Top of the Lake: China Girl airs on SundanceTV Jane Campion’s initial plan for Top of the Lake, her SundanceTV drama about sexual violence in a rural New Zealand town, was for the story of haunted detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) to come to a full stop at the end…
Strong Island premieres on Netflix on September 15. The tragic truth remains that all it takes in America for a white person to get away with killing a black person is for the white person to convince the right people — a judge, a jury, a prosecutor — of his…
In Columbus, architecture takes the place of emotions, to sometimes startling effect. An outwardly chilly, resolutely static film that nevertheless finds poignancy in the most surprising places, Kogonada’s directorial debut does a couple of important things so well that I can’t help but forgive the things it doesn’t. (Kogonada, by…
Say what you will about James Cameron, but the man commits. Stories of the director’s perfectionism, his control-freak mania and his sheer drive are legion, but I’m talking about something more fundamental to the work itself. Whereas most action filmmakers are content to let emotion and morality take a backseat…
Our resident GoT expert weighs in.
Fire Chasers premieres September 8 on Netflix. The greatest surprise is the beauty. The gripping new Netflix documentary series Fire Chasers opens with visions of orange-and-black hell, of ash and apocalypse, of California homes and trees and horizons ablaze, of the sky itself now some jack-o’-lantern’s smile. The fire brightens…
It floats in the darkness, unspooling onscreen with a sepulchral glow. It has waited for what seems like an eternity to meet the eyes of its audience, and it senses in them both anticipation and dread. Yes, there was that bizarre miniseries back in 1990 (God, remember Tim Curry in…
In Eliza Hittman’s debut feature, It Felt Like Love, a young girl tests the waters of adult sexuality, offering her body up to the statuesque bros who live in her Eastern Seaboard beach town. She tries her hardest to mimic the women in pornos, the ones all the boys want,…
In adapting for the screen the long, hard story of Colin Warner — a Trinidadian native who, as a Brooklyn teenager in 1980, was wrongfully convicted of murder and sent to prison for more than 20 years — Matt Ruskin’s Crown Heights moves along in a counterproductive hurry. Scenes rich…
Is there a more telling symptom of the sickness afflicting studio filmmaking right now than the fact that there aren’t more good Reese Witherspoon comedies out there? In eras past, a hit could be built more years than not around a star like her. Sunny yet tart, she’s a romantic…
The original French title of Belgian director Joachim Lafosse’s latest domestic drama is L’economie du couple, which translates (awkwardly) as “The Economy of the Couple.” It’s understandable that a U.S. distributor would opt instead for the rather nondescript and bland After Love — who the hell wants to see a…
It’s September and TV is back so praise the lord and pass the Postmates app, because I’m not trying to leave my apartment unless it’s to protest Donald Trump. It’s just TV, protest Trump and repeat. Happy fall! Sept. 5, FX, American Horror Story: Cult This season of Ryan Murphy’s…
Here’s what you didn’t see if you aren’t from there. Here are the voices you didn’t hear if you didn’t go there. Here’s the pain you can’t fully comprehend if you’re white, as I am, if you’re just watching on TV, if life has taught you that just saying sir…
Here’s a shocker: What might’ve seemed an ill-advised sequel to a surprisingly not-bad little hockey comedy is … surprisingly not bad! In fact, in some ways Goon: Last of the Enforcers actually manages to improve upon its forebear, connecting on jabs at a rate roughly equal to that of the…
In one sense, Steven Spielberg’s 1977 UFO bliss-out, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is reprehensible. It is, after all, the story of a daydreamer dad (Richard Dreyfuss) who leaves his family for worlds unknown as he continually trades in one slender, luminous life companion for another: Teri Garr for…
Twin Peaks: The Return airs Sundays on Showtime. Live long enough, and people may surprise you. The biggest pricks you grew up with — the bullies or blowhards or preening kings of the high school — grow up, too. Sometimes they even turn out all right. Sometimes they’re even stung,…
On a crowded Brooklyn street, an Orthodox Jew adjusts his yarmulke, a tefillin bag under his arm. He speaks on a smartphone and practically struts. The man, as dandified as one can look in a black suit and a white shirt, is a red herring in Menashe. Several other Brooklynites,…
To honor the late comedian.
Since it premiered at Cannes earlier this year, the Safdie brothers’ man-on-the-run, darkly comedic thriller Good Time has been hailed as something of a return to classic New York movies, i.e. from before the Giuliani cleanup, when Martin Scorsese was experimenting with cinema on the streets. In this film, Ben…
Aubrey Plaza is a national treasure, but the movies still haven’t figured out what to do with her. Ingrid Goes West comes close, though, with its twisted, of-the-moment tale of an Instagram stalker who infiltrates the personal life of a social media celebrity. But for all its many virtues, it…
Once more, into the Brie — or, in this case, the Manchego. For the third time, now, for Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, it’s the feast as improv proving ground, the sumptuous meal as arena of competitive discernment: Who can better parse and parody the particularities of some beloved British…
Whitney: Can I Be Me premieres on Aug. 25 on Showtime In the February 2016 issue of ESPN The Magazine, Danyel Smith penned a powerful essay on Whitney Houston’s chill-inducing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Super Bowl XXV, perhaps the pinnacle of national anthem performances. Smith frames Houston as…
