The Old Guard navigates familiar genre terrain but with enough punch to put the hetero white male actioner ethos on notice. Every big-budget action flick should be as effortlessly entertaining as The Old Guard. Written by Greg Rucka, adapted from his own comic book co-created with Leandro Fernandez, and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, The Old Guard balances its high-concept sci-fi conceit with top-notch character work, philosophical and existential musings, and absolutely kick-ass action. The film follows a roster of near-immortal warriors who have…
Ever since H.G. Wells unleashed The Time Machine upon the world in 1895, artists have used the conceit to impart important life lessons, waxing broadly on everything from mortality to regret to the meaning of existence. Wells was the first to offer a science-based…
There is more than a bit of irony to be found in the fact that the new Will Ferrell/Netflix comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is being released in 2020, the first year since the singing competition’s inception in 1956 that…
Olivier Assayas produced a stunningly idiosyncratic series of works in the 2010s, even by his typically eclectic standards. From the mammoth Carlos to the autobiographical Something in the Air to the cryptic chamber dramas Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper, Assayas seemed to be searching for new forms, new avenues…
Spike Lee’s newest joint, Da 5 Bloods, makes perfectly clear its influences when, within the first five minutes, the camera pans out from a giant poster of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic Vietnam War treatise Apocalypse Now, itself a spin on Joseph Conrad’s high school…
Describing Sofia Behrs Tolstaya, a diarist and photographer who remains better known as the wife of Leo Tolstoy, Elizabeth Hardwick wrote: “With her mangled intelligence, her operatic, intolerable frenzies of distress, she comes forth still with an almost menacing aliveness, saying it all like…
The Vast of Night opens with an assured and prefatory walk-and-talk, an extended tracking shot that first follows first Everett (Jake Horowitz), a local radio show host, and then adds Fay (Sierra McCormick), a student and switchboard operator — both young residents of 1950s Cayuga,…
On September 27, 2014, the CW Network cut animation out of their Saturday morning bloc. They were the last network to do so. It was replaced with live-action family-friendly series, mirroring a general trend away from expensive, skilled labor needed for cartoons and toward…
Since being plucked from relative obscurity by uber-producer Kevin Feige, the Russo brothers, Joe and Anthony, have become two of the most commercially successful directors of all time. They now seem determined to emulate their former boss, albeit on a smaller scale. Creating their…
My wife and two children have been at home since March 14th. I worked until the 17th, as my company waffled back and forth over reducing hours of operation before finally giving up and shutting its doors entirely, furloughing all employees until further notice.…
