1303 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into French
Dead Boy Detectives
SimilarFantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, The Avengers: United They Stand,
Dead Boy Detectives is, by its nature, a strange beast. Both a spinoff of MAX’s now-finished Doom Patrol series and Netflix’s own Sandman, it began as a sort of backdoor pilot two and a half years ago in the third episode of Doom Patrol Season 3. However, this series tossed the actors portraying the Boys and their living friend Crystal for an entirely different trio of performers. Now George Rextrew plays Edwin, the uptight turn-of-the-century boy. Jayden Revri steps into the jacket of Edwin's late 80s punk adjacent partner Charles. Finally, Kassius Nelson portrays their modern and still of this mortal plane third wheel, teen medium Crystal Palace.
Soon after meeting and freeing Crystal from the clutches of a demon named David (David Iacono), the boys take her in, although Edwin is less than thrilled at the idea. Missing large chunks of her memory, she is anxious to throw herself into the boys’ work investigating cases for and about ghosts, usually in the name of sending them off to the Great Beyond. Their first case as a trio takes them away from their English home to Port Townsend, WA. Unfortunately, even after they close the case, forces conspire to keep the three stuck in the town. With only time to waste, they decide to make the best of it by solving the problems of Townsend’s surprisingly bustling phantom population.
Kassius Nelson accesses those spooky-ooky powers. (Netflix)
This kind of “neither here nor there” of the show’s beginning and the characters’ “house arrest” soon reveals itself as a kind of meta reflection of the series itself. Steve Yockey, the writer of that backdoor pilot episode and the creator of this series, clearly has enthusiasm and love for the concept and the characters. The central relationship between the spectral friends has a striking sweetness without being cloying. The two's connection never feels in doubt, even as they bicker or revelations of unrequited sexual attraction come to light. The scripting deftly avoids needless "can their friendship survive" melodrama or after-school special syrupiness. It doesn’t hurt that, despite the roster change, Rexstrew and Revri wear the roles like comfortable clothes. They give Edwin and Charles a casual depth that extends behind their simple archetypes. Continue Reading →
Knuckles
SimilarAtomic Train, KONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, La Femme Nikita, Mortal Kombat: Conquest,
Planet of the Apes Tabitha, That '70s Show, The Sarah Jane Adventures,
So. Knuckles the Echidna attends a Shabbat dinner. That isn't the start of a joke for an incredibly specific audience; that's the set-up for episode three of his new miniseries. Picking up where Sonic the Hedgehog 2 left him, the six-episode show follows the last of the Echidna Warriors on his epic, life-defining quest to define his life with something other than epic quests and grand battles. Knuckles trying to live his life as though his mission to protect the all-powerful Master Emerald was the alpha and omega of his existence only resulted in driving his foster mother, Maddie Wachowski (guest star Tika Sumpter), up the wall and getting himself grounded. So, after some prodding by Sonic (guest star Ben Schwartz) and the ghost of Echidna Chief Pachacamac (Christopher Lloyd), Knuckles gets down to figuring out who he wants to be and what he wants to do with his life.
His new purpose? Help Green Hills' goofball deputy sheriff Wade Whipple (Adam Pally) find his dignity by teaching him the ways of the Echidna Warrior so that he might apply those ways at a national bowling championship and, through struggle and glorious victory, put some ghosts from his past to rest. Their allies? Wade's loving, world-weary mom, Wendy (Stockard Channing), and his trying-way-too-hard FBI agent sister, Wanda (Edi Patterson). Their foes? A duo of rogue GUN agents (Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi and Ellie Taylor) who want to sell Knuckles to a Dr. Robotnik wannabe (Rory McCann), Wade's egomaniacal bounty hunter ex-best-friend Jack Sinclair (Julian Barratt), and a champion bowler who moonlights as an utterly despicable cretin (Cary Elwes).
Knuckles brandishing a rubber chicken is a lower-key moment in a gloriously goofy show. Paramount.
From the jump, Knuckles is deliberately and intensely silly. Knuckles' initial stubborn devotion to his life-is-the-capital-letters-MISSION-and-nothing-else mindset becomes a vehicle for action comedy beats built on the dissonance between the inherently ridiculous image of grown men being manhandled by an anthropomorphic echidna and the fact that ridiculous or not, Knuckles is absurdly strong and, when he wants to be, creative on the battlefield. When Sonic and Tails (guest star Colleen O'Shaughnessey) convince him to try making himself at home, Knuckles certainly does. After all, what's more homey than a giant throne in the dining room and swapping the den for an Echidna fighting pit? Continue Reading →
The Big Door Prize
SimilarA Dance to the Music of Time, KONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, M*A*S*H, Monarch of the Glen,
Planet of the Apes Roswell Tales from the Neverending Story, The Shining, The Strain, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles,
Watch afterDexter: New Blood, Severance,
Silo The Night Agent,
StarringJosh Segarra,
In Season 1, The Big Door Prize felt like a cracked mirror version of a small-town Stephen King story. When the Morpho Machine—a device that spits out a card revealing the user’s “potential”—arrives in Deerfield, it does indeed disrupt life. However, most Deerfield residents are nice. Or, at least, they're not mean in the “could be tempted by Randall Flagg or Leland Gaunt” way. As a result, the disruptions were more of a “the principal buys a motorcycle” and “that dad grieving the death of his son declares himself sheriff without ever abusing power.” No escalating series of pranks culminating in out-and-out bloodshed or betraying one’s former friends to the dark embodiment of evil found here.
