1420 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Mandarin (Page 32)

A blandly suited district attorney steps up to the podium to make his opening statement.“In a very real sense, this case is about pretense and appearances,”  he intones. “It’s about things not being as they seem.”  Continue Reading →

In the last 15 years since 2008's Taken, Liam Neeson has become an action hero for men over 50. Now 69 years young, Neeson continues to star in these action-focused B-movies, each riffing on the previous one. Steady paychecks seem to be cashed by the Irish actor. Filmmakers line up to direct fights in trains, planes, cars, parking lots, hospitals--anywhere there might be an ounce of criminal activity.   Continue Reading →

Though it resulted in some of the finest genre films of the 21st century, including The Babadook, Hereditary and Midsommar, it wouldn’t be all that bad if we got a break from horror movies that are about grief for a little while. Real life is about as bleak as it’s ever been, and while horror has always in some way reflected current events, maybe we can take a breather and return to a brief, glorious run of masked killers or radioactive giant rats. If not for that, then because it’s a genre that’s no longer bringing much to the table except more suffering and anguish. Taneli Mustonen’s The Twin, while well-acted and capably directed, seems almost committed to trying nothing new with the genre. Even a third act twist that essentially negates everything that happens up to that point is derivative in its own separate way. Continue Reading →

Shining Girls makes for a difficult review because so many details could be considered spoilers. Those familiar with the source material, the novel The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, will know the bigger ones. However, show creator Silka Luisa structured the series so differently even those who know the material may still be surprised. This review will do its best to preserve those surprises, but, as spoilers are in the eyes of the beholder, be warned your definition and this writer’s may differ. Continue Reading →

Jabberwocky, Terry Gilliam’s solo directorial debut, is a fractured fairy tale of sorts that remains as bizarre and unique today as when it first hit theaters in 1977. It is ostensibly a PG-rated fantasy with all the elements one might associate with such a prospect. There’s (Spoiler Alert) a stalwart hero, a beautiful princess, a fearsome beast, a kingdom in peril, and a happy ending. However, it skews them in strange and occasionally gruesome ways until none plays out as expected. Although admittedly uneven in parts, the result is an undeniably entertaining and occasionally outrageous work. It serves as an impressively formed and executed debut of one of the era’s more compelling and unusual filmmaking voices.  Continue Reading →

Vanessa Bayer, known for her time on SNL, joins the ranks of recent alums hitting the TV market with her own show, I Love That For You. Writing and starring, Bayer plays Joanna Gold, a Midwestern woman chasing her dream. At the start, she breaks free of her coddling parents and Costco career. She then achieves her dream of becoming a host on QVC-esque Special Value Network (SVN).  Continue Reading →

Chances are that if you know any Mormons at all, they’re far more likely to be ex-Mormons. Despite claims that the Mormon Church is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States (source: the Mormon Church), in reality, like most organized religions in America, membership has been on a steady decline for the past decade. Along with the same issues other churches face, the Latter Day Saints also suffer from years of bad P.R., forever associated with magic underwear, child brides, and polygamy, though the latter two aren’t permitted within the modern Mormon Church, and haven’t been since the 19th century. Every church has its members who take things a little too literally, however, and that occasionally results in tragedy, as illustrated by FX’s docudrama Under the Banner of Heaven, a chilling true story about death and faith. Continue Reading →

There’s something strangely quaint about watching The Rock nearly 26 years after its theatrical release. It’s a bit like listening to the hard rock of a generation ago and hearing just how, well, soft it seems in comparison to what’s followed. (The kind of soft-ass shit Captain Darrow (Tony Todd) doesn’t like.) Considering where director Michael Bay will take his films after 1996, it feels odd to label this offering maximalist even though, objectively, it’s accurate.  Continue Reading →

The easy move in discussing We Own This City is to compare it to co-creators David Simon and George Pelecanos’ The Wire. After all, they both concern crime, police, and politics in Baltimore. However, to do so diminishes both.  Continue Reading →

Motherhood, particularly new motherhood, is a lonely time. No matter how much help you have, there are still long, hard hours where you’re left with a tiny life, one for which you are wholly responsible, often after putting your body through a massive ordeal. Throw in a lack of sleep, a lack of meals, then add society’s pressures (are you feeding the baby properly?), familial pressures (your cousin never did things that way), and the all-too pressing personal pressures (is this it? Is this the thing that will mess up my child for life?) and it’s a miracle the human race has ever chosen to propagate. As I wrote this review, a banner ad invited me to buy (in my child’s stead) a personalized book called The World’s Bestest Mommy, because there’s nothing like the pressure of a gift to remind you what you have to live up to. Now, imagine that on top of all of this, your child has the supernatural ability to kill those around him and you have The Baby.   Continue Reading →

