37 Best Releases From Amazon Studios Studio (Page 2)

North Carolina, 2032. Flynne Fisher (Chloë Grace Moretz) is a skilled gamer. Pro gaming (usually helping some rich schmucks win victories they couldn't on their own) is a viable way for her and her cyborg'd-former-Marine brother Burton (Jack Reynor) to earn extra cash. They live with their ailing mother Ella (Melinda Page Hamilton) a half-step ahead of financial ruin in a town more or less run by spiritual-cousin-to-Road-House-villain-Brad-Wesley Corbell Pickett (Louis Herthum, Westworld). Continue Reading →

Ryan White’s Good Night Oppy is a documentary about one of the technological marvels of our time, but it's less interested in science than its subject matter would suggest. It throws several elements into its mix—archival footage, contemporary talking-head interviews, voiceover narration from a big star (Angela Bassett in this case), and long sections of CGI recreations of moments not caught on camera. But instead of using them to edify viewers about the genuinely amazing accomplishments being achieved (the kind that might encourage younger viewers to get interested in science), White seems more inclined to deploy them in a manner meant to suggest a (mostly) live-action version of a Pixar film.  Continue Reading →

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While there are a lot of autistic characters in pop culture, there’s very little variety to be found. The eclectic personalities, genders, ambitions, and every other trait imaginable that exists in actual clusters of autistic individuals is absent in general pop culture. Instead, we’re either super-geniuses who function more like X-Men or childlike figures who need a neurotypical person to rescue them. If you were to go by mainstream media, autistic people were like M&Ms circa 1964: we only come in two flavors.  Continue Reading →

(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Festival) Continue Reading →

The Tender Bar, streaming on Amazon January 7th, is based on J. R. Moehringer’s memoir of the same name. In practice though, it could be anyone’s story, and not because there’s a universality to the tale it tells. George Clooney’s film is so generic that the film's Moehringer might as well be a human-shaped blank space. Boasting the archly-drawn relatives of the film version of August: Osage County, the subtle needle drops of a Robert Zemeckis film, and the emotional insight of a Snapple lid fun fact, the picture leaves one thirsty for something of substance.   Continue Reading →

Amazon Prime’s new high fantasy series, The Wheel of Time has arrived, and already a major part of the critical conversation seems to be “how much like Game of Thrones is this?” The answer is “not much,” which will undoubtedly disappoint some. For others (myself included) its differences from HBO’s leviathan dragons-and-politics series are welcome. Firstly, in the six episodes that were made available to reviewers, I didn’t spot a single sexual assault and only two women were tortured, so that’s something. Here, women don’t gain power through marriage or dragon-riding because they don’t have to. If there is anything you should bear in mind heading into The Wheel of Time, it’s the knowledge that this is a world where women already hold most of the power, in every sense of the word. Continue Reading →

On April 14th, 2019, Pete Buttigieg announced his campaign for President of the United States of America. This came as a surprise for the public at large. He had little experience--his previous government position was Mayor of South Bend-- and a minimal national profile. Additionally, he was young--just 37 at the time-- and the first openly gay presidential candidate in American history.  Continue Reading →

In 1973, Lois Duncan created the perfect premise for a thriller: a group of teens on a midnight joyride run over a pedestrian and make a pact to keep it a secret. They think they're successful in hiding the crime. Then, a year later, one of them receives an ominous note stating simply, "I Know What You Did Last Summer." While the teens try to solve the mystery of who is harassing them, they soon realize that whoever knows their secret wants them dead.   Continue Reading →

The first two entries in the newest Welcome to the Blumhouse collection are a flawed pair of scary films. Welcome to Welcome to the Blumhouse! This annual anthology collection of four new horror films from Get Out producers Blumhouse Productions, debuting on Amazon streaming, is back after its inaugural run in 2020. Conceptually, this seems like a nifty idea, a way to tackle bold new filmmaking concepts or styles that may not be as broadly accessible as theatrical Blumhouse fare like Fantasy Island. Unfortunately, titles like The Lie made the first iteration of Welcome to the Blumhouse feel like a grab-bag of movies that just weren’t good enough for the big screen. This year, the four movies comprising the second edition of Welcome to the Blumhouse are all apparently fixated on institutionalized horror. The first two installments that have dropped (the other two films will premiere on October 9) are Bingo Hell and Black as Night, each tackling both a different strain of horror storytelling and a unique form of systemically ingrained injustice. A common trait across the pair of features, unfortunately, is a lack of consistently high-quality filmmaking. Here’s to hoping the next final two entries in this year’s collection wrap things up on a much stronger note.  Continue Reading →