For those expecting The Big Door Prize Season 2 to start stacking the bodies like cordwood, I have bad news. It keeps the King’s small-town vibes without wandering into King’s “the secrets we keep will literally tear us apart” territory. Opening moments after Season 1’s end, the Morpho machine has stopped spitting out cards, instead offering the town folk a move to the next level. While the result is, essentially, yet another projective test, the results bring a distinctly different flavor to the mix. While the series retains a certain goofiness, it also gains a sadder complexity. The longer we look at the characters, the more forced their good-time silliness becomes. Instead of the exception, Season 1's Father Reuben (Damon Gupton) centric fourth episode feels more like Season 2’s template.
Mary Holland and Josh Segarra nail the couples' costumes category. (AppleTV+)
To find that tone, the series does reshuffle its character decks. Many of the students we met last year are nowhere to be seen, for instance. New characters are introduced, including a music teacher played by Justine Lupe. Others, like Cass’s (Gabrielle Dennis) best friend Nat (Mary Holland), get a much bigger spotlight. The overall result gives the series a stronger ensemble feel, even if it is not necessarily without downsides. Continue Reading →
The Spiderwick Chronicles
SimilarKONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!,
Planet of the Apes The Lost World,
Studio20th Television, Paramount Television Studios,
As the opening minutes of Roku's The Spiderwick Chronicles is all too glad to remind us, "This is a dark fairy tale." A decidedly on-the-nose sentiment to blurt out to an audience in its beginning seconds, to be sure, but that matches the vibe of the series: A lot of spells, but very little magic. The show was rescued by Roku after Disney+ cut it in 2023 after completing the series; the move was ostensibly to cut costs, part of the streaming squeeze we're all going through as streamers start realizing it doesn't quite pay to firehouse out an endless stream of expensive content. But based on what we've seen, they may have been on to something.
Based on the early-aughts children's fantasy novels by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi and updated by Aron Eli Coleite, the show offers a coincidentally similar premise to Coleite's prior show, Netflix's Locke & Key: A mom and three siblings moving to their family's ancestral home in the wake of losing their father (here, it's to divorce), only to find magical secrets that lie inside. In Spiderwick, that family is the Graces, each of which has their own distinct quirks but not a lot of space to develop beyond them. There are twin brothers Jared (Lyon Daniels) and Simon (Noah Cottrell), the former with mental health issues and the latter with a chip on his shoulder about leaving their dad behind. Older sister Mallory (Mychala Lee) is a fencing prodigy whose meticulous life planning may be her biggest weakness. Mother Helen (Joy Bryant) is doing her best to hold the family together, all while trying to deal with her institutionalized Aunt Lucinda (a small but powerful guest turn from Charlayne Woodard), who continually goes on about boggarts and ogres and faeries.
The Spiderwick Chroniciles (Roku)
But based on the house they move in, the creaky, ancient Spiderwick estate, with its labyrinthine tunnels, and the large tree that grows in the middle of the foyer, there may be something to Aunt Lucinda's mutterings (and, it turns out, Jared's visions). Turns out their relative, Arthur Spiderwick (Arthur Jones), spent his life chronicling the fantastical creatures and artifacts he came across in his varying travels, collecting them all in a Field Guide that the kids happen upon not too far into the series. Trouble is, they're not the only ones looking for the guide: maniacal ogre Mulgarath (Christian Slater) wants it too, and for hardly altruistic reasons. Continue Reading →
Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver (In French: Rebel Moon – Partie 2 : L'Entailleuse)
Similar2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Alien (1979), Aliens (1986), Apollo 13 (1995), Armageddon (1998), Catwoman (2004), Con Air (1997), Die Hard (1988), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), You Only Live Twice (1967),
Watch afterRebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023),
My favorite moments in Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver come during quick breaths before a plunge.
In the first, warriors Tarak (Staz Nair) and Milius (Elise Duffy) come to terms with their likely imminent deaths at the hands of a smoke-spewing tank. Having spent years of his life consumed by survivor's guilt, Tarak thought having a cause to die for would be enough. It isn't. He wants to live, but he probably won't. The next best thing is to die fighting alongside a peer like Milius.
