Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
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What Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather films portray is a perfect amalgamation of the magical and limiting aspects of Hollywood cinema in a perfectly composed, morally ambiguous fantasy. I’m only discussing the first two here because of their proximity to one another and them embodying a 70’s theme and aesthetic that prided on American stories – Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, Patton, Breaking Away, Dog Day Afternoon, and Rocky to name a few – make them distinctly different for what I want to say than the third movie, which seems like a forgotten stepchild of the 90’s. Continue Reading →
Grear Patterson's debut feature is moody, evocative, and graciously efficient, but doesn't fill its world with characters you can care about. In a world where the average blockbuster runs closer to two and a half hours than 90 minutes, the 75- to 80-minute movie is often like a breath of fresh air. Kudos then to the filmmaker that can manage to make those minutes feel like 1,000 years. It’s an impressive feat, albeit one no one wants to sit through. Unfortunately, this is where all 78 minutes of Giants Being Lonely lands. Director and screenwriter Grear Patterson’s debut is a moody little exploration of the perils of growing up. Set in the warm days at the end of the school year in the south, we follow a group of teenagers as they wrap up the year and prepare for prom. The cast is mainly comprised of unknowns, which adds to the film’s feeling of “Anyplace, USA”. There’s wayward baseball star Bobby (Jack Irv), the coach’s battered-down son Adam (Ben Irving), and Adam’s crush, Caroline (Lily Gavin). From first loves to illicit affairs and parental abuse, the kids go through it all as they wait for summer to come. Continue Reading →
From the moment that it debuted in 1961, following months of negative headlines surrounding its schedule and cost overruns that all but sealed its fate long before it ever hit theaters, a debate has raged over One-Eyed Jacks, the jumbo-sized Western that proved to be the Heaven’s Gate of its day. It also marked the beginning and the ending of the directorial career of renowned actor Marlon Brando. Was it, as some people even back then noted, a one-of-a-kind masterpiece that dared to inject overt artistry and psychology into what was normally one of the most straightforward of screen genres? Or, as others suggested, was it a pretentious and bloated misfire that did nothing but underscore the dangers of letting an actor with overweening creative ambitions take charge of a project without any sort of controls? Continue Reading →
The Law & Order: SVU and Law & Order: Organized Crime crossover event on April 1st will mark not only the premiere of a new Law & Order spinoff, but also the return of one Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni). For the first 12 seasons of SVU Stabler and Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) were the SVU team, the perfect partners. Continue Reading →
While the first movie in the series was stylish & unexpectedly moving, it was tainted by cheap, empty sequels that forgot what made it special. You don’t have to have seen The Crow to know the story behind it. It’s one of the great Hollywood tragedies, like the Twilight Zone crash, or the Poltergeist curse, where watching them feels a little forbidden and eerie. That’s particularly true for The Crow, because the scene in which star Brandon Lee was accidentally killed with a prop gun was left more or less intact. Granted, there’s some clever editing and use of a body double, but it’s close enough to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. I shan’t spend too much time recounting The Crow, because, again, even if you haven’t seen it, you’ve sort of seen it (and also it’s already been written about at length on this very website). I will say that I rewatched it for this project, and was surprised to see how well it holds up. It might be perhaps the most early 90s movie ever made, but unlike, say, Reality Bites, it’s in a way that’s still cool and stylish. The swooping urban landscape shots, created almost entirely with miniatures, are still a feast for the eyes, and would be put to even greater use four years later by director Alex Proyas, in his masterpiece Dark City. Sure, the villains, who have names like “Tin Tin” and “Funboy,” are laughably over the top, but they’re balanced by Lee, undoubtedly a rising star, who plays doomed hero Eric Draven with subtlety and genuine human emotion. Continue Reading →
