738 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Bulgarian (Page 21)

Death Valley, a new horror film from Matthew Ninaber (known best for playing PG in Psycho Goreman), wants it all. The 93-minute feature hopes to bend horror, thriller, and action—a daring attempt at a balancing act without much of a safety net. Unfortunately, in practice, Ninaber’s picture can’t put two feet into any storyline and fumbles its attempt to juggle its myriad characters, plots, and tonal shifts. Continue Reading →

The network sitcom, much like the American auto industry, is a dying breed in fields looking to modernize and capitalize on newer, flashier models. NBC’s new American Auto sadly won’t revitalize either one. It's a two-dimensional sitcom that follows an inept CEO (Ana Gasteyer) as she attempts to shake up a Detriot auto manufacturer Payne motors. Continue Reading →

Everyone’s favorite silver-haired, monster-killing hunk is back, and this time you can call him Daddy. After a ponderous first season that took the long way to find its footing, TheWitcher’s second season boasts both a more assured stride and a more ambitious scope. Thankfully dispensing with the non-linear timelines, we catch up with Geralt of Rivia and company right where ‘Much More’ left off. But while season one was a witty, delightfully horny romp, season two takes on a gloomier tone and delves into stories with uncertain outcomes. Continue Reading →

Back in 1998, Gus Van Sant released his remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. It wasn’t a good movie, but it provided two decent critical talking points. Firstly, was it actually a remake, or was it another adaptation of Robert Bloch’s novel? Given that Van Sant’s film was a shot-for-shot recreation of its 1960 predecessor save for two or three differences, it was a rarity in that, given its context, it ended up being the former. It, for all its failures in execution, used semiotics to circumvent the aforementioned semantics of its identity. Continue Reading →

Far more frustrating than a disastrous mess is a film annoyingly close to being good or vastly more interesting. That's The Unforgivable, a sloppy retelling of the Sally Wainwright's (Gentleman Jack, Happy Valley) 2009 BBC miniseries.  Continue Reading →

There’s a song that was popular in the aughts with the lyric “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” and it feels like the most fitting description of The Expanse. It’s a show that has changed identities more times than Sidney Bristow and managed to retain a strong, cohesive narrative, with this season bringing its final arc full circle. Not to the proto-molecule, but to the struggle of the Belters to get their fair shake from Earth and Mars, something Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) dreamed of in the very first episode, something Fred Johnson (Chad Coleman) lived and died for.  Continue Reading →

Mike Wade (Scott Adkins) thought he could make it in Mixed Martial Arts, he really did. He couldn't. With his career definitively over, Mike and his pride have to figure out what to do with themselves. A temporary gig on the crew tearing down Birmingham, Alabama's infamous Castle Heights hospital is better than nothing—it even leads to a friendship with fellow crew member George (Vas Sanchez, Cobra Kai seasons one and two). But Mike's still lost in himself, still processing the fact that his dream is capital letters DONE. And then, on the last day of demolition, mere hours before the explosives are set to go off, Mike finds a $100 bill. A $100 bill that leads to a cool three million in cash, hidden in a wall. Continue Reading →

When it was announced in 1975 that Robert Altman, then riding high on the success of his groundbreaking epic Nashville, had been hired to direct the film version of E.L. Doctorow’s sprawling novel Ragtime, it almost seemed too good to be true. After all, not only was he one of the most inventive American filmmakers of the era, he seemed uniquely qualified to bring the book to the screen. Additionally, with its sprawling cast of characters, multiple storylines, and cheeky mixture of fact and fiction, Nashville now seems like an experiment to test out potential approaches for tackling that book. Continue Reading →

While audiences and critics often bemoan the plethora of sequels and remakes that litter the media landscape, retelling a familiar story isn’t inherently bad. After all, Shakespeare’s most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, was based on earlier works, and in 1957 playwright Arthur Laurents (along with composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist Stephen Sondheim) adapted the tale into West Side Story, which Robert Wise turned into a classic musical in 1961. Sixty years later, Steven Spielberg has thrown his hat into the ring with a new adaptation of the material. But can he make a familiar plot relevant to the 21st century?  Continue Reading →

To quote Mystery Science Theater 3000, “It’s the 80s! Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan!” Continue Reading →

