1102 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Greek (Page 51)

An episode focusing on the difficulties of conception highlights some of the show's best qualities. This episode, appropriately titled “Trying,” gets at the heart of what makes Brooklyn Nine-Nine so special, and why Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) and Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) are the best couple on television.  Framed by two of Hitchcock’s (Dirk Blocker) divorce parties, writers Evan Susser and Van Robichaux use an episode stuffed with B, C, and D plots as a showcase for how difficult and dispiriting it can be trying to conceive. Jake, not feeling the romance in Amy’s sexy calendar invites, suggest they try to be more spontaneous in their efforts. Amy miraculously doesn’t go on a lengthy tirade about fertility windows and basal temperatures, but gamely agrees to try “the Jake way.” When that predictably doesn’t work, Amy doubles down on the rigidly scheduled lovemaking. What follows is a heartbreaking montage of Amy and Jake, frustrated and tired and completely joyless, getting one negative test after another over the course of six months. And while the constant disappointments are excruciating to watch (is there anything sadder than a completely demoralized Amy Santiago?) this sequence does a great job of featuring the unmitigated tedium that comes with trying to conceive. Ask anyone to who has spent a year or more trying, and they will tell you how boring sex can get.  Continue Reading →

FX's true crime documentary examines one man's obsessive search for the truth about his birth father. Is there more to belonging than being told you belong? Is there truly a feeling that we are out of place, out of sync, out of favor with those who surround us? Or is it a lie that gets repeated so often it becomes true? For Gary Stewart of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, these questions are what drive him beyond a simple desire to know and to belong. FX’s new four-part documentary miniseries, The Most Dangerous Animal of All, explores Stewart’s quest for understanding and the fallout of his obsession.  Told in a quiet, confessional style, Stewart stares directly into the camera, his voice occasionally choking with emotion. Abandoned as a baby, Stewart’s trust issues are understandably deep-rooted—and they’re as much a part of his identity as the color of his eyes. Despite being adopted at three months old into a loving family who raised him with strong values, he struggled with the feelings of being unloved, of not belonging anywhere and to anyone. He even has a string of broken marriages to prove it.  One thing that series creators Ross M. Dinerstein and Kief Davidson make clear from the beginning is that identity is a slippery concept. Do our genetics determine who we are or does our environment? Would Gary Stewart have been a more stable adult if he’d never discovered that his birth parents were once a sensational news story, or would the wound of not knowing where he comes from continue to fester?  Continue Reading →

Ricky Tollman's directorial debut has great ingredients, but they add up to a terrible stew. Run This Town is an admirable first effort from writer/director Ricky Tollman. Unfortunately, the worse aspects of the film keep it from truly shining. While the film soars in certain performances and technical aspects, a weak script and a lead actor devoid of any charisma prevent this film from rising to the level of the journalism thrillers it is so clearly modeled after.  The film is set in 2013 Toronto, during the much-publicized last year in office of hard-partying mayor Rob Ford, played in a captivating, transformative performance by Damien Lewis. Much to the detriment of the film, Ford is only present in a few tense scenes, when the film truly feels like it’s making a statement. The focus of the film flips between the support staff trying to cover up Ford’s partying and the journalists chasing after the much-publicized video of Ford with a crack pipe in his hand that made its way around the internet in early 2014.  It’s in the cast of journalists that the film’s biggest failure is present, particularly Ben Platt’s performance as journalist Bram, who fights to get his story about Ford smoking crack past his editors David (Scott Speedman) and Judith (Jennifer Ehle). While Ehle and Speedman are fantastic as the kind of editors that any journalist would both hate to work for and also chase their approval, Platt fails to make Bram anything more than a whiny young man who lucked into the perfect story. Continue Reading →

