127 Best Releases Translations Turkish on Hulu (Page 5)
The Forgiven
StudioBFI, Film4 Productions,
Despite its top shelf cast & capable direction, this drama about tourists behaving badly is nothing we haven't seen before.
The Forgiven is a story about fantastically rich white people behaving badly in an “exotic” location, told by slightly less rich and hopefully better intentioned white people. So soon after HBO’s The White Lotus, it might be tempting to call this a new trend. But it’s probably more accurate to consider it business as usual.
This is not to say that it’s a bad film. The Forgiven is thoroughly competent in its writing, direction, and performances. It also happens to be — from its first scenes and the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?-esque dynamic it establishes between its protagonists, to its ending which is strongly foreshadowed to the point of telegraphing — an obvious one. Continue Reading →
Titane
SimilarA Real Young Girl (1976), Copying Beethoven (2006),
StudioARTE France Cinéma,
Julia Ducourneau's followup to her stunning debut Raw makes for brutal, beautiful, brilliant body horror.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.)
Titane begins with the pluck of banjo strings and an extreme closeup of chrome. It’s a clash that’s jarring and compelling: the earthy, fire-and-brimstone howl of David Eugene Edwards’s take on the American folk standard “Wayfaring Stranger” set against an almost voyeuristic tour through a car’s inner workings. Continue Reading →
What We Do in the Shadows
NetworkFX,
SimilarArrested Development,
StudioFX Productions,
It’s been said (okay, only I’ve said it) that sitcoms shouldn’t run more than three or four seasons. Any longer than that, and they run the risk of getting stale, resorting to tired tactics like flashback episodes, forced romantic relationships, and adding cute wisecracking kids. So it’s a wondrous thing that, in its third season, What We Do in the Shadows, shows no signs of flagging, of having to fall back on retreads, or even having a musical episode. Despite what feels like a limiting premise, it’s as fresh and funny as ever before, somehow managing to maintain a remarkable balance between raunch and sweetness. Continue Reading →
Only Murders in the Building
Like its stars, Hulu original Only Murders in the Building, a 10-episode series focused on murders, podcasts, and murder podcasts, mixes the old with the new. Created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, the often-light dramedy stars Martin alongside Selena Gomez and Martin Short, three tenants of a high-rise, upper-class New York City apartment complex. It attempts to appeal to the widest of audiences, from upstart New Yorkers to murder aficionados to TV-watchers who need their grandchildren to set up streaming services. And it (mostly) succeeds. Continue Reading →
Vacation Friends
StarringTawny Newsome,
Studio20th Century Studios,
It’s apparent that anyone at Disney or 20th Century Studios wanted with Vacation Friends was a 100-minute movie to accompany a thumbnail of John Cena and Lil Rel Howery on the front page of Hulu. That’s it. There’s no other purpose to this film’s existence. It’s just another piece of “content” that can gather dust on Hulu. Save for Space Jam: A New Legacy, you won’t find a more fitting representation in the summer of 2021 of what hollow cinema the age of algorithms and monopolistic streaming services has wrought. Put simply, Vacation Friends makes Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates look like Safety Last! Continue Reading →
Nine Perfect Strangers
SimilarSám vojak v poli,
StudioEndeavor Content,
Big Little Lies and The Undoing creator David E. Kelley returns to the small screen for another collaboration with Nicole Kidman with Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers, an adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s 2018 bestseller. The book received mixed reviews, though, despite its commercial success, and the series struggles with the shallow nature of its story. Coming on the heels of The White Lotus, another show depicting rich, difficult people at a beautiful location, Kelley struggles to capture the suspense of his previous endeavors. Continue Reading →
Pig
Similar28 Weeks Later (2007), I Stand Alone (1998),
StudioEndeavor Content,
The sense of rot in Pig is almost constant. There’s progression but no real growth for much of its short runtime, no feeling of true human connection through its first half. For a while, its empathy only comes from within. It comes within its hero; its intimacy only blossoms when there’s no one else to dry it from the roots up. The man in question is Robin (Nicolas Cage). He was a well-known chef but has since jumped ship, living in a shack in the Oregon wilderness and hunting truffles with his foraging pig. His only consistent human interaction is with a yuppie-type named Amir (Alex Wolff), but that’s strictly transactional. Continue Reading →
