Apples Never Fall
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarA Fortunate Life, A Little Princess,
Agatha Christie's Poirot Anna Karenina, Återkomsten, Atomic Train, Blackeyes, Brides of Christ, Cleopatra, Dancing on the Edge, Dexter, Elizabeth R, Fallen, Game of Thrones, Gossip Girl, Intruders, Jewels, M*A*S*H, More than Blue: The Series, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
Planet of the Apes Pope John Paul II,
Pride and Prejudice Scully,
Sherlock Holmes Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Tales from the Neverending Story, The 4400, The Buccaneers, The Lost World, The Shining, Unterleuten: The Torn Village, World War II: When Lions Roared, Wycliffe,
The expression, “The book was better,” has become a truism in adaptation, an assumption where the few exceptions only prove the rule. But what’s a creator to do when the source material is deeply flawed?
If you’re Apples Never Fall creator Melanie Marnich, you make several cosmetic changes to Liane Moriarty’s novel. The drama moves from Australia to West Palm Beach. The four Delaney children—Troy (Jake Lacy), Brooke (Essie Randles), Amy (Alison Brie), and Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner)—are no longer uniformly tall and olive-skinned. Quite the opposite, really, on the skin tone front. Relationships are shuffled a bit. Unfortunately, these changes fail to elevate the series.
The broad strokes of the plot itself are intriguing. The Delaney parents Joy (Annette Bening) and Stan (Sam Neill) have finally retired from a lifetime of running a tennis center, including their own stints as players and coaches. Rather than a delightful occasion, it churns up all manner of unprocessed relationship issues. Stan is cantankerous and competitive, oscillating between diminishing everyone around him with words and beating them all over the court. Joy, on the other hand, expected to spend her golden years catching up with her children, who lack the time or interest in doing the same. Continue Reading →
True Detective
SimilarAgatha Christie's Poirot Amazing Stories, American Horror Story, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Bates Motel, Brimstone, Broadchurch, Brotherhood, Cruel Summer, CSI: Miami, Deadly Class, Dexter,
HIStory Jack the Ripper, La Mante, Life on Mars, Luther, Millennium, Murder Most Horrid, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King,
Sherlock Holmes Tarzan, The Twilight Zone, Viso d'angelo, Wycliffe,
Jodie Foster and Kali Reis shine as a pair of detectives investigating an increasingly surreal crime.
In Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt mysteries, the title character is a brilliant, eccentric detective haunted by the unsolved disappearance of one of her closest friends. Her cases are vitally recognizable and beautifully surreal. When The Infinite Blacktop, the most recent entry in the series, was released in paperback, Gran held a giveaway, including a copy of the book and some fun feelies. On one of those, a pen, the following was printed: “Open your eyes and learn to see that truth lives in the ether.” In the course of thinking about Issa López (Tigers Are Not Afraid)’s excellent True Detective: Night Country, it’s a line that’s been on my mind.
It's the end of 2023. In Ennis, Alaska, the eccentric scientists of the Tsalal research station vanish just as the long polar night sets in. Ennis police chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and detective-turned-trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) know that something is not right. Though bitterly estranged, the former partners share a drive to discover what happened at Tsalal and why. Their need to get to the truth only intensifies after the scientists are discovered in a ghastly, bizarre state—a collective corpsicle, all of them nude and visibly terrified. Continue Reading →
Fargo
SimilarAgatha Christie's Poirot Amazing Stories, Animated Classics of Japanese Literature, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Bates Motel, Baywatch Nights, Black Scorpion, Broadchurch, Cruel Summer, CSI: Miami, Dexter, From, Jack the Ripper, La Femme Nikita, La Mante, Luther, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, More than Blue: The Series, Murder Most Horrid,
Planet of the Apes Sentimental Journey,
Sherlock Holmes Star and Sky: Star in My Mind, Tales from the Crypt, The Dead Zone, The Shining, The Twilight Zone, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Wycliffe,
StudioFX Productions,
The crime drama returns to the Land of 10,000 Lakes and rediscovers its best storytelling self.
Throughout the six episodes of Fargo Season 5 screened for critics, the series isn’t exactly subtle. From opening the season with an on-screen graphic defining “Minnesota Nice” as neighbor attacks neighbor during a school board meeting to Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) staring up at a campaign billboard of himself, the show loudly states its theses at the viewer over and over.