A decade after their 2011 hit film Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo are back as co-writers and costars in Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar. Their new comedy romp follows Barb (Wiig) and Star (Mumolo), two Midwestern middle-aged suburbanite gal-pals looking to get “their shimmer back” on a trip to the ocean oasis of Vista Del Mar. The wide-eyed duo discovers sea-shell bracelets, hooks up with mysterious Edgar (Jamie Dornan), and accidentally becomes embedded in a murder plot involving super mosquitos. Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar plays like a five minute SNL sketch that stretches into an hour and forty-five fever dream peppered with talking crabs, musical numbers, and culottes. Continue Reading →
When it comes to suffering, no one does it like Catholics. Consider Opus Dei, the secretive branch of Catholicism that still allegedly practices self-flagellation, or the hardcore worshipers who recreate Christ’s crucifixion every Easter, rather than dyeing eggs or baking a ham. Even when mortification of the flesh isn’t involved, no other religion promotes the idea of misery as the pathway to salvation. Rose Glass’s nightmarish Saint Maud digs deep into the pathology of that mindset, and is something you won’t likely forget for a long time. Continue Reading →
Robin Wright makes her directorial debut in a tender and understated drama about a woman who isolates herself from the world after an unimaginable loss. The pain of losing our loved ones is unimaginable. It’s overwhelming and often hard to overcome. Though healing is not impossible, there’s no timetable when it comes to processing this loss. It may take weeks or months or even years for people to finally be okay again and move forward. Robin Wright’s directorial debut, Land, understands this really well. The movie delves deep into the pain and the complicated feelings that people have to face when they’re dealing with the death of their loved ones. It’s an understated character study about grief and loss, and a moving celebration of human connection and resilience. Working from a script penned by Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam, the movie follows Edee (Wright), a woman determined to isolate herself from everyone in the wake of a devastating tragedy. When we first meet her, she’s already on her way to a remote cabin in Quincy, Wyoming. She wants to abandon everything, staying away from everyone who wants her to get better, but never allow her to process the deep sadness she’s been feeling for a while. Before arriving at the cabin, she ditches her phone and even calls a local to get rid of her rental car, leaving herself with only a bunch of canned foods and a box of her most personal possessions. But Edee is not cut out for this kind of living, so the plan she’s made seems foolhardy. Continue Reading →
Where’s the line between a messy movie and a movie that’s a mess? Joel Schumacher’s clearly-flawed Flawless oozes with subplots while it tries to fulfill the obligations of an “unexpected buddy” movie. Like the pre-gentrification East Village that it’s built around, characters and cultures clash to chaotic, uneven results. Continue Reading →
Ninja Thyberg's tale of a woman's attempt to make it in the adult film industry is a feature debut that doesn't pull any punches. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.) Fresh from Sweden, Jessica (Sofia Kappel) has just landed in Los Angeles. The customs agent asks her a few questions, and when he inquires whether she’s here for business or pleasure, she says—you know what she says. This is the only moment Ninja Thyberg’s debut feature winks at its audience. From here on out, there’s no sense of humor to be had. Sure, characters will make jokes with each other once in a blue moon, but this is far from a fun watch. You see, Jessica is in L.A. to become an adult film star, going by Bella Cherry instead. It seems immediate that she’s on her first shoot. She meets Mike (Jason Toler), who soon becomes her agent, and lives with three other young women in the porn industry (Revika Anne Reustle, Kendra Spade, and Dana DeArmond). On paper, it’s a standard star-is-born tale. In some ways it is, but that isn’t the main approach. Pleasure, while incredibly difficult to watch, repackages that subgenre into a look at the cycle of abuse when having boundaries isn’t a commodity. Continue Reading →
