& Beyond
“The Batman” isn’t a superhero movie. Not really. All the trappings are there: the Batmobile, the rugged suit, the gadgets courtesy of trusty butler Alfred. And of course, at the centre, is the Caped Crusader himself: brooding, tormented, seeking his own brand of nighttime justice in a Gotham City that’s spiralling into squalor and decay.… Continue reading The Batman
In an early scene of Edgar Wright’s wickedly entertaining “Last Night in Soho”, British screen veteran Rita Tushingham, playing the protagonist’s doting grandmother, Peggy, reminisces about the excitement, the music and the fashions of London in the Swinging ’60s. If your film knowledge of the period goes back far enough, you might find yourself thinking… Continue reading Last Night in Soho
I have a confession: I have never seen a single “Saw” film. It’s a (not so embarrassing) fact that makes me both the best and worst person to review “Spiral: From the Book of Saw”, the ninth and newest movie in the grisly series. My lack of knowledge is a strength: I’m one of the… Continue reading Spiral: From the Book of Saw
“Lovecraft Country” has something to say about the ordinary horrors of racism as well as the cosmic ones of fantastic fiction mixed into its foundation. The series is a horror-drama from the astute mind of Misha Green and based on the novel of the same name by Matt Ruff, that unleashes secrets, legacy, and gore on one family’s… Continue reading A New Era for Science-Fiction
The nature of evil — where it originates, why it takes hold of some so potently — is among the richest questions fiction can investigate. Chris Evans might not have a shield in "Defending Jacob," but the eight-part miniseries, gripping legal drama based on the 2012 bestselling novel of the same name, is all about shielding… Continue reading Defending Jacob
“It’s all a construct. None of it is real, and we’re not here so where the fuck are we?” “Westworld” is perhaps the most over-plotted show on television, obsessed with nonlinear storytelling, symbology, constant references to literature and philosophy, and regular plot twists or status quo shifts. It would be nice if the third season was… Continue reading Westworld S3
Welcome to “Hunters”, a show that lives in the extremes. It can be sober and thoughtful in one moment and gleefully trashy in the very next. At times, the energy of its grindhouse pastiche can feel addictive; at others, it just seems like the work of someone who’s sat through Tarantino movies too often. For his… Continue reading Hunters
Pour leur première collaboration les deux titans du cinéma britannique, Helen Mirren et Ian McKellen, se retrouvent dirigés par le réalisateur Bill Condon dans un thriller malheureusement décevant. Ce film est un bon exemple d’à quoi ressemble le cinéma dit « pour adulte », un genre en voie de disparition avec l’hégémonie Disney. Ce film peut… Continue reading L’art du mensonge
Now here’s a mystery worth solving: Why doesn’t Hollywood give us more ridiculously complicated, gratuitously eccentric whodunits? You know, the kind of all-star affairs where a colorful assortment of highly suspicious characters gather in a remote manor, or at an old castle, or on the Orient Express, in order to be confronted by a corpse… Continue reading Criminally Good Time
A basic problem for filmmakers to overcome in space movies is the demand of exposition. The required world-building of a movie, about hypothetical lives in the imaginary future, would seem to work at cross purposes to James Gray’s usual method; which is to take the recognisable and infuse it, from the start, with a personal… Continue reading To the Stars
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