775 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Arabic (Page 20)

The one thing that no one can deny is Stranger Things Season 4 remains aggressively itself right up to the end. Its final two episodes, feature-length films onto themselves, serve everything that one could enjoy about the first seven episodes with a side of everything that frustrates and annoys. The good news is that the bad bits remain a side dish, not the main course. The better news is that ratio tips even further in favor of what’s enjoyable. Continue Reading →

v Katia Conrad and Maurice Krafft grew up in Alsace, France and fell in love at nearly the exact same time, twice over. First, they fell in love with volcanoes, and then they fell in love with each other. Sara Dosa’s new documentary about the power couple volcanologists, Fire of Love uses Dosa’s exquisite prose, the Kraffts' own footage, and Miranda July’s narration to bring their love to life on screen.  Continue Reading →

When Black Bird opens with its Mogwai-penned and performed score and its series of voyeuristic but vague imagery, one will likely have an idea what kind of show they’re in for. And they will probably be correct. Continue Reading →

With the first season of Only Murders in the Building, creators Steve Martin and John Hoffman found success through a tricky balance -- between young and old, between thriller and comedy, between murder and levity. With Selena Gomez and Martin Short returning to join Martin as the unlikely podcasting trio, the Hulu series leans on the chemistry of its three stars. The resulting second season overachieves, brimming with confidence, comedy, scares, and a balanced tone. Continue Reading →

As comic premises go, the notion of portraying people in the movie industry as pretentious vain, shallow, sex-crazed glory-hungry goofballs is about as close to shooting fish in a barrel as one can possibly get. Therefore, the trick to pulling off something along these lines is not by pretending that one is making some bold artistic statement, but by striving to make sure that it is actually funny. Continue Reading →

In the opening seconds of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, viewers are blasted with the sight of the Warner Bros. logo – a variant glowing in gold and crimson, practically exploding with flair and moving parts – accompanied on the soundtrack by a remix of “Suspicious Minds.” Within the first few minutes, sweeping shots of Las Vegas clash with Ocean’s 11-style split screens, and the editing juggles between slowmo and cranked-up fast motion, in classic Luhrmann fashion. Continue Reading →

Gather around, children, and let Auntie Gena tell you a story about days gone by. Long ago, up till around 1984, kids used to run free in the streets from dawn till dusk, with virtually no adult supervision. Was it a better time? Not really, just different, and it all came to an end with the collective belief that bad things happen to children who aren’t carefully watched at all times. Now it’s swung so far in the other direction that allowing your children to walk themselves to school may result in a visit from child protective services. Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone takes place in the time before, when parents didn’t worry about monsters until they were almost under their noses. Continue Reading →

A movie based on Buzz Lightyear seemed inevitable, didn’t it? Toy Story is Pixar’s flagship franchise, and an action-packed sci-fi movie is primed for merchandising opportunities. There’s no way The Mouse could resist making a spin-off featuring the beloved fictional action figure.  Continue Reading →

Adam Sandler doesn’t need to earn any good karma. With a comedy career spanning 25 years and a dramatic career consisting of two decades worth, though more sparingly, of working with auteur filmmakers, the Sandman has been given the green light around Hollywood. And more importantly, he’s been given a blank(ish) check by Netflix, the service most associated with streaming despite its recent struggles. Continue Reading →

In the video game version of the original Jurassic Park for the Sega Genesis, you can choose to play the side scroller as either Dr. Grant or a Velociraptor. Of course, you choose the raptor almost every time because dinosaurs are cooler than humans. It’s a great lesson for making a fun video game, but not for making a successful movie franchise.  Continue Reading →

