One Day at a Time
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Netflix’s new romance limited series offers a thoughtful, warm adaptation of the 2009 novel.
The hook of author David Nicholls’ 2009 novel is irresistible. Readers catch up with two former classmates who are something more than friends but not quite lovers on the same day, July 19, every year from 1988 to 2008. It’s no wonder it has managed two adaptations in the 15 years since its release—first as a 2011 movie directed by Lone Scherfig from a script by Nicholls himself and now as a limited series created by Nicole Taylor, with only one Nicholls’ script among the fourteen episodes.
Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall) is handsome, charismatic, and just rich enough not to worry about making a plan for his future. Emma Morley (Ambika Mod) is also quite attractive—although she can’t (or won’t) see it—and from a working-class background that makes her feel as though she can’t pursue her clear goal for the future: to become a writer. They travel in different circles, but on the night of graduation, they end up falling into her bed. While they kiss plenty, it never goes further, Emma preferring to chat despite her massive and evident crush on Dexter. Continue Reading →
Mission: Impossible
From De Palma's series launcher on, Cruise has used the tales of Ethan Hunt to ponder the nature of cinema as performance, perception, and manipulation.
The Mission: Impossible movies begin in perhaps the most inauspicious fashion possible: a computer tech, played by Emilio Estevez, watching security camera footage of clandestine crime scene clean-up. One of the men he's watching happens to be Tom Cruise in heavy prosthetics and a wig. It's an odd opening for an eight-film mega-franchise, a globe-trotting stunt spectacular that has attracted some of the world's biggest stars and most interesting actors—America's answer to Bond movies. But as the opening to a Brian De Palma movie, it's a no-brainer. Of course it starts with a dorky guy in a cramped little room watching unappealing CCTV footage of a crime of passion. That's De Palma.
Though Robert Towne wrote the script (he and Cruise were friends and artistic confidants; Cruise produced his 1998 movie Without Limits), the film is thoroughly De Palma's, never more so than when indulging in its covert operations. He films the opening sting from Cruise's POV, and its dizzying effect is rather like the opening to Dario Argento's Opera or its fellow perverse Italian horror thrillers. It is always disconcerting when movie characters address us but speak to someone else when we see what the hero sees see but cannot control what they do. We are seeing a performance from the inside, knowing that if the scene doesn't go off without a hitch, it could mean death for the man whose eyes we've been given for the duration. The Mission: Impossible movies have since changed directors four times, but their central tenet remains: they are about performance. They are about making movies to make sense of a senseless world. Continue Reading →
True Lies
SimilarHunter x Hunter, Love, Victor,
Watch afterAhsoka, Citadel, Elementary,
StarringGinger Gonzaga,
Studio20th Television,
If you’re going to do a TV reboot of any James Cameron movie, it might as well be True Lies, his weakest directorial effort that doesn’t involve flying piranhas. The 1994 Arnold Schwarzenegger/Jamie Lee Curtis action-comedy was undercut by the same fidelity to traditionalism that makes other Cameron features enjoyable. His Avatar films feel like riveting fables, for instance, while Titanic had a sweeping nature to its old-school romanticism. Tragically, True Lies was traditional in that it regurgitated stale observations on domestic married life. Then there were the uncomfortable gender and racial stereotypes that were already long outdated before the movie ever hit theaters. Continue Reading →
The Price Is Right
A crew of workers isolated from the rest of the world encounters some kind of biological agent that turns the infected against the uninfected. A blood test can easily reveal infected individuals, but complications ensue when attempts to apply the test begin. No, I’m not reviewing The Thing. I’m not reviewing either of those X-Files episodes, “Ice” or “Firewalker.” Instead, I’m talking about The Rig, a new series from Prime Video that’s thick with ideas drawn from other works. Continue Reading →
Evil
SimilarBroadchurch, From, The Strain,
Just in time for spooky season, Michelle and Robert King’s Evil is back from mid-season hiatus with a couple of corkers that loyal viewers will no doubt find worth the wait. Evil is the rare show that manages to successfully mix scares, humor, and genuine human emotion and still be as sophisticated as it is weird, and these first two episodes are no exception. Continue Reading →
Sydney
Before he passed away at the age of 46, Philip Seymour Hoffman starred in 52 feature films. Starring roles, character pieces, chameleon work—he left a legacy nearly unmatched in both quality and quantity. Now, with P.S.H. I Love You, Jonah Koslofsky wafts through the cornucopia of the man’s offerings. Continue Reading →