1199 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Hungarian

Watching The Perfect Couple, Jenna Lamia’s slick adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s 2018 novel for Netflix, two thoughts immediately bubble up. The first isn’t the fault of the show’s quality so much as its timing. That thought is, “maybe we should give a break to all these shows and movies about rich folk in great locales doing crime”. In less than a year, I have reviewed shows with that plot taking place in a planned bunker in the tundra, on an ultra-expensive cruise ship, a rich enclave in West Palm Beach, and, now, an estate in a seaside New England town. Other recent entries include The Glass Onion, The Menu, and one could even mount an argument for Only Murderers in the Building. A lot of these are good. Some are great. But perhaps we could spread the ensemble crime-mystery wealth (haHA) a bit? Maybe a murder mystery set at a State Fair? Meghann Fahy's got those beach-y waves everybody wants. (Netflix) Granted, this is a bit unfair. The Perfect Couple comes from a novel. Hilderbrand set the novel in Nantucket, where she lived, so she was writing about the kind of climate outside her window. That all makes sense. However, it’s difficult not to see so much media where affluence is part of the scenery and not get a little tired of it. Especially when the series feel like they’re acting as a catalog as much, if not more, than critique. Continue Reading →

About 25 years ago, comics fell in love with a storytelling device called decompression. At its best, it expanded what typically would be short stories to several issues long to better explore emotional beats and psychological motives and give the occasional joke room to breathe. For instance, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko told the origin of Spider-Man in 11 pages. Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley retold an updated version of the origin in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN in more than 130 pages spread over six installments. Over time, however, the technique became a source of frustration for many. Too often, readers would find themselves wielding through a multi-issue arc only to discover it was more a prelude of things to come than its own story. These exercises in attention maintenance weren’t without their charms, but even the highest of charms grow tired with repetition. Netflix’s Kaos, from Charlie Covell, creator of the excellent teen road trip series The End of the F***ing World, sadly feels a lot like those infuriatingly decompressed comics of the early 2000s. Which is to say, there’s plenty to enjoy in the eight episodes, but by the time credits roll on the season, there’s a distinct lack of satisfaction. Stephen Dillane has a good stretch and a yawn. (Netflix) To tackle the positives first, Covell and co-writer Georgia Christou’s chop-and-screw approach to adapting Greek mythology makes good use of the material without being chained to the centuries-old tales. For example, recasting Persephone (Rakie Ayola) as Hades’ (David Thewlis) willing partner gives the audience a unique take on the duo, reveals how myth works even in a world where the gods are demonstrably real, and adds a layer of wickedness to Hera who seems to oversee holy PR, for lack of a better way to put it. Continue Reading →

Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), and the rest of the Slough House reprobates are back for Slow Horses Season 4, and things are, unsurprisingly, not good. While a bombing in a bustling London shopping center consumes most of Britain’s intelligence community, River’s grandfather, David (Jonathan Pryce), has wandered into a very different sort of fight. His memory and cognitive skills are unraveling, triggering, among other problems, a rapid increase in his paranoia. One night, someone close to him drops in for a visit, and moments later, David guns down the visitor. But is everything what it seems? Questions of what family members owe one another take center stage as David’s confused and deadly actions expose the previously largely unexplored complexity of the Cartwright family. As one member of Slough House runs to France to investigate a single errant clue, the rest of the team is left behind to protect David from Emma Flyte (Ruth Bradley), the new head of MI5’s “dogs”. While seemingly far less corrupt than her predecessors, she’s just as disinterested in tolerating the Horses’ nonsense or willing to trust their pleas for more time. Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Christopher Chung, Tom Brooke, Kadiff Kirwan, and Rosalind Eleazar are all here. You got a problem with that? (AppleTV+) Coming at the Horses from the other side is a seemingly unstoppable black-ops mercenary (Tom Wozniczka) trying to clean up the loose ends of…something. David might have once been able to fill in the blanks, but with dementia steadily robbing him of his past and his present consumed with guilt and trauma, he can’t conjure any explanations. As he stalks the members of Slough House, Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) tries to push the new First Chair, the hesitant and PR-focused Claude Whelan (James Callis), to bury anything and everything having to do with the bombing and its apparent perpetrator. Continue Reading →