In the second, Kora (Sofia Boutella) is in the midst of blasting her way through the fearsome dreadnought King's Gaze. After slaying a warrior wielding a high-tech superheated sword, she takes a moment to catch her breath. With some pilfered cloth, she wraps the blade's hilt so she can use it without burning herself. It's a moment of improvisation, providing Boutella a chance to deliver a quieter piece of physical acting that stands in contrast to brawling with a corridor of goons or swordfighting Ed Skrein's Admiral Noble. Continue Reading →
Franklin
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess, Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Cleopatra, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Intruders, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, Monarch of the Glen,
Planet of the Apes Pride and Prejudice Scully, Son of the Morning Star, Tales from the Neverending Story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Phantom of the Opera, The Shining, The Sun Also Rises, Unterleuten: The Torn Village,
StudioApple Studios,
Michael Douglas's career so deeply connects him to as specific kind of late 20th/early 21st Century man. As a result, throwing him back to the 18th Century and into the body of Benjamin Franklin feels deeply counterintuitive. It is not surprising that Franklin—an adaptation of the book A Great Improvisation by Stacy Schiff—is one of the few period projects Douglas has done, joining the likes of The Ghost and the Darkness and those flashback scenes in the Ant-Man films. What is surprising, and to the series’ credit, is how quickly that strangeness recedes. It isn’t that Douglas manages to fade into the role of Franklin until he disappears entirely, but he does manage to recede enough that he doesn’t disrupt the show’s reality.
In some ways, Douglas proves a surprisingly apt selection. No stranger to playing womanizers on screen, Douglas easily finds the correct valence to portray Franklin’s specific flavor of late 18th-century skirt chaser. The metacommentary works in his favor as well, an aging icon who retains much of his skill but perhaps can no longer command the same buzz or box office returns embodying an aging icon whose mind remains sharp but whose body—and possibly will—has been beaten up by life and time. While almost a decade older than the Franklin he’s portraying, Douglas also excels at the moments where the audience witnesses the statesman energized like old times.
Thibault de Montalembert has neither the time nor the interest in your lame attempts at Call My Agent/Dix pour cent joke attempts. (AppleTV+)
Still, the script too frequently hamstrings the actor. Not bad by any means, the writing still suffers for trying to match Franklin’s reputation. It’s the old conundrum of trying to build a series, film, or play around a singular piece of art. How does a creator convince the audience that someone is singing the most fantastic song ever without truly writing the most fantastic song ever? Similarly, how do writers provide dialogue to what is, by historical reputation, one of the greatest wits in American History without simply quoting his greatest hits? Continue Reading →
The Sympathizer
SimilarA Dance to the Music of Time, A Fortunate Life, A Little Princess,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Dexter, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, M*A*S*H, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, Monarch of the Glen, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II, Scully,
Sherlock Holmes Son of the Morning Star, The Lost World, The Phantom of the Opera, The Shining, The Sun Also Rises, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Viso d'angelo, Witchcraft, Wycliffe,
"All wars are fought twice. The first on the battlefield. The second time in memory." This line, emblazed in Vietnamese and English in the opening moments of The Sympathizer, is taken right from Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen's bestselling novel of the same name. Fittingly, it also serves as the thesis statement for Max's adaptation of the sprawling work, a fleet-of-foot miniseries that explores the malleability of identity and perception through the lens of the Vietnam War, and the dynamic lenses through which our lives and conflicts can be viewed.
That duality is encapsulated in the titular character, a French-Vietnamese biracial protagonist known only as The Captain (Hoa Xuande). From his childhood in Vietnam, he was always ostracized for being neither white nor Asian enough; his only solace came from his two friends, Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan) and Man (Duy Nguyen), who instead frame his heritage as being "twice of everything." Cut to Vietnam in the '70s, in the days leading up to the Fall of Saigon: He works for the Vietnamese Secret Police, interrogating Viet Cong prisoners at the behest of his arrogant martinet of a boss, The General (Toan Le). But he's also a communist mole, feeding information back to Man, who's now his North Vietnamese Army handler, and his daily life is a struggle to reconcile all of these varying identities.
That struggle is further compounded after the Fall of Saigon (an escape attempt rendered in the first episode as an exciting, terrifying barrage of booming explosions and a foot race to a fleeing cargo plane). The Captain and Bon make it to America, though not without some heartbreaking losses for the latter; now, the two are alone, the Captain still required to report on the General's activities while laying low for both his CIA handlers and the LA cultural figures who treat him as an object of curiosity. Continue Reading →
Fallout
SimilarBlack Scorpion, Dark Angel, Dark Skies, Knots Landing, Mortal Kombat: Conquest, Noah's Arc,
Planet of the Apes Sonic the Hedgehog, The Tribe, ThunderCats, Thunderstone, World's End Harem,
Few titles in the world of video game RPGs are as stylistically significant and cherished by fans as Interplay Entertainment’s Fallout. First published in 1997, the post-apocalyptic RPG has spawned countless sequels (including the acclaimed Fallout: New Vegas) and garnered millions of devoted fans through meticulous worldbuilding and its (now signature) atomic age-inspired retrofuturist aesthetic.