Space Jam: A New Legacy
SimilarAnnie Hall (1977), Bring It On (2000), Fantasia (1940),
Watch afterBlack Widow (2021),
Let’s get one thing out of the way: the original Space Jam, released in 1996, isn’t a good movie. It’s an extended Nike commercial with an iconic soundtrack that tricked the brains of '90s kids into keeping it warm with nostalgia. So, it’s only fair that 25 years later, a new generation of children are forced to experience a similar kind of cash grab. Continue Reading →
Werewolves Within
SimilarEdward Scissorhands (1990), Ghost (1990),
StarringSam Richardson,
If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that all that stuff about the importance of caring for your neighbors, and looking past differences in order to create a better world? Horseshit. Absolute nonsense. The phrase “I got mine, to hell with everyone else” should be emblazoned on the American flag. Not even a highly contagious, potentially fatal virus could bring us together - if anything, it divided us further, splitting the country right down the middle between “I’d like to not spread this virus to other people” and “Hey, pal, other people aren’t my fuckin’ problem.” As we slowly recover from said potentially fatal virus, it may not seem time yet to laugh at such a thing, and yet, by gosh, director Josh Ruben makes it possible in Werewolves Within, a riotously funny horror-comedy that pokes fun at neighbors who are unable to force themselves to get along even in the most dire of circumstances. Continue Reading →
Italian Studies
SimilarBreakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Caché (2005), Maria Full of Grace (2004), Pi (1998), Stranger Than Paradise (1984),
StarringDavid Ajala,
Adam Leon's foggy mood piece is as endearingly formless as its amnesiac protagonist, a moody reflection on creativity and youth.
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival.
There's no explicit explanation given for why Alina Reynolds (Vanessa Kirby), a short story writer of some recent renown, finds herself aimlessly wandering the streets of New York City sans memory in Adam Leon's hypnotic Italian Studies. But if anyone was to thrive in the Big Apple in such a remarkable fugue state, it'd be someone so preternaturally attuned to listening and observing as Alina. And that she does for the vast majority of Italian Studies' runtime, creating a listless yet engrossing fever dream about the unexpected gifts of curiosity. Continue Reading →
Agnes
Mickey Reece's latest eases you into a darkly comic take on the typical possession film, before turning an ambitious 180 into more solemn territory.
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival.
Oklahoma City-based filmmaker Mickey Reece is as idiosyncratic as he is prolific; Agnes is his twenty-fifth movie in the past decade. And like his previous films (Mickey Reece's Alien, Climate of the Hunter), it's just as hard to categorize. Step into Agnes totally unfamiliar, and you might expect the typical possession-horror endemic of something like The Nun or, well, the obvious nod to Agnes of God. But right from its opening minutes, Agnes sets itself apart with a winningly dark humor; wait even longer still, and its halfway point will surprise you even further. Continue Reading →
Dream Horse
SimilarBring It On (2000), Brubaker (1980), Freedom Writers (2007), Mississippi Burning (1988), Raging Bull (1980),
Watch afterAvatar: The Way of Water (2022),
StudioFilm4 Productions, Ingenious Media,
Toni Collette has recently made a name for herself in the broader movie-going culture as a queen of creepy, suspense cinema, with her fantastic performances in Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Charlie Kaufman’s dark and whimsical I’m Thinking of Ending Things. It’s fun to see this resurgence of popularity nearly two decades after she gave what I consider her best performance of her career in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. Continue Reading →
Crazy Rich Asians
The director-writer & star of Asia talk death, love & the immigration experience.
A mother, her rebellious teen daughter, and an illness. It’s a story that’s been done and redone so many times that it’s basically become a subgenre. But in Ruthy Pribar’s feature directorial debut Asia, a tender and devastating character study about motherhood and loss, everything about the subgenre gets rejuvenated. Not because it breathes a new life into it, but because it tells the story in an understated way, with a level of realism that recalls the works of the Dardenne brothers more than it does The Fault in Our Stars.
The titular character, Asia (Alena Yiv), is a 35-year-old single mother who immigrated herself and her daughter from Russia to Israel years ago to start a new life. By day (and sometimes night), Asia works tirelessly as a nurse. But when she’s not taking care of her patients, Asia likes to spend time at a bar, drinking alone and flirting with strangers, or having sex with her colleague in his car as if she’s still a teenager. Continue Reading →
Undine
StudioARTE France Cinéma,
Over the past decade, writer-director Christian Petzold has delivered three near-perfect features-- 2012’s Barbara, 2014’s Phoenix, and 2018’s Transit. His work isn't showy, but what he pulls off is challenging - making artfully crafted, sumptuously romantic stories focusing on lonely, easy-going characters finding connection with one another. His latest, Undine, follows in that tradition, and it’s one of his best. Continue Reading →
Hudson Hawk
In the 30 years since it made its infamous debut, there have been bigger critical and commercial catastrophes unleashed upon multiplexes than Hudson Hawk (1991). And yet, while most of those disasters have been duly forgotten, it continues to loom large as the ultimate Hollywood cautionary tale of what can happen when a performer riding the absolute peak of their cultural ascendancy is given the chance to make literally anything that they want and it turns out to be something that evidently no one else wanted. Continue Reading →
Four Good Days
SimilarThe Cider House Rules (1999), The Last Emperor (1987),
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 →
Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Watch afterAmerican Fiction (2023),
StarringSamuel L. Jackson,
StudioLionsgate,
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 →
The Outside Story
StarringSonequa Martin-Green,
In the last year, we’ve all been able to relate to The Outside Story protagonist Charles Young (Brian Tyree Henry) and his desire to just stay indoors. Whereas the general public’s inclination to stay inside has come from the danger of the COVID-19 pandemic, though, Young has been refusing to move from his couch due to a severe case of heartbreak. After learning that his girlfriend, Isha (Sonequa Martin-Green), cheated on him, the two have broken up. Now Young is so forlorn that he can do nothing but remain in his apartment working on video editing assignments from Turner Classic Movies. Continue Reading →
Pose
NetworkFX,
SimilarDante's Cove, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
StudioFX Productions,
A lot of the discourse surrounding Pose tends to focus on how groundbreaking it is, and rest assured Ryan Murphy’s drama is certainly that. Prior to the 2010s, queer media almost exclusively focused on the G in LGBT+ and most of those gay men were white and cis. By contrast, Pose’s main cast stars people of color, most of whom are trans. This diversity is behind the camera as well, being partially created by Steve Canals with writing and directing credits by Janet Mock and Our Lady J. Continue Reading →
The Handmaid's Tale
SimilarCigarette Girl, Millennium, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King,
Roswell Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan,
In the spirit of full disclosure, I need to say this: I’m not a big fan of The Handmaid’s Tale. There’s something about a show that is so unrelentingly grim—without even the occasional glimmers of light—that just makes me feel like I’ve been ground down into a salty meat paste. This is why I checked out of Game of Thrones before I even knew the words “Red Wedding,” because I couldn’t bear to watch Sansa Stark beaten, humiliated, and tortured anymore. So while I can say that Handmaid’s has strong writing and still boasts some of the most gorgeous photography of any show out there, I still don’t enjoy it. Can anyone say they actually enjoy it? And when did the incessant castigation of women become primetime entertainment? Continue Reading →
We Broke Up
We Broke Up wastes no time cutting to the chase of its own title. The first scene quickly and efficiently introduces the breezy, playful dynamic between longtime partners Doug (William Jackson Harper) and Lori (Aya Cash) as they banter in a restaurant while waiting for takeout. By the end of the scene, Doug pulls a proposal out of nowhere and Lori proceeds to vomit right then and there. It's one of the few times We Broke Up even tries to push the comedy into its supposed rom-com format. Continue Reading →