829 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Danish (Page 29)

Eleven months ago, nearly exactly to the day, I first fell in love with Ted Lasso—the show and, I suppose, the man too. As several people, including myself, have proclaimed, it seemed the perfect show for a population battered by the isolation and fear of what felt like a possibly endless pandemic at the time and, for Americans especially, the ugliness of a looming election. Lasso proved the wonderful good-hearted surprise so many of us were so in need of. Continue Reading →

Man, Escape from New York. What a picture. It's one of the standouts of director/co-writer John Carpenter's damn-near-unmatched 1976-1988 run of stupendous filmmaking, a man-on-a-mission film with a driving sense of urgency that still makes time to breathe in its mood and world. Dean Cundey’s widescreen cinematography captures the ruined prison island of New York in deep blacks and dense color and gorgeous widescreen framing. Carpenter and Alan Howarth’s score is cool and moody. The main theme alone is best described as “indelible.”The ensemble is a murderer's row of great actors with fantastic faces: Adrienne Barbeau, Isaac Hayes, Donald Pleasance, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, and the one-and-only Harry Dean Stanton. Each does unforgettable work. Continue Reading →

Within the opening scene of The White Lotus, it’s revealed that someone will die at some point during the show. But the question of who that someone is and how will they die isn’t really the central plot, as the six-part miniseries is much more interested in the characters and their fascinating dynamics than the mysteries and all the events leading up to the impending death. Continue Reading →

Nadja (Peri Baumeister, The Last Kingdom), a cautious, brittle woman battling a terrifying illness, boards an overnight flight from Germany to the United States. With her is Elias (Carl Anton Koch), her sweet, precocious son. They're hoping to make a new start in America, where a talented team of doctors wait to help Nadja find a cure for her sickness. While at the gate, Elias befriends Farid (Kais Setti, Dogs of Berlin)—a kind young man bound for a conference. Continue Reading →

Not all entertainment is for everyone. Continue Reading →

TV shows based on hit movies are nothing new. However, programs like The Real Ghostbusters and Buzz Lightyear of Star Command had only the barest connection to their source material and had no chance of scoring any of the performers from the original features. In the age of interconnected cinematic narratives, though, the new Disney+ cartoon Monsters at Work, a sequel to Monsters Inc., goes in the opposite direction.  Continue Reading →

The Purge franchise, spanning five films and a now-canceled two-season television series, was never one to traffic in nuance or subtlety, or even optimism. Its premise is born of a kind of didactic, Shirley Jackson-esque thought experiment: what if all crimes, even murder, were legal for 12 hours? How would people react, and who would they become, when they could let out their raging ids just for a night? From its second film, the Carpenter-esque The Purge: Anarchy, series creator James DeMonaco tacked on a third question: What if *gasp* the rich and powerful were just using the Purge as a means to cull the poor, the marginalized, and nonwhite? Continue Reading →

After spending more than two decades living in the shadow of Norman Bates, the character that he played to such indelible effect in Alfred Hitchcock’s groundbreaking classic Psycho (1960), Anthony Perkins finally came to terms with the character that ensured his place in cinema history by electing to appear in Psycho II (1983), which picked up the story of his character with his release after spending 22 years in an asylum and his ill-fated decision to return to his childhood home and its adjacent motel. Continue Reading →

It's clear from the starting gun that Paramount originally intended to push The Tomorrow War as a major summer theatrical release. But given the pandemic, Amazon Prime Video has stepped up to rollout this 140-minute sci-fi action romp starring Chris Pratt of Marvel’s Cosmic corner and Jurassic World fame. Continue Reading →

If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that all that stuff about the importance of caring for your neighbors, and looking past differences in order to create a better world? Horseshit. Absolute nonsense. The phrase “I got mine, to hell with everyone else” should be emblazoned on the American flag. Not even a highly contagious, potentially fatal virus could bring us together - if anything, it divided us further, splitting the country right down the middle between “I’d like to not spread this virus to other people” and “Hey, pal, other people aren’t my fuckin’ problem.” As we slowly recover from said potentially fatal virus, it may not seem time yet to laugh at such a thing, and yet, by gosh, director Josh Ruben makes it possible in Werewolves Within, a riotously funny horror-comedy that pokes fun at neighbors who are unable to force themselves to get along even in the most dire of circumstances. Continue Reading →

Some will complain about the lack of stakes in Black Widow. After all, even more so than typical MCU fare, Natasha Romanoff’s (Scarlett Johansson) fate never stands in doubt. She will, of course, survive. Not because she’s the good guy, but because we already know how she dies, thanks to Avengers: Endgame (aka the biggest movie of all time). Continue Reading →