Thanks to shows like The Last of Us proving naysayers wrong and paving the way for high-budget, critically acclaimed video game adaptations, Prime Video has joined forces with Bethesda to bring the Fallout franchise to the small screen with an eight-episode series of the same name. Bolstered by source material with a baked-in sense of aesthetics and a pair of winning leads in Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins, Fallout is a clever, twisted apocalyptic odyssey that soars as both a video game adaptation and a standalone series.
Starring Purnell, Goggins, and Aaron Clifton Moten, Fallout follows Lucy (Purnell), an idealistic, sheltered “Vault Dweller” who has spent her entire life in an idyllic vault built to keep wealthy Americans happy and healthy in the event of nuclear devastation. When surface raiders disrupt her vault’s peaceful existence and kidnap her father, Lucy is forced to leave the safety of Vault 33, encountering all manner of unlikely enemies and allies along the way. Continue Reading →
Baghead
SimilarAlien (1979), Wild at Heart (1990),
Watch afterInception (2010), Parasite (2019),
Sometimes when a loved one exits this mortal coil, they leave us something we don’t necessarily want. Outstanding bills, for instance. Or perhaps a piece of truly hideous artwork, or a cursed doll collection, or a house stuffed to the eaves with worthless junk, and we’re stuck dealing with it.
Or, like the main character in Alberto Corredor’s Baghead, you inherit an ancient malevolent creature with a connection to the dead. What do you in that situation? Do you try to foist it off on a cousin you never cared for? Maybe sell it on Facebook Marketplace? Well, if you’re Iris (Freya Allan), you turn it into a moneymaking venture, because why not? What could possibly go wrong??
Iris has inherited a pub from her late estranged father (Peter Mullan) that’s inexplicably in the middle of Berlin, even though every character in the movie is British and the pub looks like the Winchester in Shaun of the Dead. Despite it being a pub, it doesn’t appear to have paying customers, or at least not the kind you’d expect. Iris learns that hidden away in a hole in the basement is some sort of female creature wearing an Elephant Man bag over her head, and who can shapeshift into dead people. Whatever customers her father had came to the pub to communicate with deceased loved ones through the creature, paying a substantial fee for the experience. Continue Reading →
RIPLEY
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Cleopatra, Dark Winds, Dexter, Elizabeth R, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Jack the Ripper, Jewels, M*A*S*H, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, Monarch of the Glen, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II, Scully,
Sherlock Holmes Son of the Morning Star, The Buccaneers, The Gold Robbers, The Lost World, The Phantom of the Opera, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Tientsin Mystic, Troubles, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Viso d'angelo, Witchcraft, World War II: When Lions Roared, Wycliffe,
StudioShowtime Networks,
Tom Ripley doesn't exist. Not just in the sense that he's a fictional creation of thriller novelist extraordinaire Patricia Highsmith, no; as a man, Ripley is a chimera, a shadow, a formless void that hungrily sucks in whatever nourishment it can from whatever or whoever is around him. Damn the consequences. He's one of literature's (and, in the case of several cinematic adaptations, moviedom's) greatest conmen, a remora with nothing behind the eyes except the next game, the next mark, the next place to flee when suspicions run too high. Now, writer/director/showrunner Steven Zaillian has adapted the first of Highsmith's novels into an eight-episode miniseries for Netflix (it was originally slated for Showtime before they sold it), and by virtue of those pedigrees, it's maybe the best original series the streamer has put out all year.
When we first meet Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott), he's a low-level grifter eking out a living with some street-level mail fraud in New York City. But one day, a private dick (Bokeem Woodbine) taps him on the shoulder and hauls him in front of a wealthy shipping magnate (filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan) for a special mission: travel to Italy on his dime to find his layabout painter-wannabe son Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and bring him back home to fulfill his business responsibilities. Ripley doesn't know the man, but he agrees -- the chance to start all over somewhere else (and be bankrolled for it) is too great. So he swans off to Atrani, a small beachside villa where he ingratiates himself to the pampered Dickie and his writer girlfriend, Marge (Dakota Fanning), two people as insulated by their wealth as they are by their respective artistic mediocrities.