Before things go too far, it’s important to offer this disclaimer. Bad Monkey’s monkey isn’t especially naughty. Or even all that present. So people with particular opinions on animal performers, now you know. Proceed accordingly. For everyone else, Bad Monkey isn’t bad. In fact, it’s largely quite good. The series grabs your attention with an opener that accurately captures the tone of the ten episodes to come. An arrogant, nouveau riche-coded husband on honeymoon reels in a big one. Only problem is it turns out not to be a fish. Instead, a severed arm, seemingly flipping off the world, hangs off the hook. His new bride screams inconsolably as a deckhand snaps a pic of the man with his catch. On the deck above, the rent-a-captain dryly mumbles to himself about the business of making dreams come true. It is loud, over the top, funny, and a bit horrifying when you stop to think about it. Continue Reading →

After several attempts at relaunches and reimaginings, last year’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem finally hit on a formula that justified bringing those heroes on the half-shell back yet again. Ditching the cluttered live-action CGI of Platinum Dunes’ previous Turtles’ films in favor of a fresh and fluid animation style, the film shifted focus from “ninja” to “teenage.” The green guys could still fight—and did—but the story was more interested in the adolescent longing for peer connection. Add a propulsive soundtrack and a real sense of place, and they got a refreshing delight. It only makes sense that Paramount would want to move the approach from the big screen to the little one with Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Unfortunately, budgets are a thing. Moving to 12 episodes (the first six provided for critics) on streaming means fewer dollars and further to stretch them. Thus, while Leonardo (Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr.), Raphael (Brady Noon), and April (Ayo Edebiri) return with their original voices, several are either changed or don’t return at all. For instance, Jackie Chan no longer voices Splinter. His replacement, James Sie, communicates only in a gibberish language called “vermin”. To be fair, it is a fun/funny solution to the usual “different guy trying for the same voice for the cartoon series” problem. Robot 02 would just like a little hug. Honest. (Paramount+) The other mutants—the antagonists turned protagonists of the film—simply don’t appear. That’s not especially surprising. It’s hard to imagine getting the likes of Paul Rudd, Giancarlo Esposito, Post Malone, and Seth Rogen to ALL commit to a 12-episode order and have any money left over. That said, Rose Byrne contributes a brief but amusing cameo as Leatherhead. There is a chance the rest, or some portion, might return in the back half of the season. Regardless, their prominence ranges from significantly curtailed to entirely eliminated. Continue Reading →

Ever since the pseudonymous Carolyn Keene first created the plucky heroine Nancy Drew in 1930, so-called Girl Detectives have remained an object of cultural fascination. Netflix’s riveting new series A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder introduces audiences to Pip Fitz-Amobi (Emma Myers, the breakout of Tim Burton’s Wednesday), a worthy successor to Nancy and her compatriots like Harriet the Spy. In just six tightly-written episodes, Good Girl’s Guide unspools a satisfying small town mystery that will captivate teenage fans and adult viewers alike. Eschewing her original thesis proposal on feminism in Gothic literature, self-possessed seventeen-year-old Pip decides to spend her final year of school before university investigating the mysterious disappearance of her older classmate Andie Bell (India Lillie-Davies). Andie’s boyfriend Sal (Rahul Patni) supposedly confessed to her murder before taking his own life, but Pip has her doubts from the jump, and not without reason: she may have been the last person to see the doomed couple together. Her fledgling case grows even more complicated when she connects with Sal’s charming younger brother, Ravi (Zain Iqbal), and finds herself developing romantic feelings for the first time in her life. Myers confidently anchors the fun, diverse ensemble of newcomers with spunk and aplomb, her wide blue eyes searching every scene for clues. Iqbal and Patni are perfectly cast as crush-worthy sadboys, while Asha Banks and Yasmin Al-Khudhairi (Rye Lane) stand out as Pip’s practical best friend Cara Ward and her troubled older sister, Naomi. Familiar British favorites like Anna Maxwell Martin (Becoming Jane, A Personal History of David Copperfield) and Mathew Baynton (Wonka) round out the adult side of the cast, playing Pip’s loving mother and kindly English teacher, respectively. Continue Reading →

