Clerks III
SimilarAs It Is in Heaven (2004), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), Happy Death Day 2U (2019),
StarringRosario Dawson,
Considering Kevin Smith's career from a 2022 perspective is a fascinating exercise. His early output, from 1994's Clerks to 2001's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, were once quintessential texts for Gen X / film nerds, treated with the same reverence as the films of Quentin Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez. But that isn’t the case anymore, and hasn’t been for over a decade. Continue Reading →
DMZ
NetworkHBO Max,
SimilarAnna, HAPPY!, Krypton, ThunderCats,
StarringRosario Dawson,
There’s no good time in history to make war into entertainment. This is possibly one of the worst times to try to do so. Now clearly, the creators of DMZ, HBO Max‘s newest miniseries, had no idea what was going to happen in history when they were creating the show, but there’s a faint bad taste in watching a woman search for her son in a war zone in a time when actual women are doing that actual thing. Continue Reading →
Dopesick
StarringRosario Dawson,
Studio20th Television,
Early in watching Dopesick, I had a moment of marveling at an achingly humanistic scene between Dr. Samuel Finnix (Michael Keaton) and his physically and emotionally wounded patient Betsy Mallum (Kaitlyn Dever). This was followed immediately by a moment of being stunned by how early I was in the episode. Continue Reading →
Space Jam: A New Legacy
SimilarAnnie Hall (1977), Bring It On (2000), Fantasia (1940),
Watch afterBlack Widow (2021),
Let’s get one thing out of the way: the original Space Jam, released in 1996, isn’t a good movie. It’s an extended Nike commercial with an iconic soundtrack that tricked the brains of '90s kids into keeping it warm with nostalgia. So, it’s only fair that 25 years later, a new generation of children are forced to experience a similar kind of cash grab. Continue Reading →
All the Streets Are Silent
Jeremy Elkin's documentary is a love letter to the skater culture of the '90s, and the punks and rebels that filled it.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca film festival.)
It took me towards the middle of Jeremy Elkin's documentary All the Streets Are Silent to realize that Eli Gesner, the videographer behind much of the New York skateboard culture in the 90s, was the prototype for the character Fourth Grade in Jonah Hill’s mid90s. Fourth Grade was the kid I identified with the most, being the shy and silent observer to the antics and adventures of a tight-knit crew of talented skaters and artists. All throughout that film, he captured it all with his trusty palmcorder, only to eventually debut the footage in a video mixtape at the end. Such an expression that I also didn’t realize until All the Streets Are Silent was inspired by Gesner’s work as a kid with a camera. Continue Reading →
Josie and the Pussycats
By the time Josie and the Pussycats premiered in theaters in April 2001, the pop culture universe of the early aughts was already in full swing. Dissenting and raging against the machine was out, and corporate partnerships and glossy production values were in. Total Request Live was the hottest television show on the air, and it had only been eleven months after Britney Spears released Oops! I Did it Again and became the official celebrity endorser for Got Milk, Clairol, and Polaroid. The Spice Girls had just gone on hiatus, and it was the height of the Backstreet Boys vs. N*SYNC fan wars. Post Y2K and only a few months before 9/11, the Dot-com bubble was imploding and consumerism was already at an all time high. Continue Reading →