However, it never feels like creator Noah Hawley has lost control of the storytelling. It’s methodically over-the-top. The audience is on a roller coaster, but they can feel the quality of the engineering keeping them on the tracks. In other hands, this approach can feel alienating or blunting. Fargo Season 5 benefits from meeting Hawley’s signature energy with a game cast and impressively insightful art direction. As a result, the series turns in its best offering since Season 2’s near-perfect effort. Continue Reading →
Gotham Knights
SimilarGARO, HAPPY!, Loonatics Unleashed, Madan Senki Ryukendo, Mirai Sentai Timeranger, The Batman,
It’s a year ending with a number, so, once again, someone’s launching a live-action TV show rooted in Batman’s mythology but doesn’t star Batman. That show, following in the footsteps of Gotham and Pennyworth: The Origins of Batman’s Butler, is none other than Gotham Knights. A brand-new CW production, it aims to be a “next generation” tale of sorts. The audience follows a motley group of teens possessed of assorted connections to Batman characters, old and new. By the time the first episodes wrap, viewers will undoubtedly want to shine a signal into the sky to summon a better TV show. Continue Reading →
We Own This City
SimilarFate/Apocrypha, Florida Man,
HIStory StarringDagmara Domińczyk, Wunmi Mosaku,
The easy move in discussing We Own This City is to compare it to co-creators David Simon and George Pelecanos’ The Wire. After all, they both concern crime, police, and politics in Baltimore. However, to do so diminishes both. Continue Reading →
Knokke off
The sci-fi thriller takes no risks, and tries absolutely nothing you haven't seen before.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.)
The IMDb listing for Tides lists it under the "SciFi" and "Thriller" headings, and while that is nominally true, a better case could be made to file it as an anthology. While technically an original story, it is made up of elements cribbed from so many other films that genre buffs could entertain themselves while watching it by making up lists of all the movies that it borrows from and comparing them afterwards to see who scored the most. If nothing else, it will give viewers something to do while watching the film since there is precious little going on up there on the screen to hold their attention. Continue Reading →
It's a Sin
NetworkChannel 4,
SimilarMore than Blue: The Series, Queen Cleopatra, Star and Sky: Star in My Mind,
In 1979, the Village People released the song “Ready for the 80’s” on their double-LP Live and Sleazy. The song is upbeat and bright, full of hope and promise. The group sings “I’m ready for the 80s / Ready for the time of my life” throughout the chorus, and one verse starts “Everything is gonna work out fine / I have faith in this old world of mine / We'll be loving in the bright sunshine.” Listening to this song over 40 years later, you can’t shake a sense of dramatic irony. In the end, the 80’s weren’t kind to the Village People, disco, or queer men in general. As I watched the opening episode of Russell T. Davies' latest mini-series, It’s a Sin, I kept thinking of this song and its optimistic outlook for a new decade, an optimism echoed in the fresh faces of its cast, blissfully unaware of the heartbreak awaiting them. Continue Reading →
繁华似锦
Viewers expecting the season finale to have an exciting climax will be disappointed, as characters and grim reality drive the ending.
Warning: don’t read until you’ve seen the episode!
I’m just going to come right out and say it: I know I’m going to be a lot easier on “Must/Can’t,” the finale of The Outsider, than other people. With the last few episodes a whole lot of nothing (well-acted nothing, but nothing all the same), expectations that the show would end with a horror movie-like confrontation between heroes and monster were high. Well, surprise -- it’s over barely halfway through the episode, and not the most action-packed ten minutes or so of television you’ll ever see. Despite its spooky, supernatural themes, The Outsider ended up being less about monsters and more about people, for better or worse.
But let’s move on and take a look at the casualty list that’s racked up before we even get to the opening credits. Deader than disco are Alec, Detective Andy (sad face!), Howie, and Seale. So, basically everybody you expected to get killed. Yunis (Yul Vazquez) is wounded, but alive. Also in very bad shape is Jack (Marc Menchaca) who, after successfully killing off more than half the team, is rewarded for his trouble with multiple rattlesnake bites. There are bosses from Hell, and then there’s El Cuco. Continue Reading →