The host of a podcast I regularly listen to consistently refers to a “toxic impulse.” I’m not sure I agree, but I found myself thinking about that turn of phrase often while screening all ten episodes of Batman: Caped Crusader. Created by Timm and produced by a plethora of eye-catching names, including J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Ed Brubaker, Caped Crusader unfolds in an art deco Gotham City from some alternate universe of 1930s/40s America. It is early in the pointy-eared vigilante’s career, not necessarily Year One, but close. Not everyone in Gotham believes in the Batman’s (Hamish Linklater) existence. He hasn’t found a working relationship with the police department, and most of his wonderfully complex and scary villains do not yet exist. In the daylight, Bruce Wayne (Linklater again, natch) moves through high society, dropping all kinds of money on various charities. Along the way, he flirts (but nothing more) with enough women to make Warren Beatty in his prime ask Brucie for advice and disappears at the oddest times. Eric Morgan Stuart always manages to get perfectly framed by windows. (Prime Video) Does all of that feel familiar? Like 1992 familiar? Like Batman: The Animated Series familiar? Well, it will also look familiar to fans of that series. While Batman: Caped Crusader admirably brings more diversity—racial and body type-wise, most noticeably—to the cast, the aesthetics match those of The Animated Series original look very closely. It sounds like TAS, thanks to Frederik Wiedmann’s score. There’s nothing as big in it as the moment from Danny Elfman’s Main Credits Theme when the building explodes and the percussion kicks in, for sure. However, Wiedmann creates themes and motifs that immediately call to mind the quieter aspects of that theme and Shirley Walker’s in-episode compositions. Continue Reading →

To say creator Kathleen Jordan’s adaptation of The Decameron is loose is to enjoy the gift of significant understatement. The source material, an Italian collection of 100 tales “told” to one another by ten characters, was a kind of Canterbury Tales for the plague set. Or, more accurately, Tales was a Decameron for the Brits. The Italian work, after all, has about 50 years on Chaucer’s book. While the TV series does gather ten characters together, initially to celebrate the arranged wedding of Pampinea (Zosia Mamet) and Leonardo (Davy Eduard King), then to try to ride out the Bubonic, it largely ditches the tale-telling. In its place is a satirical take on today’s class inequalities smuggled onto screen under the veil of a period black comedy. While likely conceived of during or in the wake of COVID’s darkest early days, the tones and themes update nicely to now. It does not reflect our modern situation as literally as it did in, say, April 2020. Nonetheless, it smartly captures how certain global tragedies cannot be dodged and how the rich and powerful will still try at the cost of the larger society. If only it landed its jokes as well. Zosia Mamet and Saoirse-Monica Jackson learn the importance of decanting from Jessica Plummer. (Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix) It isn’t for lack of talent. Tanya Reynolds—so good in Sex Education—proves she deserves a bigger stage, stepping into one of the lead roles as the handmaiden Licisca. She finds herself tethered to the vain and selfish Filomena (Jessica Plummer) as they journey to Leonardo’s estate. How the kind and socially conscious member of the servant class evolves in isolation as she tastes luxury and power for the first time is genuinely interesting and well-acted by Reynolds. A scene where she goes from faking kindness to the hypochondriac aristocrat Tindaro (Douggie McMeekin) to genuinely delight with him feels wonderfully organic and honest. Continue Reading →

For a show set in the mid-1960s, Lady in the Lake explores a basketful of issues relevant to today. From nearly 60 years in our past, it echoes modern “concerns” of all stripes. For example, characters range from dubious to outright hostile to the idea of Maddie (Natalie Portman) working as a journalist or Ferdie Platt (Y’lan Noel) becoming the first black detective in Baltimore. It doesn’t take much to see how that connects with today’s handwringing over DEI—bigotry dressed up to look like worries about the “most deserving person” getting the job. That the most deserving always seems to be a white man, in such concerned citizens’ opinions, is just a coincidence, no doubt. Also spotlighted in Lady in the Lake are questions about women’s autonomy over their own bodies, grooming, legalized gambling, antisemitism, and politicians throwing over the people that got them elected for “respectability”. Homophobia, stranger danger, and the ramifications of untreated childhood trauma also receive small but prominent moments of attention. Moses Ingram's too good to get lost in this series' chaos so often. (AppleTV+) If that sounds like a lot for a television series to tackle in a single seven-episode season, well, it is. As a result, the show frequently —particularly the first two to three episodes—lapses into a sort of controlled but still frantic chaos. In its efforts, led by creator Alma Har’el, to wrap its arms around everything it wants to be about, the viewer can feel battered by incidents. The series’ occasional dalliances with hallucination and visual metaphor don’t help in this regard. They’re fascinating for certain. The sixth installment’s near episode-length exploration of Maddie’s psyche stands out as a season-high. However, they also sometimes make it overly difficult for the audience to find solid footing in the narrative. Lady in the Lake’s ambition is worthy of praise, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into good television. Continue Reading →

