Murderville
Murderville has a terrible premise. It’s a parody of police procedurals, but also involves improv comedy, performed mostly by actors not known for their improvisational skills. It sounds like forced laughs of the most uncomfortable kind, where the jokes are sparse and the flop sweat is flowing. It shouldn’t work at all. And yet, somehow, it not only works, it’s a genuine delight, and a respite from a relentlessly bleak season. Continue Reading →
カウボーイビバップ
SimilarAh! My Goddess, Astro Boy,
Caprica Eureka Seven Fate/Apocrypha, Komi Can't Communicate, The Wallflower,
StarringMegumi Hayashibara,
There’s a moment in the second episode of Cowboy Bebop that captures the experience of the entire series. Spike Spiegel (John Cho) fights a man in a bathroom while a wedding takes place in the same building mere yards away. As Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) tries to figure out what’s happening over comms—despite it seeming fairly obvious—Spike gets the upper hand. He pauses, shifts slightly, pauses again, and then kicks the man through a bathroom stall door. The man helpfully stayed in place throughout. Continue Reading →
Blade Runner: Black Lotus
SimilarBrimstone, My Holo Love, Stargate Atlantis,
Los Angeles. 2032. 13 years after Blade Runner Rick Deckard completed his last job for the LAPD. Ten years after the nuclear blackout that wiped the city's history clean. Four years before the brilliant but utterly vicious industrialist Niander Wallace will successfully lobby for the re-legalization of the artificial humanoids called Replicants. Seventeen years before Replicant Blade Runner KD6-3.7 will be assigned to retire rogue Replicant Sapper Morton. A young woman named Elle (voiced by Jessica Henwick of the upcoming The Matrix Resurrections) wakes up in the back of an automated shipping truck. Her memory is a shamble. The only clues she has to her identity are a mysterious device she cannot unlock, inexplicable and ferocious combat skills, and a beautiful tattoo of a black lotus on her back. Continue Reading →
No Man of God
No Man of God, Amber Sealey's Ted Bundy picture, is well made but does not successfully distinguish itself from its fellow study-of-a-serial-killer films.
In the days leading up to the Tribeca premiere of No Man of God, there was a brief dustup in the media when its director, Amber Sealey, did interviews in which she appeared to be taking potshots at recent films that had also been centered on notorious serial killer Ted Bundy for utilizing approaches that she suggested glorified him by depicting him as this brilliant and wildly charismatic character.
This didn’t sit well with fellow filmmaker Joe Berlinger, who made Bundy the subject of his Netflix documentary series Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) and the dramatic film Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019), in which Bundy was portrayed by no less a figure than one-time teen heartthrob Zac Efron. He responded in kind by suggesting that Sealey was deliberately misrepresenting his work in order to pump up interest in her own film.Both Sealey and Berlinger have their points, I suppose. But as it turns out, this controversy may ultimately prove to be the most interesting thing about No Man of God in the end. Continue Reading →
The Empty Man
StarringRobert Aramayo,
Studio20th Century Fox,
Two-hours and sixteen minutes. There is a version of The Empty Man that’s a solid, efficient horror flick, and then there’s the version that’s two-hours and sixteen minutes. Unfortunately, we got the latter. Adapted from an independent comic book of the same name, this poorly paced, occasionally engaging exercise staggers along like its titular demon. If only there was a way to stop it, before it’s too late. Continue Reading →