Jason Segel gives us an energetic journey with compelling characters to balance a campy premise. About halfway through the first episode of AMC’s Dispatches From Elsewhere, Simone (Eve Lindley), one of the main characters, exclaims: “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s freaking fun!” This phrase just about sums up this new show, created by and starring Jason Segel. While Dispatches is scripted entertainment, it's based on the documentary The Institute, which explores the hybrid alternate reality game and performance art piece by Oakland based artist Jeff Hull. From 2008 to 2011, Hull “inducted” thousands of people in the San Francisco Bay Area into the Jejune Institute. He created multiple “episodes” for inductees to participate in, giving them missions with instructions as silly as dancing at a phone box to things as grand as leading a parade. Segel moves the action from San Francisco to Philadelphia but retains the ridiculous and almost cult-like nature of its source material in depicting the on-screen Jejune Institute and its rival the Elsewhere Society. In the first episode, we are introduced to Peter, an average joe working a dull job. Intrigued by flyers with nonsensical adverts for dolphin communication and human forcefield testing, he calls a number and is invited to an office building downtown. He’s soon roped into a world of intrigue just below the surface of our everyday world, where two entities, the corporate Jejune Institute and more radical Elsewhere Society, frantically search for Clara (Cecilia Balagot), a mysterious inventor whose talent promises to liberate humanity from societal shackles. Continue Reading →

Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For February, we’re celebrating acclaimed genre-bender Jonathan Demme. Read the rest of our coverage here. 2015’s Ricki and the Flash doesn’t know what’s about to happen. It doesn’t know it would silence the successful string of Singing Streep films. It doesn’t know it’s Jonathan Demme’s final film. And it doesn’t fully realize the changing conservative political tide that was about to crest over America the following year. Ricki and the Flash is a rock ‘n roll fable about Ricki, a prodigal mother (Meryl Streep) who returns to bourgeois Indiana from her life as a working-class musician to help estranged daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer) through her divorce and suicide attempt. Her return reignites hostilities with ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline) and sons Josh and Adam (Sebastian Stan and Nick Westrate). But with a little classic rock, the atypical family learns to accept one another. Sorta. Continue Reading →

Benh Zeitlin's follow up to "Beasts of the Southern Wild" loses its way in a muddle of fairy dust and magical realism. A person can grow up a tremendous amount in eight years. In the case of filmmaker, Benh Zeitlin, that’s how much time it took to make Wendy, a movie about not growing up, and the unfortunate fact that there’s no stopping it. It also happens to be Zeitlin’s follow up to Beasts of the Southern Wild, one of the most celebrated debut films of all-time, but sadly not talked about much these days.  Maybe it was Zeitlin’s lack of a quick second effort that made us forget about it, like a nice dream that slowly disappears as we go about our day, but now we finally have Wendy, Zeitlin’s folksy reimagining of Peter Pan, told from the perspective of Wendy Darling (Devin France). Similar to Beasts, it’s a magical realism film centered around a young girl growing up and finding her place in a big, scary world, but much like growing up, it’s a mixed bag. Instead of the London setting from the original play, this version takes place somewhere in the nameless, impoverished backwoods of America. Like Beasts, the characters are below the poverty line and off the grid. While the residents of the Bathtub in Beasts were mostly fine with  their place in the world and had fulfilling lives, for the characters in Wendy, there is a sense that  joy and imagination have already passed out of their lives, and there’s no getting it back.  Continue Reading →

Built in 1970 and finished in 1973, Chicago's Sears Tower was the epitome of neoliberalism. Whereas the other, more traditionally liberal buildings were humble and for the people, this one was better. It was bigger, taller, providing more room while taking up less space. It even beat out the Empire State Building with its 1,450 feet. Suffice it to say its edifice knew no bounds. But while it already dwarfed its sky like a capitalist Godzilla, it added antennas to grow another 279. The result was an onyx symbol that, with all its simplicity, said, “Come to me. Be my victim.” Continue Reading →

Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For February, we’re celebrating acclaimed genre-bender Jonathan Demme. Read the rest of our coverage here. Jonathan Demme's most acclaimed works are often his darkest: the grim serial killer nihilism of Silence of the Lambs, the tearjerking tragedies of Philadelphia and Beloved. But it's important to remember the late director for his moments of mirth, his celebration of music and Americana, and the little ways we allow ourselves to break out from the pack. 1986's Something Wild is more of a curio in Demme's back catalog, a manic pixie road romance that flits between goofy renditions of "Wild Thing" and blood-soaked confrontations in a suburban bathroom. It flirts with serious issues of late-capitalist malaise, but is first and foremost here to show you a good time. The opening minutes of Something Wild feel like something out of a Dear Penthouse letter: I never thought it'd happen to me, but.... It starts with gormless, straight-laced Manhattan finance guy Charlie Driggs (Jeff Daniels, paradoxically at his most Minnesotan) trying to skip out on a check at a diner, only to be intercepted by a mysterious, enticing woman named Lulu (an entrancing Melanie Griffith). In his transgression, she sees the glimmer of a fellow 'wild thing' trying to escape, someone flaunting social norms because he just needs to feel alive. Lulu, with her European bob (reminiscent of Louise Brooks' Lulu in Pabst's Pandora's Box, perhaps deliberately) and array of African jewelry, steals him away from his day job on a sojourn to a New Jersey motel, enticing him to skip work and come with her on a long weekend of sex and discovery. Continue Reading →

Clever, handsome, and rich but not necessarily in that order, Emma Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a self-made matchmaker. She tinkers in the personal lives of her peers; she fancies herself somewhere between a queen bee and a B-level goddess. That isn’t to say she plays god, though. She has just enough at stake for that to not be the case. It’s more that she, given her 1800s English setting and semi-detached friendships, is royalty in training. It’s an archetypal base that’s spawned adaptations both loose and tight, but when it comes to Autumn de Wilde’s, it’s a little too atrophied to be either. Continue Reading →

Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For February, we’re celebrating acclaimed genre-bender Jonathan Demme. Read the rest of our coverage here. Good movies are no stranger to trauma, hurt, or hardship. These things give the images projected and stories a truth that allows the audience to forget they’re fiction, but even in the best films, that sort of trauma is usually manicured, packaged, and made digestible in two-hour chunks. Some of the greatest works of cinema still put our collective pain into little boxes that viewers can open and close when needed. Rachel Getting Married is rife with the same sort of pain, pathos, and unfathomable tragedy that has fueled many of those films. However, it presents an uglier, more unvarnished version of those elements and emotions. There’s an unsparing realness to the story it tells, of a family celebrating a beautiful occasion and reliving their worst losses at the same time. The results are, at times, hard to watch. But that just speaks to the raw nerve and level of authenticity that director Jonathan Demme manages to achieve here. Continue Reading →

Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For February, we’re celebrating acclaimed genre-bender Jonathan Demme. Read the rest of our coverage here. Objectively, remaking The Manchurian Candidate seems a wild proposition. The 1962 version was met with strong critical praise and audience support upon its release. Furthermore, Angela Lansbury’s depiction of Eleanor Iselin has only grown to near-mythic standards of appreciation since. On top of it all, the movie was also a deeply faithful adaptation of the novel. How and why does someone re-adapt/remake something that was both universally praised and hewed so close to the source material as to make being less faithful the only option? The most compelling answer lies in Jonathan Demme’s particular fixation on humanism. As has been well-established, the director has long been considered one of the most humane directors of the late 20th and early 21st Century. Through films like Something Wild, Rachel Getting Married, Beloved, and even Ricki and the Flash, the director has time and time again created empathetic portraits of people struggling through life. Continue Reading →