Eons ago, a wise philosopher named Scott Stapp turned his head to the heavens and screamed, "Can you take me higher?/to a place where blind men see/Can you take me higher?/to a place with golden streets?". Whether or not he ever got to those grand heights is unknown. However, daredevil Russian climbers Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus took a different, more active route to reaching those beckoning skies. They’ve dedicated their lives to climbing incredibly tall skyscrapers without harnesses or safety nets. Imagine if the Free Solo guy was also Ethan Hunt mounting the Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. That's this romantically infatuated couple. Rooftopping is the name of Beerkus and Nikolau's game, and it's most certainly a dangerous exercise to which one's life is devoted. However, for this duo anchoring the new Netflix documentary Skywalkers: A Love Story, the unthinkable is just ordinary reality. Nikolau, especially, was destined to push boundaries and put her safety in jeopardy. After all, she grew up in a circus family, with her bravura mother serving as her idol for how one should exist. Once she got into the rooftopping game, though, she needed a mentor. This is where the experienced Beerkus came into play. Eventually, their dynamic transformed into something more romantic. Simultaneously, their scaling of iconic massive landmarks turns the duo into celebrity sensations. Everyone loves the couple that smooch and defy vertigo with equal ease. Come 2022, though, Beerkus and Nikolau’s finances are dwindling, and their relationship is under enormous duress. It’s time for “one last job.” The Warisan Merdeka Tower in Malaysia (the second-tallest building in the world) is calling their names. Their skills and love are about to suffer enormous challenges. Continue Reading →

There’s probably something meaningful to say about the current state of politics and the seeming revival of the swords and sandals genre; unfortunately, Peacock’s new series Those About to Die engenders very little desire to engage with its material on any deeper level. Created by Robert Rodat and directed by Roland Emmerich and Marco Kruezpaintner, Those About to Die is a historical drama centered around the fading rule of Emperor Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins), his sons Titus (Tom Hughes) and Domitian (Jojo Macari, eating every piece of available scenery), and the bloody and politically treacherous world of chariot racing.  Set in 79 AD (reading up on that year will provide some spoilers if history is a spoiler), Those About to Die wants to have it all. It’s a drama! It’s an epic! It’s historical fiction! It’s sexy! It’s violent! Well, sure, it’s all of these things, but sadly none are enough to raise it above its vaguely ‘90s television miniseries feel. The series sags under the weight of its scale. Feeling at times like nothing so much as “James Michener’s ROME," Those About to Die features no fewer than 15 primary characters, many of whom fade into the background and reappear with such little fanfare that the audience struggles to keep track. Though the storylines blend fairly swiftly after an overpacked premiere, the characters make so many rash and death-defying decisions per episode that nothing seems to carry any sort of weight. Anything dramatic that can happen does but with varying (and unearned) degrees of consequence. There are attacks on characters but then they’re fine; characters lose money and then get more. When it feels like everyone has plot armor until a “surprise,”  nothing is a surprise anymore.  Continue Reading →