RIPLEY. (L to R) Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood and Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf in RIPLEY. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Unlike previous adaptations of the material, Zaillian barely (if ever) clues us into any kind of deeper humanity lurking under the surface for Tom Ripley. Matt Damon's version from The Talented Mr. Ripley was motivated by emotional impulse; here, Scott plays him like a reptile. There's something downright alien about his cold tilt of the head, those shark-like eyes (aided by Robert Elswit's chiaroscuro photography, which we'll get to later), the way his delivery teeters between blase deference and a flat, manipulative affect. He seems less like a desperate hanger-on than a predator, one all too happy to take rich people for everything they've got and discard them when he's sucked all the meat off their bones. He doesn't covet the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and even the script's frequent allusions to Ripley's subtextual lust for Dickie don't seem to fully account for his motivations. Continue Reading →
Música
SimilarAlmost Famous (2000), Ice Age (2002),
As the director, co-writer (alongside American Vandal’s Dan Lagana), executive producer, and composer of Música, Rudy Mancuso’s filmmaking debut suggests he’s carrying a certain “do it all yourself” energy over from his previous career as a prolific YouTuber. Impressively, it does not feel insular or self-involved despite his hands being in nearly all aspects of the process. That isn’t to say, however, that it all works.
Mancuso plays, well, Rudy, a college student barreling towards graduation with little semblance of a plan for what comes next. His dedication to puppetry and music shows great creativity, but it doesn’t seem like a promising moneymaking venture if his occasional busking is any indication. Further complicating matter is his synesthesia, a condition that underlines every aspect of his day with a constant beat. It may be great for his musicality, but it also creates a distance between him and others. Often distracted, sometimes overwhelmed, by the music only he can hear, he frequently misses out on what others are trying to tell him.
Rudy Mancuso explains the "What's up Brother" meme to Camila Mendes. (Prime Video)
His perceived lack of ambition proves too much for his girlfriend Haley (Francesca Reale), leading to a break-up at the film’s start. This clears the decks for Rudy’s mom (Maria Mancuso, the filmmaker’s real-life mom) to start playing matchmaker with every Brazilian-American girl around his age she can find and for Rudy to fall for Isabella (Camila Mendes), an employee at a local seafood counter. When Haley returns, things fall apart quickly, thanks in no small part to advice from Anwar (J.B. Smoove), a food truck entrepreneur and seemingly Rudy’s only friend. Continue Reading →
Sugar
Similar4400,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Angel, Baywatch Nights, Black Scorpion, Dexter, Knots Landing, Noah's Arc, Pope John Paul II,
Sherlock Holmes The 4400, World War II: When Lions Roared,
StudioApple Studios,
Some shows are difficult to write about because they don’t excite one’s passions. They’re not terrible or great, so they offer little to dig into. Sugar is not that sort of show. Instead, its difficulty stems from a plot development that seems too large to go unremarked upon. And yet, it would be unfair to those who haven’t yet watched the show to spoil it.
With all that in mind, I will delicately attempt to navigate a third path. This development is significant. It changes much of what you know about several of the characters. And yet, it largely doesn’t impact the show. I don’t mean it is a waste of time, only that the show’s positives and negatives remain largely unaffected by this development. Take it out, and the story’s heart will remain essentially the same. It’s the rare significant plot point that changes so much without fundamentally altering the series. So, while it would be interesting to write about and explore it, this review is still broadly comprehensive without touching it.
Amy Ryan bellies up to the bar and reminds us all she's excellent in noir stories. (AppleTV+)
John Sugar (Colin Farrell) is a private investigator specializing in finding missing people. Draped in bespoke suits, he insists he hates hurting people but does so with fluidity and ease. After completing a case in Japan, a message from legendary film producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell) draws him back to LA. Jonathan’s granddaughter Olivia (Sydney Chandler) is missing. Despite a history of substance abuse and frequent absences—as well as the lack of concern from her father Bernie (Dennis Boutsikaris), a producer of…less quality movies—Jonathan is convinced this time is different. A film obsessive, Sugar can’t resist taking the meeting despite reassuring his handler Ruby (Kirby) that he’d rest and recuperate. When Olivia reminds the PI of his missing sister, he must take the case, promise or not. Continue Reading →
Star Trek: Discovery
Similar3rd Rock from the Sun,
Battlestar Galactica Ben 10: Omniverse, Blake's 7,
Caprica Crusade, Dark Skies, Doctor Who, Duck Dodgers,
Earth 2 Eureka Seven Farscape,
Firefly First Wave, Flash Gordon, Future Man, Hyperdrive, Intruders, Inuyashiki: Last Hero,
Justice League Lost in Space, Marvel's Rocket & Groot, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Out of This World, Quark, Red Dwarf, Space: 1999,
Star Trek Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,
Star Trek: The Next Generation Star Trek: Voyager Star Wars: Droids, Stargate Atlantis, Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills, The Ark, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Sarah Jane Adventures, The Transformers, Threshold, ThunderCats, Torchwood, UFO, Ultraman,
StarringAnthony Rapp, Blu del Barrio, David Ajala, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman, Sonequa Martin-Green, Wilson Cruz,
The 1960s Star Trek show did not have the chance to do a true series finale. All of its successors did though, until now. From The Next Generation to Deep Space Nine to Voyager to Enterprise to Picard, every show had the opportunity to make a final statement and sum up the years of adventures in some fashion. Yet, despite being the primogenitor of the franchise, The Original Series just sort of ends, with the sense of the conveyor belt simply stopping, and its last output accidentally becoming an end, if not quite the end.
