1187 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Dutch (Page 47)

One of the most fascinating things about Godzilla -- whether in his original Japanese provenance in his long-running series of films, or in the comparatively-recent "MonsterVerse" Westernization of the big lizard, courtesy of Warner Bros. and Legendary -- is that he's so malleable. On the one hand (as with the original 1954 Ishiro Honda film and Gareth Edwards' flawed but philosophically-intriguing 2014 reboot), he can be a poignant vehicle to explore the apocalyptic anxieties of nations ravaged by atomic bombs and climate change. Continue Reading →

A thirty-plus-year veteran of film and TV scoring, Kiner's a chameleon who can work with the themes and motifs set by other composers and spin them into broader, more dynamic cues demanded by the rigors of television storytelling. That's borne out in his work for Star Wars, especially, where at this point he's written more music for the universe than John Williams himself -- while he finds moments to work in familiar motifs and themes, Kiner also carves out room for experimentation, which you can hear in the more synth-heavy scoring for Clone Wars: The Final Season. Continue Reading →

It’s been 25 years since we last saw coach Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez) and his ragtag hockey team came out victorious in D3: The Mighty Ducks. But when they return in the Disney+ spinoff series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, things are a little different. For instance, Bombay isn't the same man he was; he now hates hockey and kids. 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 →

Like most pieces of queer cinema, Happy Together was widely misunderstood on its initial release. Looking back on its reviews in 1997 by American critics, there’s a puzzling emphasis on the narrative. Specifically, many critics at the time took umbrage for what they perceived as a “laggy” storyline. So prominent were these criticisms that they ended up giving the film a Metacritic score just one point about Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge of the Sith. Continue Reading →

"Everything expires. Is there anything in this world that doesn't?" Continue Reading →

In Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels, we follow two parallel narratives. One tells the story of a contract killer (Leon Lai) trying to get out of the game and his agent (Michelle Reis) who is infatuated with him. The other follows a chaotic and mute man, He Zhwiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro), who falls in love with a woman called Charlie (Charlie Yeung) whom he keeps running into. There’s a lot to like here, from the moodiness of Hong Kong to the music, to Wong Kar-wai’s signature stunning lighting. One specific thing which is really fascinating here is how few moments of dialogue are present here, and how that makes this film so effective.  Continue Reading →

A look back at a '90s star, the opioid crisis, and the weird world of domino art mark SXSW's docs in competition. (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) The subjects of the eight films included in the 2021 SXSW Documentary Competition slate vary greatly in intensity and relevancy. The three major films in the festival are documentaries as well, highlighting musicians Demi Lovato, Tom Petty, and Charli XCX. With several first-time filmmakers, the slate has potential with stirring topics, but can easily flame out, due to a lack of experience, immediacy, and understood closeness to the current status of a world that has recently felt like its ripping at the seams.  Continue Reading →

WandaVision may have spoiled us. The first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier isn’t bad. It’s a solid dose of meat-and-potatoes superhero storytelling with a big screen feel. But it’s also very traditional, in a way that the first Marvel Studios show to hit our television screens simply wasn’t. That leaves the newcomer feeling a little disappointing by comparison. Continue Reading →

Two old flames reuniting, a harried nursing home worker, and Dante Basco's family affair mark SXSW's Narrative Spotlight. (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) One year ago, the idea of doing a virtual version of the South by Southwest film festival would have sounded like an insurmountable task. Now, it’s just one more piece of “normal” life that we take for granted. For the second year in a row, SXSW has gone online and though that’s led to a lot of changes, that hasn’t altered the fact that the festival is still home to distinctly-rendered indie projects. Some of those films can be found in the Narrative Spotlight section of the festival, which kicked off with a trio of titles, including See You Then. Continue Reading →

(This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) As vaccinations soar, stimulus payments go through, and studios seem a bit more eager to get people back in theaters, it feels as though the days of COVID-era film consumption are drawing to a middle. To that end, I wonder if we'll miss the unfettered access and pyjama-based marathons virtual film festivals have allowed us. One hopes they'll stick around, given that virtual fests allow more and more people to access these small, independent films that could use all the eyes and exposure they can get. The 2020 SXSW Film Festival was the first to go virtual (and The Spool was one of the few outlets to continue to cover those entries!), so it's fitting that we've come full circle in 2021 with a more full-fledged virtual fest. Keep an eye out at The Spool for dispatches on the major categories and full reviews of the festival's three headliners; in the meantime, let's dig through Day 1's offerings of the fest's Narrative Feature Competition. Continue Reading →