As metaphors for one’s tweens and early teens, a superpower that changes your body, often without your control or knowledge, and leaves you questioning who you truly are at any given moment isn’t exactly subtle. But when it comes to chronicling the travails of middle school, perhaps subtlety isn’t the best way to approach the problem anyway. It’s the metaphor Ben (Lucian-River Chauhan) finds himself living as a seventh grader in Me. At school, he’s the new kid, an easy target for Jason (Brock Duncan), the bully who positively bristles with overcompensation. At home, he’s a visitor trying to become a resident as he and his mom, Elizabeth (Dilshad Vadsaria), move in with his stepdad Phil (Kyle Howard) and older stepsister Max (Abigail Pniowsky). His father is nowhere to be seen and quickly dismissed when mentioned. Max’s mom is a constant presence, even if it is usually just by mention. Then, one morning, Ben wakes up looking like Max’s friend (Jeremiah Friedlander). Like the mutants of Marvel’s X-Men, his superpower has kicked in just as adolescence is gearing up. "What do you mean, we aren't allowed to say cap?" demanded Kyle Howard and Dilshad Vadsaria. (AppleTV+) That bit might resemble the lives of Cyclops of Jean Grey, but in most other ways, Me feels a lot more like a junior version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the Gen Alpha set. Like Buffy’s Slayer mantel, Ben’s shapeshifting abilities become a gateway to a far stranger and more dangerous world existing just under the surface of his new home. And just like that series, Me plays best when it focuses on the growing pains of adolescence. Continue Reading →

Amrit Rathod (Lakshya) is a commando. He is a peerless soldier among peers. He's as ruthless as he is skilled, and when he fights, he wins. It might be a slugfest, and he cannot walk off a hit like it's nothing, but if someone fights him, he's the one who walks away from the fight. He's also a good friend to his fellow commando Viresh (Abhishek Chauhan) and a loving partner to his girlfriend Tulika Singh (Tanya Maniktala. When Tulika's wealthy father arranges her engagement to someone she doesn't love, Amrit and Viresh catch the Singhs' train. The plan is simple—link up with Tulika and elope. The trick is that their train has been marked for robbery by an extended family of bandits—fathers, siblings, and cousins. Fani (Raghav Juyal) may not be the patriarch, the strongest, or even the most respected among the bandit crew. But he is ruthless, sadistic, and determined to come out on top. No one will stop him from pulling the robbery off, and he will not tolerate disrespect. When the bandits make their first play, Amrit wants to stop them. After Fani makes his play, a vicious move that introduces the title card 45 minutes in, Amrit wants them dead. And he has the ability and the will to make that happen. Writer/director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat's Kill is a decent entry in the growing hyper-violent 21st-century action cinema library. Like Gareth Evans' The Raid, Kill uses the geography of its setting to its choreography's advantage. Like John Hyams' Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, Kill pays attention to the immediate psychological effects of extreme violence. Like Timo Tjahjanto's The Night Comes for Us, Kill builds some of its strongest action beats on improvised weaponry and unique flavors of grody that can result from its creative application. It doesn't reach their level, but it's a worthy swing with strong narrative escalation and an enjoyably despicable turn from Juyal. Continue Reading →

It’s disappointing and fitting that director Ti West’s MaXXXine is undone by its sheer ambition. Throughout West’s licentious slasher series, his films have always featured titular heroines whose dreams were never commensurate with the limitations of their present circumstances (cue Mia Goth’s iconic “Please, I’m a star!” diatribe in 2022’s Pearl). In a similar vein, MaXXXine follows Maxine Minx (played once again by a show-stopping Goth) as she struggles to make a name for herself in Hollywood despite a less-than-savory past (for starters, she’s the sole survivor of a brutal massacre, as depicted in the first film of the series, X). Like its titular protagonist, MaXXXine has high ambitions, attempting to weave in commentary about the dignity of sex work, the glamor and exploitation of Hollywood, the soul-crushing dogmas of conservative Christianity, and the pitfalls of fame all while delivering bloody genre thrills. It’s an admirable attempt, but, unfortunately, that desire to cover so much thematic ground does a disservice to the film as a whole, ultimately rendering MaXXXine a sizzle reel of iconic 1980s set pieces in a desperate search for a more compelling story to thread them together.  Taking place in 1985 and six(xx) years after X, the film follows Maxine as she carves a successful name for herself in the pornographic film industry. Still, she’s convinced that she’s meant for greater things, hoping to make the leap into non-stag films. She gets her big break when she lands the lead role in the horror film The Puritan II, but cannot rest on the laurels of her inchoate movie career. A serial killer known as the Night Stalker has been brutally murdering young LA hopefuls, and after three of the victims have a direct connection to Maxine, she realizes that her past has caught up with her. In between her blossoming movie career, she strives to stop the Night Stalker, lest her dreams are thwarted. Continue Reading →

