[Inhales] OK, right, so when last we left Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), the socially awkward magical zoologist renowned as a scholar of fantastic beasts (and not coincidentally, where to find them!), he was preparing — along with Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), hot-for-teacher Hogwarts’ hunk and future Harry Potter mentor — …
Read More »The Michael Bay 'Ambulance' Movie Review Drinking Game
A few decades back, an older, wiser critic said — we’re paraphrasing slightly here — that the problem wasn’t that we’re plagued by bad movies, but that we are now plagued by the same bad movie over and over again. This goes double for the works of director Michael Bay, …
Read More »'Tokyo Vice': What If 'Miami Vice' Had a White-Savior Complex?
In one episode of the new HBO Max crime drama Tokyo Vice, American-born newspaper reporter Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) is running his Japanese editor Eimi (Rinko Kikuchi) through the many deceased victims of the elaborate criminal conspiracy he has uncovered. After a moment, she interrupts his generic descriptions to point …
Read More »'Apollo 10 1/2': Richard Linklater Takes an Animated Space Trip Down Memory Lane
Nostalgia can be a curse, a poison, a mind-killer far worse than fear. Unless, of course, it’s your subjective nostalgia — then it’s a sentimental journey through the various signposts and miscellaneous debris that have made you the person you are today. Or: it’s nostalgia as filtered through the lens …
Read More »'Slow Horses' Stars Gary Oldman as a Stinker, Failure, Older Spy
Midway through Apple TV+’s new British spy series Slow Horses, veteran intelligence agent Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) studies a dead body at the bottom of the steps to his dingy office. Lamb’s mortified underling Min Harper (Dustin Demri-Burns) insists that he didn’t mean to kill this man. “Of course you …
Read More »'Moon Knight' Is Oscar Isaac's MCU Debut — and Kind of a Mess
Midway through the second episode of Disney+’s new Marvel series Moon Knight, mercenary Marc Spector has a heart-to-heart conversation with museum gift shop clerk Steven Grant. This is complicated by the fact that Marc and Steven are two different personalities — both played by Oscar Isaac — of the same …
Read More »'Bridgerton' Returns — With New Lovers, More Gossip, and Way Less Sex
With Daphne Basset (Phoebe Dynevor) now engrossed in her duties as the Duchess of Hastings, and her husband offscreen for the foreseeable future — fare thee well, Regé-Jean Page — the Ton’s inquiring gaze must inevitably turn to more current prospects. Yes, Bridgerton is back, and with it the debut …
Read More »'X': Two Grindhouse Staples — Horror and Porn — Combined Into One Neo-Exploitation Classic
Bloody. Brutal. Grungier than a big-city back alley and more guts-strewn than a slaughterhouse. This is how you like your slasher-flick horror, and trust us when we say Ti West has your back. Part of a young, hungry generation of horror auteurs weaned on the grindhouse canon, he’s dabbled in …
Read More »'Deep Water': Erotic Thriller Spells Deep Trouble for Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas
The return of a master of the genre, they said. Maybe the erotic thriller isn’t dead after all, they said. Never mind that the release of the Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas thriller Deep Water— director Adrian Lyne’s first movie since Unfaithful 20 years ago —was repeatedly delayed. This …
Read More »'The Torch': Buddy Guy Gives a Lesson on How to Play the Blues — and Keep the Music Alive
That moldy-peaches cliché “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” has rarely applied to anyone as much as Buddy Guy. As his former protégé Joe Bonamassa says in The Torch, a new doc about Guy, the now-85-year-old blues guitarist and singer is “the last man standing.” He really is: …
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