“And if my thought-dreams could be seen,” a wise man named Bob Dylan once said, “they’d probably put my head in a guillotine.” Chaos Walking, an adaptation of Patrick Ness’s young-adult trilogy about a planet where one’s private hopes and fears become public audiovisual transmissions, cribs the sentiment from that …
Read More »'Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar': They Should've Stayed Home
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is designed to be difficult to dislike — but if you’re not the type to back down from a challenge, it gets easier. The purposely messy, garish and disposable comedy from Bridesmaids writers Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, who also star as …
Read More »'Moonbase 8': TV's Latest Space Oddity
Imitation is the sincerest form of television. Every now and then, though, the imitation gets especially weird. There was the year both ABC and the WB premiered shows (That Was Then and Do Over) about middle-aged men who were sent back in time to relive their adolescence. Or the year …
Read More »'Letter to You' Review: Bruce Springsteen's Long, Loving Look Back
Bruce Springsteen looks old. He doesn’t seem like he’s old — at 71, he appears to be in better physical shape than most of us were at 21. Judging from the vigor he shows in Letter to You, Thom Zimny’s documentary (it begins streaming on Apple TV on Oct. 23rd), …
Read More »'On the Rocks': Bill and Sofia's Excellent New York Adventure
Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks (in theaters now; it starts streaming on Apple TV+ on October 23rd), is in many ways a straightforwardly neurotic New York comedy — albeit one run through the stylishly lensed, muted discontent familiar to this director’s work. It’s a little zany, a little blue, emotionally …
Read More »'The 24th' Review: Revisiting a Riot, and a Historical Racial Injustice
On the evening of August 23rd, 1917, while American boys fought next to their brethren overseas, a group of soldiers marched into the streets of Houston, Texas. They begun firing on locals, many of whom were officers of the law. By the time the sun rose the next morning, 11 …
Read More »'How to Build a Girl' Review: Combine Rock-Critic Snark With Coming-of-Age Tale
This film adaptation of Caitlin Moran semi-autobiographical 2014 novel How To Build a Girl, about a teen rock critic who learns to grow past her own cosmetically-applied cynicism, is never as wicked, winning and bruisingly comic as it needs to be. But lead actress Beanie Feldstein is all that and …
Read More »'Westworld' Season 3 Review: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
When HBO released the full trailer for the third season of Westworld, the reaction was near-pandemonium. Oh, the trailer got people excited, because of course it did — this is what trailers are designed to do. They are sales tools, and even god-awful movies and TV shows can sell themselves …
Read More »'High Fidelity' Review: Hulu Series Plays the Hits
Rob, the record-store-owning hero of Nick Hornby’s classic novel High Fidelity, has strong opinions on many musical subjects, particularly the making and deployment of a great mixtape. He has rules about what kinds of songs to use, in what order, and believes that structuring the playlist just the right way …
Read More »'The Gentlemen' Review: Lock, Stock, and Way Too Stale for Its Own Good
When was the last time you watched Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels? If you remember Guy Ritchie‘s debut hitting American screens back in the spring of 1999, you might recall how familiar it felt — we’d already spent most of the decade watching smooth criminals in clever, chatty caper …
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