80 Best Releases Translations Japanese on Apple Tv Plus (Page 4)

Reunions can be murder. You’ve got to fool yourself into thinking you look as good or better than you did at 18. Then you have to draw to make that delusion reality. Clothes. A new haircut. Makeup. Perhaps a fun new accessory you can pretend has always been your thing. Then you get there. You see exes, people you hated who have the nerve to look great and be successful, and former classmates who remind you that you were kind of terrible as a teenager, too. Continue Reading →

Say what you will about Apple TV’s Servant, but give it credit for its audacity. We’re three seasons in, and the series, executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan, remains as clear as mud as to both what’s happening, and to where it’s all going to lead. Not since Twin Peaks has a TV show been so dedicated to being completely incomprehensible. Watching it is like being led down one path, only to be violently jerked toward another. “No, it’s not about that, you silly goose,” it says. “It’s about this.” Until it becomes about something else. Season 3 throws less things at the wall to see what sticks, but things remain frustratingly opaque. Continue Reading →

If I were to tell you that Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd were starring in a comedic miniseries about a hapless, neurotic man whose entire life is taken over by his overbearing psychiatrist, you’d be forgiven for assuming that (a) Ferrell plays the psychiatrist and Rudd his patient, and (b) it’d be a pretty funny movie. In fact, the opposite is true: Rudd, in a rare villainous role, is the doctor, and the series, Apple TV+’s The Shrink Next Door, isn’t particularly funny. Oh, there are some amusing moments, but they’re more likely to elicit laughs of the uncomfortable kind, as the viewer is torn between sympathizing with its protagonist and wanting desperately to shake some sense into him Continue Reading →

It's doubtful Dickinson Season 3 will convert any new subscribers to AppleTV+. Still, the final season provides a strong salute to wartime poet Emily Dickinson. Don't think of Dickinson in those terms? You're hardly alone.  Continue Reading →

Invasion, Apple TV+’s newest foray into sci-fi television, follows “ordinary” people around the world as an alien force, well, invades. Created by Simon Kinberg (who writes and directs several episodes) and David Weil (who also created Amazon’s Hunters), Invasion is an engaging slow-burn of a thriller series, building character and atmosphere with the ever-looming threat of an unforeseen enemy. Continue Reading →

To listen to the Velvet Underground today is to marvel at how very much its own thing it was. Their droning, dirge-like songs, often accompanied by the discordant squeaking of a viola, addressed such unsavory subjects as drug addiction and sadomasochism, and seemed to be designed for listeners who neither identified with hippie folk or rebellious rock and roll. They were so far ahead of their time that even more than five decades later no one else has sounded quite like them yet. Todd Haynes’ documentary, just called The Velvet Underground, captures their lightning in a bottle moment in music history, eschewing the tropes of the genre in favor of a dizzying sound and visual landscape. Continue Reading →

(This is part of our ongoing NYFF coverage.) Continue Reading →

Foundation is big. It is glossy. It is grand in scale and epic in tone. Worlds upon worlds, filled with trillions of people, hang in the balance. Well-dressed futuristic figures in smartly-appointed rooms give high-minded speeches at one another, debating the fate of civilization as it unspools over millennia. Continue Reading →

Eleven months ago, nearly exactly to the day, I first fell in love with Ted Lasso—the show and, I suppose, the man too. As several people, including myself, have proclaimed, it seemed the perfect show for a population battered by the isolation and fear of what felt like a possibly endless pandemic at the time and, for Americans especially, the ugliness of a looming election. Lasso proved the wonderful good-hearted surprise so many of us were so in need of. Continue Reading →

Even I have to admit that being trapped in a classic musical sounds like a waking nightmare. That’s exactly what happens to Melissa (series producer Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) when they find themselves in the isolated titular town of Schmigadoon. After getting lost on a couples retreat, the pair pass a magical barrier only to find they are unable to leave until they find True Love. They’ll have to sing and dance their way into love, or risk being stranded in Schmigadoon forever. 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 →

In a perfect world, every sitcom would have a first season that never sees the light of day. That’s because it usually takes a season for the actors to grow comfortable in their characters’ skins, and for the show’s writers to fine-tune the dynamics of the ensemble into something compelling. The new season of Apple TV+’s Mythic Quest is a perfect example of a show finding itself after taking ten episodes to figure things out.  Continue Reading →

When Billie Eilish met with director R.J. Cutler to discuss her documentary Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, she had an odd request: “I want it to be like The Office.” Eilish, known to be a stan of the NBC comedy (she sampled dialogue from the show in her song “my strange addiction”), wanted to drop the audience into the world of her and her family as she rises from a 13-year-old viral video sensation to a 18-year-old Grammy winner. Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry is an epic journey of the on and offstage life of the musical prodigy. Continue Reading →

Cleveland. The early 2000s. A young man (Tom Holland, The Lost City of Z) falls in love with a girl named Emily (Ciara Bravo, Wayne). It’s lovely but fraught. When she wants to go to college in Canada, he impulsively signs up for the Army. Life as a medic in the Iraq War is traumatizing, and the young man processes that trauma poorly. Drug use becomes addiction, and Emily joins him. A loathsome drug dealer (Jack Reynor, Midsommar) becomes a hated enemy and a desperate friend. Bank robbery starts to look like a good idea. The spiral devours all.  Continue Reading →

Sian Heder directs a touching & funny story of having to choose between dreams & obligation. The reason why so many movies about teenagers don’t work is because they often feature too-old actors playing characters who talk like jaded 35 year-olds (or rather, like the people who wrote them). Every once in a while, however, you find a real gem, like Sian Heder’s Coda, a low-key, moving story about a teenage girl who finds herself caught between doing the thing she loves, and having to help keep her family’s business afloat. 17 year-old Ruby, played by Emilia Jones (in what will hopefully be a star-making performance) is the only hearing member of her Massachusetts fishing family. On top of trying to get through school, she must also work on the family fishing boat, serving as the ears and voice of her father, Frank (Troy Kotsur), and older brother Leo (Daniel Durant), as they try to avoid (with mixed success) getting ripped off by the local fish buyer. It’s quietly expected that Ruby, who has no real plans for college, will simply stick around as long as Leo, Frank, and her mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin) need her. Continue Reading →

Tucked between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in the Southeastern corner of Louisiana, St. James Parish is home to several petrochemical plants. The state rewards billions in tax breaks for these places to operate, and in exchange, they pollute the water and air for nearby residents, who tend to live around the poverty line. This poisoning is so out of control that this stretch of highway earns the dubious title of “Cancer Alley”. Continue Reading →