TV amp; Movies Reviews

Eight movies. Five directors. Three dozen character actors. Two dozen exotic locales, each one of them the perfect background for globetrotting espionage. A dozen action set pieces. A half dozen peeled-off masks. One best-of-show brawl set in a public bathroom. Numerous car chases, motorcycle chases, helicopter chases, explosions, collateral-damage relationships, …

As a filmmaker, J.J. Abrams wears his influences on his sleeve. A die-hard Twilight Zone fan, he turned an episode of his first series, Felicity, into a black-and-white riff on that show’s famous “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” while Lost was full of Rod Serling-esque twists. Abrams’ films …

Is the title character of the new Apple TV+ series Murderbot the most relatable person, machine, or other in science fiction history? Yes, the security unit (played by Alexander Skarsgård) has no genitals and various deadly weapons built into its artificial body. But its desires are simple:“All I really wanted …

In the early months of 2003, a film that had been building buzz on the festival circuit the year before began to make its way to American arthouses. A story of twentysomethings caught up in petty crime and the punishment of perpetual restlessness — and blessed with the English title …

Meet Craig Waterman, the world’s most socially awkward suburbanite. The fact that he’s played by Tim Robinson — co-creator of the brilliant sketch show-slash-meme-generator I Think You Should Leave — tells you everything you need to know from the jump. Craig’s wife Tami (Kate Mara), a cancer survivor clearly still …

There is an alt-timeline in which Rust, writer-director Joel Souza’s pulpy and pathos-fueled Western, is just another tale of an outlaw in his autumn years. It’s simply the latest entry in a genre whose century-plus history is filled with similarly modest sagebrush epics. After a brief theatrical run, a slightly …

In an episode of the new Netflix comedy The Four Seasons, Tina Fey’s character, Kate, compares a situation to Zelig, an obscure Woody Allen film from 1983. Kate’s husband Jack (Will Forte) sarcastically replies, “Oh, that’s a really fresh reference!” The Four Seasons is perhaps an even less fresh reference. …

Early on in Marvel’s Thunderbolts* — after we’ve seen special operative Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) plummet off a skyscraper in Kuala Lumpur, but before we see Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) wash his prosthetic limb in a dishwasher — a gala event is held in what used to be the Avengers …

What if Rain Man was Batman? Sounds like the pitch for a comedy sketch that would have absolutely slayed in the summer of 1989. So it’s worth remembering that The Accountant, the 2016 action thriller that ran with that premise, was merely a preposterous crock and not some outdated outrage. …

Early in the second season of Andor, an Imperial officer considers a situation where he could arrest someone for being an undocumented immigrant, or use the threat of arrest to make that person do his bidding. Reveling in the power he has at the moment, he says, “The situation requires… …