1420 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Mandarin (Page 51)

Film Comment used to run a semi-regular feature entitled “Guilty Pleasures” in which they would invite someone to write a piece about films that have often been ignored or reviled by critics and the public but for which they still maintain a deep love for any number of reasons.  These articles were always fun to read but I must confess that the notion of a so-called “guilty pleasure” is one to which I have never quite subscribed. My feeling is that if a movie gives you some form of pleasure—either because it is genuinely good or because of its camp value—you should be able to celebrate it without feeling any guilt over whether or not it conforms to general standards of artistic acceptability. Continue Reading →

In Four Good Days, when heroin-addict Molly is asked what her triggers are, what could get her to use again, she replies, “My life’s a trigger…” Fellow addict Amanda Wendler takes things a step further, though, proclaiming, “Reality’s a trigger.” But Amanda isn’t another character in Molly’s story—she’s the inspiration behind it. In 2016, the Washington Post chronicled a few days in her fight for sobriety in their much lauded article, “How’s Amanda? A Story of Truth, Lies and American Addiction.” Continue Reading →

After a four-year absence, Master of None returns to Netflix with a new tone and new focus, but it still grapples with the same emotional beats of the first two seasons. This time around, creator Aziz Ansari focuses his efforts behind the camera, only appearing in two brief cameos in season three’s five-episode arc. Instead, all of the action is focused on Denise (Lena Waithe) and her partner Alicia (Naomi Ackie), who are rusticating in a cottagecore fantasy that not even TikTok could call sustainable. Rather than the buzz of traffic and the cramped quarters of the city, we see Denise and Alicia’s relationship develop against the bucolic splendor of open fields and towering trees. Continue Reading →

At The Spool, generally, we try to keep the work front and center. We try to center the work, not ourselves. I say all of that here as a preface because I am both a therapist and a therapy client. I’m reviewing In Treatment as a fictional dramatic work, but I’m also honest enough to acknowledge that framing and guiding some of my opinions will be my own experiences and, while I hesitate to use the term, expertise. Continue Reading →

The long-time horror screenwriter's eerie-boarding-school-set first feature is worthy work that takes full advantage of its spooky setting. Seance is counting on one thing to keep the scares coming. Times may change, trends may come and go, but any organization that prides itself on its elitism, and thus its insularity, never will. Make no mistake, there are also some damn good performances, technical choices, and just enough ambiguity to keep audiences in a state of suspense, if not outright fear. And yet, it’s this core truth that powers Seance through its 92-minute runtime, and thank goodness it doesn’t try to overextend its reach. Continue Reading →

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “May you live in interesting times,” understand this: we’re living in them right now. It’s a historically awful time of racial unrest, an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, and a global pandemic that’s coldly highlighted how little many of us care about our fellow humans. Optimism is in very limited supply at the moment, and so we cling to the little things that give us joy, and a reason to keep going the next day. Things like Lil Nas X’s Twitter feed, or Ted Lasso, or Lady Gaga branded Oreo cookies. Things like Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar, which in better times might have made barely a blip on the pop culture radar, but right now feels like a cool drink of water on a very hot day, and is a cult hit in the making. Continue Reading →

M.O.D.O.K. isn’t set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but it is firmly set in the newest trend in adult-sewing American animation. Popularized by Rick & Morty and BoJack Horseman, these cartoons put on an exterior dick jokes and fart gags but are actually about deeper explorations of weighty turmoil’s. Considering this phenomenon has produced shows like Horseman and Harley Quinn, it’s one of the better TV trends out there. The best parts of M.O.D.O.K. exemplify why. There’s something enduringly impressive about balancing out raunchiness with genuinely insightful drama. Continue Reading →