The best sports movies uplift and invigorate. They often take their formulaic structures to greater heights than what seems achievable. They transcend the films that they’re modeled after, pushing forward different definitions of winners and losers. The classics, Rocky, Hoosiers, A League of Their Own, offer the catharsis that sports can bring; they unite an audience in rapturous applause, even if the underdog doesn’t win the title fight. Unfortunately, Halle Berry’s directorial debut, Bruised, neither elevates nor shifts this formula, resigned to a middling existence likely to get lost among the endless titles shuffling through Netflix.  Continue Reading →

Despite sounding like something one might hesitate to Google outside of a private browser, HBO Max's The Sex Lives of College Girls is a fairly wholesome dramedy about four young women starting off their adult lives as freshmen in college. Admittedly, yes, college freshmen who do have sex, but wholesome just the same. Created by Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble (who also write many of the episodes) TSLoCG quickly overcomes the gimmicky nature of its title.   Continue Reading →

Pablo Larraín’s sympathetic “fable” about Diana, Princess of Wales, also compassionately addresses the secret shame of eating disorders. CONTENT WARNING: this article addresses eating disorders and self-injury. See our spoiler-free overview of Spencer here. If Pablo Larraín’s Spencer doesn’t change your mind about royalty being aspirational, then nothing will. Sure, you’ll have access to wealth and fancy clothes, but at the cost of your time and privacy. Every part of your life, every holiday, even “off time” with your family, is scheduled down to the last minute, and everything you do is judged according to tradition and propriety. Maybe it’ll be you who breaks tradition, who makes things different through sheer force of will. But probably not. You’ll be a dress-up doll in a glass case, to be taken out and shown off whenever the occasion calls for it, whether you want to be or not. Continue Reading →

What if they made an MCU show with almost no stakes? Would that be inviting or off-putting? Continue Reading →

Bong (Donnie Yen) is a hero cop. He's bold, decisive, and always gets his man. For good and ill, he's got no patience for the brass and their smirking politicking. And he's got even less patience for those of his peers who grin through the sleaze and kiss up to their superiors anyway. But Bong being a hero isn't the same thing as his being good. His derring-do, damn-it-if-it-doesn't-get-us-our-guy mode and his attempts to pass it on have cost people he's cared for terribly. And that cost isn't something he's fully faced. Continue Reading →

The temperatures are dropping and the stores are getting crowded, which can only mean one thing...it’s time for another installment of Netflix’s holiday cavity-maker...no, not that one. Noth that one either. That’s right, we’re talking Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star, so grab your peppermint martinis and your fuzziest slippers as we delve into the film that begs the question “Is Vanessa Hudgens using Netflix as a vehicle to kiss cute boys?” Fair warning, there are some spoilers ahead.  Continue Reading →

There’s a word that exists in the Italian language that doesn’t quite have a counterpart in any other language: sprezzatura. What it essentially boils down to is the art of looking like you don’t care – a style of perfectly-studied imperfection. This idea goes back at least to the Renaissance, a time when the Gucci family earned its reputation as skilled saddlemakers to the rich and aristocratic. Or at least that’s how Aldo Gucci, the powerful and powerfully at-ease paterfamilias played by Al Pacino, relates the family history in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci. It is against this backdrop – of wealth, power, history, and above all, style – that Scott and screenwriters Roberto Bentivegna and Becky Johnston weave their story, an uneven yet compelling story about the only person who became a Gucci through their own making rather than by an accident of birth, and yet was forever an outsider.  Continue Reading →

Once Upon a Time… 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 →

Plenty of Star Trek shows hit their stride in season four. The timing makes sense. After four years together, the cast and crew have all had time to jell. The writers have had long enough to hone the show’s voice and course correct for any missteps. And there’s still enough mileage left in the original premise and characters to take them to interesting places. Continue Reading →

One of the few moments of genuine humanity from Ghostbusters: Afterlife comes before the movie starts. In the press screening intro video, director and co-writer Jason Reitman shows up to tell everyone to please enjoy the movie. Then he briefly mentions the high stakes pressure of taking up the mantle of a beloved film property from his father, Ivan Reitman.  Continue Reading →