Pixar gets back to its tear-jerking roots with an emotionally complex modern fantasy about grief, loss, and brotherhood. Early in Pixar's Onward, lanky, nerdy elf Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland) retreats from a harrowing day of school into his bedroom, sitting at his desk where he's effectively erected a shrine to his father. He never met his dad; the man died of illness before Ian was born. All that's left of him are a collage of photographs, which gaze lovingly at the lens (and, by extension, Ian), but without context. The only recording of his dad's voice is a rambly outtake from a tape recorder, a one-sided conversation Ian pretends to fill in with his own words. When we lose someone, especially someone we never got to have in the first place, we do what we can to emulate that experience as best we can. It may not be real, but it's the best we get. And sometimes, it can blind us to the people who are actually around us. That's the scene that finally began to unlock Pixar's Onward for me, a film whose kitschy ads and Dreamworks-level character designs made me fear the worst for the acclaimed studio's output. Pixar's long been known for their original tear-jerkers (it's easy to forget that Inside Out and Coco are two of their best films, released only in the last five years), but their continued mining of their existing franchises for whatever narrative meat is left on the bone -- and, let's be real, toy sales -- has diluted the brand somewhat. It's pleasing to say, then, that Onward, while not Pixar's best, will absolutely hit you in those finely-tuned heartstrings. The premise is somewhere between Zootopia, Frozen and Dungeons & Dragons -- imagine a Tolkien-esque fantasy world where the various races of the realm went all-in on industrialization and abandoned the wonder of magic for the reliability and convenience of electricity, automobiles, and urban development. (The timeline's admittedly a little janky, and the film can't quite settle on how long ago this cultural switch happened, but just go with it.) Enter the Lightfoots, a family of elves living their lives in the suburbs: the painfully anxious Ian, his RPG-loving screwup brother Barley (Chris Pratt), and their overworked mother Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). They're getting by, but the absence of the boys' father clearly weighs on them. Ian's in desperate need of courage, and Barley loses himself in fantasy games (which just so happen to recount the world's real history) to avoid the real responsibility of adulthood. Continue Reading →

Netflix’s latest sci-fi/drama/comedy/thriller features realistic characters, but lifts heavily from “Stranger Things,” “Carrie,” & just about everything else in the same genre. Say what you will about Netflix’s baffling business model, particularly when it comes to its practice of releasing hundreds of original programs and promoting perhaps 10% of them. It understands winning formulas, however, none so much as teenagers + supernatural powers=a guaranteed fan base. Filling the gap between seasons of Stranger Things and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (though season three of the latter only just premiered last month) is I Am Not Okay With This, yet another comedy/drama/thriller/etc. in which a teenage girl struggles with both burgeoning mystical powers, and the slings and arrows of growing up. Based on Charles Forsman’s graphic novel, it brings absolutely nothing new to the table (other than a “Dear Diary” narrative device), but features a believable, complicated, often realistically frustrating protagonist. Sophia Lillis, late of Gretel & Hansel and the IT movies, is Sydney “Syd” Novak, a lonely high school student given to outbursts of anger ever since her father committed suicide. On top of grieving, a strained relationship with her mother, new responsibilities at home, and acne in unfortunate places, Syd harbors a terrible crush on her best friend, Dina (Sofia Bryant), who is blissfully unaware of her feelings. Much to Syd’s dismay, Dina begins dating not just any jock douchebag, but the biggest douchebag of them all, football player Brad Lewis (Richard Ellis), who can’t get through a class on the reproductive system without making a snide joke. Insincerity all but oozes from Brad’s pores, but Dina is inexplicably over the moon for him, calling him “babe” and wearing his letterman’s jacket. A heartbroken Syd stares at Brad with hate in her eyes, and it’s only when Brad’s nose spontaneously starts to bleed that she realizes she possesses some sort of telekinetic power beyond her understanding. This power only seems to exhibit itself when Syd is angry, which is unfortunate, because she’s angry just about all the time. Syd is propelled by anger, stomping around her drab little Pennsylvania town and scowling at anyone who isn’t Dina or her younger brother, Liam (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong). She’s a prickly heroine, which is the lifeline I Am Not Okay With This clings to to keep from drowning in cliches. Continue Reading →

