At this point, it’s a rite of passage for each generation to have their own show full of sexy teens running on a beach. Everyone knows Outer Banks is no different — everyone, that is, except the show itself. One of Netflix’s most successful young adult series, Outer Banks premiered …
Read More »Netflix Probes Alex Murdaugh's Trail of Dead Bodies and Missing Millions
If you have a taste for lurid news you probably know that Alex Murdaugh is currently on trial in Walterboro, South Carolina, for the murder of his wife and younger son. It’s the kind of story that makes true-crime mavens drool: a once-prominent, now-disgraced lawyer is charged with bloody heinousness. …
Read More »A Sensual Portrait of a Brilliant Young Woman Far Ahead of Her Time
Frances O’Connor’s Emily, her directorial debut, takes a familiar literary biography and garnishes it with the right kind of creative liberties — the vibrant, suggestive kind. It’s the story of Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights, younger sister to Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre and Villette. Emily isn’t a straight …
Read More »Netflix's 'Perfect Match' Is Horny, Utterly Ridiculous Fun
Back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, there was a CBS show called Circus of the Stars. The show featured a mélange of early ‘90s network TV stars, from Alfonso Ribeiro to Bronson Pinchot to Six from Blossom. It gave fans a thrill to see all of these beloved …
Read More »'Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey' Is a Torture-Porn Travesty
At the outset of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, an independent horror film that makes feral killers out of the cuddly animals from beloved children’s books, you hope for some entertaining grindhouse slasher. Two minutes in, you’re reduced to praying that it’s “so bad it’s good.” And by the time Pooh …
Read More »'Sharper,' Apple TV+'s Con-Artist Caper, Is a Lot Less Sexy Than It Thinks It Is
Benjamin Caron’s Sharper, Apple TV+’s sleek but unsatisfying new thriller, needed to be a little smarter to work. It’s more plain than titillating, more predictable than mysterious. But its opening stretch is pleasurably deceptive. Sandra (Briana Middleton) is a grad student at NYU who walks into a humble indie bookstore …
Read More »'Return to Seoul' Is One of the Best Identity-Crisis Movies Ever
“Do you know what sight-reading is?” a young woman asks her dining companions. Neither of them know, so she explains: When you look over a score for the first time, “you have to able to analyze the music in one glance, evaluate the danger… and jump in.” The key is …
Read More »One of the Most Controversial Movies Ever Is Back in Theaters
Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible — the notoriously graphic, 12-scene rape-revenge tragedy from 2002 — still has the capacity, to say nothing of the will, to shock. The movie premiered at Cannes to jeers and walkouts, a long tail of outrage and a reputation that would grow to precede and overshadow the …
Read More »'Star Trek: Picard' Season 3 Finds Its Magic by Reuniting the 'Next Generation' Crew
Early in the new season of Star Trek: Picard, our eponymous hero (played, as always, by Patrick Stewart) and his companion Laris (Orla Brady) are supervising the donation of many of his career mementos to various Starfleet and Federation museums. Jean-Luc fears being an old relic who just waxes on …
Read More »'Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania' Feels Like the MCU Has Lost Its Way
You guys remember the Quantum Realm, right? Of course you do! That’s the universe right beneath our own, which you can only get to by going “subatomic” and shrinking down to beyond-microscopic size. The same one that Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), better known as Ant-Man, found himself floating through after …
Read More »