And yet “Turnabout Intruder”, infamous though it may be, is a surprisingly fitting finale for TOS. It features the good notions and abiding themes of the 1960s show: the idea that this crew knows their captain well enough to sniff out a fake; that become a well-functioning team that can work through even the most unorthodox problems, and that after seventy-nine episodes’ worth of outlandish adventures, they remain open to new and unexpected possibilities. It also features the bad ideas and problematic elements that plagued series time and again: from a mixed-at-best perspective on women to William Shatner’s over-the-top acting. In that, the show’s final outing is an inadvertent but strangely apt swan song for the series.
In its new season, Star Trek: Discovery follows in those hallowed, unexpected footsteps. This is Discovery’s fifth and final year on the air, but as reported by the cast and crew, they didn’t know that when writing or filming it until the last minute. Despite the promise of a hastily-shot coda to give the show an air of finality, that makes this last leg of Discovery’s mission an accidental ending, not unlike the one endured by the original Star Trek series. Continue Reading →
Palm Royale
SimilarAnna Karenina, Återkomsten, Blackeyes, Jewels, KONOSUBA – An Explosion on This Wonderful World!, Monarch of the Glen, Oh, Doctor Beeching!,
Planet of the Apes The Wimbledon Poisoner, Troubles, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,
StudioApple Studios,
There’s something undeniably inspired about casting Kristin Wiig as Maxine Simmons in Palm Royale. A social climber attempting to ingratiate herself into late 60s Palm Beach high society, Simmons shares with Wiig a certain constant desire to change herself. The actor's years at Saturday Night Live and subsequent film roles have established her as a chameleonic performer. She has enough versatility to play everyone from the painfully grounded to live-action cartoon characters. In this case, Wiig pours that talent into a woman trying desperately to be a different version of herself.
As a kind of middle-aged conservative version of Tom Ripley, Wiig does indeed excel. The actor invests a mix of brute force cunning and barely hidden desperation in Simmons. That makes the would-be social maven compelling and repulsive in equal measure. Her machinations are too intriguing to ignore, but her very presence can be almost unendurable, especially for viewers with an overactive sense of vicarious embarrassment.
Kristen Wiig and Allison Janney try to hash it out. (AppleTV+)
The show also adds an interesting layer to her performance of wealth and class. Simmons’ claims often sound outlandish, the scrambling lies of someone trying to stay one step ahead of being exposed. However, Palm Royale slowly confirms a great many of them. Unlike Ripley or Saltburn’s Oliver Quick, she’s not a total fabrication. She has the credentials for the inner circle, but can’t stomach the time it takes. Continue Reading →
X-Men
Regardless of what one thinks of nostalgia—a toxic force or a pleasant refuge from the chaos that is existence—there’s no denying its significant role in shaping and guiding our pop culture. Rather than simply rallying against it, we must, from time to time, acknowledge it and evaluate its accuracy. The launching of X-Men ’97 gives The Spool a unique opportunity to look back at ’97’s progenitor, the early 90’s series X-Men, also commonly known as X-Men: The Animated Series.
However, this is not a task for one person. An objective of this size requires a team-up, in the Merry Marvel Tradition. Tim Stevens, The Spool’s steadfast TV Editor, whose stoicism conceals a maelstrom of doubt and rage, much like ruby quartz holds back optic blasts, tackled the first half of the series. Then, Justin Harrison, our near-feral writer with a gift for mentorship and a head full of implanted memories, closes things down with his take on the second half of season 3 and all of seasons 4 and 5.
With that, there’s no time to waste. Hop in the Blackbird and come with us for a look at the highlights—and occasional lowlight—of the X-Men! Continue Reading →
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (In French: Godzilla et Kong: Le nouvel empire)
SimilarBack to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Ghostbusters (1984), Godzilla Raids Again (1955), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Jaws: The Revenge (1987), King Kong (1933), King Kong (2005), Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Spider-Man 3 (2007), Superman Returns (2006), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999),
The most frustrating thing about Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire isn't that it's stupid. It knows it's stupid; it's banking on that. It's not even that its luster has been eclipsed by Japan's most recent entry in the terrible lizard's decades-long rampage on the cinematic landscape, the now-Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One. It's that somehow, director Adam Wingard and the team behind the MonsterVerse have forgotten how to be the right kind of stupid, fumbling the formula that 2021's Godzilla vs. Kong captured with surprising charm. (Then again, our assessments of 2021's COVID-era output are innately suspect, considering most of us were just glad to be back at the movies at all.)