Early on in the proceedings of the long-gestating Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, an actual Beverly Hills cop, looks over files chronicling Axel Foley’s previous visits to the city of glitz and glamor. The officer remarks, “94–not your finest year,” a clear shot at the dismal Beverly Hills Cop 3. Ironically, as bad as it was, 3 feels like a near-masterpiece compared to Axel F. This installment is a wheezy, depressing collection of franchise tropes that have long exhausted their comedic value. Eddie Murphy delivers one of the more listless performances in a career that has been, to put it politely, uneven. It somehow pulls off the seemingly impossible task of making Bad Boys: Ride or Die seem vital and cutting-edge. This time, our hero continues to cause chaos as a Detroit cop, chasing crooks through the streets in a snowplow in the opener. Almost immediately, he’s once again summoned to Beverly Hills when he learns that his estranged daughter Jane (Taylor Paige) is receiving death threats. As a defense lawyer, her current case, involving an accused cop killer and possible police corruption, has apparently upset some dangerous people. Axel teams up with Jane and her former flame, the honest cop Det. Bobby Abbott (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to investigate the threats. It isn’t exactly Chinatown in its complexity, though. The bad guy, corrupt top cop Capt. Grant (Kevin Bacon) essentially announces his villainy the minute he appears. Cue the alleged wackiness. Villain or not, Kevin Bacon has that jawline. (Netflix) The original Beverly Hills Cop was not a particularly great film, an often-uneasy fusion of violent cop thriller and comedy. But it did effectively milk its basic fish-out-of-water premise with a just ascending to superstar status Murphy. At this point, however, that premise has long since been milked dry. Former outsider Axel is now such a fixture in these posh surroundings that I suspect there’s a sandwich named after him at Nate’N Al’s. Continue Reading →

So it’s fairly obvious that the first two seasons of The Bear had a whole birth/death thing going on. The show opens in the aftermath of the shocking and abrupt suicide of Mikey Berzotto (John Bernthal), and the first season charts the slow, inevitable death of his restaurant, The Beef, under the stewardship of his little brother Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and best friend Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). The second follows the birth of The Bear, the new restaurant that rises from the ashes of The Beef, as well as the blossoming of many of its employees from a sloppy blue-collar crew to a careful, refined, highly efficient team. And Carmy flirted with birthing a life outside the kitchen through his relationship with old-flame-from-back-in-the-day Claire (Molly Gordon). But while the first season ended in pretty unambiguous triumph when Carmy, Richie, and the rest of the Beef staff were suddenly flush with cash and a plan for the future, season two ends on a significantly darker note. The Bear manages to open its doors on time and have a successful opening night, but Carmy’s relationships with Richie and Claire are in tatters—casualties of Carmy’s rage and anxiety. There was a kind of dry run for the catastrophe that closed the end of season two near the end of the first. Carmy loses his shit, breaks a bunch of stuff, yells, and alienates pretty much everyone. But the final episode brought them all back together, stronger than ever. Carmy is what George Costanza would describe as a “delicate genius,” ferociously gifted but intense and unpredictable. To work with him is to warm yourself by the raging fire of his mind while trying to avoid getting burned by the constant sparks and flares that burst from it. “THE BEAR” — “Tomorrow” — Season 3, Episode 1 (Airs Thursday, June 27th) — Pictured: Jeremy Allen White as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto. CR: FX. The show did an elegant job pacing Carmy’s assholeishness with revelations about his past home and professional life. He grew up in a single-parent home with an alcoholic, mentally unwell mother, prone to fits of rage and depression. He worked under a monstrously critical chef while he was coming up, who criticized and undermined everything he did. These revelations are for the audience, not necessarily the other characters in the show. So when Carmy melts down in a fit of panic and self-loathing on opening night, we know it’s informed by his hyper-tense childhood and abusive mentor. But the people who work under him don’t. Some know parts, but no one knows everything. And it’s harder for them to understand.Now we come to season three, and the completely reasonable expectation is that it will open much like season one closed. Having learned a valuable lesson, Carmy will gather the crew back together, apologize, and things will return to normal in the kitchen. Oh, it might take a little longer for some of them to come around than others, but everything will work itself out. Except it doesn’t. Because while the first two seasons were concerned with birth and death, the third is a lot more about life. And the thing about life is that it’s its own thing, separate from birth and death. They’re related, obviously, but life is also a distinct thing in ways that birth and death are not. Continue Reading →

