1348 Best Film & TV Releases Translated Into Russian (Page 54)

Xavier Beauvois' procedural offers intriguing day-in-the-life police work, despite an abrupt late-film shift into melodrama. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.) Drift Away (Albatros), the eighth film from French filmmaker Xavier Beauvois, contains such abrupt shifts in focus and tone that one’s degree of enjoyment towards it will depend largely on rolling with the punches.  Continue Reading →

Befitting the moodiness of the presentation is a similarly idiosyncratic score courtesy of musician and visual artist Daniel Blumberg, who makes his feature-film composing debut. An alumnus of London's free-jazz and experimental venue Cafe Oto, Blumberg leverages his love for improvisation and atmosphere into a fragile soundtrack that's foreboding and romantic in equal measure. Clarinets and strings fill the foggy New York air and the loaded silences between Abigail and Tallie, aided capably by musicians like saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and vocalist Josephine Foster. Continue Reading →

Director Quentin Dupieux understands that the surreal blooms in a short period of time. Like Dupieux’ Deerskin (Le daim), Keep An Eye Out (Au poste) slowly pulls back thin leaves of logic before chaos springs out. Masterfully (and perhaps mercifully) just as we realize and appreciate the world’s full confusing splendor, the film ends.  Continue Reading →

In our ongoing reckoning with pop culture of the past, 80s comedies have fared particularly poorly, with far too many jokes relying on racism, homophobia and rape. One of the few to make it past a reassessment mostly unscathed (though it relies on an even by then tiresome transphobic gag) is 1988’s Coming to America, Eddie Murphy’s cheeky romantic comedy that, in spite of perhaps his own best efforts, still remains funny and deeply likable. Much of that can be attributed to Murphy and co-star/BFF Arsenio Hall pulling a Peter Sellers and playing multiple characters, with an energy that Murphy would lack in later movies. That effort alone set it apart from other comedies of the same era. Continue Reading →

Early on in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run, the third cinematic iteration of the long-running Nickelodeon series SpongeBob Squarepants -- after 2004's The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and 2015's The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water -- the Tim Hill-directed road movie flashes us back to the childhood of our absorbent, yellow, porous protagonist (voiced by Tom Kenny) and his first meeting with his beloved snail, Gary. By the time the film's over, we'll learn that all of SpongeBob's friends -- Patrick (Bill Fagerbakke), Squidward (Rodger Bumpass), Mr. Krabs (Clancy Brown), and the rest -- all met as kids in an undersea summer camp called Kamp Koral. Continue Reading →

In the late '90s, pharmaceutical companies claimed that the opioids that they produced weren’t addictive, causing a spike in medical providers prescribing them. This claim was, of course, false, and the influx of people who became addicted to opioids has created a public health crisis that results in an economic burden of $7.85 billion a year. Even worse is the human cost. In 2018,  67,367 Americans were killed via drug overdose. Of that number 69.5% of those deaths were caused by Opioids- mainly synthetic opioids.  Continue Reading →

One early scene in Natasha Kermani’s horror-thriller Lucky features a tracking shot following protagonist May (played by screenwriter Brea Grant) walking to her car in an empty parking garage. There's a foreboding sense that May is not alone even as the garage is seemingly deserted; a contemporary counterpart to the haunted gothic mansion. Fear and danger are everywhere, and nowhere.  Continue Reading →

Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 sci-fi blockbuster Pacific Rim certainly has its core group of dedicated fans, but I was never among them. The characters fell flat, the jokes never landed, and even the action sequences lacked suspense. Far from the worst action films, but also nowhere near among the most memorable, I went into Netflix’s anime twist on the story with a healthy dose of skepticism. Continue Reading →

Natalie Morales directs herself and Mark Duplass in a tender look at the bonds we form to save ourselves in a hard world. How are we supposed to process our grief when the closest we have to comfort is sharing feelings through zoom video calls? In Natalie Morales’ directorial debut Language Lessons, that question is explored at the center of the story. Wonderfully written and packed with heart and sensitivity, this heartwarming two-hander mumblecore celebrates the beauty of human connection in any kind of medium, depicting how the unexpected bond we have with other people, even the one only shared via computer and phone screens, can help us heal from the pain of losing our loved ones. Morales, who co-writes the script with indie darling Mark Duplass, plays Cariño, a Costa Rica-based Spanish teacher hired by a wealthy man named Will (Desean Terry) to give his husband, Adam (Duplass), a 100-hour lesson on the Spanish language. Though their first meeting starts off awkwardly, the two eventually warms up to each other, especially after Adam opens up about his life, his relationship with Will, and even his strange morning routine.  Continue Reading →

If you’re like me, you may be surprised to find that one of Netflix’s most enduring original franchises is Last Chance U, a documentary series chronicling football players as they juggle sports and academics. Though the show ended after a four-season run last year, Netflix isn’t one to let a recognizable brand name rest. Last Chance U has returned in the form of Last Chance U: Basketball, which shifts the focus from the Friday night lights of football to the indoor basketball fields of East Los Angeles Community College. Continue Reading →

