TV amp; Movies Reviews

Superhero films didn’t start with Robert Downey Jr. declaring “I am Iron Man” — there were blockbuster hits, huge swing-and-a-miss failures, and pockets of comic-book cinematic universes way before the MCU came along. The history of Marvel at the movies is long, complicated, and a virtual multiverse of copyright ownerships …

“You think every story is your story,” Maddie Morganstern’s son Seth bitterly argues late in the Apple TV+ miniseries Lady in the Lake. This is a common accusation other characters level at Maddie (Natalie Portman), a Jewish woman in mid-Sixties Baltimore who has left Seth (Noah Jupe) and her husband …

Martin Scorsese is recognized as a champion of cinema, a man who’s dedicated his life to preserving the seventh art, the former model for the single most 1970s beard ever and our greatest living American filmmaker. What folks usually forget to mention is that the 81-year-old director is also our …

If a massive tornado was to pick up your house Wizard of Oz-style, spin it through space and time, and drop it into a mall parking lot in 1996, there’s a good chance that you’d see a line of folks waiting to see a disaster flick. Specifically, one in which …

It’s a fine line between genius and madness, and an even thinner, barely visible gossamer thread that demarcates genius and being categorized as difficult. Faye Dunaway has been labeled both, though in a competition between those two descriptives, “difficult” often had a three-to-one lead. Most documentaries about legendary stars would …

You do not meet John Whitfield, known to friends and enemies alike by his nickname Divine G, as a person convicted of a crime. You are introduced to him onstage as a performer, bringing a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream to a close as an audience of fellow incarcerated …

According to the movies, there are really only four jobs: assassin; hooker (heart of gold optional); President of the United States of America; and FBI agent who hunts down serial killers and risks safety and sanity in doing so. Everything else can be filled under miscellaneous: doctor, lawyer, cop who …

America is in crisis. It’s the late 1960s, and President John F. Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade has yet to be fulfilled. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration — NASA, for short — has experienced a major setback when a …

Are we on the verge of Hot TV Robot Summer? This week on HBO, Julio Torres’ delightfully, defiantly weird comedy Fantasmas is finishing up its first season, and one of the main characters is Bibo, a helpful yet pushy household robot whose secret desire is to become an actor. Now …

Once upon a time in 1970s Texas, a group of filmmakers traveled to a remote farmhouse to shoot what they hoped would be the Citizen Kane of porno flicks. Only one of them would leave that quaint rural residence alive. Cut to: that same “Final Girl” close to a decade …