From Certified Copy to Mass to the Before trilogy, cinema is replete with examples of great movies that wring transfixing drama out of an intimate scope and a cast of characters you can count on one hand. Christy Hall’s feature-length directorial debut Daddio aims to follow in the footsteps of those features, but stumbles mightily in the process. Daddio begins at a New York airport, where Girlie (Dakota Johnson) plops into a taxi after a trip to her home state of Oklahoma. Driving this cab is Clark (Sean Penn), a grizzled man in his sixties who loves shooting his mouth off. Initially, the focus of his ramblings is typical old-man material. He gripes about the ubiquity of apps and credit cards in the modern world. Gradually, though, the duo gets trapped in traffic. Stuck on the road, Clark begins asking Girlie increasingly intimate questions. They started this car ride as strangers. But conversations ranging from the raw to the ribald will have Girlie discovering the listener she didn’t know she needed. Unsurprisingly, Daddio started as a concept for a stage play. What's surprising is how the final film's visual impulses seem determined to avoid comparisons to something you could watch on Broadway. Hall, cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, and editor Lisa Zeno Churgin act furiously to avoid lengthy single-take shots. Nobody will ever compare this to a Chantal Akerman or Chung Mong-Hong movie. Instead, images default to close-ups and medium shots. Hall and company continuously jostle viewers around the cab. Maybe this is out of concern that moviegoers will see a more staid visual style and immediately ask, “Why isn’t this a play?” Continue Reading →

What is Horizon? It's a question that plagues the sprawling cast of characters in Kevin Costner's new Western saga, his return to feature filmmaking after staking out a healthy retirement fund (and keeping himself in the public eye of America's dads) with five seasons on Paramount's popular neo-Western soap Yellowstone. Most of them, one way or another, have been drawn West with the promise of prosperity thanks to mysterious flyers published nationwide; settlers, homesteaders, and forty-niners all rush out there to find their future and their fortune. But, as with so many tales of the frontier, down this way lies danger: Apaches, privateers, the shadows of your past following you into the unknown seeking vengeance. Horizon, it seems, is the intangible dream of westward expansion and Manifest Destiny, the romantic core of this nation's history (and the brutal underbelly of violence that created it). But it's also important to ask what Horizon is for Costner, especially in the context of this first chapter: Part 1, a three-hour prologue that sets up what could be up to three chapters to come but which gives audiences little to grab onto in that lengthy time period. Much like Dune: Part One before it, it's hard to gauge a film's merits when its story is incomplete by its very nature. Comparisons to "How the West Was Won" have been made, but it also evokes the epic miniseries events of the 1970s and 1980s like Lonesome Dove and The Blue and the Grey, multi-night appointment viewing that told novelistic stories with lavish production values. "Horizon" most echoes these in its structure, a TV-etic format that seems oddly fitting for Costner's return to film after so much time in the TV landscape himself. But Part 1's greatest asset (and hurdle) comes from its opening act, the inciting incident for much of the plot's primary thrust. 1859, the San Pedro Valley; a group of settlers put down stakes and form a small tent city, complete with loving families and even a bustling dance hall. Tragically, this bliss is interrupted by a raiding party of Apaches, angry at the "white-eyes" stealing their land, a forty-minute sequence as brutal as it is terrifying. This is the Costner of Dances With Wolves, in all its power and old-fashioned attitudes: scenes full of Western grandeur, yet suffused with an exoticism of Native peoples that hasn't quite updated to the modern day. Continue Reading →

