TV amp; Movies Reviews

The charming new FX comedy English Teacher opens with its hero — Austin, Texas high school educator Evan Marquez, played by the series’ creator, Brian Jordan Alvarez — preparing for another day of work. As the pulse of Michael Sembello’s synth-pop classic “Maniac” (from the Flashdance soundtrack) pounds, we see …

Midway through the fourth season of Only Murders in the Building, NYPD Detective Williams (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) complains once again about how true-crime podcasters Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selena Gomez) keep stumbling their way into and through murder investigations. Her objection isn’t just to these three …

Some five decades separate director Victor Erice’s debut film, The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), and his latest, Close Your Eyes. In between these twin professional highlights, there are two other features — El Sur (1983), a work haunted by the fact that filming was halted before a key scene …

There are a few cardinal rules that every screen character should live by: Don’t go in the basement. Never get off the boat. Never go against the family. And for fuck’s sake, never, ever go to a private island where a tech bro and his toxic buddies like to chill …

What do you remember most about the 1994 movie The Crow? Is it the soundtrack, a semiperfect hodgepodge of industrial-music MVPs (My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, Machines of Loving Grace, Nine Inch Nails), next-gen alt-rock (Helmet, Rage Against the Machine, Stone Temple Pilots), and goth royalty (the Cure)? …

At a TED talk in 2012, Angela Patton, the CEO of the nonprofit organization Girls for Change, told a story. She was running a summer immersion program in Richmond, Virginia, called Camp Diva. Patton asked the dozen or so attendees if there was something the camp could do to foster …

“A haunted-house film set in a spaceship” — that’s how Ridley Scott‘s groundbreaking science-fiction/horror mash-up Alien was characterized when it was released in 1979. It’s not a bad description, actually. Then James Cameron came aboard for Aliens and upped the velocity factor, essentially turning the 1986 sequel into a roller …

It’s been nearly 30 years since Vince Vaughn first exploded onto movie screens as Trent, the slick, confident best friend to Jon Favreau’s Mikey in Swingers, who was forever convinced that a trip to Las Vegas could solve any emotional problem. In the decades since, Vaughn has never lost that …

There may not be a movie that has more BDE (Brooklyn Dad Energy) than Good One — you’d have to go to closing time at a Park Slope bar with nothing but The National on the jukebox to find a more concentrated dose of paternal moodiness than writer-director India Donaldson’s …

Deep in the forests of Germany, there is a resort, a quaint getaway nestled right at the bottom of the Bavarian Alps. Step out of your car, and you immediately feel like you’re stepping into a postcard; you half expect men in lederhosen, hoisting large steins of Pilsner, to greet …