Michael Cristofer's first movie since 2001 is a low-key thriller that respects its characters, even if its setup isn't too original. As a general rule, people love to watch what other people do, especially if the person they’re watching isn’t aware of it. It gives us endless fascination to see how someone else acts when they think that they’re alone. But while knowing someone’s secrets can be fun, knowledge can also be a burden. Michael Cristofer returns to the director’s chair after an almost 20-year absence to explore what happens when you see something you shouldn’t in his drama, The Night Clerk. Bart Bromley (Tye Sheridan) likes to watch people not for unsavory reasons, but instead to learn from them. He has Asperger’s Syndrome and, to better understand human interactions, watches the guests of the hotel where he works via hidden cameras that he’s set up in the guestrooms. One night, Bart’s cameras record a woman getting murdered, causing Bart to rush to the hotel to save her. Since Bart was off at the time his appearance at his workplace rouses the suspicion of Detective Johnny Espada (John Leguizamo). While the case is being investigated, Bart is transferred to another location. There he meets and quickly becomes infatuated with guest Andrea (Ana de Armas) and as the duo bond, Bart starts to feel a little less lonely, but Andrea has secrets of her own.  Despite featuring a murder and a protagonist who records people without their consent, this is a story about loneliness and connection. Most of the plot centers on the relationship between Bart and Andrea with the crime elements being relegated to Johnny’s subplot until the climax. This isn’t a bad angle to take, but it may be a turn off for audiences who are expecting a taut thriller. Continue Reading →

Disney continues to shuffle off Fox's remaining output with this limp, awkward adaptation of the Jack London novel. Jack London started writing The Call of the Wild at the dawn of the 20th century after traveling through Yukon country during the height of the Gold Rush. It was in this period of blind human ambition and greed that he conceived of a story told through a dog’s eyes. The very good dog, Buck, starts as a civilized house pet before being stolen and sold as a sled dog in Alaska. There he gets passed from owner to owner, some much nicer than others, and along the way discovers that his destiny is not with humans but with the beasts of the wilderness, like his ancestors before him. It’s a beautifully written and visceral adventure about the brutality of man, the overwhelming power of nature, and the freedom we’re capable of when we turn our back on society’s rules. On the other hand, the new film adaptation of The Call of the Wild has all the thematic weight of an Air Bud sequel.  Director Chris Sanders, who is very accomplished in the world of animated film with credits like How to Train Your Dragon and Lilo & Stitch to his name, finds himself in no man’s land in the world of live-action. In order to really dig into the book’s themes and capture the harrowing journey Buck goes through, it’s necessary to make it a brutal animated movie like Watership Down. But that would be too much for any Disney-owned studio. Instead, we get a very saturated version of the novel that relies on a CGI dog that looks like a reject from Marmaduke.  Continue Reading →

Al Pacino leads a team of Nazi hunters in a brassy Amazon series stuffed with Holocaust pathos and comic-book sleaze. (Editor's note: this review is based on the first five episodes of the show, which is what was provided to critics prior to the show's premiere.) Amazon’s Hunters is a lot. That’s not bad, by any means, but it is a heads up. It’s funny and heartbreaking and stressful, a love letter to exploitation films, comic books, and revenge fantasies, and it is a lot. It’s also very much something that people need to see right now. Created and written by David Weil and produced by Jordan Peele, Hunters was inspired by his grandmother’s stories about World War II and the Holocaust, stories that Weil saw as a battle between good and evil (much like the comics that the show references and draws visual inspiration from). Nothing is as simple as good versus evil, of course, but Hunters does an excellent job of addressing the battles head-on. Set in 1977, the show revels in its primary NYC setting, full of grit and cigarettes and flickering subway car lights, and the visits to other locales are given equal ‘70s glory by production designer Curt Beech and set decorator Cathy T. Marshall, with loud wallpaper and lights shaped like grapes and so much carpeting. The most real and lived-in location is the modest house where 19-year old Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman) lives with his grandmother Ruth (Jeannie Berlin). After Ruth is murdered and the police handwave her death as a burglary, Jonah is approached by Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino), who knew Ruth from their time in a concentration camp and who, Jonah comes to learn, is the financier and now leader (in Ruth’s absence) of a group of Nazi hunters. While the Hunters are working from a list of Nazis who were active during the war and are now living in the United States, it becomes clear that there is a wider network at play and larger stakes than even the Hunters had suspected.  Continue Reading →

