For some inexplicable reason, Netflix seems to have set its sights on reviving the early-to- mid 90’s boom of erotic thrillers, old-fashioned melodramas mixed with vague neo-noir trappings and done up with a patina of sex and slick, gauzy cinematography (think anything with Rebecca De Mornay or Sean Young from the era). Earthquake Bird fits the bill, and also boasts the dubious distinction of being about 5 years too late to jump on the Gillian Flynn-adjacent Gone Girl and Making a Murderer bandwagons. Earthquake Bird is…
The Irishman tells the probably-not-entirely-true story of Robert DeNiro’s Frank Sheeran, using cutting-edge visual effects technology to place him inside some of the most important events in American history, right next to a lot of famous people, many of whom wind up dead. It’s…
Scott Aukerman’s Between Two Ferns: The Movie barely qualifies as a movie, in much the same way that Between Two Ferns barely qualifies as a TV show. The long running Funny or Die sketch featuring Zach Galifianakis as a hilariously inept local access celebrity…
It’s incredibly difficult for a television show to stick the landing. Long running programs tend to become different things for different viewers, particularly shows that have fully lodged themselves into pop culture. For every controversial ending (I’m thinking Seinfeld, Lost, and especially The Sopranos) there are…
It is endlessly frustrating to see Netflix continue to gobble up talented, idiosyncratic directors and spew out garbled, muddled nonsense. As critic Katie Rife recently wrote over at The AV Club, “the streaming service seems to have a knack for commissioning original films from…
One must marvel at Travis Scott’s dramatic cultural ascendancy. The 28-year-old hip-hop artist currently operates in the highest strata of pop stardom, put there by his rabid, young fanbase. And yet a mere five years ago, it seemed as if Scott would end up…
Directed by Nahnatchka Khan and starring Ali Wong and Randall Park, Always Be My Maybe is a rara avis. It’s a romantic comedy with Asian-American leads, and that alone would make it worthy of attention. But this film does much more than just mechanically…
Point Blank is an unnecessary, and altogether unremarkable, remake of a 2010 French film of the same title — which is itself fairly mediocre as well. Credit where it’s due: both films have a great hook. An injured criminal is placed under arrest in…
With films like D.A. Pennebaker’s seminal 1967 documentary Don’t Look Back and Todd Haynes’s shapeshifting 2007 musical drama I’m Not There, the cinema has maintained a steady preoccupation with the myth of Robert Zimmerman. Fourteen years after Martin Scorsese first took on the legendary…
The Sandman operates in a curious strata these days, as the haters have had to concede to the fact that There Is Something To Adam Sandler — thanks to stray cool-guy director cosigns — even as the bulk of the man’s output is still…