On the heels of The Luminaries, Starz brings us another dramatic import, this time the Irish 3-episode miniseries Death and Nightingales, based on Edmund McCabe’s book of the same title and adapted/directed by Allan Cubitt. Set and filmed in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, Death and Nightingales is one of those rare sunny day thrillers, a gorgeously filmed but raw story of a young woman trying to save herself amidst family secrets, Irish Nationalism, and an increasingly untenable homelife. Continue Reading →

Mohammad Rasoulof’s There Is No Evil begins with a slow and winding tracking shot as a car exits an underground garage. It all too perfectly sets the tone for the film, which itself is slow, winding, monotonous, and mysterious. It’s a richly humanistic contemplation on the death penalty in Iran and the questions it raises. Continue Reading →

In Las Vegas, the Queen of the Strip, comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) finds out her stranglehold on The Palmetto, her casino home, is slipping. The gambling palace’s owner (Christopher McDonald) alerts her to his plan to take away her prime weekend slots because he needs to appeal to “idiots and people in their twenties,” and Deborah gets him neither. Continue Reading →

If you happen to stumble upon the Wikipedia page for Spiral, the ninth and newest feature film in the Saw franchise, you find a goldmine full of stories, exaggerations, and words strung together that you hardly believe are real. Chris Rock, the star and executive producer of Spiral, ran into Michael Burns, the Vice Chairman of Lionsgate, at a friend’s wedding in Brazil. They chatted about the horror genre, with Rock expressing intent to take his career on a different path.  Continue Reading →

While Those Who Wish Me Dead is coming out in theaters this weekend (be safe, especially if you're not vaccinated!), it's probably the movie to benefit most from Warner Bros. pandemic-fueled decision to simultaneously throw their releases up on HBO Max. From stem to stern, Taylor Sheridan's latest feels like the kind of movie you'd find on old-school HBO in the '90s, or FX or TNT, watching with your dad over a holiday weekend. It's silly, forgettable schlock, and yet I can't get too mad at it. Continue Reading →

Director Alexandre Aja built his career finding as many ways as possible to explore tension and suspense. His tone shifts from project to project, from the gruesome violence of The Hills Have Eyes to the goofiness of Piranha 3D. His most recent success, Crawl, was lauded as a true successor to Jaws—just swap the boat for a creepy house and the shark for a pack of gators. But always at the core of his work is Aja’s interest in finding new ways to thrill his audiences, and Oxygen is no different. Continue Reading →

Despite it being mid-May, the first signs of summer are already upon us. No, I’m not talking about rising temperatures or the release of tentpole blockbusters, I’m talking about my local PetSmart setting up its pride section. In recent years, gay pride month has gone from niche celebration to a new sort of corporate holiday, with major brands such as Target, McDonald’s, and the aforementioned PetSmart creating advertisements and apolitical merchandise designed to invoke a sort of fun that’s a far cry from the anger that sparked the Stonewall riots. (And let’s not forget how many corporations spend money on both pride floats and homophobic politicians.) Continue Reading →

A running joke in early episodes of The Simpsons was McBain, an action hero parody. In one scene, a group of rich people celebrate their new product SWANK (a product 10 times more addictive than marijuana), and end with a toast: “To human misery!” After watching Alex Gibney’s two-part documentary, The Crime of the Century, it’s hard to not think this scene was based on Purdue Pharmaceutical’s owners, the Sackler family, toasting the creation of OxyContin. Continue Reading →

