda has the same problem: how to justify violence meted out by cops with …
With the stage set in A24’s X, Ti West looks to continue the story of Maxine and her fame-crazed counterpart by looking back to yesteryear with the second film in the horror trilogy, Pearl: An X-traordinary Origin Story. As a prequel to the first film, Pearl takes audiences back to …
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of the most prolific directors in world cinema. This year, he premiered Chime at the 74th Berlinale. The French remake of his 1998 film, Serpent’s Path, went to the San Sebástian Film Festival. Concluding his year, Cloud debuted at the Biennale di Venezia, and Japan selected …
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 …
Well, it seems that we need to say happy holidays to Netflix. Black Doves is the Christmas present you never knew you needed. Think…socks. An expensive, robust pair of socks that doesn’t have holes in them by March. They might not be what you asked for, might not have been …
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 …
Thanks to streaming, the landscape of cinema has entirely changed. What once would have been a summer crime caper built for the cinema now goes to the small screen. Depending on how you view it, that can be both a benefit and a curse. The curse is that movies like …
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. …
There are few institutions in this world that are more heavily regarded and reviled in equal measure than the Catholic church. From the sects of religious devotees that populate social pockets of the world to their portrayal in modern media that places them in the spotlight for heinous acts of …
What do you believe in? It seems like a simple enough question to answer; however, when you begin to break it down, there are many ways to interpret it. What beliefs are we talking about? Religion, perhaps? Are we talking about which God we pray to and what religious standards …
Based on the bestselling book by Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing rockets viewers back to 1972 Belfast with an explosive opening scene. The miniseries employs different framing devices to Keefe’s nonfiction tome, but both work to great effect. Widowed mother of ten Jean McConville (Judith Roddy) sends her eldest daughter …
Halloween is right around the corner and so is everybody’s favorite unkillable slasher, Michael Myers. He may not have the in-depth lore of the Jigsaw Killer or the quippy one-liners of Freddy Kruger, but Michael Myers has remained one of the defining figures of horror across thirteen movies. Well, technically …
What is there to say about Sony’s Spider-Man Universe? A franchise that once ruled the world has now become a mixed bag of incredible highs and abysmal lows. On one hand, we have films like Across the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: No Way Home, which joined the ranks of the original …
This Telugu-language movie was guaranteed major international distribution once N. T. Rama Rao Jr. agreed to star. After all, he was half of the leading duo in RRR, the Indian movie which so dramatically punched through to an international audience. Yet Devara Part 1 is not designed for an international …
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 …
It may be unrealistic to suggest that zombies will rise from graves or aliens will flood the sky, but a lot of films and TV shows, like War of the Worlds and The Walking Dead, provide an insight into what might happen in those situations. They beg the question: what …