Niamh Algar learns the price of prurience in Prano Bailey-Bond's neon-soaked ode to the video nasty. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.) It's England in the 1980s - poverty is high, Thatcher is in office, and the so-called moral majority is sounding the alarm about the increasing ubiquity of "video nasties", gory, violent films that, as the hysteria goes, tap into the seediest, most antisocial impulses of the British people. Think Abel Ferrara's The Driller Killer, or Cannibal Holocaust: eerie exercises in sociopathy that thrill their fans and terrify their detractors. For Enid (Niamh Algar), a film censor, her job isn't about protecting a sensitive public from the disturbing films she's shown (ones with titles like Deranged and Beast Man), but merely to do her job well. Even so, she's buttoned up in more ways than one, from her uptight clothing to her lack of chemistry with her coworkers. Much of that is due to years of trauma sustained from the disappearance of her sister as a teenager, which she was present for but can't remember a thing about; her parents only recently chose to declare her dead and begin to move on with their lives. Continue Reading →
Nick (Nick Sasso) is a bouncer. Once he was a Muay Thai boxer, a rising talent. Those days are long done. Now he’s drifting through life, lonely and purposeless. Nomi (Nomi Ruiz, lead singer of Jessica 6) is a pop star. She’s doing what she loves, and she’s aimless and lonely. When Nick rescues Nomi from a would-be rapist and loses his bouncing gig, she hires him as a bodyguard. Together, they travel the world and begin to fall for each other. But they’re very different people, with very different needs. Their future could be wonderful. But it’s an open question. Continue Reading →
When I reviewed season one of Selena + Chef this past August, I ended on the note of “I dare not say I hope there’s a season two (because that would mean a longer time for all of us in quarantine), but if we have to spend several more months cooking at home, we might as well do it with Selena.” Little did I know that in January of 2021 the pandemic would still be a raging mess, paving the way for the second season of Selena + Chef. Rather than looking at it like the meal you didn’t order arriving at your table (you know, back when people ate in restaurants), it’s more like a surprise dessert you didn’t know you wanted, because once you dig into season two of Selena + Chef, you won’t be able to resist the charm Selena Gomez and her jovial quarantine pod cooking with chef friends. Continue Reading →
Two-hours and sixteen minutes. There is a version of The Empty Man that’s a solid, efficient horror flick, and then there’s the version that’s two-hours and sixteen minutes. Unfortunately, we got the latter. Adapted from an independent comic book of the same name, this poorly paced, occasionally engaging exercise staggers along like its titular demon. If only there was a way to stop it, before it’s too late. Continue Reading →
Ethan Hawke often plays characters who internalize their passions, who tend to smolder and keep their feelings under tight restraint. Not so in The Good Lord Bird, where as star and co-creator Hawke gives the biggest, grandest performance of his career playing radical abolitionist and fighter Captain John Brown, circa 1857. His Brown is a delusional, violent prophet, flecks of spit fleeing from his mouth as he screams scripture during guerilla warfare and is sent into fits of rage by his fellow whites’ refusal to “free the Negro”. But in a country anchored by the selling and owning of human beings, where survival is often precarious at best, Brown sometimes appears to be the sanest white man of them all (sometimes). Continue Reading →
The debate over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie is played out. It’s time for a new pop-cultural dispute to take hold, namely whether an episode of Star Trek Discovery that pays serious homage to Die Hard is, by extension, also a Christmas movie, despite having no explicit ties to the holiday. Continue Reading →
David Fincher's 2011 adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is both a quite good movie and a deeply frustrating one. At its best, it thrillingly delves into the art of investigation through the eyes of two well-crafted and well-performed protagonists. At its worst, it falls flat on its face and takes its sweet time to get up, dust itself off, and get back into a groove. Continue Reading →
