1348 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Russian (Page 30)

In the first scene of Eskil Vogt’s sophomore feature The Innocents, a young girl pinches her autistic older sister while riding in the car. Her sister doesn’t react, so she pinches harder. The morality of Vogt’s latest ebbs and flows with this girl, her sister, and their two new friends, all of which have an odd connection, not to mention supernatural abilities. Kids have a gray version of right versus wrong, as violence sputters around the Norwegian thriller, minimal in technique but tense in execution.  Continue Reading →

With perhaps the single exception of Heaven’s Gate, perhaps no American film produced in the 1980s received more bad press, critical hostility and commercial indifference than Elaine May’s Ishtar. Scathing press coverage revolved around its enormous budget—which extended to the reviews, many of which felt as if they were written by investors rather than critics—and studio machinations pretty much ensured that it would fail. Audiences stayed away in droves; as May herself once quipped, “If all the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman today.” Continue Reading →

Did you leave the gas on? Or does this movie stink? I’ll be here all week, folks. Continue Reading →

The bond of trust between a doctor and patient should be sacred. No matter who they are, a person should be able to trust that their physician has their best interests at heart. This need for trust is most important when it comes to fertility; any woman who wants to become pregnant deserves informed consent before they become pregnant. While most doctors uphold the dignity of their charges, there are some who will use their position of power to exploit women at their most vulnerable.  Continue Reading →

Season 1 of Hacks literally left things up in the air with Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder), as they boarded Vance’s private jet back to Las Vegas. Deborah has convinced reluctant writer Ava to join her on tour. Unbeknownst to Deborah, Ava’s aired their dirty laundry via email to a team of British writers, who are keen to use the material as inspiration for a horrible boss-type sitcom. Ava’s in full crisis mode when news of her email reaches manager Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) as she boards the flight.  Continue Reading →

Action films love using Nazis as the villains because they’re unquestionably evil, wear scary uniforms, and are fun to watch get punched in the mouth. Now that modern-day Nazism hides behind bad haircuts on television and schlubby dudes wearing hunting jackets, it’s harder to achieve that visceral thrill of seeing a Nazi get his ass kicked. The Takedown makes a strong attempt, though.  Continue Reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →