1190 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Hebrew (Page 47)

The Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: Organized Crime crossover event on April 1st  will mark not only the premiere of a new Law & Order spinoff, but also the return of one Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni). For the first 12 seasons of SVU Stabler and Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) were the SVU team, the perfect partners. Continue Reading →

Dan Mahoney (Philip Seymour Hoffman) doesn’t want to win anything – he just wants to gamble. He drives a shabby car, wears a cheap suit, and lives with a woman he clearly doesn’t love. Most of his life is just a front – Mahoney maintains his appearance as a respectable, up-and-coming bank manager to facilitate his destructive hobby, even as a bookie barges into his office to collect the ten grand Dan owes. From the moment we meet him until Owning Mahoney’s final frame, he has no endgame. He just wants to bet. Continue Reading →

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 →

Welcome to the Criterion Corner, where we break down some of the month’s new releases from the Criterion Collection. #1070: Secrets & Lies (1996), dir. Mike Leigh Secrets & Lies - Criterion One would be hard-pressed to find a more keenly-observed chronicler of everyday life than England's own Mike Leigh. While some of his films dabble in the historic and histrionic (Topsy-Turvy, Mr. Turner, Peterloo come to mind), it's in his modern-day profiles of the workaday Briton -- Life Is Sweet, Naked, Career Girls -- where his quiet, observational eye holds the most purchase. 1996's Secrets & Lies might well be the purest distillation of Leigh's kitchen-sink dramas; he touches on social issues of class and race, but only slightly, with none of the preachiness Ken Loach is occasionally guilty of. And in so doing, speaks volumes about those very issues while keeping its focus on its individual characters and how they navigate those spaces. Secrets & Lies is about two worlds colliding: one belongs to Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptiste, masterful in her quiet calm), a successful middle-class optometrist who takes an interest in tracking down her biological mother after her adoptive one dies. The culprit, we learn, is Cynthia (a Cannes-winning performance from Brenda Blethyn), a brittle, middle-aged factory worker falling apart at the seams at her advancing years and her fractious relationships with her daughter and brother (a steady Timothy Spall). Hortense is Black; Cynthia is white -- dynamics that cause first confusion, then strife in these family dynamics, as Cynthia eventually brings Hortense into the explosive relationships around her. 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 →

During our pandemic lockdowns, who amongst us hasn’t recruited quarantined friends and family into a baking project beyond our experience? Now imagine the pressure of concocting an elaborate bake with a pal or family member for all the world to see. With Netflix’s Nailed It! Double Trouble, bakers pair up in teams of two to recreate extravagant bakes and win $10,000. While some elements have changed in this new season, host Nicole Byer still panics at the push of a button, chef Jacques Torres still imparts wisdom to the contestants, and the bakers reach new heights of spectacular cake fails. In the words of guest judge Ron Funches, “I love a good hot mess.” Nailed It! Double Trouble is the good hot mess we need, seeing twice the fun and chaos from amateur bakers. Continue Reading →

Udo Kier gets a lovely late-career showcase, and Leah Purcell directs a brustling but unfocused feminist Western. (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) Much like time in a Tracy Lawrence song, the 2021 South by Southwest film festival marches on. However, while SXSW will continue on until March 20, the Narrative Spotlight section has reached its final day with two entries. The vast differences between this pair of features reinforces the level of variety found in this festival. The first of these closing Narrative Spotlight projects is a wistful yet joyous endeavor starring the one and only Udo Kier.   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 →

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 →

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 →

By the time the 1990s rolled around, the action film genre in America was in a bit of a doldrums. The same figures who had dominated the previous decade were still making movies, but their efforts were becoming more forced and listless. Even masters of the form like Walter Hill and Clint Eastwood were coming up with duds like Another 48 Hrs (1990) and The Rookie (1990), chasing past glories with sequels and knockoffs rather than attempting anything new. Sure, the Hong Kong scene was thriving with the works of John Woo and Tsui Hark, but few in the US outside of film circles were familiar with them. Continue Reading →