Believe it or not, there’s a highly charming animated musical sitcom called Central Park currently airing on TV. The lack of marketing for any streaming program, and especially ones airing on the widely ignored pit of “content” that is Apple TV+, means that Central Park fell through the cracks of pop culture in its first season last year. The lack of any kind of notoriety for Apple TV+ programming not named Ted Lasso makes it unlikely the show will suddenly explode into a phenomenon for its second season. But at least the cast & crew behind Central Park are still delivering enjoyable half-hour doses of song-filled entertainment.  Continue Reading →

At this point, the mechanics of a Fast and Furious movie are no secret. Running on an engine of blistering sincerity, the over-the-top action inevitably finds Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) pulled in for “one last job.” You’ll see a street race populated by women in bikinis. Fancy cars will defy the laws of physics as they inevitably crash, fly, or crash while flying. Roman (Tyrese Gibson) shall vamp and riff to kingdom come. Coronas will be consumed and, in the end, family will emerge victorious. Continue Reading →

Nearly a year after the series aired on HBO, there is a new episode of I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, a docuseries based on Michelle McNamara’s book of same name. This time around, the epilogue serves as a coda, bringing the story of The Golden State Killer (and the root McNamara’s obsession) full circle.  Continue Reading →

Adapted from Matthew Logelin’s Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss and Love, written/directed by Paul Weitz, and co-written by Dana Schwartz, Fatherhood follows Matt (Kevin Hart), a father forced to raise his daughter alone when his wife Liz (Deborah Ayorinde) dies just after giving birth. Hart’s first big foray into dramatic acting has some heartwarming moments but is too bogged down by an awkward script and lack of dramatic weight. Continue Reading →

Sean King O'Grady directs a claustrophobic horror film that has a lot of potential, but just misses the mark. We Need to Do Something, the debut feature from Sean King O’Grady, is a horror film that can easily be read on two different levels, though your mileage with it will vary depending on which one you choose to follow. As a straightforward horror yarn, albeit with moments of grotesque black humor thrown in from time to time, it contains a few interesting elements but never finds a way to pull them together into a completely satisfying whole. On the other hand, if one regards the whole enterprise on a more overtly symbolic level, it gains a little more in terms of power and effectiveness. Yet, even then it also tends to lose its way especially once the fairly potent central metaphor gives way to less interesting instances of bloodshed. In either case, it ends on such a clunky and ineffective note that viewers may get the sense that O’Grady and screenwriter Max Booth III have just been screwing with them, a feeling enhanced by the all-too-apt choice for a key musical cue towards the end. Continue Reading →

If you graduated high school before, say, the new millennium, you’ll likely recall such phrases from television as “pinch an inch,” or “a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then a sensible dinner.” You may remember a “diet candy” unfortunately named Ayds. You might even recall, with a grimace, the popular OTC supplement Dexatrim, which was basically speed. All of this was in service of encouraging already thin women to either stay thin, or get even thinner, before it was replaced by the slightly less destructive, but no less obsessive exercise craze spearheaded by celebrities like Cher and Jane Fonda. Annie Weisman’s dark comedy Physical takes place during the early 80s cusp of the transition from fad dieting to fitness, and is a scathing look at ambition and the lengths we go to in order to maintain a very specific image. Continue Reading →

It can’t be overstated how much the mid-90s belonged to Jim Carrey. Largely a stand-up comedian and supporting actor at first, Carrey shot to stardom thanks to In Living Color, and the grotesque characters he played on it, including the disfigured Fire Marshall Bill, and ponytailed lady bodybuilder Vera de Milo. His leap to leading roles in comedy features was swift and wildly successful, with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber all released the same year. There hadn’t been a comic actor much like Carrey before, someone who did childish things like pretend to talk out of his butt, but also had a wild look in his eyes that suggested a hint of danger with the body contorting nonsense. Continue Reading →

Toni Collette has recently made a name for herself in the broader movie-going culture as a queen of creepy, suspense cinema, with her fantastic performances in Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Charlie Kaufman’s dark and whimsical I’m Thinking of Ending Things. It’s fun to see this resurgence of popularity nearly two decades after she gave what I consider her best performance of her career in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense.  Continue Reading →

It takes almost an hour for Patrick Hughes’ The Hitman’s Wife's Bodyguard to take a break. At around the 52-minute mark, the film goes without dialogue, gunshots/explosions, or a car chase. But this short-lived, relatively still moment lasts less than a minute. Like a person terrified of an awkward silence who just keeps talking and talking to fill the void, Hughes does not let the movie ever take a second to breathe.  Continue Reading →

Season one of HBO’s skateboard ensemble comedy/drama Betty was a sparkling slice of life, a rare female-led show where the main characters were flawed and brilliant and terrible in turns. The series (created and directed by Crystal Moselle, based on her movie Skate Kitchen) falters a bit in its sophomore season as it pulls the core girl gang apart into individual stories, to the detriment of the whole.  Continue Reading →