About fifteen years ago, an era of “complicated” protagonists ruled the television landscape. These anti-heroes—Walter White, Don Draper—were the sort of people one wouldn’t associate in their day-to-day life. Safely sealed in a flat screen, though, and viewers couldn’t get enough of them. It was a glorious time to be unlikable on TV. Still, as Erik Kain pointed out, it was an honor almost entirely reserved for men. Sunny is a late-arriving corrective, centering a fully complex and often unlikable Rashida Jones. As Suzi, Jones ditches nearly everything that makes her an on-screen appealing presence in the likes of The Office and Parks and Recreation. She also flattens the traits that make her stand out as a character worthy of empathy in projects like Silo and On the Rocks. In place of those, she offers a dead-eyed stare that only sparks to life when castigating her mother-in-law Noriko (Judy Ongg), random bureaucrats, and, of course, the titular android Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura). Rashida Jones does not, and this can't be stressed enough, have time for this nonsense. (AppleTV+) It isn’t like she doesn’t have cause for anger and the thousand-mile gaze. As the opening minutes reveal, Suzi has justy lost her husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and son in a plane crash. However, as the series unfolds, it becomes clear Suzi can’t blame her unpleasantness entirely on grief. As revealed in flashbacks, she’s been hard-drinking and foul-mouthed for some time. Additionally, although partially owed to her dyslexia, she wields her failure to learn nearly any Japanese like a cudgel. It is yet another tool for holding the world at bay. That world includes, often, her spouse. Of course, his own drinking and pile of secrets hardly made him an ideal partner either. Continue Reading →

There’s no honest way to say WondLa looks ugly or uninteresting. The environs, in particular, make wonderful use of gentle pastels broken by sharp primary colors to create a world both beautiful and utterly alien (no pun intended) to our protagonist, Eva (Jeanine Mason). But visually attractive isn’t the same as unique or arresting. Sadly, once one begins to scratch the show’s surface, it reveals many all-too-familiar elements. Sometimes, it is just a general sense of the thing. At others, it is nearly one-to-one. For example, Eva’s first otherworldly ally, Otto (Brad Garrett), is a furry talkative sibling to Raya and The Last Dragon’s Tuk Tuk. Similar design elements are typically easy to accept for this critic, provided the story utilizing them offers enough to chew on. It is here that WondLa truly stumbles. A collection of other “coming of age” and “humanity’s end” stories’ greatest hits, the series never offers something fresh enough to get its audience to sit up and take notice. A collection of strong voice work, including Teri Hatcher—who has proven herself a real voice talent asset over the years—is further hamstrung because the voices come from mostly thinly sketched characters. Sarah Hollis and Jeanine Mason love your new look. (AppleTV+) In some unnumbered future year, Eva is the only child living in a vast underground bunker known as a Sanctuary. Her only true companionship is a robot surrogate parent, Muthr, who sees to the child’s physical—and, with time, inevitably—emotional needs. When Eva turns six, she—and the audience—learns she is part of a program to “save” humans from themselves. Under the direction of Cadmus Pryde (Alan Tudyk in a rare straightforward voice performance), the dwindling human populace built an array of Sanctuaries. In each, a robot raised children until the planet healed from the various environmental catastrophes and violent conflicts people visited upon it. When the Earth is ready and the children properly trained, they will be released to the surface to re-establish society and maybe treat each other and their planet right this time. Continue Reading →

Joko Anwar is no stranger to telling stories that serve as a mirror reflecting Indonesia’s sociopolitical situation. In his folk horror Impetigore, he delves into the topics of poverty and the abuse of power, while his superhero flick Gundala tackles the theme of mass hysteria. It is no surprise that in his 7-episode anthology Netflix series Nightmares and Daydreams, he portrays various everyday situations from his homeland, touching on issues like the struggle of being in a sandwich generation and systemic challenges faced by Indonesian society. Through his distinct narrative style, Anwar confronts pressing issues with a blend of supernatural intrigue and science fiction. In each episode, the show immerses us in compelling tales that not only entertain but provoke thought. Set between the years 1985 and 2024, the series chronicles the experiences of everyday individuals in Jakarta who encounter peculiar phenomena while simultaneously navigating their struggles. While each episode focuses on different characters, the events depicted throughout the season are interconnected and gradually reveal something more sinister. In our recent conversation with Anwar, he shed light on the inspirations behind Nightmares and Daydreams. From the show's inception to the intricacies of character development, Anwar's meticulous attention to detail underscores his commitment to crafting narratives that resonate on multiple levels. Moreover, his fascination with the aliens adds an intriguing layer to the series, sparking discussions among the audience. Continue Reading →