There are no trilled notes, no stirring group musical numbers, no talk of castles on clouds in French-Malian director Ladj Ly’s directorial debut. You will hear, however, the songs of angry men, expressed in a way that drives home the point of their rage and rancor. It is not a …
Read More »'Watchmen' Review: A Dazzling Reinvention of a Landmark Comic
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen landed on comic book fans in the fall of 1986 with the force of a thunderbolt, if not that of a giant psychic interdimensional squid. (You kind of had to be there.) The series was, among other things, a murder mystery, an alternate history …
Read More »'Honeyland': To Bee or Not to Bee
A woman walks down a dusty, sunbaked road. She hikes along a mountain ridge, prying a small, flat slab from the craggy wall with a small steel tool. When she removes it, you can hear the buzzing of bees filling the soundtrack. This is her secret honey stash; she will …
Read More »'Brightburn' Review: What If Baby Superman Broke Bad?
What if baby Superman crashed onto Earth and turned out to be an evil bastard instead of a do-gooder? That’s the idea behind Brightburn, a horror show that doesn’t have a clue about what to do with a clever premise. Produced by James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), who unfortunately …
Read More »Zac Efron's Ted Bundy Performance Is Good, Not Killer
There’s a daring concept behind this off-kilter Netflix movie about the kinder and gentler side of serial killer Ted Bundy that should have worked: How can a pretty face blind us to the demon lurking inside? Zac Efron perfectly embodies the hotness that drew women to law-student Bundy even after …
Read More »'Avengers: Endgame' Review: The MCU's Long Goodbye Is an Emotional Wipeout
Thanos demands my silence. So if you expect a lot of specific “who lives, who dies” spoilers in this review, snap out of it. However, it is fair to say that Avengers: Endgame, directed by the Russo brothers — Anthony and Joseph — with a fan’s reverence for all that …
Read More »'Brockmire' Season 3 Review: A Peak TV Home Run
“Going from drunk asshole to sober asshole isn’t the makeover you think it is,” Jim Brockmire’s new broadcast partner Gabby tells him in the third season premiere of IFC’s astonishingly filthy — and even more astonishingly sincere — baseball comedy Brockmire. Season One chronicled the return of the titular honey-voiced …
Read More »'The Lego Movie 2' Review: Everything Is Still Awesome-ish, Kind Of
Remember when The Lego Movie came out in 2014, and how we all thought it would be the cinematic equivalent of cheap plastic — only to end up laughing our asses off at how meta-clever it was at skewering brand culture? And remember how, in 2017, The Lego Batman Movie …
Read More »'Sex Education' Review: Brit Teen-Sex Comedy Covers All the Bases
“Intercourse can be wonderful,” Jean Milburn tells her son Otis. “But it can also cause tremendous pain. And if you’re not careful, sex can destroy lives.” Jean would know. She is a sex therapist and bestselling author on the subject, but her marriage to Otis’ father (also a sex therapist …
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