When we meet Mel, the heroine of the new Hulu/Onyx Collective comedy How to Die Alone, she is living an existence that only a masochist might choose. She works at JFK Airport, driving a cart around the terminal to ferry passengers on their way to the kinds of trips she …
Read More »'Queer' Finds Daniel Craig Cruising for Sex, Drugs — and an Oscar
His name is Lee … Bill Lee. A man slouching toward middle age and suffering the malaise of someone who’s seen it all, heard it all, shot it all into his veins, he’s embraced the dissolute life of an ex-pat. Sporting an endless supply of filthy linen suits and ever-present …
Read More »'What a F-ckin' Ride!' Bruce Springsteen Hits Toronto for New Doc Premiere
You’re used to hearing the sound of “Bruce! Bruuuce! Broooooooooose!” in giant, rock-friendly arenas all over the world. The echo of fans screaming out Bruce Springsteen‘s name in the Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, however, feels weird — the 2,600 capacity venue is pretty intimate compared to most places the …
Read More »'The Brutalist' Is a New Great American Masterpiece
Imagine a film archivist scouring an underground vault in Burbank or a cave in Butte, Montana, and discovering a few dozen dusty film canisters tucked away in a corner. Reels of some long-lost project from Francis Ford Coppola, or Bernardo Bertolucci, or Michael Cimino circa the mid-1970s reside in these …
Read More »'Reagan' Is Everything the Right Gets Wrong About Art
There’s a reason that hardline American conservatives regard so many books, movies, TV shows, music, theater, and other creative arts as ideologically poisonous, tools for “indoctrinating” people with “woke” values or “grooming” children to adopt an LGBTQ+ identity and become sexually permissive. It’s because they find little value in a …
Read More »'His Three Daughters' Turns a Familiar Family Drama Into the Best Movie of the Year
You may love your family, though you might not like them very much, and just because you’re kin doesn’t mean you have anything in common. Take, for example, the three grown siblings who find themselves forced to share the same air in His Three Daughters. There is Katie (Carrie Coon), …
Read More »'Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos' Looks Back at the Iconic Mob Series — and the Man Who Made It
“I really regret the amount of fucking verbiage from this morning,” the man in Dr. Jennifer Melfi’s office says. “Who gives a shit, about all these personal questions?” While this could easily be a quote from Dr. Melfi’s most infamous patient, New Jersey wiseguy Tony Soprano, it is in fact …
Read More »'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice': Tim Burton's Long-Awaited Sequel Is Fine Fine
Tim Burton was already a graduate of the Disney hard-knocks school of animation, a filmmaker with a few shorts under his belt, and the man who helped Pee-wee Herman go from underground favorite to alpha-manchild of ’80s cinema, when he begun working on his sophomore film: a 1988 horror-comedy about …
Read More »5 Reasons to Start Watching 'Slow Horses'
In the new fourth season of Apple TV’s Slow Horses, the latest member of the comic thriller’s titular group of disgraced British spies suggests, “We can’t help anyone. This is a D-list unit with no unifying sense of purpose. Everyone here has been checked out and written off.” Yet these …
Read More »'Saturday Night' Turns 'SNL' Origin Story Into Late-Night 'Bad News Bears'
It was never going to work. They couldn’t give enough tickets away to fill the seats. There were sound issues, lighting issues, drug issues, ego issues. Some of the crew walked out. A key cast member wouldn’t sign his contract, then went missing right before the show was supposed to …
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