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. The greatest trick Sonic the Hedgehog ever pulled, on the other hand, was convincing the viewer it was harmlessly mediocre. But while the Devil is outright evil, the feature debut from Jeff Fowler is much more cynical: the kind of empty calories that fattens up the audience before leading them to the slaughter. Continue Reading →

As a printer churns out women’s headshots, none of them look particularly similar. Their hair colors vary. Some of them are angled a little differently. One of them stands out because she’s holding her hand to her chin, but their demeanors are the kind of neutral that most viewers would try projecting a sharper emotion onto. Part of the issue, however, is that the emotions in question aren’t sharp. They’re throbbing, constant, quiet. They’re easy to feel but hard to unpack. Continue Reading →

Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For February, we’re celebrating acclaimed genre-bender Jonathan Demme. Read the rest of our coverage here. So there’s this girl, okay? And she was bad for a long time and now she’s trying to be good. And there’s this boy, and he’s good too. Like, an officer of the law, good. He’s a real straight shooter and she’s a lady with a past but they meet and they spark and soon they’re in love. But there’s a problem - he needs her to go back to her old life and pretend she’s still bad to help catch some of the bad guys she used to run with; and if she doesn’t, she might get busted herself. That’s the plot to Jonathan Demme’s 1988 Married to the Mob. It’s also the plot to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 Notorious, but told from the woman’s perspective, and a comedy. The result is a sweet, oddball movie that works more than it doesn’t, but is a little at odds with itself. Demme’s desire to make a charming, screwball comedy about a bunch of wacky larger-than-life characters doesn’t always mix with his desire to subvert a cinema classic and show a woman trying to survive in a man’s world.  Michelle Pfeiffer stars as Angela de Marco, a dissatisfied mob wife who uses the death of her husband Frank (Alec Baldwin, maximum greasy) to leave the insular world of organized crime to start fresh. Her pampered life may have been suffocating but it was also very comfortable, and when the movie focuses on her struggle as a single mom in Manhattan it is funny and well observed.  Her one room studio apartment with a toilet in the kitchen doesn’t impress her son and there’s not much work available for a former mob-wife with no employment history. But Angie is scrappy and doesn’t take any shit; so when she applies for a job at a chicken joint and catches the manager spying on her as she’s changing into her uniform, she storms out. Eventually, she’s hired at a local salon, run by a Jamaican immigrant named Rita (played by reggae singer and actress Sister Carol East).  Continue Reading →

Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For February, we’re celebrating acclaimed genre-bender Jonathan Demme. Read the rest of our coverage here. It’s been nearly 30 years since filmmaker Jonathan Demme made The Silence of the Lambs. Based on Thomas Harris’ terrifying followup to Red Dragon, Silence was originally slated for an entirely different director: Gene Hackman, who was also to play the role of Jack Crawford. Serendipitously, Hackman’s daughter read the book and discouraged her father from trying to get the movie made, and Orion tapped Demme—hot off his quirky hits Something Wild and Married to the Mob—to direct.  It wasn’t the first adaptation of a Harris work. Red Dragon had already been adapted by Michael Mann as the slick thriller Manhunter, with Brian Cox filling the role of Hannibal Lecter in what amounts to a glorified cameo. While Cox is a very fine actor, his portrayal of Lecter didn’t quite stick the landing. Enter Sir Anthony Hopkins. In what might be the greatest character introduction—certainly the greatest villain introduction—of all time, Hopkins’ Lecter stands perfectly still in the center of a glassed-in cell. There are no bars for this criminal. Lecter is instead taunted with the illusion of freedom, no doubt at the behest of his petty, ambitious warden, the deliciously revolting Dr. Chilton (Anthony Heald). The role would earn Hopkins his first of four Oscar nominations, and remains his only win for Best Actor. The performance looms so large, you forget he shares only four scenes with Jodie Foster’s agent-in-training, Clarice Starling.  Continue Reading →

Ring the alarm next time a movie tacks “Blumhouse’s” to the front of its title. Is it a marketing tactic? Is it a sign of desperation? How about a warning to heed instead? Hell, is it all three? It might be a little early to tell, but it’s starting to feel like the latter. Continue Reading →