The smell of buttery popcorn and the sounds of shuffling of plastic cases only paints a partial picture of the era of a trip to a video rental store. During the '90s, the video store reigned supreme, and there was one giant that ruled them all: Blockbuster. There was once a store opening every seventeen minutes; now they’re reduced to one lone outpost in Bend, Oregon. The rise and fall of this entertainment empire is the subject of Taylor Morden’s documentary The Last Blockbuster. This quirky documentary follows the nostalgia trail, taking us on a journey from Blockbuster’s glory days to its last stand in Bend, Oregon. Continue Reading →
One of the major concerns people have before cutting the cord is potentially losing access to live sports. But the great thing about live TV streaming services is that you never lose that access. Minus the contracts and complications of cable, these streaming services connect you to a host of live channels, including ESPN. So ... How to Watch ESPN With A Free Trial
To date, Paramount Network has only two original shows on air right now: Yellowstone and Bar Rescue. The network seems to have its hands full with on-demand streaming service Paramount+, which is constantly stacked with a fresh supply of new shows. But Yellowstone and Bar Rescue are so sturdy and expansive that the network doesn’t ... How to Watch Paramount Network With a Free Trial
Previously “Women’s Entertainment,” We TV has since rebranded to accurately reflect its name and be a more inclusive lifestyle channel. It’s home to addictive reality gems like Bold and Bougie, Bridezillas, Marriage Boot Camp, and The Untold Stories of Hip Hop. And when it’s not airing original titles, it has on syndicated shows like 9-1-1, ... How to Watch WE TV With a Free Trial
For many sports fans, TNT is a non-negotiable. It broadcasts NBA, MLB, NHL, college basketball, and All Elite Wrestling matches. And, as a bonus, it also has reruns of shows like Supernatural, Charmed, and NCIS, as well as films like The Avengers, Dune, and Justice League. But while TNT used to be a cable staple, ... How to Watch TNT Sports With A Free Trial
It’s no coincidence that many of today’s biggest comedians found their footing on Comedy Central: the channel is a bastion of emerging comic talents. It served as a playground for people like Nathan Fielder (Fielder For You), Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson (Broad City), Tim Robinson (Detroiters), and Dave Chappelle (Chappelle’s Show) before they shot ... How to Watch Comedy Central With a Free Trial
You’d be hard-pressed to find a bad show airing on FX. The channel has made a name for itself as a bastion of high-brow TV, along with HBO and AMC. It’s produced shows like Atlanta, Fargo, The Americans, Archer, and more recently, Shogun. But because it’s owned by Disney, it still airs several blockbusters in ... How to Watch FX With a Free Trial
If you’re a fan of true crime and insider docu-shows like The First 48 and Court Cam, then you’re probably already familiar with A&E. The cable channel is home to other reality TV gems like Hoarders, Duck Dynasty, and Storage Wars (they’ve moved on to spin-offs like Road Wars, Customer Wars, and Prison Wars now). ... How to Watch A&E With A Free Trial
From classics like Unplugged, Cribs, Jersey Shore, and Catfish to newer favorites like RuPaul’s Drag Race (and Untucked!) and Love & Hip Hop, MTV is still the place to be, if not for the latest in music and pop culture, then at least for solidly entertaining reality TV. Unlike before, you don’t actually need cable ... How to Watch MTV With a Free Trial
Comedy fans know Adult Swim is where it’s at. Home to shows like Rick and Morty, Robot Chicken, and The Eric Andre Show, the Cartoon Network programming block has become so big and successful that it’s practically overrun its home channel. It helps that it also shares rights to popular adult animation like Bob’s Burgers, ... How to Watch Adult Swim With a Free Trial
There are few things in the world more thrilling to women than a juicy true crime series. NBC seems to know that pretty well, hence the rebranding of The Oxygen Channel from light lifestyle fare to hardcore true crime. Here, you’ll find investigative shows like Cold Justice and Dateline, specials like Homicide for the Holidays, ... How to Watch Oxygen With a Free Trial
Sometimes, you can’t ask for anything more than funny and smart shows, which FXX has in spades. As the cable network home of The Simpsons, it airs new episodes of the show weekly, even dedicating an entire Sunday afternoon block to it. This is accompanied by shows like Futurama, King of the Hill, Family Guy, ... How to Watch FXX With a Free Trial
Much like HBO and AMC, FX always has at least one show on that has everyone talking. Right now, that’s Shogun and Fargo (please go see those now if you haven’t yet). But in the past, it’s also seen the rise of now-cult classics like American Horror Story, Atlanta, Sons of Anarchy, and It’s Always ... How to Get an FX Subscription Without Cable
