1393 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into French (Page 48)

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 →

The Paper Tigers is out on blu-ray today. It's one of this year's very best films. And speaking personally, it's my favorite of 2021 so far. Continue Reading →

Adam Leon's foggy mood piece is as endearingly formless as its amnesiac protagonist, a moody reflection on creativity and youth. This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. There's no explicit explanation given for why Alina Reynolds (Vanessa Kirby), a short story writer of some recent renown, finds herself aimlessly wandering the streets of New York City sans memory in Adam Leon's hypnotic Italian Studies. But if anyone was to thrive in the Big Apple in such a remarkable fugue state, it'd be someone so preternaturally attuned to listening and observing as Alina. And that she does for the vast majority of Italian Studies' runtime, creating a listless yet engrossing fever dream about the unexpected gifts of curiosity. Continue Reading →

Mickey Reece's latest eases you into a darkly comic take on the typical possession film, before turning an ambitious 180 into more solemn territory. This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. Oklahoma City-based filmmaker Mickey Reece is as idiosyncratic as he is prolific; Agnes is his twenty-fifth movie in the past decade. And like his previous films (Mickey Reece's Alien, Climate of the Hunter), it's just as hard to categorize. Step into Agnes totally unfamiliar, and you might expect the typical possession-horror endemic of something like The Nun or, well, the obvious nod to Agnes of God. But right from its opening minutes, Agnes sets itself apart with a winningly dark humor; wait even longer still, and its halfway point will surprise you even further. Continue Reading →

If nothing else, the new Disney+ program The Mysterious Benedict Society reaffirms that the hallmarks of Wes Anderson’s works have gone fully mainstream. As its first episode opens with a needle drop of Electric Light Orchestra’s "Livin’ Thing" plays over a montage of various adolescents living in perfectly arranged dollhouse environments, you’d be forgiven for wondering why Tony Hale is providing the opening narration instead of Bob Balaban. Like that Series of Unfortunate Events TV show, Benedict Society shows that Anderson’s style is something even kids are supposed to be aware of nowadays. 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 →

Pregnancy sucks. Though we do it all the time, because otherwise god forbid more women would choose to not subject themselves to it, it seems almost morally wrong to sugarcoat it. Even an “easy” pregnancy is uncomfortable at best, when foods you normally love become repulsive, and even tasks as simple as putting on shoes become a comedy of errors, if your feet can even still fit in them. Childbirth itself is the most excruciating pain the human body can endure, and the effort for such a “natural and beautiful” process can result in vaginal tears that can make future intercourse difficult. Mostly, we just get real weird about pregnant people. Pregnancy is perceived as a communal event, with everyone, even casual friends and co-workers pushing advice and suggestions, while often dismissing (if not shutting down outright), the pregnant person’s needs and concerns. Ilana Glazer and John Lee’s False Positive is a chillingly effective look at an expectant parent’s sharp decline from excitement to unease to paranoid terror. Her fears are brushed off as part of “mommy brain,” but there may be something to it. 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 →

Isabelle Furhman's relentless lead performance as an obsessive aspiring athlete propels the Tribeca rowing drama forward. “Rhythm is everything,” a crew coach tells Alex (Isabelle Fuhrman) at one point during The Novice, which won awards for best U.S. narrative feature, actress, and cinematography at the Tribeca Festival this week. The coach could well be explaining how this movie, about a college student with an obsessive drive to be the best at varsity rowing, differentiates itself from Black Swan (the movie about a young woman with an obsessive drive to be the best at ballet) or Whiplash (the movie about a young man with an obsessive drive to be the best at jazz drumming) or The Social Network (the movie about a college student with an obsessive drive to be the best at something, even if it winds up destroying the world, in part because there’s no way that he can row crew)—all of which The Novice resembles in content, and sometimes form. Writer-director Lauren Hadaway’s rhythm is her own, distinct from Darren Aronofsky’s, David Fincher’s, and Damien Chazelle’s, the triumvirate of dude directors who made those previous, excellent studies in obsession. Perhaps informed by her own college rowing experience, Hadaway keys into a relentless push-pull, especially as Alex drives herself further, further, and further still before picking herself up off the floor. Continue Reading →

Typically, when we talk about a documentary, we mean a film that captures, preserves, documents a subject. With her new film Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation, director Lisa Immordino Vreeland turns the genre on its head and becomes a nonfiction work about documents themselves. Painstakingly compiled from libraries and archives of all kinds, it gives us profound insights into the lives of two famous twentieth-century literati frenemies, Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams, told exclusively in their own words. Continue Reading →

The formula isn’t a new one: the hot, hyper-competent wife who gave up her master’s track to marry the boorish, underachieving man-child. Just add three cameras and some annoying in-laws/neighbors, and you could be watching King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, or (God forbid) According to Jim. Some shows have put a unique spin on the formula, the most successful being Gloria Calderon Kellett’s One Day at a Time reboot. But overall, when you see a three-camera sitcom, you usually know what you’re getting. It’s like gas station coffee or dinner at Applebee’s. It’s just there. 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 →

The documentary delivers a well-made case for Will Vinton as an underappreciated titan of animation. When it comes to legends of the animation industry, we all know the names of Walt Disney, Lotte Reiniger, and Nick Park. But what about Will Vinton? He may not be a household name, but Claydream makes a solid case for him being someone who should be. Vinton left his mark not just on the Claymation figures he designed but also on an entire artform. Claydream chronicles Vinton's career as a scrappy outsider. Establishing his art and his eventual studio in Portland, Oregon rather than in Hollywood, Vinton’s Claymation works also eschew the clean-cut perfection of so much mainstream animation. On the contrary, the figures in his works (including, perhaps most famously, the California Raisins) have a distinctly imperfect look to them. There’s an endearingly inventive quality in the designs of these works that suggest how Vinton’s shorts and films are more about imagination rather than replicating reality.   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 →

Roshan Sethi (mostly) overcomes the stigma of the dreaded "sheltering in place together" movie with two lovely lead turns and a heaping helping of cultural specificity. This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. To attend a film festival in 2021 is to endure a veritable wave of films that either a) make a big deal of being filmed under COVID-19 restrictions or b) even worse, try to glom the pandemic onto an existing genre to mine bittersweet drama from our once-in-a-lifetime hell. We've seen plenty of attempts at a "couple sheltering in place learns to live together" story in Locked Down and SXSW's The End of Us, but first-time director Roshan Sethi's 7 Days manages to break the mold in a few important ways. It's not perfect, but it makes use of its particular context to make space for two comic actors long overdue for dramatic (and romantic) consideration. Continue Reading →

Samarth Mahajan’s documentary about life on India's borders is engaging, involving, and dense. Too often, filmmakers think they can make a documentary simply by picking a good subject. But the mark of a good documentary is not the importance or controversy of its subject, but the way that its filmmaker convinces their audience that the subject is worth exploring. Samarth Mahajan’s Borderlands accomplishes just this, and does so by pulling off the difficult task of spinning what could be disjointed or arbitrary subjects into a compelling thread that speaks to the history and dynamics of a region. Borderlands focuses on the communities of people who live near the different national borders of India. India is currently bordered by seven different countries – Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, China, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. The history of these borders is vast and dense, consisting of major wars, invasions, imperialist conquest, and political turmoil. 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 →