In the not too distant future, Las Vegas has become even more of its own world. A wall of armored shipping containers has sealed off the Entertainment Capital of the World. Sneering armed guards patrol a vicious hybrid of quarantine and refugee camp at the wall's edge. And on July 4th, on the orders of a dopey, malignant, unnamed president, Sin City will burn in nuclear fire. Why? The zombie apocalypse. Fortunately for the world, the plague of undeath was stopped in the sleepless city. With the zombies contained, Vegas was left to rot. But while the city crumbled, its infamous fortunes were preserved - sealed away in counting rooms, slot machines, and vaults. Why risk going in to retrieve it when insurance covers disaster (brain-eating or otherwise)? Because it's money. And that is the pitch Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) gives to haunted, lonely, zombie war hero Scott Ward (Dave Bautista).When Tanaka abandoned the Bly Casino, he left $200 million untaxable, untraceable dollars in its vault. If Ward assembles a team to go into Vegas, crack the vault, and retrieve the money, $50 million of the haul is his to do with as he will. Ward, a lost man searching for some sort of purpose and looking for a way to make things right with his estranged daughter Kate (Ella Purnell), agrees. Ward gathers his crew - his war buddies Maria Cruz (Ana de La Reguera) and Vanderhoe (Omari Hardwick), bitterly caustic helicopter pilot Peters (Tig Notaro), zombie-killing influencer Mikey Guzman (Raùl Castillo), Guzman's warrior pal Chambers (Samantha Win), oddball safecracker Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) and, at Tanaka's insistence, oily security man Martin (Garret Dillahunt). Kate, the mercenary coyote Lilly (Nora Arnezeder), and a loathsome guard called Burt (Theo Rossi) join them at the city proper. Continue Reading →

Even early in his career, Philip Seymour Hoffman is too good for this dull shoot-em-up. Before he passed away at the age of 46, Philip Seymour Hoffman starred in 52 feature films. Starring roles, character pieces, chameleon work—he left a legacy nearly unmatched in both quality and quantity. Now, with P.S.H. I Love You, Jonah Koslofsky wafts through the cornucopia of the man’s offerings. When you think of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s frequent collaborators, Alec Baldwin probably doesn’t come to mind. Yet these actors found themselves in the same movie on multiple occasions, appearing opposite each other three times. Their collaborations got better as time went on, with their most successful pairing coming in the genuinely funny Along Came Polly. Before that, Hoffman and Baldwin co-starred as a writer and a pervy actor, respectively, in David Mamet’s State and Main. Unfortunately, their original convergence is a rancid waste of time.  Continue Reading →

Like a modern Grimm’s fairy tale, The Djinn has some brutal lessons to teach. The most important may be to avoid reading ancient texts called "The Book of Shadows" if at all possible, but the other key takeaway is that talented artists can do a lot with very little. The second film from writer/directors David Charbonier and Justin Powell drives this home, thanks to some sharp, cost-effective horror directing, with only a few hiccups along the way. Continue Reading →

Hollywood's year-long hiatus on major comic-book adaptation movies has left ample room for streaming services to pick up the slack and then some. Amazon, for example, has wisely curated high-profile releases from existing superhero stories that subvert the genre in ways that would probably ring unfamiliar if attempted by the more mainstream Marvel and DC fare. The Boys is all about poking a gory hole in how superheroes can be vapid, unchecked, and even monstrous celebrities. Invincible just ended its first season with a bang of a finale, taking its colonizer version of Superman to task. And then there's the curious case of ‌Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy.  Continue Reading →

Guy Ritchie hasn't worked with Jason Statham, the tough-guy lad whose breakout performances in Lock, Stock and Snatch helped propel him to A-list action stardom, since 2005's twisty pseudophilosophical gangland thriller Revolver -- a film critics at the time called "impenetrable" and "stupid". It's a shame, then, that their long-overdue reunion, Wrath of Man, succumbs to many of the same tricks and traps as their previous collab, but without any of the perverse flash that made the former at least grimly interesting. Continue Reading →

There’s something both modern and curiously quaint about Fried Barry. It’s very slick and glossy looking (while also still dark and grimy at the same time), but its dedication to pushing the envelope with graphic sex and violence feels like a product of the 90s, when indie filmmakers were all trying to become the next Tarantino. Fried Barry tries for a lot of things--science fiction, comedy, body horror, etc.--while also assaulting the viewer’s senses with a throbbing electro soundtrack and frenetic imagery. The primary reason it works (mostly) is its star, who adds some unexpected humanity to a thoroughly loathsome character. Continue Reading →