Céline Sciamma's followup to Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a graceful tale of rediscovered childhood. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.) In the wake of the international success of her hypnotic, Gothic-infused romantic drama Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), it would have been natural to assume that Céline Sciamma's next film would be a major project and the center of great scrutiny. Perhaps recognizing and preferring to avoid that template, Sciamma instead went the other way. She not only follows up Portrait with the decidedly small-scale Petite Maman, she shot it so quickly and in such secrecy that most people didn't even know she was working on anything until its world premiere at Berlinale was announced.  Continue Reading →

Dasha Nekrasova leaps out of the gate with an audacious, out-there horror debut as creepy as it is transgressive. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.) Once upon a time, when a horror film was described as being “transgressive,” it indicated that it dealt with material that went far beyond the social mores of the time. Even fans of the genre were startled by what they were seeing in films like Psycho (1960), Night of the Living Dead (1968), and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Nowadays, when a horror film is described that way, it's just code for being super violent and nothing else.  Continue Reading →

Dan Stevens stars as a seductive but malfunctioning robot companion in Maria Schrader's refreshing, tender exploration of longing. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Berlin Film Festival.) It’s nearly impossible to not think of Spike Jonze’s romantic drama Her while watching Unorthodox creator Maria Schrader’s third feature I’m Your Man. Granted, both movies focus on a relationship between a lonely, messy human being and an AI. But where Jonze’s film tells the story from the male gaze, Schrader flips the narrative and gives the room to a complicated female character. The result is not only refreshing but also more tender and meditative, exploring love, loneliness, and longing over the technological ethics that tend to occupy these kinds of films. Continue Reading →

(Note: We heavily encourage you to read reviews and criticism from Southeast Asian critics, who have a much more intimate and detailed understanding of the cultures from which Raya and the Last Dragon draws inspiration. This thread is a helpful primer.) Continue Reading →

If I told you that thirty years ago, 1.2 million dollars literally fell out of an armored truck, would you believe me? To be clear, this money wasn’t stolen – at least, not initially. A Purolator Armored Services truck – carrying an enormous quantity of cash from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia – suffered an “equipment malfunction,” leaving 1.2 million dollars lying on the side of the road in South Philly. As 1993’s Money For Nothing will tell you, this cash was quickly discovered by Joey Coyle (John Cusack), an out-of-work twenty-something. What does one do next?  Continue Reading →

Who actually wants movies like Tom & Jerry? Think back to the dregs of the Alvin & the Chipmunks movies from the aughts: the awkward blend of live action and animation, the creaky dragging of baby-boomer cartoon mascots awkwardly into present-day pop culture, the incessant noise of it all. What's worse, the characters you've come to see -- the ones your kids never knew -- come on screen in a form you hardly recognize. 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 →

Peacock's attempt at reviving the classic 80s sitcom with some vague modern touches is as meaningless as it is harmless. Existing in a cotton candy-tinged alternate 2021 (the year is specifically noted, but there’s nary a mask or online class in sight), Peacock’s new reboot of ‘80s touchstone Punky Brewster exemplifies the question asked of all reboots. Who is this for? The adults who grew up with Punky are likely to ignore this entirely and it’s hard to imagine any child or teenager clamoring to watch it either. It’s a wispy throwback with vague trappings of “the messages of today." And a laugh track. In this economy?  Punky (Soleil Moon Frye), a professional photographer, still lives in the Chicago apartment where she lived with adoptive father Henry, but now with her own three children. Said children are Hannah (Lauren Lindsey Donzis) a teenager’s teenager, who loves TikTok and Timothee Chalamet as the teens do; Diego (Noah Cottrell); and Daniel (Oliver De Los Santos). These three are shortly joined by Izzy (Quinn Copeland) AKA Punky 2.0, a sprightly foster child whom Punky’s lifelong BFF Cherie (Cherie Johnson), now a social worker, encourages her to take in. Izzy appears to have wandered in from a casting call for The Great Gilly Hopkins, all adorable wisecracks and beanies. Also in the mix is Punky’s ex-husband Travis (Freddie Prinze, Jr), from whom she is recently divorced, although neither of them seems to remember that regularly.  Continue Reading →

Erin (Hope Davis) and Sean (Philip Seymour Hoffman) aren’t meant to be. We know this from the opening scene: he, a schlubby Marxist, announces he’s finally leaving. Even if he’s left and come crawling back before, this time he means it! Erin goes back inside their Comm Ave brownstone and rips up his “Think local, act global” bumper sticker attached to their – her – fridge.  Continue Reading →

While Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia (created by Sarah Lampert) has so far been hailed as a sort of edgier Gilmore Girls, the new young adult series arguably has more in common with Richard Benjamin’s Mermaids (1990), starring Cher and Winona Ryder. In essence: what if Cher’s Mrs. Flax kept two pistols in the house? Continue Reading →