But the more you settle into the latest entry in Warner Bros. and Legendary's "MonsterVerse" -- the Americanized shared universe of Japanese-sourced kaiju movies that started with 2014's Godzilla -- the more confounding this exercise becomes. The end of the previous film in the series teased a kind of detente between Japan's favorite reptile and Skull Island's favored son, the two working together to take down MechaGodzilla after a movie's worth of preening spats on cargo ships and among the skyline of Hong Kong (no relation). You'd think screenwriters Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett, and Jeremy Slater would double down on the "what now?" of it all: how would these two reluctant allies share the Earth? That might be fun.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire Review (Warner Bros./Legendary)
Instead, The New Empire feels like a semi-retread of Godzilla vs. Kong -- actually, scratch that, more like a King Kong movie with a few bits of Godzilla peppered in here and there. Like so many sitcom roommates before them, the pair have drawn a chalk line halfway down the planet and decided to each keep to their own territory. Godzilla protects humanity from rogue Titans on the surface, and in between bouts, he curls up in the Roman Colosseum like a cat bed, one of the film's more charming images. Meanwhile, Kong searches for other giant apes like him down in the Hollow Earth. (Yeah, that exists now.) Continue Reading →
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (In French: SOS Fantômes : L'empire de glace)
SimilarAnnie Hall (1977), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Constantine (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), From Russia with Love (1963), Ghost (1990), Goldfinger (1964), Hellboy (2004), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Jaws: The Revenge (1987), King Kong (1933), King Kong (2005),
Live and Let Die (1973) Manhattan (1979), Men in Black II (2002), North by Northwest (1959), Ocean's Eleven (1960), Scrooge (1951),
Shaft (2000) Snakes on a Plane (2006), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Spider-Man 3 (2007), Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Superman Returns (2006), The Apartment (1960), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), The Green Mile (1999), The Terminal (2004), Volver (2006),
StudioColumbia Pictures,
There are few names as deeply ingrained in the fabric of American pop culture as Ghostbusters, the action-comedy franchise spawned by Ivan Reitman’s beloved 1984 film. Nonetheless, despite its staggering financial success (netting nearly 300 million against a 25 million dollar budget) and pop culture permeance, Sony has had trouble recapturing the magic in later entries. Neither 1989’s Ghostbusters II, 2016’s Ghostbusters, and 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife have neared the original’s success.
Despite that, it seems the Ghostbusters franchise has finally found a sequel concept it’s willing to forge ahead with. The franchise’s latest installment, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, is a direct sequel to Afterlife. It once more reunites Egon Spengler’s (Harold Ramis) children with the three living original Ghostbusters— Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Bill Murray. Despite an intriguing subplot for Phoebe, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is an incohesive, unoriginal entry. It coasts on fan service to carry a paper-thin plot and a lukewarm crop of characters, new and old.
Bill Murray and Paul Rudd discuss their love of fog machines. (Sony Pictures)
Picking up two years after the events of Afterlife, Frozen Empire follows the Spengler family (Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, McKenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard) to New York City. After the previous film's tradition-breaking decision to unfold in rural Oklahoma, this returns the franchise to its true home. Bankrolled by the uber-wealthy Winston (Hudson) they're back operating out of the old Ghostbusters firehouse. There the Spenglers struggle to juggle ghost-hunting with their interpersonal dynamics. That's all while working to keep the mayor (William Atherton) from shutting the family business. Continue Reading →
X-Men '97
SimilarBatman, Batman: The Animated Series, Birds of Prey, Captain Midnight, Captain Star, Deadly Class, Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, Flash Gordon, Gekisou Sentai Carranger, GoGo Sentai Boukenger, Inazuman, Invincible,
Justice League Mirai Sentai Timeranger, Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger, Power Rangers, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Seijuu Sentai Gingaman, Silver Surfer, Sonic the Hedgehog, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, Super Crooks, Tales from the Crypt, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Avengers: United They Stand, The Flash, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men: Evolution,
As the saying goes, only '90s kids will remember the severe cultural impact X-Men: The Animated Series had on a particular strain of latchkey millennials. For many, the show, which ran from 1992-97 on the Fox Kids programming block, was the arguable apex of the Marvel superhero team's on-screen representations. It was thrilling, exciting, and for the time, surprisingly mature in its handling of the sociopolitical issues that spawned the comics in the first place -- racism, xenophobia, homophobia. It carried an element of serialized storytelling that was rare for kids' TV and took its characters and their respective issues seriously. Plus, that theme song just slammed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQjdm8BdJO4
Disney+, in its infinite wisdom, knows how to keep the franchise going while they anxiously figure out how to incorporate the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Deadpool & Wolverine should give us a portent, however grim) -- and to keep the '90s kids satiated with a heaping helping of nostalgia while we wait. So goes X-Men '97, a straightforward continuation of The Animated Series that updates its "too sophisticated for kids" remit all the way to the present day and lands on something interesting, if far from perfect, in the process.
