738 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Bulgarian (Page 20)

Say what you will about Apple TV’s Servant, but give it credit for its audacity. We’re three seasons in, and the series, executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan, remains as clear as mud as to both what’s happening, and to where it’s all going to lead. Not since Twin Peaks has a TV show been so dedicated to being completely incomprehensible. Watching it is like being led down one path, only to be violently jerked toward another. “No, it’s not about that, you silly goose,” it says. “It’s about this.” Until it becomes about something else. Season 3 throws less things at the wall to see what sticks, but things remain frustratingly opaque. Continue Reading →

Previous seasons of Netflix’s Ozark followed Martin and Wendy Byrde’s (Jason Bateman and Laura Linney) quest to survive death and prove their family’s worth to the cartel and their violent rivals. Now, in the fourth and final season, the Byrdes must figure out if they can survive without their dark, criminal lives. They sacrificed a lot to get to the top—but what would they sacrifice to stay there? Thanks to this ask and its answers, Ozark Season 4 Part 1 is slow-burn suspense at its finest, with the Byrde’s maneuvering to stay on top, no matter the personal costs.  Continue Reading →

Say what you will about the Scream movies – while they’re almost as absurd as the movies they’re satirizing, they’re also each trying to say something. While the first movie was about slasher movies in general, Scream 2 explored the nature (and necessity) of sequels, while Scream 3 attempted (to less than successful results) a pre-#MeToo spotlight on sexual harassment, and, as an answer to the rise of Facebook and Twitter, Scream 4 focused on social media culture. Wes Craven set out to not just entertain and scare audiences, but to get them to think about what they were watching, exactly, and why. Continue Reading →

The Hotel Transylvania series is a surprising juggernaut amongst contemporary family entertainment. Who would have guessed that a movie about a hotel for monsters would create a franchise where every sequel grows in both box office and critical success? With no signs of slowing down, it made sense for Sony to greenlight a fourth film. How could another sequel not be a hit at the box office? Well, I think we know how.   Continue Reading →

This review was originally written as part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival; we're reposting it now that the film is available in theaters and VOD. Continue Reading →

I'll say this for Simon Kinberg: he's got to be just about the nicest man in show business. After all, how do you get a second chance at the director's chair after the unmitigated disaster that was X-Men: Dark Phoenix? According to interviews, he only got that gig at the insistence of Jennifer Lawrence, who would only do the film with him in charge (he was reportedly very easy to work with when Bryan Singer went AWOL on X-Men Apocalypse, forcing Kinberg to pick up the baton). While working on Dark Phoenix, Jessica Chastain approached Kinberg with the idea of starring in and producing a female-led spy franchise a la Mission: Impossible; and so we have The 355, a film seemingly tailor-made to be the kind of mid-budget dross we get every January. Look out, Liam Neeson, you've got competition! 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 →

Much to the Republican Party’s dismay, the birth rate in the United States has been gradually on the decline, hitting an all-time low in 2020. Couples are not only waiting longer to have children, they’re having less of them, with an average of 1.6 per family. While climate change and cost of living expenses are the primary factors in the decision to have fewer children (or none at all), a small part of it can also be attributed to more people accepting a difficult truth: that raising children can be an incredibly hard and thankless task. Maggie Gyllenhaal makes an assured debut as a writer and director in her adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter, a complicated and strangely moving psychological drama/thriller about two women who bond over this truth. Continue Reading →

The modern era of musicals moves fits and spurts. Over this young century, the form has repeatedly fallen in and out of fashion. 2021 was an on year—one pulsing full of musicals, which ranged from towering works like Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story remake to the dreaded and thoroughly mocked Dear Evan Hansen. Many of them were quite experimental too, like Leos Carax and Sparks’ Annette and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tick, tick…BOOM!. But even against that august competition, Joe Wright’s Cyrano carves out a place as one of the most imaginative musicals of this modern era. Although The National’s newly-composed songs don’t immediately gel with the iconic story being told, Cyrano makes its way towards a moving, complex finale, thanks to a stellar set of performances.  Continue Reading →

When Cobra Kai first premiered on YouTube Red, it seemed just like a fun tribute to The Karate Kid, but it soon revealed itself to be impressively complex. In its first two seasons, Cobra Kai reflected on the dichotomy of good vs. evil. Then, in season three, it became a story about how nostalgia can curdle into something toxic. While Cobra Kai’s fourth season continues to explore these topics while remaining funny and badass, the show’s seams are beginning to show, and its scripts are starting to run out of new ideas. Continue Reading →

Full disclosure: I was going to start this review with a Peloton joke given show creator Darren Star’s recent track record. Then out of nowhere, there was an actual Peloton knock-off storyline in this season of Emily in Paris. So my joke told itself. Points to you, Emily in Paris. Continue Reading →

How Marvel's latest cuts through the MCU trappings to deliver one of Spidey's most personal stories yet. Please note that this article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Spider-Man: No Way Home. If you consume enough Spider-Man stories, you start to notice the malleability of the character. The assorted movies, shows, video games, and comic books all have their different takes on the wall-crawler and can plausibly plop him into different settings and moods. But you’ll also witness the two central aspects of Peter Parker that unite the various versions of the character across eras and mediums: (1) he chooses to do good, even when it’s hard, because he knows it’s the right thing to do, and (2) he suffers mightily for it. Continue Reading →

It's hard to overstate just how seismic The Matrix was when it was first released in 1999. Looking back on it now, in an age of focus-tested corporate franchises, extended universes, and an even more top-heavy IP landscape than we had back then, it feels positively revolutionary. Even in its imperfect but-radically-reappraised 2003 sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions, filmmakers Lana and Lilly Wachowski manage to build a world that's at once evocative of so many of its influences (cyberpunk, bullet opera, kung fu film, Star Wars) but feels highly original. And what's more, is unafraid to tackle challenging, often heady psychological questions while still revolutionizing the way action movies were made. Continue Reading →

In the age of streaming, any movie, short of maybe Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, can become a TV show. It doesn’t matter if your original film was a box office turkey, these channels just want “content” and any previously established brand name will do. Through this phenomenon comes MacGruber, a continuation of a Saturday Night Live character and the star of a 2010 movie that crashed and burned financially. But when Peacock desperately needed something, anything, to release over the holidays, MacGruber rose from the aches like a conceited phoenix. Continue Reading →

Aadrman's original 1989 Creature Comforts did something unique. Director Nick Park took interviews with everyday Britain residents and then put those vocals into the mouths of stop-motion animated zoo animals. The result was fascinating, as two disparate elements combined to tap into the daily woes which inform our lives. Whether you’re a lion trapped in an exhibit, or a man just yearning for the space of your original home country, melancholy emotions are universal.  Continue Reading →

Contains spoilers about The Power of the Dog (read our spoiler-free review here) Continue Reading →

When Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel hit shelves in 2014, it was a standout in science-fiction. HBO’s adaptation can’t help but hit differently in 2021. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale about what’s left of the world after a deadly flu ravages the populace. The parallels to current events are glaringly obvious.  Continue Reading →

Early in the King's Man, Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) reads a newspaper chronicling the human cost of the then-nascent World War I. The headline for all this carnage reads "When will this misery end?" It’s fitting since I found myself constantly asking myself the same question as The King's Man dragged on and on. For some reason, a franchise that’s previously leaned heavily on anal sex jokes and Elton John beating up evil henchmen wants to get serious in the most superficial way possible. Continue Reading →