TV amp; Movies Reviews

There’s a moment in The Beach Boys, the new documentary about the pioneers of California pop music streaming now on Disney+, in which rock historian and USC professor Josh Kun raises a question that has haunted the band throughout the bulk of its career: “Who are we as artists?” In …

Every superhero gets an origin story. So, for that matter, do most supervillains. The Apprentice drops viewers into New York circa 1973, when a 34-year-old resident of Queens walked in to the upper-crust establishment on the Upper West Side known as Le Club. He went there in an attempt to …

Imagine a world in which Stephen Sondheim made Sicario. Yes, that Stephen Sondheim; yes, that 2015 thriller about the world of Mexican drug cartels. Got that? Good. Now add in Selena Gomez as the wife of a narco who, in a moment of deep grief and remembrance, utters the line, …

Those lucky enough to have discovered Yorgos Lanthimos right as he was establishing himself as a world-cinema weirdo — we’d carbon-date the initial who-the-fuck-is-this-guy?! moment as mid-2009, when his breakthrough film Dogtooth was worming its way through the festival circuit — remember what a shock it was to encounter the …

At one point in the new Apple TV+ miniseries The Big Cigar, Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton (André Holland) attends a party and recalls the time he and film producer Bert Schneider (Alessandro Nivola) tried to write a movie about his life, which would have starred comedian Richard …

Some 45 years ago, the Cannes Film Festival invited Francis Ford Coppola to bring his latest project to the French Riviera for a special “work-in-progress” screening. The movie’s production had already achieved a mythic status as an example of Murphy’s Law made manifest, from last-minute actor replacements to monsoons to …

She is watchful, wary, able to ward off Wasteland degenerates and War Boys alike with a well-aimed headshot. She’s a survivor, a scrapper, someone who makes a compelling case for smeared axle grease as a postapocalyptic fashion statement. You need someone to do repair work on a War Rig going …

Amy Jade Winehouse could have been any young woman growing up in 1990s London — palling around with her mates, sneaking lagers, shagging dudes, getting into trouble, getting her nose pierced, and getting expelled from drama school for it. (That, and a few other reasons.) Until she opened her mouth, …

In Netflix‘s new series Bodkin, hard-bitten newspaper reporter Dove (Siobhán Cullen) is forced to team up with veteran podcaster Gilbert (Will Forte) to investigate a 25-year-old mystery in the eponymous Irish town. The reluctant partners clash on everything, not least of which is that Dove thinks they can, and should, …

Think back to your teenage years, and a few incidents, days, dates, etc., spring immediately to mind. Most of what comes flooding back probably are the sensations that colored that time of your life — the feelings you had while pissing away whole afternoons with friends, not knowing what late …