In 1974, a crane operator named Maurice Flitcroft watched the Piccadilly World Match Play Championship (a golf tournament) and decided that he would take up the game. Not as a fun new hobby, though. No, he intended to play at the British Open. Supported by his wife Jean, Maurice did indeed enter and play in the qualifying round of the Open after fibbing on his paperwork that he was a professional. He scored 121 and ended up summarily banned. Over the years, Flitcroft would attempt to re-enter the Open, using costumes and pseudonyms. If this all sounds handcrafted for immortalization on film, then you’re in luck.   Continue Reading →

As Marvel holds its iron grip on theaters, and Netflix seems determined to focus its dwindling profits on churning out generic action movies starring various iterations of Ryan Reynolds, cineastes lament the loss of “art” films, those outliers that, whether good or bad, generate far more lively after-movie conversation than Spider-Man ever could. And yet, right now we seem to be in the middle of a weird movie renaissance. We have the joyful weirdness of Everything Everywhere All at Once, the all too topical weirdness of Alex Garland’s Men, and the over the top spectacle weirdness of Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming Elvis. What better time could there be for David Cronenberg to come roaring back to form with some body horror weirdness in Crimes of the Future? Continue Reading →

Although histories of Hollywood in the 1970s tend to include Brian De Palma alongside the so-called “movie brats” who helped to revolutionize the film industry at that time (Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola), his films never came close to reaching the critical and/or commercial peaks they had.  Continue Reading →

“Time is a flat circle.” So said Rust Cohle, one of the icons of modern prestige television. Our pasts and our presents bleed into each other like paints colliding on a canvas. At its best, the new Apple TV+ program Now & Then recognizes and reflects this truth through memorable, bombastic visuals. Unfortunately, too much of Now & Then is weighed down by lackluster storytelling and filmmaking, both of which will lead your mind to wander away from the show you’re watching in the present. Continue Reading →

Navy Captain Peter "Pete" Mitchell, callsign "Maverick" (Tom Cruise) is a living legend. He is the only man to have shot down multiple enemy planes in the modern era of combat aviation. From the F-14 Tomcat to bleeding-edge skunkworks stealth plane prototypes, there is nothing he cannot fly, nothing he cannot (or more accurately will not) push past the fabled Danger Zone. Continue Reading →

Expanding a television show that usually runs for twenty-five minutes into a full-length feature film can be patty hard. Sorry, I mean pretty hard. After spending so much time in director Loren Bouchard’s colorful, sardonic world filled with enough burger puns to fill a McDonald’s ball pit, it’s hard to resist that sort of thing.  Continue Reading →

Eugenio Derbez has followed all the proper steps for any comedic leading man, including breaking out with a movie whose success nobody saw coming (Instructions Not Included) to side roles in long-forgotten blockbusters (Geostorm). Now he's taken a cue from many other modern stars of the genre like Adam Sandler or Melissa McCarthy and moved to 'streaming service A-lister' with Hulu's latest, The Valet. Continue Reading →

The more things change, the more they stay the same. For the latest example of this phenomenon, notice how, 34 years after Who Framed Roger Rabbit? changed movies forever, moviegoers are getting another comedic mystery hinging on live-action humans interacting with famous cartoon characters. The shadow of Zemeckis' revolutionary blend of filmmaking styles looms large over its modern-day thematic successor, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers.  Continue Reading →

Armageddon was never just a movie. Beginning with its much-coveted Fourth of July Weekend opening, to its (now typically) Bayhem-infused Super Bowl commercial, through its screening of fifty minutes at Cannes and bizarre feud with Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla (literalized in the film) over which movie would be the biggest of summer 1998, Armageddon positioned itself as nothing less than a pop-cultural event. It was the most expensive movie Disney had ever produced, starred Bruce Willis in his prime, backed him with a suddenly white-hot Ben Affleck, and was directed by blockbuster wunderkind Michael Bay. Add to all that the escalating success of 1997’s Lost World, Men in Black, and Titanic, and there was the sense that this would be a movie for the ages. Which it was. Kind of.  Continue Reading →

Did you leave the gas on? Or does this movie stink? I’ll be here all week, folks. Continue Reading →