On the surface, Julie Ha and Eugene Yi’s Free Chol Soo Lee tells the story of an infamous wrongful conviction and its long cultural aftermath. If you recognize the name, you know the story. In Chinatown, San Francisco, in 1973, a man named Yip Yee Tak was gunned down on …
Read More »'House of the Dragon' Is 'Game of Thrones' Minus the Fire
The massive sprawl of Game of Thrones could be both blessing and curse. The HBO fantasy epic had a seemingly bottomless and varied well of colorful characters and places from which to draw stories, and to keep the audience from growing tired of any one corner of its fictional world. …
Read More »'Beast': Idris Elba Battles the 'Cujo' of Lions
“It’s the law of the jungle,” one character says fairly early on in Beast — “early” as in after we’ve established that a lion decides to become a four-legged vigilante once some poachers slaughter his pride, but before this one-cat army sets his sights on our hero and his family. …
Read More »'She-Hulk: Attorney at Law': The MCU Takes on the Sitcom
Among the running gags of Disney+’s new Marvel series She-Hulk: Attorney At Law is that its title character — a.k.a. Jennifer Walters, cousin to Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk, who becomes big and green after their blood accidentally intermingles in a car accident — hates her own nickname. “It’s so dumb!” she …
Read More »'Emily the Criminal': Aubrey Plaza Wants to Stick It to the Man
Early in Emily the Criminal, Emily Benetto (Aubrey Plaza, sporting a New Jersey-native accent) is asked about her permanent record in a job interview. It’s a trick question. Despite telling her otherwise, this prospective employer has already done a background check. They already know about the low points on her …
Read More »'Fall': The Only Thing You Have to Fear Is Holy-Shit Panic-Inducing Heights
In the satisfyingly corny Fall, directed by Scott Mann, two women get stranded atop a rusted, obsolete TV tower — a slim, rickety death trap that they had no business climbing in the first place. But what would be the fun in playing by the rules? Grace Caroline Currey plays …
Read More »'Emergency Declaration' Is South Korea's 'Snakes on a Plane,' But With Covid
A standard direct flight from Incheon International Airport in South Korea to Honolulu clocks in at a little over 10 hours, and a lot can happen in the duration of that dawn-to-near-dusk journey. You could start and finish a medium-sized book or work your way through a season of a …
Read More »'This Fool': Damn, It Feels Good (Not) to Be a Gangster
While considering the winning new Hulu comedy This Fool, the hardest question to answer is this: Who is the titular fool? One possibility is Julio, played by comedian Chris Estrada, who borrowed aspects of his own life to co-create the show with Pat Bishop, Jake Weisman, and Matt Ingebretson. Julio …
Read More »'A League of Their Own': There's Still No Crying in Baseball — Just Room for Fixing Old Errors
A League of Their Own is a pretty darn perfect movie. The Penny Marshall-directed film from 1992, about the women recruited to play professional baseball while so many men were off fighting World War II, is a crackerjack sports movie, a winning ensemble comedy, and a well-hit drama about female …
Read More »'Summering' Works Better as a Mood Than It Does a Movie
There’s a moment within the first few minutes of Summering — James Ponsoldt’s delicate, affectionate tribute to the wonder years (or more specifically, the seasonal wonder months) between childhood’s end and teenage riots — that captures the blurred, giddy adrenaline rush of youth in full bloom. Four girls are goofing …
Read More »