Who doesn't love a good redemption arc? We want to believe the best in people. We want to believe people can change for the better. It's no surprise, then, that the reformation of a character from an unrepentant villain to a heroic figure provides a very satisfying type of catharsis.   Continue Reading →

Nicolas Cage became a national institution somewhere between stealing Huggies from a convenience store and putting the bunny back in the box. Since then, his career has been a mixture of some highs and many more lows. In the process, he’s gone from one of our most celebrated actors to a self-parody. It’s debatable whether Cage has previously leaned into his own outsized persona, but there’s no question he’s in on the joke with The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.  Continue Reading →

It’s been over a year since we saw Cassie Bowden (Kaley Cuoco) at the beginning of her sobriety, coming to terms with how the trauma and legacies of her childhood shaped her. As season two begins, we get the rundown on how that’s been going via her AA sharing. Now based in Los Angeles, Cassie is healthy, in a relationship with smoking hot photographer Marco (Santiago Cabrera). She's also still working as an international first-class flight attendant with an unspecified side hustle that definitely isn’t working with the CIA, wink.   Continue Reading →

Things aren’t looking good for us right now, am I right, ladies? States are passing a historic number of anti-abortion laws, and the needle has barely moved in reaching income equality with men, particularly for Black and Latinx women. The time may not be right for a whimsical take on what it’s like to be a woman in the 21st century, but Apple TV+’s anthology Roar has enough of an edge on it to make it entertaining without being condescending or out of touch. Though it suffers from the typical unevenness of an anthology series, even its weaker entries are still solid, and their blessedly short half-hour runtime makes it all go down smooth. Continue Reading →

Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District opens on a Parisian building. More specifically, on a young woman named Émilie (Lucie Zhang in her feature debut), a struggling telemarketer, singing naked in her apartment. Next to her is Camille (Makita Samba), a literary professor, her new roommate, new lover, future ex-roommate, and future ex-lover. Broken credits chop up the action, staggered throughout the first lengthy scene. There’s an ephemeral nature to all of it, the sex and romance just as fleeting as the credits only fully shown for a moment, though Audiard has no problem spending longer with the revolving bodies of this story.  Continue Reading →

Showtime’s new series The First Lady takes us (mostly) inside the inner lives of three of America’s most groundbreaking first ladies, with decidedly mixed results. The meticulously recreated sets, flawless costuming, and award-winning talent are no substitute for an in-depth and well-told story. Sadly, that's truly the only thing lacking in the 10-episode series. Viola Davis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Gillian Anderson star as Michelle Obama, Betty Ford, and Eleanor Roosevelt - three First Ladies who still fascinate the American public. With such powerhouse actors on set, it’s a shame that the series is a jumbled collection of moments that barely glance upon what makes these women so special.  Continue Reading →

If the new Mark Wahlberg movie Father Stu were a person, it would have to stay in a confessional for a whole year to list its endless shortcomings. Continue Reading →

A woman wanders a vast and empty house. Her eyes well with confusion as she seems to disappear through walls. She’s a specter in her own home, unfamiliar amongst what should be the most familiar. But she’s not a ghost. She’s just lost.  Continue Reading →

If you’re not a skateboarding fan, you’ll likely only be aware that Tony Hawk exists, rather than anything specific about his life or accomplishments. Maybe you’ll know there’s a bunch of video games named for him, or that he appeared in a Police Academy movie. But the fact that you’ve heard of him, even if you wouldn’t know a quad deck from a cheese sandwich, speaks volumes about both his impact, and his role in bringing mainstream respect to a sport once dismissed as a pastime for bored kids and delinquents. Continue Reading →

Bringing back favorite characters and connecting some surprising threads throughout sketches in previous seasons, season 3 of the Emmy Award winning A Black Lady Sketch Show is back and funnier than ever, throwing comedic punches with an all-star cast of hilarious heavy-hitters. Continue Reading →

These days, when confronted with a film made in the past featuring material that comes across as somewhat outre by contemporary standards, it's practically to remark that there's no way such a thing could be made in these comparatively staid times. In the case of Paul Schrader’s Cat People (1982), one comes away from it not only thinking that it couldn’t be made today, but wondering how in the hell it was able to get made back when it did. Bloody, erotic and suffused with a level of kink rarely seen in a putatively mainstream project, this go-for-baroque spectacle was an outlier when it first came out 40 years ago and that feeling remains undiminished to this day, along with its ability to simultaneously raise eyebrows and libidos at every turn. Continue Reading →