Helen Mirren is an extraordinary actor. This is a fact as indisputable as the rising of the sun, the receding of the tides or the notion that borscht is actually best served cold rather than piping hot. We tend to take this basic truth for granted. So, unfortunately, do producers …
Read More »'The Lighthouse' Review: Willem Dafoe Gaslights Robert Pattinson
The Lighthouse seeps into your bones with the chill of the sea wind. Stunningly directed by Robert Eggers from a script he wrote with his brother, Max, and shot in black and white in the boxy aspect ratio common in the silent era, The Lighthouseis set in the 1890s on …
Read More »'Fleabag' Season Two Review: A Heaven-Sent Sequel
“I want to fuck a priest,” the title character of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s seriocomic gem Fleabag confesses early in the second season. For most shows, this would be utterly scandalous. For Fleabag — the ribald, scathingly funny, achingly heartfelt story of a grief-stricken young woman battling her most self-destructive impulses — …
Read More »'Peterloo' Review: Mike Leigh Revisits a Historical Tragedy
What possessed the British Tory government to order a military charge on horseback into a crowd of over 100,000 unarmed, working-class protesters? The place is St. Peter’s Field in Manchester, England, and the slaughter ended with 18 dead and hundreds injured as the cavalry — swords drawn — slashed through …
Read More »'Sally4Ever' Review: Watch HBO's Painfully Funny Cringe Comedy at Your Own Risk
Imagine if, a few episodes into the first season of the Steve Carell version of The Office, NBC opted to pair it on a lineup with Extras, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s follow-up to the UK original Office. That would have seemed strange, right? Even for the millions of viewers …
Read More »'Maniac' Review: Trippy Drama Is a Surrealistic Visual Feast
Owen Milgrim (Jonah Hill), the mentally ill hero of the new Netflix drama Maniac, is obsessed with what’s real and what isn’t. It’s hard to blame him, since his illness often manifests itself as a hallucinatory doppelganger of his horrible brother Jed (Billy Magnussen), who sends Owen on nonexistent spy …
Read More »'Peppermint' Review: Formulaic Shoot-'Em-Up Lets Down Audiences — and Its Star
Anything Liam Neeson can do, Jennifer Garner can do better. At least that’s the premise of this hilariously awful, insanely hard-to-swallow action thriller from Taken director Pierre Morel. Turns out the only ones who’ll be taken by this shoddy rip-off are the audience. Peppermint stars Garner as Riley North, an …
Read More »'Disenchantment' Review: Matt Groening's Fantasy Series Is One Visually Clever Delight
Disenchantment, Simpsons creator Matt Groening‘s new animated fantasy parody for Netflix, uses the same art style that’s been the cartoonist’s trademark his entire career. Sweet, hapless Elfo (Nat Faxon) doesn’t look too far removed from Lisa and Maggie’s beloved Happy Little Elves; an obnoxious prince gets transformed into a swine …
Read More »'Lodge 49' Review: Quirky Dramedy on Lost Souls, Secret Societies is Pure Cult TV
“When I’m out there, I feel like I’m all alone,” Sean “Dud” Dudley (Wyatt Russell) says. “But it’s different in here. I can see what this place is. I can feel it. Can’t you?” The sweetly dim surfer at the center of AMC’s Lodge 49 (premiering August 6th) is describing …
Read More »'Shock and Awe' Review: Journalistic Drama Is No 'All the President's Men'
Oh god, you want to love it. You really, really want to love it, or at least, y’know, like it a lot, to stand up and cheer with it. I mean, a movie about journalists, real ones, doing what they do best, pounding the pavement and searching for the truth? …
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