Now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Panic is a new series about doing whatever it takes to break free from your dead-end, small-time town without dying in the process. Adapted from Lauren Oliver's eponymous 2014 YA novel, Panic is an exciting, gripping teen drama that blends the small-town delirium of Riverdale with the high-stakes plotting of Pretty Little Liars, then adds in a light dash of The Hunger Games to produce something a bit more unique and interesting than all these comparisons might immediately suggest. The show takes place in Carp, Texas, a small town with some big secrets. One of them being a dangerous game called "Panic," where every year, the graduating high school class competes in a series of death-defying stunts and challenges to win a massive prize. Most of these kids have no other way of exiting Carp for greater things, so an influx of cash is just about their only ticket out. The challenges themselves are essentially a more advanced, devil-may-care take on Fear Factor, with huge emphasis on how the teens need to form shaky alliances and ultimately screw each other over, sometimes literally, because like I said, this show wants to be a sharper, more grounded version of Riverdale with a less heightened tone. Because it's on Amazon, it does leave a little extra room for swearing and sex, but nothing too gratuitous. Continue Reading →

While there are many ways to adapt material to another medium, there do seem to be two prominent schools of thought. Some want adaptations of existing works to take the source material as a jumping-off point. The original text should inspire the creators of the new media, but should make their own perspective felt. On the other hand, there are those that crave pure accuracy. They want the new piece to resemble the original as closely as possible, in tone, point of view, and style. Continue Reading →

It’s easy to feel like time’s been stuck in an infinite loop recently. Especially when two movies are released within a year of each other that both ask the question, “What if we remade Groundhog’s Day, but with two people instead of one?”. Unfortunately for The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, a Y.A. drama streaming on Amazon Prime, it’s now the Volcano of time loop romances (the superior Palm Springs is the Dante’s Peak, of course). Continue Reading →

There are two moments in The Wilds that so succinctly summarize the show’s tone, we have just have to start with them. In the first episode, Leah Rilke (Sarah Pidgeon) barrels directly down the lens of the camera and declares the life of a teenage girl in America in the 21st Century to be literal hell as if in direct conversation with the audience. Then, later in the series, Rachel Reid (Reign Edwards) searches for the word melodrama, applying it to the actions of her fellow island isolated survivors. And that’s The Wilds for you. Tremendously unsubtle and one-hundred percent aware of it. It also happens to be very good. Continue Reading →

Joe Begos’ wild, gore-soaked drug trip of a vampire flick is not for the faint of heart. Creative block is a particularly cruel trick our brains play on us. Sure, you have lots of wonderful ideas, and maybe even the talent to make them come to life, but when it comes time to actually do it, suddenly, the well runs dry. It’s a disheartening, infuriating cycle: when you can’t create, you get depressed, and the more you’re depressed, the less you create. It starts to feel like a great, cosmic joke. Joe Begos’ grisly sensory overload Bliss is what happens when a young artist, desperate for inspiration, descends into a hellscape of drugs and an inexplicable taste of blood. Dezzy (Dora Madison) is falling far behind in both rent, and in producing pieces for an upcoming show. Though she’s successful enough in her field that she’s recognized out in public, a rotten attitude and a consistent failure to meet deadlines have caused Dezzy to quickly lose clout with both her agent, and her buyers. After a couple of heated exchanges with those she owes either money or work to, she decides that the best course of action to take is to go out and party. Drug dealer pal Hadrian (Graham Skipper) supplies Dezzy with the titular Bliss, a drug that’s snorted but resembles nothing so much as a bag of gunpowder. A combination of heroin, acid, meth and God only knows what else, it’s love at first sniff for Dezzy, even though Hadrian can’t really explain what’s in Bliss, or what the long-term effects of it might be. Following a decadent (albeit barely coherent) night with friends Courtney (Tru Collins) and Ronnie (Rhys Wakefield), Dezzy wakes up the next morning desperately ill. She assumes she needs more Bliss, and while it helps a little, she feels a darker craving that she doesn’t yet understand. On the upside, she’s suddenly able to paint again, and, seemingly working non-stop (because you can when you’re unable to sleep anymore), Dezzy begins to create a beautiful but eerie mural, perhaps her greatest work yet. Sure, Bliss sends her into murderous rampages where she chews the flesh off of people’s fingers, but, finally, she’s got that artistic flow back! Continue Reading →

Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For January we’re celebrating the work of godfather of independent film Jim Jarmusch. Read the rest of our coverage here. “What does a poet look like?”  The first (and only) documentary I ever made asked this very simple question. To answer, I lined up the poets from my creative writing program—from the sporty sorority sister to the quiet bespectacled shaggy-haired dude—and simply… asked. Their answers? Continue Reading →