The first feature-length documentary dedicated to Tina Turner leaves out too much to be truly engaging. “This film, and the musical, are a kind of closure” says executive producer Erwin Bach, who's also partner to Tina Turner for over three decades. The music icon has, in many ways, been asked to tell the same story over and over again. Even when Turner attempted to silence the nagging questions by “journalists” about the abuse in her past by writing a biography (the now infamous I, Tina), the story of her life remained outside of her control.  Directors Daniel Lindsay and T.J Martin attempt to bring an end to the unceasing cycle of questions with their new documentary, Tina. Featuring new private interviews with Turner and those closest to her, along with a stunning array of archival footage, this is the definitive documentary on the pop and soul legend. Most of her, anyway. Continue Reading →

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a good movie. Its cast brings the famous DC superhero team to life through performances that range from reliably solid to very strong. Its action is clear, creative, and in a few places downright stupendous. Its thematic work is interesting, both on its own and in the greater context of its long and winding road to existence. There are multiple moments that qualify as full-on fantastic filmmaking, sequences that successfully connect western superheroes to the larger-than-life feeling of mystical Arthurian lore. To put it simply, I like it. I like it a bunch. Continue Reading →

Coming 2 America Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5lrkdvEZGg&ab_channel=AmazonPrimeVideo Continue Reading →

What if during one of your worst nightmares, you couldn't wake up, no matter how hard you tried? This the brooding question hanging throughout Come True, Anthony Scott Burns' sophomore horror thriller, coming off of Our House in 2018. The director (and now screenwriter) brings his visual effects background to develop an atmospheric wasteland of pure, spine-chilling dread with just a touch of analog sci-fi. The result is an ironically snoozy slog about the horrors of sleep paralysis that gets by more on vivid aesthetic than the sheer terror of what keeps us up at night.  Continue Reading →

High school sucks. You know it, I know it, we all know it. Yet, culturally, we can’t leave this awful period of our lives alone, like a scab we have to pick over and over again. For what seems like eons, the high school sex drama has been a staple, whether it’s American Pie or Euphoria, we just can’t seem to stop obsessing over the sex lives of teenagers. But who are these movies and shows for? Are these for teenagers, or adults recreating high school in the image they wish it was, rather than what it is.  Continue Reading →

At least the title’s fun? If only the rest of this throwaway horror schlockfest could be as audacious as a curse word in a title. Stay Out of the Fucking Attic, Shudder’s latest exclusive, directed by Jerren Laudert and co-written with three other people (it only took one person to write Chinatown by the way), is a “House of Horrors” film that fails on two important levels. The house isn’t impressive, and there are no horrors to be found there. Continue Reading →

Watching any Wong Kar-wai movie in 2021 hits differently than it might have in almost any other year. He’s a director known for exploring loneliness and to watch it at a time when all of us without question are among the loneliest we’ve ever been is a striking experience. We’re now a year into a pandemic and despite the vaccinations on the horizon, it feels like it has no end. We’re counting the time since we last hugged or kissed our loved ones in months and even years at this point instead of hours. Continue Reading →

Radu Jude's latest is as unsubtle as it is gripping, a strange tryptich about sex, justice, and communal madness. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.) In Radu Jude’s Golden Bear-winning tenth feature, the zanily titled Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, there is no subtlety. The message is loud and clear from start to finish: The world is a sick place and not a lot of people are capable of empathy. For Emi (Katia Pascariu), a teacher, not having empathy from others means she could her job for a ridiculous reason: An amateur sex tape featuring Emi and her husband is circulating all around the internet, and when the parents of Emi’s students find about this, they demand the school to fire Emi. Jude, however, doesn’t address this plot point right away. Instead, he toys around first, dividing the movie into three equally bizarre parts. Continue Reading →

Back in 1988, Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai tried his hand at directing a feature film, transitioning from soap opera screenwriting to the low-level crime underworld seen in As Tears Go By. Wong’s debut drama follows three characters with multiple storylines: Wah (Andy Lau), his cousin Ngor (Maggie Cheung), and Fly (Jackie Cheung), his stand-in little brother in criminal life. Around the age of 30, Wong’s first foray into directing landed him a critical and modest commercial success, blending elements of his style that would become staples in his own filmmaking style.  Continue Reading →

The camera in Pirate Radio won’t stop wobbling – it’s so damn annoying. At first glance, this choice makes sense: most of this rotten film is set on “Radio Rock,” a broadcasting boat sending the greatest hits of the baby boomer era across '60s British airwaves. Carl (Tom Sturridge) has been sent aboard to live with his godfather (Bill Nighy); he’s inducted into the crew’s debauchery while the posh, no-good government tries to shut down the party.  Continue Reading →