Picking up months after the original series' finale, X-Men '97 shows a world reeling from the death of Charles Xavier in the final episode of the animated series: Mutants are mistrusted more than ever, and a growing fifth column of right-wing human militants called the Friends of Humanity are gathering up mutants and taking them down with stolen Sentinel technology. Naturally, it's up to the X-Men to stop them -- if they can pull themselves together and work as a team. Scott Summers (Ray Chase) is the next natural choice for leader, but he's torn between his duty to his fellow X-Men and his desire to start a family with Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale), a move that has ol' Wolverine (Cal Dodd) itching with jealousy. Continue Reading →
Manhunt
SimilarAgatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Dark Winds, Dexter, Fallen, Fate/Apocrypha, Fearless, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl,
Hilda Furacão Jack the Ripper, Jewels, La Mante,
Little Women M*A*S*H, Moeder, waarom leven wij?, Monarch of the Glen, More Tales of the City, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pride and Prejudice Sherlock Holmes Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Super Pumped, Tales from the Neverending Story, The Buccaneers, The Lost World, The Strain, The Sun Also Rises, The Wimbledon Poisoner, Tientsin Mystic, Troubles, Unorthodox, Witchcraft, Wycliffe,
Studio3 Arts Entertainment, Apple Studios,
Making Abraham Lincoln or Hamish Linklater the least interesting thing about your television series is no easy feat. That's especially the case when it features Linklater playing the 16th President of the United States. Yet, somehow, the Monica Beletsky-created MANHUNT, adapted from the James L. Swanson tome of the same name, manages to do just that. And that is 100 percent a compliment.
Often forgotten is that Lincoln was not John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle) and his co-conspirators’ only target. The schemers also marked Vice President Andrew Johnson (Glenn Morshower, an acting veteran turning in his best work.) and Secretary of State William Seward (Larry Pine) as targets. (The series additionally implies that the show’s lead, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Tobias Menzies), may have been on that list, but that doesn’t appear in historical texts.) By opening on the far larger plot that almost immediately unraveled due to bungling and cold feet, MANHUNT quickly asserts its intentions. While catching Booth is the series’ splashiest element, it is certainly not all it has on its mind.
Tobias Menzies has hat, will travel. (AppleTV+)
If anything, the eponymous search provides the show a means of taking stock of America immediately after the Civil War. Ping-ponging around in time, Manhunt provides a glimpse of how a collection of Americans experienced life after General Lee’s surrender. The derailing of a far more extensive restructuring of America feels every bit as mourned here as the fallen President. Continue Reading →
Knox Goes Away
SimilarBeverly Hills Cop II (1987), Beverly Hills Cop III (1994), Léon: The Professional (1994), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995), Wild at Heart (1990),
StudioFilmNation Entertainment,
Michael Keaton gives a subtle & empathetic performance as a hitman in his waning days.
The minute the mournful saxophone music swells in Knox Goes Away (which is minute one), you think to yourself oh boy, here we go. A car driving in the Los Angeles night, two hitmen, one cool, cultured, and precise, the other seemingly more casual and good-humored about the whole thing, meet in a diner to banter and discuss their next job; none of this fills the viewer with confidence that they’re about to see something they haven’t seen a million times before.
And then the first hitman asks the diner waitress for a cup of coffee, seemingly having forgotten he already has one in front of him, and maybe something different is happening here. Continue Reading →
Immaculate (In French: Immaculée)
SimilarAlien (1979), Aliens (1986), Carrie (1976), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Maria Full of Grace (2004), Silent Hill (2006), Sliver (1993), The Godfather Part III (1990),
According to the press tour for Immaculate, Sydney Sweeney first auditioned for the film years ago. Despite not getting the role at the time, the script made a sizable impression on her. Thus, when she had enough clout, she immediately pursued it once again. Alas, for most of the jump scare-heavy but not especially frightening, horror movie, it’s difficult to understand why the script so captured her heart.
After a brief prelude that would cost Immaculate little to lose, audiences meet Sister Cecilia (Sweeney) at Italian customs. After surviving a fall through the ice in her childhood, Cecilia felt called to serve God although not sure how. When her Michigan congregation closed, the young nun felt even further adrigt from His will. However, an invitation from Father Sal (Álvaro Morte) feels like it might be her true purpose. Therefore, despite not speaking Italian, she accepts his invitation to a remote convent specializing in hospice for nuns.
Mother Superior (Dora Romano) and another novice nun, Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli), greet her kindly. The fellow Bride of Christ who makes the biggest impression, though, is Sister Isabella (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi). She brings sharp bitterness to her first encounter with Cecilia, softening to warn Cecilia off taking the convent's vows. When the new nun rejects the advice, Isabella doubles down on that initial attitude. The seeming professional rivalry only increases when Cecilia discovers she’s pregnant despite being a virgin. Continue Reading →