As the (smaller) sister channel of ABC and The Disney Channel, Freeform is home to some pretty entertaining but still wholesome TV shows like Grown-ish (a spin-off of Black-ish), Chrissy & Dave Dine Out, and Young & Hungry. Some on-brand reruns also include shows like Boy Meets World, Switched at Birth, and The Secret Life ... How to Watch Freeform With a Free Trial
Nickelodeon has made a name for itself as a children’s channel, but late at night when the kids go to bed, it airs films and TV shows that even mom and dad can enjoy. The programming block, called Nick at Nite, begins at 8 in the evening (10 on Saturdays) and runs through 7 in ... How to Watch Nick at Nite With a Free Trial
When it comes to breaking news, few channels can match up to CNN. It has local, national, and international coverage down pat, not to mention it’s on 24/7 and hosted by some of the country’s most trusted journalists, including Anderson Cooper and Christiane Amanpour. In the past, CNN only came with expensive cable packages, but ... How to Get a CNN Subscription Without Cable
Ina Garten, Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Tiffany Derry…really, who’s doing it like The Food Network? The channel has been platforming some of the most recognizable chefs and their respective shows since 1993, and even in the streaming age, it shows no signs of stopping. I mean, you can watch YouTube and TikTok chefs all you ... How to Get Food Network Live Without Cable
Cartoon Network’s giant library of animated television series has been a great, diverse companion to generations of kids growing up. Originals like Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Johnny Bravo brought tons of color to basic character tropes; while new age classics like Steven Universe and We Bare Bears explored softer moods to go with the ... How to Watch Cartoon Network with a Free Trial
Whether you just want to tune in to the most anticipated sporting event of the year (Puppy Bowl, of course) or you want a constant stream of shows like Lone Star Law, The Vet Life, and Coyote Peterson to keep your animal-loving heart company, then you probably know how vital it is to have Animal ... How to Watch Animal Planet With a Free Trial
Unlike most channels out there, The CW doesn’t cater to a specific niche; it’s a network that has a little something for everybody. It carries superhero shows like Superman & Lois, dramas like All American, magic shows like Penn & Teller, and comedies like Whose Line Is It Anyway? Because it has local affiliates scattered ... How to Get The CW Live Without Cable
If you’re looking for a good mix of serious true crime shows, hard-hitting documentaries, police procedurals, and vintage classics, then Sundance TV will be a fun addition to your channel lineup, if it’s not there already. It’s random enough to cater to different tastes, but its shows are, for the most part, addictive watches. Currently, ... How to Watch SundanceTV With a Free Trial
If you’ve put on the Travel Channel in the last decade or so, you’ll know it’s not actually the Travel Channel anymore, not really. Sure, it still occasionally airs gems like No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain and Hotel Impossible, but most of its time slots are now dedicated to supernatural and true crime shows. That ... How to Watch Travel With a Free Trial
Everyone knows that A&E is the go-to channel for all the wars. You know, Customer Wars, Storage Wars, Road Wars, Neighbor Wars, Parking Wars…But the cable channel is also home to other programs that take a closer look at our mundane but fascinating lives. Sometimes, they take a more criminal bent with shows like The ... How to Get an A&E Subscription Without Cable
Aimed at the next generation of Disney kids, Disney Junior offers countless fun and educational children’s programming. Whether it’s modern favorites like Sofia the First, Doc McStuffins, or Bluey; or staple Mickey Mouse shows such as Mickey Mouse Clubhouse; the Disney Junior line-up is perfect for young children’s active imaginations, as well as teaching them ... How to Watch Disney Junior with a Free Trial
Whether it’s a game show, a survival contest, or a race, nothing beats the the thrill of a competition. And what better way to tune into that thrill than by heading over to the Game Show Network, which is all rivalry 24/7. Unlike the olden days, you don’t need a cable connection to do this. ... How to Watch Game Show Network With a Free Trial